Today we continue reading from the book of Genesis and the “Saga Abraham” with this well known story about the sacrifice of Isaac, and the first thing we may say about it is that it’s one of the most difficult passages of the Old Testament. It’s difficult to hear, it’s difficult to understand and mostly, it’s difficult to accept. Now of course we are no stranger to a scary movie or even a true crime story and this text has all the elements required to give us a good shiver down the spine with the innocent victim and the perplexed father, and then the rising tension: Saddling the donkey, cutting the wood, walking three days and then ascending the mount, the knife, the fire, the bonding and then the last minute rescue when the father raises his arm to strike and the angel stops it mid air. Actually, it’s a good story if you think about it, as good as most of our modern “slow burn dramas” can get. And a lot of us enjoy those stories, don’t we? And yet it’s also true that for most of us, this one from the Bible we don’t enjoy, this one is almost unbearable. So what is it that makes it so unbearable? Well, I don’t think it is about the violence, because we know plenty about violence, what makes it unbearable is that God should require such a thing, that God would indeed say to Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to (…) Moriah, and offer him there as burnt offering”. This is not so much the story that we cannot accept, although it is dreadful indeed but not so different from a lot of movies and podcasts as terrifying. No, what is unacceptable, I believe, is the cruel God that puts the whole thing into motion. The difference is the cruel God.
And so generally there are two kind of reactions to this story: Either we reject it completely, and I’ve heard priests saying they just refuse to preach this passage, and then there are other people who desperately try to make sense of it, try to make it more acceptable. To me, I think if we choose any of these roads too quickly, we risk to miss the whole point. We noticed earlier that Genesis has a lot of emotional stories. Last week, we heard about how Hagar was sent in the wilderness with her son, and how she hid him under a bush so she wouldn’t have to watch him die, and this was a very emotional story as well. In the same way today, I think the narrator of the story wants us to “feel all the feelings”, he wants us not only to feel scared, but also to feel this disgust and revolt against that cruel God taking back the promise he had given, making a fool of Abraham, and, obviously, ordering the killing of children. Indeed, if we don’t feel the pain, then we’re not listening.
But where do we go from there? Well, let me rewind a little bit. I talked earlier about the fact that the book of Genesis was written while the Jews were in captivity, after they had been defeated in Jerusalem, they had lost their king, their temple and their land and were taken away to a foreign city, not knowing if they would ever come back. And that’s when they started wondering about God’s promise, about which the book of Genesis is all about: Why would God have given them the land of Israel, why would God have given them the Temple, why would God have given them a king, only to take it all back? It didn’t make any sense, did it?
Well, exactly. It didn’t make any sense that God would take back the land, the temple and the king, in the same way that it didn’t make any sense that God, after having promised five times to Abraham that he would be the Father of a whole nation, after having given him a son from a barren woman in her old age, it wouldn’t make any sense that God would want to take it all back. I think the way we react today to the story of Isaac thinking: God is not like this or I don’t want a God like that, this is exactly how we are supposed to react. It is not possible.
And so, surprisingly, this story is about hope. This was a story of hope for the Jewish people. It says that God won’t take back what God has given us: The land, the temple, the king. Or maybe God will take it back, but just for a little while, and we will find it again. It’s just a test, as the story mentions from the beginning. And I believe this is why the story was told because this story was actually very popular when the Jews were persecuted in Europe during the middle ages. They started quoting this story a lot because it gave them strength, either to endure persecution or even to accept their death. They actually wrote new commentaries saying that Abraham came down alone from the mountain because Isaac was killed, but then God gave him back, and indeed Isaac appears later in Genesis, to marry and have two sons: Esau and of course “Jacob-Israel”. And so the persecuted Jews could also accept their persecution and death, because the story told them it was only a test, a testabout faithfulness and obedience. God would not do that, God would not allow his people to disappear, in the same way that God didn’t accept that Isaac would die, or remain dead, before he could have an offspring. You know the saying: “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away” and there is wisdom in that. Yet the story takes us even deeper, because it shows us that “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away and then the Lord gives back.”. This is a story of hope and this is a story of faith, and even more than that, for us Christians, it should hit us that this is a story of Resurrection. A story of Resurrection that’s right here at the beginning of Genesis. For us, this is a story about Jesus, about his obedience, about the love of the Father who gives his only son.
But now we understand a bit better the purpose of the story, one question remains, a question that maybe is the most important for us: Did it really happen? Because even if God refused the sacrifice in the end, it’s still a terrible thing God asked for it. So what are we to make of that? Well my guess is that this story is so well known, so important, not only for the Jews but also for Muslims and Christians, it’s so important that it must have happened, in a way or another, More deeply, I think it’s a true story because we know that God can take away…If you remember last week, we talked about how Sarah was afraid Isaac’s inheritance would be given to Ishmael. It was bad but she wasn’t being irrational, she knew that all she had could be taken away and she was trying to prevent that from happening, in case God changed his mind. And this is something we all do, don’t we? We know life is uncertain, that we cannot take anything for granted and we try to make sure our blessings stay with us, we control what we can rather than really trust God to be faithful.
In Abraham and Sarah’s case, it’s quite evident that they were overprotecting Isaac, since he was even prevented from playing with Ishmael. I know that we assume from our story that Isaac was a child when God asked for the sacrifice, but if we do the math he was between 30 and 37 years old, and yet he still wasn’t married, probably for the same reason: His parents wouldn’t let go.
But then how was the promise supposed to happen? How God could work through Isaac’s life? And so I believe that indeed God asked for Abraham to offer his son. There is an interesting ambiguity in the Hebrew text that does not appear at all in our English translation: God does not exactly ask Abraham to make Isaac ascend “as a burnt offering”, but to make him ascend “the mountain” towards God.
In fact, in the book of Jeremiah, this is what God says about human sacrifice: “The people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods (…) [they have] gone on building the high places (…) to burn their children in the fire (…) which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind” (19:4-5)
Abraham was asked to renounce to his son, yes. At some point God asked that Isaac would be offered back. Not by killing him, although of course the text plays on the ambiguity, but by giving him back to God and by letting him go. We know from the whole Bible the kind of sacrifice God wants: “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obedience to the voice of the LORD? Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.” (1 Samuel 15:22)
The sacrifice of Isaac isn’t about the sacrifice of Isaac, it’s about about Abraham’s test and our passage is very clear about that. It’s about the sacrifice of Abraham’s will, the sacrifice of Abraham and Sarah trying to control the promise. And God asks them to renounce, not because God is offended they are controlling, but rather because when we try to control things and mainly people, not only it won’t satisfy us or save us but we get in God’s way, and we can prevent the way of God from happening. I like the idea that indeed Abraham came back down from the mountain on his own, because I have in mind Isaac going down by another way, given back to himself, free to live his own life and follow God the way he needed to follow. Actually, in a few chapters we will hear about him getting married and becoming a father with children of his own. He’s free at last, literally unbound from the tying knots his family did to him. And I think Abraham was freed as well. Finally, he was liberated from trying to make things happen and he could just let God be God, you know.
And so I think about all the things, and also the people we are invited to put back into God’s hands, our family, our friends, our church, our country and our world. I heard recently an older woman say she spent all her whole life explaining things to God in prayer, and she said that she realized at some point she was just trying to be in charge, and she said that now the only prayer she prays is: “I trust you”. I trust you. I think this became also Abraham’s prayer in his very old age when he climbed the mountain: Whatever happens, I trust you.
Could this become our prayer too?