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.” 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.
Genesis 22:1-14 (NRSVue)
And the two of them walked on together. 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.” And 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. 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.”
My sermon from the 4th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (July 2, 2023) on Genesis 22:1-14.
So what do we do about a story that, in the words of the Mark Smith, professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, “has no parallels in the Bible or ancient Near Eastern literature?” Christians have, since the first few decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, seen the story of the attempted sacrifice of Issac as one foreshadowing Jesus on the cross. There are details within this story that seem to match – such as Issac being the one who carried the wood he would be bound too. Yet this story still leaves us with questions since God, who already promised that Abraham’s descendants would outnumber all the stars in the sky, suddenly out of nowhere asked Abraham to end that promise. We’re told that this whole ordeal is meant to be a test but what that test is trying to measure is a bit fuzzy. Even Abraham, Issac, his family, and their entire household are left in the dark, not knowing that they’re undergoing a test in the first place. Our reading begins with God calling Abraham by name and then quickly moves to God uttering a word we wouldn’t expect. This is a story where God’s intentions aren’t very easy to see.
Yet I wonder if the opening words between God and Abraham might help us unpack everything else that followed. These words, at first, feel rather one-sided since God does most of the talking. But we can safely imagine that Abraham wouldn’t have been so quiet since he had a regular habit of arguing with God. At worst, Abraham would have kept every response to God safely in his head and I think that that command that punctuated God’s speech provides that space where we get to imagine what Abraham might have said. God began his words with the command “take your son” which Abraham would have made Abraham wonder – which one? By this point in the story, Abraham had two sons – one through Sarah and the other through Hagar, Abraham’s slave. That son was born when Sarah and Abraham tried to make God’s promise come true on their own. God, though, answered Abraham’s question by pointing to Issac but surrounded that name with “an only.” Abraham knew, however, that such a word didn’t fully apply to him but did to the women who never made an overt appearance in the story. Abraham, I believe, loved all his kids – which might be why God didn’t say that Issac was the only one he loved. By this point in the speech, I imagine Abraham was a bit confused – not quite sure what God was doing. The comments God shared didn’t fully describe Abraham’s story as he, himself, knew it to be. God seemed to be shifting Abraham’s story in a slightly different way that left Abraham filled with questions. Abraham probably wondered where God was going with all of this – which shows how faith doesn’t require us to turn off our brain or leave our emotions behind. Instead, God seemed to be engaging with Abraham’s default story – his own self-vision of who he was supposed to be.
And it’s at that point in the story where everything gets weird. God then told Abraham to take Issac to a new place to be offered up as a sacrifice. Now the idea behind the sacrifice – the intentional killing of a living thing as a way to connect with the divine – is something that’s all over our Bible. But our Bible doesn’t take a few verses to describe why this kind of sacrifice existed in the first place. Instead, it’s just there – a part of our human story that assumes reaching out to the divine requires a life to be involved. Usually the sacrifice used grain or grapes, cattle or sheep, or other kinds of domesticated plants and animals. But there were moments when, during a war or after a natural disaster or while living through a famine or plague that humans were killed. When the world was on the line, a person’s life was used as a way to convince a god or gods or whatever to intervene. Abraham knew that his current situation wasn’t close to being that dire but that concept of sacrifice was simply assumed as part of what it means to interact with God. He, I think, couldn’t even imagine that a relationship with the divine wouldn’t include some kind of sacrifice. A sacrifice was how you convinced the so-called gods to act on the behalf of you, your family, and your nation. Living with the divine meant the world was kind of wrapped up in a pay-per-play attitude where your faithfulness, your love, your devotion, was reflected in and through the living things burnt up to the divine. Abraham, though, doesn’t explicitly hear from God about what this so-called test that he didn’t even know he was taking – would give him. Yet that pay-per-play idea was assumed to be part of every communication one had with the divine. God commanded Abraham to end the promise Issac’s life fulfilled – and every bit of his wonder and doubt and questions were impacted by this sacrificial vision of what it means to be in a relationship with God.
And so I wonder if this test wasn’t about how close Abraham came to slaughtering his own son but rather was God showing how far these default stories take us into death and how we need God to give us a new vision of what it means to live in the world. Asking, or forcing, others to make all kinds of sacrifices for our own personal benefit – is a story that is still with us. We often require others, especially the most vulnerable among us, to sacrifice their own opportunities for life, love, health, and success so that the story we tell of our own value and importance won’t come crumbling down. We, without always realizing it, live as if God’s creation really is a pay-to-play reality where everything, including love and grace, is a limited commodity that only certain people are allowed to have. God sent Abraham on a journey that revealed to him and Issac just how far the default stories we carry might take us. God was not interested in letting these kinds of stories continue because a sacrifice shouldn’t be about asking others to lose their own life so that we can continue embracing the status quo. Rather, the kind of sacrifice God had in mine was centered on what we can do to help those around us – thrive.
God gave Abraham and his descendants a new story rooted in the promise of life, opportunity, and hope. Our interaction with the divine and the wider world would no longer be centered on death but rooted in the life God had already brought about. The life of faith is not meant to make us into some kind of holy robot that does whatever it’s told. Rather, our new story helps us undo the default story that believes that scarcity and fear are central to what God is about. And so, after rewriting Abraham’s story, God eventually re-wrote every story by living a human life and ending the power of death. Instead of asking or forcing others to be sacrificed so that we can remain who we are, God intervenes to show us the life-giving people we can be. This, though, requires us to reflect, deeply and honestly, about what our default story truly is. We need to ask what sacrifices we ask others to make so that we don’t have to make any sacrifices of our own. We have to push through our own comfort zone and into a reality where mercy, hope, and forgiveness abound. And we do this not because it’s easy or because we think this will get God to do what we want God to do. But rather, this is simply the way we get to be because God has already acted. Jesus died on the Cross so that we would no longer ask others to die on it too. Instead, we get to embrace a new vision – a holy vision – a Godly vision – that notices just how abundant God’s love, grace, and forgiveness can truly be.
Amen.