Immediately after the tower of Babel, God calls Abram. God's whole plan, it turns out, is now going through Abram. We know this because the two great promises God makes to Abram - land and people - correspond to the two great curses. The land promised to Abram will be a new Eden, a land "flowing with milk and honey." (Ex. 3:8) Also, the people that will descend from Abram will break the curse of Babel and its divided people. The people are a "seed" that will fertilize the land. What God will do with Abram is what Jacob sees in his dream - a ladder between heaven and earth, a new Eden, a true gate to God that will be a true Tower of Babylon (which means "gate of God") No more floods. No more open warfare against the violent flesh of the earth. God will grow the redemption of the earth through one particular stream - the stream of Abram. The curse will be broken through Abraham and his 'seed.'
But as we've seen, humanity under the power of death lives by boastful flesh. Flesh, again, is Paul's word for sinful humanity. It isn't our bodies. Those are good, very good. Flesh is a fear of death that goes all the way down, which manifests itself in us through works of strength, boastfulness, and self-sufficiency. How will flesh be put to death in Abram? The answer is circumcision. It is the sign of God's promise and covenant with Abram.
I want to pause for a moment. This Lenten series is about the public impact of Christ's cross, about how it actually changes the world. Initially, it seems that in talking about circumcision, we move away from the public aspects of our lives and move into the most private aspects of anyone's life - their sexuality. Perhaps I need to confess some of my own boastfulness. I want to say something important in this blog! And let's face it - writing about circumcision is embarrassing. But if the curse of sin is all about building bulwarks against our vulnerability to death, then childbearing and the sexuality that leads to it is one of the best God-replacements we can find. That the sign of the covenant is a subversive mark on a sexual organ is a sign that this is where our greatest sinful boast against death resides. This is where we think we can find immortality. This is where we think death can't get us.
We must first see circumcision as a parody of other civilizations. To ensure their future, ancient civilizations made religious symbols of sexual prowess and conquest. Naked worshipers bore phallic statues through Greek rituals of worship. Peter Leithart writes: "Sexual potency and procreation are paths to immortality, two of flesh's main strategies for overcoming the fear of death." (Delivered, 89) And it was all about the men. Civilizations valorized male flesh and male members. Trying to compensate for fleshly weakness and vulnerability to death, they boasted in male virility and strength. Their society was structured likewise. Women and slaves were impure and unclean. The new society God builds in Abram is a parody of these other societies. Where they ensure their future by boasting in male flesh, God's new people in Abram have only circumcised men, with cuts in their flesh. They are a civilization devoted to denying the flesh. Any future they have will not come from their own virility, but will come from God alone.
This is a parody. Parodies are stories that find humor in patterns, tropes, and commonplaces by retelling them with exaggeration. A joke appears in Reader's Digest: "A priest, a rabbi, a nun, a doctor, and a lawyer all walk into a bar. The bartender says, "What is this? A joke?" This joke is a parody of other jokes. Priests, rabbis, nuns, and more often turn up in jokes. Here, they all appear. They appear in a bar, a common setting for jokes. The punchline is only funny if you've heard a lot of these jokes to the point where you understand how they work.
Circumcision is a parody on the flesh-obsessed world. The joke is on them. It exposes them (pun intended). Flesh teaches all the world how to compete, how to conquer, how to be virile, how to win, how to stay alive at all costs, how to defend your life, your family, your tribe at the expense of all others. Flesh teaches this, but God's plan is to teach his people how to kill flesh. This will shape everything about Israel's worship, their sacrifices, and their ethics. It is all a parody. And it is all grounded in what circumcision means: subverting the boasting and vanity of flesh. Israel will still gain victories. God will give them everything that flesh seeks after - life, happiness, safety, family. All the good things of life. But it will only come from denying the flesh.
All their victories will be circumcised victories. When Gideon comes out to battle in the Book of Judges with 32,000 men, God keeps reducing his ranks until he has only 300. This is a parody. The only victory the Israelites will win is a circumcised victory. It is a victory they would never have won unless the Lord fought for them. When the Philistine giant Goliath is defeated by a small boy David, it is a circumcised victory. A circumcised victory is like a resurrection from the dead, a battle of certain death which only the Lord can win.
After circumcision, Abram is now Abraham. He is not of the flesh. He lives by God's Spirit. But this is a lesson Abraham continues to learn. The promises will not be fulfilled by the flesh. God promises Abraham and Sarah a child, but they are old and Sarah's womb is "dead." (Rom. 4) God's promise must be fulfilled by resurrection from the dead. When God calls Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, it is like another circumcision. For a world under the power of death, having children is a way for us to have immortality. Abraham must trust his son, his 'flesh', to be put to death, and that God will still find a way to fulfill his promises. God intercedes and an animal substitute is killed instead. God needed to know that Abraham was willing to live by the Spirit and not by flesh.
Solomon's great temple will eventually be built on Mount Moriah, the same place where Abraham obeyed God with regard to sacrificing his 'flesh.' In Abraham, in Isaac, and in the whole sacrificial system that is eventually built around them, we see that God is finding a way to put flesh to death without killing people. Death itself is being put to death without people having to die. This will overcome the curse of Eden.
Finally, we see that Christ's cross is a type of circumcision:
"Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead." (Col. 2:9-12)"
Ultimately, what Jesus accomplishes is the true and final death of flesh. Then, we see the quintessential Christian approach to all our pedigrees, victories, and accomplishments in Paul's words:
"If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ." (Philippians 3:4b-7)
Paul's accomplishments are fleshly boasting, which are put to death in Christ's cross. So he denies them. He keeps putting them to death. We see ultimately that the rich symbolism of circumcision throughout the Bible points us to consistent pattern for this world, and for all Christians, of death and resurrection. To echo the Thursday, March 7 devotion, we were under the power and curse of death. We lived by flesh, and were in league with death in rebellion against the Lord. This death, this flesh, is put to death by the true circumcision of Christ's cross so that we live by God's Spirit alone, boasting not in our accomplishments, but in him alone.
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