Post by Rabbi Neil on Oct 22, 2021 16:11:09 GMT
When God appears to Abraham at the start of this week’s Torah portion, we learn that when God visited Abraham, he lifts his eyes – which is usually an expression for greater awareness – and he sees three men standing above him. We know that these men are Divine messengers so we could say that in its most basic sense, the text isn’t saying that God is literally visiting, but rather that the men or messengers are expressions of God visiting. In that reading, these messengers are not the anthropomorphic personifications of God but, rather, their visiting Abraham is as though God visited Abraham. They visit on behalf of God. They speak on behalf of God as faithful messengers, as conduits of the Divine will. So, for example, the text says, “When the men got up to leave, they looked toward Sodom and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way.” (Gen 18:16). God then immediately speaks to Abraham, seemingly implying that God speaks through the three men. When Abraham argues with God about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, it could be that he’s arguing with God manifested through these three messengers.
When Talmud (Sotah 14a) looks at this text and says that it teaches us that just as God here visits the sick, so we should also visit the sick, it makes it clear that God is visiting Abraham who is recuperating after having circumcised himself. So, God visiting, God speaking, God acting, through divine intermediaries is possible. If we hold by that interpretation, it makes it slightly easier to stomach the fact that they sit and eat (Gen. 18:8) because the idea of God eating seems rather odd to the modern sentiment. Almost certainly not weird to the ancient sentiment, since the Tabernacle itself had shewbread which was seemingly for divine consumption in some form, but at least unsettling to a modern sentiment. Regardless of whether it’s divine emissaries or God Almighty, it is even more unsettling that they eat milk and meat in one meal, which the Rabbis later prohibited (the Torah prohibits consuming the kid in its own mother’s milk but the Rabbis extended that to a ban on eating any milk and meat together). The Rabbinic justification for this is that it’s an extremely long meal, so they eat the curds first and then wait for the appropriate halakhic time before eating the meat. That’s both clever and comical at the same time, even though it’s clearly not meant to be comical. The Rabbis have to explain it this way because the idea that angels, or God, might behave in ways that contradict later Rabbinic law is deeply unsettling for them because it would imply that God changed God’s mind, or that Jewish law develops, which we obviously hold to be true in reform Judaism but which was unthinkable in Talmud. So, the first reading of this text is that God visits through the messengers, not that God physically visits.
The second reading is more challenging to the modern religious sentiment, but is still a very strong potential reading. At the start of chapter 18, we read, “God appeared to him beneath the trees of Mamre, as he was sitting before the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and saw, lo!, three men were standing there.” (Gen. 18:1-2). In the first reading, God appearing and the three men are synonymous, but in the second reading they are different things. God appears, God literally visits, and as a result of God appearing, Divine messengers also appear, rather like a royal retinue. This would explain why sometimes in this passage we read of the messengers talking, and sometimes of God talking, because in this reading the two are separate. That is how God overhears Sarah talking behind her husband’s back even though the three messengers are currently sitting with Abraham and eating and why we clearly have points in the story where God speaks and clearly points where the messengers speak. In that reading, the messengers eat but God does not, which doesn’t seem as theologically problematic. Samson Raphael Hirsch distinguishes between the two, saying that “God revealed the Divine self to Abraham while he, Abraham, was engaged in practicing hospitality.” That implies a sharp distinction between the visitors and Godself. So, in this second reading, God literally visits Abraham, and when the messengers go to leave and then God speaks about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, this reading suggests that it’s not God speaking through the messengers but that the messengers have left and then God ends the moment of prophecy with Abraham without the messengers, just as God started it without them.
So, two readings – one that God is revealed through the messengers, and one that God is revealed and the messengers also visit. But I would like to suggest a third reading which is less supernatural and which, I think, reads better in the text. Hirsch said that God appeared while Abraham was engaged in hospitality, but that’s not the order of the text at all – God appears, then the men appear and then Abraham runs out to meet them. If we take God less as a supernatural Deity and more as, to quote Mordecai Kaplan, the Force That Makes for Salvation, then God is the drive within us to improve ourselves. So, in this third reading, the text is a metaphor for how we view the world and thus how we treat others. If we see people as just people, then we miss the Divine spark in them. Before the encounter, Abraham reframes how we views people, and sees them as expressions of Divinity. The text throughout calls them “men”, not messengers or angels or anything like how they were understood later. They’re just men. But to Abraham, they’re not just men because he realizes that God can be met through the encounter with others. The voice of God through the encounter isn’t the voice of the men as in the first reading, and it isn’t a voice separate from them as in the second reading. It’s the voice that comes to us as we encounter others. God appearing to Abraham then means that Abraham realizes after his circumcision of the imminent presence of God, and he then uses that realization to transform the following encounter. The men leave, then Abraham reflects on the encounter and the consequences of what is about to happen to Sodom and Gomorrah, and then the God “removes Godself” (Gen. 18:33) from Abraham. God is the framework for the encounter. If that’s the case, why do we have an episode of bargaining between God and Abraham? Taken in this way, this is Abraham struggling with the fact that people are going to die, wrestling with whether or not there is justice in the world. He can’t change the outcome – indeed, the men are very clear that Sodom and Gomorrah will be destroyed – but he’s wrestling with what that means. So, in this third reading, rather like with Jacob when he later wrestles with a man who at one point seems to be a man and at another seems to be God (Gen. 33), it seems that the point is that God is not manifested in the man or separate from the man but, rather, God is in the encounter with the man.
All three readings provide a different perspective on this account. All three have merits and challenges. I like the idea that God is the framework for the encounter because it reminds us that we need to frame our relationships with other people in appropriate ways. We need to see the Divine in everyone we encounter, we are responsible for how we view every encounter. And if we see the Divine in everyone, it makes it easier for us to run to help everyone, just as Abraham does. Talmud (Shabbat 30b) says that “The Divine Presence rests on us neither through gloom, not through sloth, not through frivolity, not through levity, not through talk, not through idle chatter, but only through the attainment of joy derived from a precept performed.” In other words, we encounter God in the way we act, in performing mitzvot, in helping make the world a better place. In that third reading, God is not a person, God is not a thing separate to people or within people but, rather, God is encountered as we help other people. Abraham chooses to frame God in this way, so then he runs out to help other people as soon as he sees them, and as the people leave, so the opportunity to help them leaves, which means that God leaves.
If God is truly in the encounter, then our coming together in prayer is an act of Divine presence. We don’t invite God to come and speak to us but, rather, our presence and support of each other in prayer is God speaking to us. As we speak through the words of our prayers, God also speaks, hence the meditation that opens Tefillah that asks God to open up our lips. Human beings are not God, but we are created in the image of God, meaning that we can see God in ourselves and in others if we choose to. And the more we help others, the more the Divine Presence rests upon us.
So, may we in our prayers and in our everyday lives bring God into our encounter with others. May we see every other person around us as sacred and as a unique opportunity to meet God anew. May we pray not for things, but for the opportunity to meet God in meeting the other, and may we run out to create those special moments of Divine encounter. And let us say, Amen.