Abraham has been on a bit of a roller coaster with God. Abraham left his home land following God. Abraham heard God say that he would be the father of many nations, but had not children. Abraham lied multiple times about his relationship with his wife, Sarah, hoping to reap the benefits. Abraham and Sarah sought to orchestrate God’s promise with Hagar. Abraham has had late night talks with God looking at the stars and hearing about the future. Abraham has also bargained with God for lives of those in Sodom. Abraham knows God, but it has been a roller coaster. Sometime, Abraham has taken advantage of that relationship thinking he knew more than God’s way. But God promised it would be Abraham through who the covenant would be known.
It is the very promise and covenant that Abraham will be the father of many nations that seems again like it is in question. As Abraham was carrying it by himself. For the longest time, it is in question, because Abraham is the father of no children, no nations. Then Abraham is the father of Ishmael, but this is not completely the promise of the covenant, because it does not include Sarah. When Isaac is born, it seems as though the covenant will hold. Until Abraham hears God’s command to sacrifice his son, Isaac, his connection to the covenant is proof that God cares about him.
The binding of Isaac as this passage of scripture is called is a provocative entry point for faith. There is a Yiddish folk tale that goes something like this: Why did God not send an angel to tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Because God knew that no angel would take on such a task. Instead, the angels said, “If you want to command death, do it yourself.”1
Some scholars have suggested that Abraham misunderstood God. Perhaps, God never intended for Isaac to the object of the sacrifice, rather the accompaniment. What if Abraham’s story is steeped in forgetting that the God he knew, the God who called him out of Ur and sent him towards a promised land, a new place, was NOT AT ALL like the gods his neighbors knew. What if Abraham misunderstood God, because God so changed his paradigm? In this understanding, it is God who saves Isaac and Abraham from misunderstanding misapplying God’s words.
In the time of Abraham, child sacrifice was familiar and common. So common that throughout the Hebrew Bible, the prophets go out of their way to condemn the practices. If the practice was not common, there would be no reason to condemn. Many in the time of Abraham, felt the need to offer their children as literal sacrifices to gods they did not understand and gods they believe demanded their children. It was Martin Luther’s wife, Katherine van Bora, wise biblical scholar in her own right, who said I don’t believe that God would have asked Abraham to sacrifice his son.
The philosopher and biblical critic, Kierkegaard, wrote a full book of reflections on this passage, entitled, Fear and Trembling. He posits four different understandings of this passage. The first is that Abraham takes the blame from God and tells Isaac it was his idea. “Abraham then prays softly, “Lord God in heaven, I thank you; it is better that he believes me a monster than that he should lose faith in you.“2 The second is exactly as the Genesis passage was read with the added information that Abraham did not know joy the rest of his life, regretting the whole episode. The third is that Abraham knowing agony and deciding that he should not listen to God. The fourth is that Abraham returns to his senses with God stopping the child sacrifice, and it was never spoken of again. These are interesting theories, but they probably tell us more about ourselves, than the biblical narrative.
When we are faced with impossible sacrifices, some of us take on blame, so others will not be compromised. Others of us become despondent and hopeless. The third bunch reject God and have anger towards however we understand God. From Kierkegaard’s postulations, the last group internalizes it. However, one group is missing. Those who are able to hear and know God without losing some of the more difficult stories of the scripture.
God stopped Abraham before the sacrifice could be enacted. The presence of the ram in the bushes is offered instead of Isaac. God provides a way to both follow God’s way and live out the larger commandments. Those are not in competition or conflict.
After this episode, we do not hear Sarah speak again in the biblical narrative. Many rabbis and early church fathers postulated that very shortly after binding of Isaac, Sarah died of a heartache.
This text is part of a compilation of passages lovingly entitled, “texts of terror.” It was Phyllis Trible, bible scholar who originated the term and codified the passages. There is incredible violence is reading of a father who is seemingly prepared to kill his own son on the word of God. It raises for most of us, the underbelly of faith. We think of the failed experiment in Jonestown, Guyana and David Koresh in Waco, Texas. We think of blind following which lead to the loss of life in both cases.
We think of how this story leads us to think about God. We may very well come to feel as though this is a text a terror. The command of God challenged Abraham to embrace the absurd, the irrational, and the unintelligible. What sense did it make to murder the son of promise through whom God had promised to bless all the earth? Sometimes, it is the seemingly unreasonable that God asks for. Sometimes, it is the unbelievable that we believe God to ask for.
What if this was failure of the test? Abraham who failed the test, ultimately a good thing as God did what God does – redeemed the test as Abraham understood it, and sent him on his way with the covenantal promise still intact. In his radical obedience, Abraham “worked out his salvation with fear and trembling” before a God who asks everything, absolutely everything, of us (Philippians 2:12–13).
For all of us, we find ourselves wondering: What are we willing to give? What would we sacrifice if we heard the voice of God, or thought we did, calling us to sacrifice? All that we have, even our own lives and those of the ones most dear to us, belong ultimately to God, who gave them to us in the first place.
For some of us, God is looking for us to sacrifice our comfort. We are comfortable in thinking and acting in the same ways that we always did. We are competent in explaining how everything and anything that could be critiqued in our lives, is being misunderstood. We are living faithful and thoughtful lives.
For some of us, we need to sacrifice our need to be right or to be in control. Our need to understand (this doesn’t mean to stop asking question. Please keep asking questions). We may be called to sacrifice the need for a neat answer tied up in a bow and undisputable. We may be called to follow visions that God has given to someone else, even when we want to know God more. For some of us, we need to sacrifice the desire to be clever or well regarded. The way others see us becomes more vital that the way we relate to one another.
For some of us, we need to sacrifice our desire to be the center of attention, by sharing it with our brothers and sisters who have been relegated and disregarded. We need to understand that systematically as a Church and a Country, we have given some people more regard than others. This is called racism and sexism, ageism and ableism.
You want what? We hear ourselves asking God. You want me to walk with you and give up that which keeps me from full focus on you? This sounds undoable and unnecessary. This sounds over the top and uncomfortable.
It sounds exactly like the call of Jesus: “We are intimately linked in this harvest work. Anyone who accepts what you do, accepts me, the One who sent you. Anyone who accepts what I do accepts my Father, who sent me. Accepting a messenger of God is as good as being God’s messenger. Accepting someone’s help is as good as giving someone help. This is a large work I’ve called you into, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. It’s best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose out on a thing” (Matthew 10:40-42, The Message).
This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Thanks be to God, Amen.
1https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3279
2Fear and Trembling, 11.
Old Testament Lesson: Genesis 21: 1-14
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. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Now Sarah said, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.’ And she said, ‘Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.’
The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.’
The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.
But God said to Abraham, Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named after you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.’
So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
Gospel Lesson: Matthew 10: 40-42
‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.’
Meditations For Your Week
Sunday, September 10th-Saturday, September 17th
Sunday: “After these things, God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’” Genesis 22: 1. There are times in which we cannot believe what is going on around and happening to us. In these times, turn to God and offer yourself to God.
Monday: “Abraham said, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son.’ So, the two of them walked on together.” Genesis 22:8. Abraham trusted God’s promise, even when it moved beyond reasonable. Where is God calling you to trust, where it is not reasonable?
Tuesday: “But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’” Genesis 22:11. Abraham followed the instructions of the Lord from the first moment through the end. The Lord did not disappoint Abraham. Are you listening for God?
Wednesday: “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: 14. God saved Isaac and Abraham. Where has God save you?
Thursday: ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Matthew 10:40. We welcome God through the people we meet. Through the grouchy person and rude person as well as kind, sweet one. Who are you welcoming in love?
Friday: “Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous;” Matthew 10: 41. When you see Christ in others, you meet Christ.
Saturday: “And whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.’” Matthew 10:42. A cold cup of water seems small and insignificant, but can mean so much. Offer yourself to others in small ways and be amazed at how God blesses you and the recipient.