by Gianni Gennari

We continue the journey aimed at knowing our faith, founded on the First and New Testaments and expressed in the Creed since the times of the apostolic Church. In the Bible, little by little, adapting to the ability of men, from Abraham onwards, up to Moses, to the Prophets, and finally to the Apostles, the full announcement of salvation in Jesus Christ arrived. We came, last time, to discover that in the ancient biblical revelation, from Abraham, precisely to the prophets, the only way to know God is not to look up, but to recognize with facts his true image in the brother man by listening to His voice who asked precisely this in the "Ten Words". God is "known" - the prophets tell us, even if our sensitivity is perhaps not yet accustomed to fully understanding the novelty of their word - only if he is "recognized" in his brother. The Commandments, from the third onwards - we have seen it up to here - speak only of our relationship with other men...

First consequence: true worship pleasing to God

Hence – but this should not surprise us – in Scripture, the First and New Testaments, there is a truly new way, and unique in the entire history of the religious phenomenon, of seeing the relationship between true faith and true worship. The "revelation" says that where there is no recognition of God in the brother, God himself rejects all worship. Therefore, where there is no justice and law, the true worship aimed at the true one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Prophets who announce the advent of the Messiah, cannot have any space.
Cult? In the traditional vision of all religions, speaking of worship means evoking a reality that has a precise name: sacrifice...
In this regard, almost as a parenthesis, it is worth remembering that there persists, even where you least expect it, even in the minds of many men who also claim to be cultured and informed, a serious misunderstanding about the so-called "sacrifice of Isaac" on the part of of Abraham (Gen. 22). Big scandals, usually, when we remember this biblical page. Even in a recent, widely read book, one can read that the author, Vito Mancuso, warns his son that that passage in the Bible is inhuman and should not be taken seriously, it is a sign of barbarism that is also part of the Jewish-Christian religion... At first glance it may seem like a correct thought. But if we want to talk seriously, the truth of the biblical text read with the necessary rigor is exactly the opposite. That passage from Genesis, in contradiction with all ancient religious traditions, is the announcement that the God of Abraham no longer asks, like all the others up until then, and also in the original tribe of the patriarch, the sacrifice of the most precious realities for the life of a man, the firstborn son. It was a dramatically widespread custom throughout antiquity: just as an example we remember the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia in the great Greek dramatic poetry, and the human sacrifices found in all primitive religions. Of course: the biblical story is dramatic. Abraham orders his son to get the wood and sets off. He takes the knife and brings the fire while Isaac, who walks next to him, points out that everything is there - knife, wood and fire - but there is no victim. Abraham has death in his heart, but he is aware that his ancient religion also implies this type of sacrifice, an act of worship that offered the most precious reality to the "god" and responded "the Lord, my son, will provide the victim!" he prepares everything for the sacrifice with a final act of his primitive faith. But “the Lord”, 'this' Lord, stops the ready hand. Therefore the biblical story signals the end of human sacrifices, typical of all contemporary religions, and announces something previously unheard of. Instead of being scandalized, we must understand that here it is happening as a reversal of the religion invented by human needs.
It is the primitive announcement of a God who does not ask for sacrifices but, as we began to see in the last episode, asks for justice and rights. And so the prophet Isaiah, after centuries of experience of the new faith, presents us with God's indignation for a cult that does not recognize him, because it does not truly listen to him, and tramples on his "words" (Haddebarìm", the commands of the Decalogue”: «What do all your sacrifices matter to me? I am satisfied with your holocausts... I do not like the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come before me, who has ever asked you to come and trample my courts? Stop bringing me useless gifts, their scent disgusts me; new moons, Saturdays, assemblies, I can no longer stand crime and solemnity. I hate your new moons and your pilgrimages, with all my heart I close my eyes. It is of no use to you to multiply your prayers, I do not listen to you, because your hands are full of blood, wash yourselves, purify yourselves, stop doing evil, learn to do good, seek the right, help the 'oppressed, do justice to the orphan, defend the cause of the widow.' (Isaiah 1.11-17).
Maybe we are still surprised by it. Perhaps we are not yet accustomed to being reminded of similar words, but this has been written and signed as the word of God for 3000 years. It is further confirmation and consequence of what we have seen previously, namely the dazzling revelation - completely new - that the The only way to know God is to recognize him in others, especially in the oppressed, in the orphan, in the widow. Moreover - taking a step forward - it will be the same thing that Saint James, in his Letter, will announce with that at first sight subversive definition of true religion: "Pure and spotless religion before God our Father is this: helping orphans and widows in their tribulations and keep themselves pure from this world” (Jas. 1, 27).

Between us, without going into more detail immediately and here, the true "Liberation Theology" was not invented by the theologians of South America, but the Bible invented it. We have forgotten for centuries the liberating demand of the entire Old Testament confirmed in the New with that single definition of religion that we have just read in St. James.
Towards the Christian message: confirmation and infinite overcoming
This is, albeit with a whole discussion to be made, to be specified, to be constructed by thinking about the history of 2000 years of Christian faith, the essence that is always valid: the God who has always been hidden "reveals himself" and is effectively known only in the moment where justice and right, compassion and sincerity, love and mercy reign. But this is also the first fact of the new revelation of the true God, which summarizes everything that we call the Old or First Testament, which for us is precisely the promise and premise of the "New" one. This will essentially serve to provide the proven, I would say material, concrete and living proof in Jesus of Nazareth: God is identified with man by grace, God is found in the orphan, God is in the least of my brothers. No religion has humanized God and divinized man like the Christian faith, no man has ever dared to declare himself the Son of God, one thing with God, God himself: only Jesus of Nazareth. (John 10, 30 and 38).
Those who consider Jesus a great philosopher, a great benefactor of humanity, but do not believe that he is "the Way, the truth and the life" (John 14,6) have an incomplete vision of the figure of the Messiah. Trying to outline a less incomplete one is the task of our path that will follow, but it seems appropriate here, in conclusion of this modest passage, to point out that precisely in the first writing of the New Testament, the first Letter to the Thessalonians, and precisely in the first verses all our faith is already there, there is all the truth of God and all the truth of our faith in God, revealed and given in Jesus Christ. There is the whole Trinity, in fact, and there is our life made of faith, hope and love. Worth reading for many who say that the Christian faith was gradually developed in the first centuries by subsequent philosophical and theological thought. Let's try reading: I Thess. 1, 1-6. Nothing is missing, and it is the first text of the entire New Testament...