Sermon: Here I am

Genesis 22.1-14
Matthew 10.34-42

A difficult story.

Amongst the stories of Abraham this is one of the most difficult. It is hard to make sense of it, whichever way we look at it. After all, only last week we were reflecting on the amazing and unexpected visitation of God in the form of three strangers who promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have a son and the life long promises would be fulfilled. Admittedly there are several chapters in between, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the stories of Hagar and Ishmael, even poor old King Abimelech of Gerar who strays into sin without knowing it, putting his whole community at risk and having to be rescued by Abraham’s intercession. In all of these stories there is an enviable rapport between God and Abraham, they are often in conversation and even though they don’t always agree on how to see things it is clear they are at ease with one another. No wonder the writer of James could look back and claim that Abraham was a “friend of God”.

With that background chapter 22 comes as a shock. It begins “after these things” so is clearly meant to have a connection to the cycle of stories about Abraham. A command is given to Abraham to take his son Isaac to a mountain in the land of Moriah and there sacrifice him as a burnt offering. This is the child of promise. The boy whose name meant laughter. The unthinkable nature of the command is underlined and emphasised in the three fold identification “take your son, your only son Isaac, the one whom you love.” It is a command met with silence but obedience on Abraham’s part. The action is described in staccato syntax. In just one verse we are told Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two young men with him, and his son Isaac, cut wood for the burnt offering, laid the wood on Isaac, set out and went to a place in the distance. Although there is a fair bit of action in the narrative, it is a sparse story with not much dialogue and very little emotion. But we experience powerful emotions as we absorb the words. Here are some of the reactions I imagine you are sharing with me.

Our reactions:
First, this story seems completely out of character with the God of love we know. How could love demand such a thing? It doesn’t gel with the laws of the Israelites based on God’s character, where child sacrifice – admittedly a practice of some ancient cultures – was consistently abhorred and forbidden in Israel. It even amounts to abuse: using an innocent child as a pawn in some test about faith.
Second, even if we could imagine God asking such a thing – how can it come so soon after the story of the miracle child. God is asking Abraham to throw away the means by which the promises were to come to fruition. The fulfilment is being jeopardised. It would mean some other miracle had to happen. And even more poignantly, it comes just after the expulsion of Ishmael – an action which had the blessing of God. God said to Abraham at the time “don’t be distressed about Ishmael going. It is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you (21.12). And now here Abraham is being asked to give up Isaac too. Talk about opening old wounds.
Third, certainly for me, I react against the generally accepted meaning of the story that it is about faith. Would Abraham’s faith be strong enough to follow such a command. This can’t be dismissed lightly – certainly the story does involve faith. But is faith valid at any cost?
Or is it perhaps a story that proves God won’t allow us a test too hard to bear? That is a biblical promise and here is a biblical story that does provide a way out of the unbearable. But the problem with this explanation is that while we know it is a test, Abraham didn’t. And even if we know the outcome of the story we still feel the anguish and bewilderment of the circumstances as we hear it narrated.
A fourth way of responding is to put it alongside a passage such as the one read from Matthew, which seems to ask us to ensure that we love God more than our own children, parents, partners or any other human being. That Matthew passage is also a very difficult one, and will have to be left to another time to deal with it responsibly, but we might just note that it would have resonances in other places and times that we do not experience here where faith is understood as a personal choice and does not come under the scrutiny of authorities. But this is certainly a common response to the Genesis 22 story. A Jewish interpreter (Esther Ticktin) wrote that the two strongest imperatives of the Jewish law were to rear children and destroy idols. What happens, she asked, when we turn our children into idols? Abraham had to prove he was willing to destroy the idol he had made to remain faithful to the law. But as I will come back to later, I don’t think there is any evidence that Abraham had made Isaac into his idol.
This story is an incredibly important part of the Torah and a story with a name all of its own in the Jewish writing – they call it the Akedah, which means “Binding”. From what I have read the more common Jewish response to the story is to focus on Isaac as a willing sacrifice – and to relate the Akedah to the Jews’ historical and current persecution. I found a relatively recent commentary on this passage by the chancellor of a Jewish theological seminary which says this:
“the lesson God sought to impart to Abraham at Mt Moriah is that his children, as the bearers of a demanding new faith, would often be at risk….God intended to reveal to Abraham the full consequences of his choice to heed God’s call. There was nothing idle about the order to sacrifice his son. History would make that inhuman demand of his descendents many times. Were you, Abraham, ready to expose your children to such a fate? Indeed, would Isaac agree to bear it?”
The chancellor was writing in the context of another terrorist attack in Jerusalem, and while not minimising the harm being done in the opposite direction since 1967 it is an undeniable fact that the Jewish people have been persecuted throughout history. There are records of parents killing their children to prevent them falling into the hands of zealous crusaders. Films such as Sophie’s Choice and Schindler’s List remind us of the enforced sacrifice of family members and friends in the Nazi regime. For this Jewish writer, the story of Isaac’s sacrifice foreshadowed the cost of the covenant, the dark side of Jewish history. (www.jtsa.edu/PreBuilt/ParashahArchives/5755/vayera.shtml)
And what of a child’s reaction to the story (especially a Jewish child)? Of the many responses I read while preparing for the sermon almost all wondered about their own parents’ response had such a thing been asked of them. In discussions I had with others the role of MKs and PKs came up frequently (missionary kids and pastors kids) and the question of whether it could be argued that those who are called to extreme faith may in fact sacrifice their families in the process. But even those examples do not come close to the command to offer one’s son as a burnt offering. While there are things we can say (and will say) about God, faith and trust in this story, at this point the text does fail us. We need to go to other sources for reassurance that God is not a child abuser.
One important link we need to make is the way the writers of the NT came to see Jesus as the substitutionary lamb: God did not ask of Abraham something he would not be prepared to see through himself. Jesus went through times of testing. Jesus trusted that God would find a way to be faithful to his promises. Jesus proved that redemption is not without suffering.
But we don’t even have to move into the New Testament to find such a message. Most scholars agree that the stories of Abraham were written down while the nation of Israel was in exile, centuries after the time the stories were set. The events of Abraham’s life take on a new significance when we realise they were told at a time when the people of God were wondering if the promises of God would come to fulfilment again, and wondering if God’s faithfulness would last to their own generation. The themes of bewilderment and the threat of no future would have been prominent in their minds.
And it was at this time that the passages in Isaiah known as the songs of the suffering servant were also recorded: passages that speak of God’s own representative taking on the suffering of his people and through that bringing a new hope for the future. So it is important to keep in mind connections to the broader story of faith as we look at this one.
But let us return to the story as it comes to us in Genesis, trying to put our reactions and theological reflections aside and letting it speak for itself.
Literary Analysis
The story begins “After these things God tested Abraham.” We need to notice three things here. First, we know it is a test. The narrator is upfront about that. The aim is not to kill Isaac, but to test Abraham. Second, as we’ve already noted, it is part of the cycle of Abraham stories. It is especially linked to the call of Abraham and the promises to Abraham in Genesis 12. There he was asked to relinquish his past by journeying to a land God will show him with the promise of a blessed future. In Ch 22 he is being asked to relinquish his future by undertaking an even more arduous journey, but this time there is no clear promise for the future. Third, it is a story about Abraham, not Isaac. Although we might be tempted to psychoanalyse the characters, to read between the lines and use our imagination (I was once in a class that had the exercise of telling the story from the point of view of the two young men who were left behind), it is Abraham who is the key character. His name is mentioned 15 times, including the dramatic call from heaven, Abraham, Abraham. He is in every scene, and is involved in any dialogue, sparse though it is. He names the place and at the end of the story the promises are reiterated to him, not to Isaac.
Rhetorical/Structural analysis:
I want to notice three things about the structure of the story too. The first thing we notice is the silence. Apart from instructions to the young men, the story is full of silence, and each time the silence is broken it is with the words “here I am”. Now Abraham had already proven that it is ok to question God’s ways – he had done that in the story about Sodom and Gomorrah and in the fate of his son Ishmael. But here the silence is excruciating.  The unthinkable command is met with silence. Three days pass by before anyone speaks, and as Abraham and his son journey alone together it is Isaac that breaks the next silence. Because my study of the Old Testament is focusing on a performance analysis, I’ve been paying some attention to the way the Hebrew text would have been heard when it was read aloud. In the way the accents are placed in this story there is a deliberate pause in the sentence “Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife…. To kill his son.” The use of silence in the very re-telling of the story is powerful. It is up to us, the readers, to fill the silences with our questions.
The next thing to notice is the significance of seeing. Twice Abraham lifts up his eyes, 5 times the verb “to see” is used, Abraham tells Isaac that God will “see for himself the lamb” (the literal translation of God will provide) and Abrahram names the place “God will see” – often transliterated Jehovah Jirah and again usually translated “God will provide”. But seeing is important. Abraham says little but sees more clearly as the story progresses, firstly seeing the place for sacrifice from a distance, he puts his trust in God’s seeing when asked by Isaac, then sees the ram caught in the thicket – a seeing that saves his son.
So in this story silence is important, seeing is important, and also structure is important. The statement of Abraham that God will provide comes in the centre of the story. It is in the middle of the twice repeated statement “the two of them walked on together”. Of the three responses “here I am” it is this central one where he responds more fully. Here he engages in conversation with Isaac, answering his question and clearly showing his trust in God. He does not lie to his son, or fob off his question, but he does put forward his view that God can be trusted.
This is a story of faith, and is remembered this way by the writer to the Hebrews. But ultimately I think the story is mostly about trust. Abraham hears this impossible command of God after 25 years of friendship, so there is already a context of trust. This isn’t to minimise the frightening nature of it. Many of you will know like I do that it is possible to have trust in God’s goodness and be frightened about your circumstances at the same time. When God gave the promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah they had lived through the dark night of barrenness and yet had stayed with God. “Receiving promises does not entail being protected from moments when those promises are called into question” (Brueggemann). But Abraham’s words show he trusts God will find a way to bring those promises to fruition. Isaac does have an important role in the story because his trust in his loving father mirrors Abraham’s trust in God. And that trust of Abraham’s is shown right through the story and proven by the end. This story is not a test that is designed to teach Abraham something, but to establish a fact. It is God who says “Now I know.” The issue is not what God teaches, but what God learns.
Because according to this story God also learned something. God not remote, immune, this not a game for God, he genuinely does not know. In the narrative we see God becoming aware of something for the first time. He did not know if Abraham trusted him fully, now he knows.  It is a test for God as well as for Abraham. But not a test motivated by curiosity. This is the God of the whole world, a God who is bigger than Abraham and always bigger than our personal circumstances. This issue of Abraham’s trust concerned all the families of the earth, who were to be blessed through Abraham. Is Abraham the faithful one who can carry this purpose along or does God need to find another way? So God needs to be able to trust us as much as we need to know who we trust in. When God calls, are we ready to say “Here I am”?