Imitating Abraham:
Strangers in a Strange Land

           If you work hard to play it safe, the gospel and epistle this week explode like a bomb in your briefcase. They sound reckless in the extreme:

           Don't be afraid, despite all that we know.

           God will give what is good, like an indulgent father, and better than we know to ask.

           Sell your possessions, give to the poor, and follow Jesus.

Catacomb fresco, Noah prays as the dove returns.

           There really are securities whose return on investment is guaranteed to increase and never decrease.

           Be vigilant, like Bernanos's country priest: "Keep marching to the end, and try to end up quietly at the roadside without shedding your equipment."

           Consider the saints, who were certain of what they didn't see — Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham.

           Imitate Abraham. He heard God's call, then in obedience defied the defaults of human nature and cultural conformity.

           Abraham journeyed from a present clarity to a future ignorance, from what he had to what he did not have. He sojourned from the known to the unknown, from everything that was familiar to all things strange. He was a stranger in a strange land, a resident alien.

           So too the believers a hunded years after Jesus in the Epistle to Diognetus: "Every foreign land was to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers."

           With our citizenship in heaven, our confession of faith subverts our geo-political identity.

Mosaic of Noah in Basilica di San Marco, Venice, 12th-13th century.

           Consider him faithful who made the promise. He calls those things that don't exist into existence — he makes something out of nothing.

           See the promise from afar, for many saints "did not receive the things promised."

           The farmer, poet, and consummate contrarian Wendell Berry has a series of Mad Farmer poems. By madness he means insanity and not anger. "To be sane in a mad time / is bad for the brain, worse / for the heart. The world / is a holy vision, had we clarity / to see it — a clarity that men / depend on men to make."

           His poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front contrasts the sacred folly of God's kingdom and the secular wisdom of worldly ways.

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Jewish depiction of Noah's ark on Mt. Ararat, 13th century France.

Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection. [end]

           And so, be encouraged by Saint Anthony: "A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad, you are not like us.'"