Today’s Genesis story is so
chilling we can hardly avoid it. It’s what I call a “whiplash” reading. It’s
something that snaps our heads around and makes us question everything we think
we know about God. Even if I didn’t say a word about it, I suspect most of you
would sit here thinking about that reading and not hear much of anything else.
You might go home with unanswered questions about an angry God, a capricious
God, a God who requires the sacrifice of a beloved son. Whether I will or no,
no matter how I try to avoid it myself, the Genesis story of the near-sacrifice
of Isaac is something at which we’re compelled to look.
I used to think I had finally
sorted out this sacrifice of Isaac business. I read a commentary in which the
author wrote that the story was about God no longer demanding human sacrifice
from the Israelites. The author’s theory, based on in-depth biblical research,
was that Abraham “misheard” God about sacrificing Isaac, and so, God was
compelled to retrieve the situation by providing the ram caught in the thicket
to replace Isaac. The author, whose name escapes me unfortunately, said this
was the way the Hebrew people explained and differentiated themselves from
other ancient peoples who sacrificed human beings on the altars of their Gods.
It’s a wonderful theory. And it certainly has scholarly merit. liked it a lot. But,
at least in my view, it does not deal directly with the text we hear.
There is nothing in the text as
it is translated for us, to make us think Abraham misunderstood God. God calls
Abraham. Abraham replies, “Here I am.”[1] God
tells Abraham, “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.”[2]
There is no way to get out of
this. Nothing to indicate that Abraham might have heard God incorrectly, no
messenger who might have garbled the message. God speaks directly to Abraham.
If we’re really hunting for an explanation of Abraham’s mishearing God, you
could make a case for it as being implied when the story shifts.
The story shifts when Isaac asks
his father Abraham, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for
the burnt offering?”[3] And Abraham replies, “God himself will
provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”[4] The
problem is, there really isn’t a shift. The story continues on its same
trajectory. Abraham built the altar, laid the wood, bound Isaac, laid him on
top of the wood, and reached for the knife.
It is only then that we hear what
may be the voice of sanity. The voice of reasonableness, cutting clear across
the insanity of sacrificing a son to the whim of a God Abraham cannot and does
not understand. And we note the voice is the voice of an angel of the Lord, not
the Lord. The angel says, “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.”[5] Yet here
is some confusion: is it the voice of an angel? Is it God? Is the voice
speaking in the first person or the second person? It sounds at first as though
it is an angel, then suddenly it seems to be God. “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 then, regardless of
who is speaking, the ram is provided and Isaac is saved.
We can breathe a sigh of relief
and wonder again why God would let Abraham get so close to killing his own son.
What kind of God demands that we be willing to kill our children for God’s
sake? What kind of God would be an abuser of children and allow Isaac to suffer
as his own father bound him and put him on the altar and raised a knife over
him? What about Isaac’s mother Sarah? What was she thinking? She saw Abraham
leave with Isaac and nothing for the sacrifice. Did she guess Abraham’s
intention?
What kind of God is this?
I wish I knew. I do know two
things. The first is this. The great Christian writer and mystic C.S. Lewis described
Aslan the lion, who represents Christ Jesus in his stories, in this way. To the
question, “Then he isn’t safe?” C. S. Lewis’ character replies, “Safe? Who said
anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the
King, I tell you.”[6]
The second is this. There are no
easy stories in scripture. There are no easy answers either. These are stories
to be wrestled with as we practice our faith. These are stories to laugh over
and shed tears over. These are stories in which to find God. These are our
stories: your stories and my stories.
Our God is
seldom safe but always good. This is the God in whom we place our trust: The
God of death and the God of resurrection.
AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2017
[1]
Genesis 22:1 (NRSV)
[2]
Genesis 22:2 (NRSV)
[3]
Genesis 22:7b (NRSV)
[4]
Genesis 22:8 (NRSV)
[5]
Genesis 22:12 (NRSV)
[6]
Lewis, C. S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. HarperCollins. New York:
1978 (1950) Page 80. (Italics mine.)
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