6 July 2017
Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Homicide certainly stands as one of the more heinous crimes. We are also familiar with the Church’s teaching on abortion. So when we read in today’s first reading the request of God to Abraham, to kill his only son, it does strike us as something rather contrary to the overriding message of the bible. We can make sense of this passage only in light of the life of Christ and the sacrifice Christ made for us. We understand biblical writing as a complex mix of truth but a truth that is described by means of cultural traditions and expressions. In light of these traditions, we assure ourselves of avoiding deviant and strange interpretations when we align ourselves with the sense in which the church interprets this and other complex passages. Of course God would never ask us to kill each other, but that is not the message of today’s reading. The reading is a story about commitment and trust, perhaps told in a manner that would require a different way if it were written today, and not almost 2,500 years ago.