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| "Abraham and Isaac Before the Sacrifice," Jan Victors, 1642 |
The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord
did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his
old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name
Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him.
~ Genesis 21:1-3
It’s
like running into a high school friend in the grocery store after twenty years
have passed. How do we even begin to fill in the gaps? The joys and sorrows and
unexpected twists and turns of an entire life… in five minutes next to the
artichokes.
Nineteen
chapters of Genesis have flown by in the week since we last opened this book in
community, and we are trying to catch up next to the metaphorical artichokes.
The stories of creation made way for stories of human misbehavior, from the
childish—eating a piece of fruit you weren’t supposed to touch—to the
deadly—killing your own brother. The world suffered a punishing flood that the
Creator very much regretted, and human misbehavior and self-discovery continued.
And over the course of those chapters, the story narrowed. What began as the
story of the whole cosmos has focused tightly in to become the story of one
family, a family in whom God has taken a particular interest.
In
chapter 12 God invites Abraham and his wife Sarah to get up and “Go from your country and your kindred and
your father’s house to the land that I will show you…” ~Genesis 12:1
This
elderly couple is invited into a covenant relationship with God… a relationship
based on promises.
God
promises to make Abraham and Sarah a “great nation”… to give them children, and
children for their children, children forevermore.
God
promises to give Abraham and Sarah land, a place of plenty, where they will
never know want.
God
promises to make Abraham’s name a blessing… promises that all the earth will
bless itself in his name.
All
Abraham and Sarah have to do is get up and go… and leave the past and family
ties behind.
Maybe
we should have seen this coming. Once again, God tells Abraham to get up and
go… and this time, to leave his future behind.
After these
things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land
of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that
I shall show you.”
~Genesis 22:1-2
There’s
something else that happened in the intervening chapters that I should have mentioned
right away. It took Abraham and Sarah a really long time to have their son. Abraham,
whose name means, “Father of a multitude,” is 75, and his wife Sarah is 65 when
they receive the promise of children. Sarah finally gives birth to their son
Isaac twenty-five years later.
Isaac, in case you were wondering, means “laughter.”
So
in Hebrew our passage actually reads, “God tested Father-of-a-multitude. Take
your son… Laughter… to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt
offering…” Which casts a somewhat different light on this story. The names
involved seem to me to suggest the distinct possibility that we are being set
up for some kind of elaborate (though sadistic) practical joke.
So Abraham
rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men
with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set
out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third
day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his
young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we
will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the
burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire
and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.
~Genesis 22:3-6
Now
it’s like we’re watching a terrible movie, an awful, cruel parody of taking
your children to church. The child Isaac is made to bear the wood—the same wood
that will, in a little while, bear him. It’s too much.
At
the same time, the story offers glimmers of hope, and perhaps more evidence
that Abraham knows there is something else going on. Notice what he says to his
attendants: “We will worship, and then we will come back to you.” WE will come back to you. Even in the
midst of this, is there some part of Abraham that knows—simply knows, deep
inside, that his God will not require him to do this?
Isaac said
to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said,
“The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham
said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two
of them walked on together. When they came to the place that God had shown him,
Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son
Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out
his hand and took the knife to kill his son.
~Genesis 22:7-10
I
read an article a couple of weeks ago, titled: “The Five Most Terrifying Words
in the Bible.”
“But
where is the lamb?”
No
matter what the author of the story is trying to signal to us, no matter the
possibility of an elaborate practical joke, or even a guaranteed positive
outcome, we still have at the heart of this story what one writer has called, “a
nightmare place where the Imagination conceives its ultimate ordeal”[i]:
the father coerced to kill his child, a child made to bear the transformation
of his father into that willing killer.
Does
it help to know that perhaps this may well be one of those “just-so” stories we
find every so often in the bible, like the story of the Tower of Babel, that tells
us how languages came to be? Does it help that this may well be the just-so
story of “How God let us know that human sacrifice is bad”?
Does
it help to hear Abraham’s words, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt
offering, my son”? Does it sound like Abraham is confident that God will provide? Or is Isaac the lamb?
Does
it help to know that, while Christians call this story “The Sacrifice of
Isaac,” Jews call it “The Akedah,” or “The Binding,” because Abraham binds Isaac
with rope in preparation for the sacrifice? Could it also be called “The
Binding,” do you suppose, because Abraham himself is bound by this terrible
test, in which he is asked to relinquish all claims to the future God has
promised?
Does
it help to know that the Qu’ran tells the same story, only in Muslim tradition,
it is Abraham’s older son, Ishmael, as the child who is almost sacrificed?
Does
it help to know that the whole tradition of biblical interpretation, going back
two thousand years at least, has struggled with this story, wrestled with it,
trying to get a blessing from it? Does it help to know that Abraham, in Jewish
tradition, doesn’t simply, silently agree, but questions God, challenges God. Here’s
what the rabbis believed about how the conversation really went:
God: Take your son….
Abraham: I have two sons…
God: … your only son…
Abraham: Each son is the only son of his mother…
God: … the one whom you love…
Abraham: A father’s love for his children knows no
bounds; I love both my sons…
God: … Isaac.
Does
it help to imagine Abraham dodging and weaving, doing everything he can to
stave off the inevitable, dreadful command to kill the son named “Laughter”,
trying like crazy to say “no”?
But the
angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said,
“Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do
anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld
your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a
thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt
offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The Lord
will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord
it shall be provided.” ~Genesis
22:11-14
Like a great novel or TV show,
the story of God’s covenant is told in a way that keeps us engaged. God makes a
promise, and then, instantly, the promise is in jeopardy. The promise takes
years and years to materialize. And after it does materialize, it is
jeopardized all over again.
Let’s
not forget: in the end, God does NOT want Abraham to sacrifice his son.
And
let’s not forget: in the end, God does not allow the life of one person to be
sacrificed on the altar of the religious convictions of another.[ii]
In the end, God is faithful. In
the end, God keeps God’s promises. In the end, God is on the side of life… the
same life we saw God creating life with such joyful abandon last week, life as
seen in bird and butterfly and buffalo, as well as in Abraham and Sarah and
Isaac. God is on the side of life, and God is going to be a different kind of
God for that reason.
In the end, God is going to be a
different kind of God than the world has ever known. God is going to invite
people into relationships based on love and not coercion. God is going to use
Abraham, and Sarah, and Isaac, all kinds of unlikely people, to be God’s
presence in the world and to share God’s blessings. God is going to be known,
not only as Creator, but as re-Creator, the one who brings life out of
situations that seem hopeless. And God is going to do all this faithfully,
intimately, a God who wants us, not to be bound, but to be free.
The story of this different kind
of God is our story as well. God invites us into relationship based on love and
not coercion. God uses us—every one of us, whether we feel up to it or not—to be
God’s presence and blessing in a world in pain. And God invites us into a
partnership in which we, too, can help to create joy where there was sorrow,
peace where there was conflict, and freedom from all that binds us. Thanks be
to God. Amen.
beautiful work on a hard text--thanks!
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