Genesis 22:1-19

03/20/11

Genesis 22:1-19

Hudson UMC

Last week, we considered the story of the Fall of humanity, when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden.  First we explored the standard interpretation of the passage and then looked at it from a slightly different point of view, looking to see what it told us about the nature of the atonement that God works out for us.  I want to do something similar this week.  First, let us consider the standard interpretation of the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Abraham, after being chosen by God to be the father of a mighty nation, after becoming the father of Ishmael through his wife’s handmaiden, after becoming the father of Isaac through his wife, Sarah, is told to do something quite serious.  We read, “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.’”  Of all the most shocking things we might imagine God saying to his people, this surely tops the list.  Surely, even God does not ask for one’s only son.  Astonishingly enough, we read, “So Abraham rode early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac…” and went off to do what he was told.

Now, we have just heard the story so we know what happens.  Abraham takes his son to the mountain, prepares to sacrifice him, goes so far as to lift up his knife, ready to strike, and then is interrupted by God, who provides a ram instead.  It leaves us wondering, “What in the world just happened?”  It is at this point that we begin to hear slightly different variations on how we are to understand this passage.  Some suggest that Abraham was effectively going through the motions, knowing that God would not actually demand his son from him, though we are forced to admit that there is absolutely nothing in the text that leads us to believe that this is so.  Others will quote from Hebrews, chapter 11, where we read, “By faith, Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac.  He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, of whom he had been told, ‘It is through Isaac that descendents shall be named for you.’  He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead – and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.”  In this case, Abraham was willing to sacrifice his own son because he knew that, as a worst-case scenario, God would raise him from the dead.

Regardless of some of those details, the interpretation usually ends up along these lines:  “What set Abraham apart, what really made him the father of faith, is that he was willing, at a moment’s notice, to give the very best that he had to the God who had given him everything.  If we are to be true children of Abraham, we need to be ready to give up whatever is dearest to us, we must be willing to really make God first place in our lives.”

All of that sounds pretty good, but there is something about it that just doesn’t seem right.  Nineteenth century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard wrote a book called Fear and Trembling which is devoted entirely to trying to understand this single story.  He raises some challenging, sometimes fearful, questions that can be somewhat troubling.  What is most significant for our purposes is that he periodically pokes fun at the practice of Danish preachers at the time.

One thing he says is about what might happen if someone heard a sermon that heavily proclaimed that what really set Abraham apart was his willingness to give his very best and that we should go and be like Abraham, giving our very best.  We read, “Should someone in the audience be suffering from insomnia [that is, not thinking clearly], however, there is likely to be the most appalling, most profound, tragic-comic misunderstanding.  He goes home, he wants to do just like Abraham; for the son is certainly the best thing he has.  Should that [preacher] hear word of this, he might go to the man, summon all his clerical authority, and shout:  ‘Loathsome man, dregs of society, what devil has so possessed you that you wanted to murder your own son?’  And this [preacher], who had felt no signs of heat or perspiration while preaching about Abraham, would be surprised at the righteous wrath with which he fulminates against that poor man; he would be pleased with himself, for never had he spoken with such pungency and fervor before…If the same [preacher] had some slight excess of wit to spare he would surely lose it were the sinner to reply coolly and with dignity:  ‘It was in fact what you yourself preached on Sunday.’  How could a [preacher] get such an idea into his head?  And yet he did so, and the mistake was only that he hadn’t known what he was saying.”  You know, sometimes, we preachers don’t really know what is coming out of our mouths.

The point is that, if the real reason why Abraham was set apart was because he gave the best he had, why shouldn’t we go and do likewise?  Shouldn’t we go and give the best that we have, that we might step out in faith?  If that is what we really believe about the story of Abraham and Isaac, why should that not be our conclusion?  But when we think about someone doing what Abraham was willing to do, we don’t consider them a hero of faith; we consider them a murderer!  And yet, we do indeed consider Abraham to be a hero of faith and not a murderer.  Clearly, either we are guilty of affirming an incredible double standard, or there must be something more going on here.

Why do we think that this story is about Abraham giving his very best?  We like to think of such a willingness to be extravagant with our giving because we know that it is so difficult to do.  We know that it is a real sacrifice to give our very best and that, if we decide we are going to give God something less than our best, God cannot possibly be happy with it.  If we look at pagan cultures throughout time and space, we can see that there is always a drive to sacrifice the very best, to give up something that would really be a hardship.  Since it is the season of Lent, a time when people often choose to give something up, we tend to roll our eyes when someone tells us they are giving up something trivial for Lent; we know that if it doesn’t make a difference in the way we live, it isn’t worth it.

We might even say that there is some strong support for giving only our best when we read through the law that was given to the Israelites.  When animals were given for sacrifice, they were to be of a high quality, not broken or sick, but the prize of the flock.  In the book of Malachi, the last prophet in the Old Testament, we read this lament of God.  “A son honors his father, and servants their master.  If then I am a father, where is the honor due me?  And if I am a master, where is the respect due me?  Says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name.  You say, ‘How have we despised your name?’  By offering polluted food on my altar.  And you say, ‘How have we polluted it?’  By thinking that the Lord’s table may be despised.  When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not wrong?  And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not wrong?  Try presenting that to your governor; will he be pleased with you or show you favor?  Says the Lord of hosts.”  The giving of inferior sacrifices was seen to be a desecration of God’s altar.  If we wanted to, we can read these texts as supporting our conviction that what God really wants is for us to give up, or at least be willing to give up, the best we have.

But this whole way of thinking is called radically into question by the simple fact that, though Abraham even had the knife raised so that he was only moments away from sacrificing his son, he didn’t actually do it.  God did not actually insist that Isaac had to die.  In fact, lest we should interpret God’s testing of Abraham here as a command to sacrifice our children, God says otherwise over and over again throughout the Old Testament.  You see, one of the nations that was near Israel had a god who insisted that the people sacrifice their children.  When the Israelites followed suit, perhaps because of the reasoning we have just been talking about, because it really is a giving of the best, God rebukes them, saying that it never even entered his mind to ask such a thing from us.

So, someone might say, “Pastor, are you saying that we should hold back our best from God?  Are you suggesting that God should settle for second best?”  My response would be that the facts don’t actually fit into that way of thinking.  Let us look at what actually happens in the story of Abraham and Isaac.  Abraham goes out, willing to do this terrible thing, valuing obedience more even than fatherhood.  He is absolutely willing to do what has been asked of him, but what does God do?  God does not allow Abraham to follow through.  God says, “Stop!”  But Abraham and Isaac do not leave the mountain without making a sacrifice to God.  What do we read?  “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.’”

Abraham sacrificed the ram that God gave in Isaac’s place.  What has God done?  God has given a sacrifice that was intended to replace the very best that Abraham could have given.  It is as if God was saying, “The very best that you have is not good enough.  Instead, I want you to give me what I have given you to give.”  You see, what matters most is not the size of the gift, or even how important it seems to us, but the fact that it is God who has called for the sacrifice and that it is God who has provided for it.

That is why Abraham is the father of faith.  When we really get down to it, we can see that it doesn’t really take any faith to sacrifice what is most dear to us.  We could say it involves faith in the sense of stepping out into uncertainty because we don’t necessarily know what we will do without the thing or person who is dearest to us, but as a sacrifice to God, there really isn’t any faith.  It is easy to trust that God will be happy with the best we have; after all, we have some pretty good stuff.  Also, it is easy to think that, if we have given the best we have, God has to accept it because we can’t do any better.  There is, however, a slight fear, just in case the best we have is not good enough and God won’t accept us, even though we have given the best we have.

It does take faith, however, to trust that God’s ways are better than our ways.  Abraham had to believe and trust that God’s gift of a ram was actually a better sacrifice than his only son.  Abraham had to believe that, though he had hundreds of animals he could offer to God and only one son, this one animal was better than all of that, simply because it came from the hand of God.  This little ram was better than everything that Abraham could have come up with.  It is faith to cling to the fact that what God has done is better than what we can do and to trust in that so completely that we do not live our lives worried that we have not done enough, but rejoicing that God has done it all, so we do things his way.

I want to make a further connection that does not show up in our text for this morning, but arises when we look at the Bible as a whole.  Abraham was told to take Isaac away from home and go to Mount Moriah, a mountain that was a three-day journey away.  Why that mountain and not another one?  Does it really matter which mountain Abraham went to?  Couldn’t God meet him anywhere?  We read in the history books of Israel that there was a time when King David, the one whom the Bible says, both before and after he was king, was a man after God’s own heart, incited the wrath of God and brought a plague upon Jerusalem.  However, God had mercy and told David what he needed to do.  He needed to go and purchase a threshing-floor that belonged to a man named Ornan and build an altar there and make a sacrifice.  David did so and the plague was ended.

We read in the books of Chronicles that it was on that same spot that Solomon built the Temple to God and that these events happened on Mount Moriah, the very same place that Abraham sacrificed the ram in the place of his son.  Where God once demonstrated that Abraham, the father of the people of God, could not offer a sacrifice good enough for God but needed to trust in what God himself provided instead is the same place where the people of Israel were reminded day by day that their relation to him was based, not on what they have done, but on what God has done.

This connection gets even stronger when we realize that it was only a stone’s throw away from this location that Jesus was crucified.  Here we have the most incredible example of God providing the lamb that is accepted in the place of the best we have.  The difference is that, while we might have thought that a ram in the thicket is not as good a sacrifice as Isaac would have been, surely we can think of nothing greater than the sacrifice of God’s only Son on our behalf and in our place.

Indeed, God’s grace is far greater than we can even imagine, and it is a grace that has been poured out on humanity since the very beginning.  In order to tie our reflection from last week on Adam and Eve and the Fall of humanity together with the story of Abraham and Isaac, and even with the cross of Christ, I want you to hear the words of this poem by Madeleine L’Engle.

Asked to leave Eden

Where I, with all the other beasts,

Remained after the two-legged creatures left,

I moved to the gates and the cherub

With the flaming sword

Drew aside to let me by, wings folded across his eyes.

I trotted along a path through woods,

Across a desert, made a long detour

Around a lake, and finally climbed

A mountain, till

The trees gave way to bushes

And a rock.

An old man raised a knife.

He stood there by the rock

And wept and raised his knife.

So these are men, I thought,

And shook my head in horror, and was caught

Within the springing branches of a bush.

Then there was lightning,

And the thunder came,

And a voice cried out to me:

O my son, my son,

Slain before the foundation

Of the world.

I felt the knife’s edge.

For this I came from Eden,

For my will is ever his,

As I am his, and have life

In him, and he in me.

Thus the knife pierced his own heart.

And the old man laughed with joy.

Let us pray.   AMEN