Sermon - What was he thinking?

Preached on June 29 2008 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC

Genesis 22:1-18 Matthew 10:37-42

Dedicated to the members of the 2008 mission tour; and always to the glory of God.

Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac is a difficult story. We come to the Bible trusting that it contains a word for us about our God and God’s relationship to us, but we often come away from this story disturbed because we don’t understand what that message can possibly be. Or perhaps we are disturbed because we are worried that we do understand the message of the story and we want nothing to do with it because it seems totally at odds with the message of Jesus Christ, which is the lens by which we view all scripture.

This story has two main points that disturb us. The first is that God tells Abraham to take his son, his and Sarah’s only son, whom he loves, Isaac, up to a mountaintop and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. How could God demand such a violent and senseless act? This is not the God we see in Jesus Christ, who came to give life. The second disturbing point is that Abraham agrees to do it.

What was he thinking? How can he possibly obey this command to kill his son? After World War II we heard the Nazis talk about how they were just following orders and we did not accept that excuse. In the movie A Few Good Men, we contemplated the same idea in our own military in the story of two Marines who were ordered to give their fellow Marine a code red, a kind of hazing punishment. Weren’t they able to recognize an immoral order and refuse to obey? Are we supposed to do something that is wrong and harmful just because we are told to do it by a commanding officer? And now in our country we are wrestling with the question of soldiers who were told to treat prisoners cruelly in order to soften them up for interrogation.

But what if God is the one who orders violence? The religious community has some history of this idea: burning heretics, the Salem witch trials, gunning down doctors, and calling for war against Muslims in the crusades, or in modern times painting Islam broadly as a religion of violence and hate. These people tragically thought that they were doing the will of God, and we needed more people to question their claims. So don’t we need a better model than Abraham, who doesn’t even question God’s order to kill his son? This story has some real problems!

How could any parent agree to give up the life of a child, and how could anyone let God get away with making such a mean demand? When Abraham set out for the mountain with his son Isaac, we must ask what was he thinking?

James Kugel, a scholar of the Hebrew scriptures, reminds us to be aware of the context in which this story was first told.[1] In the ancient middle east, offering your child as a sacrifice to your god was well accepted among nations in t region. More than an animal sacrifice, the gift of a child was the ultimate sign of your devotion. In the book of 2nd Kings, we read of the Moabite king who sacrifices his child to their god Molech to restore his people to the god’s good favor (2 Kings 3:26-27). Here’s the point: the Hebrews who first heard this story would not have found it very unusual or shocking that Abraham planned to sacrifice his son as a sign of great faithfulness to their God Yahweh. Instead, the extraordinary aspect of this story is that Yahweh, unlike other gods, stops the sacrifice. This story may have been the one that was told when Hebrew children asked why their religion was different from the neighboring nations. “Why are we the only ones who do not sacrifice children?” they may have asked. And the answer would come: “let me tell you about Abraham, the father of our people.

Do you see the difference it makes to read the story in that context? We read it and think that God might ask for a person’s death. They told it to make the opposite point, that our God does not desire anyone to be killed. Let’s keep that in mind, but to be honest, if that’s the only good we can find here, then this story has outlived its use. No one ever asks why God doesn’t ask for child sacrifice, and the very idea of it in our scriptures is troubling. So why do people continue to claim this story as holy?

The Jewish tradition is filled with rabbis who have found this story disturbing and tried to make sense of if for their lives. In one line of interpretation, they figured that Isaac must have been in on the plan and been willing to give himself as a sacrifice to God. In this reading, Abraham is not the monster who almost kills his frightened boy, but the father who sadly shares this mournful journey with his faithful son. If this still seems strange and abhorrent, then think of Jesus willingly walking to the cross, followed by his mother Mary in tears. Perhaps Abraham and Isaac trusted that God’s plan might be bigger than death.

In a way, the willingness of Abraham and Isaac to sacrifice so greatly might stand as a challenge to us. How much are we willing to sacrifice in order to give our lives to God? I confess that I often hide from this question. I hide because there are many things that I do not want to give up. But at the same time many of the things I do give my time and energy to are not worth the sacrifice. We could name the obvious idols to whom we give our time and our efforts: anger, fear, addiction, ambition. We sacrifice much to these things, and although they are easy to name they are difficult to overcome. But even beyond those debilitating gods, we often sacrifice our lives to the trivial. We are always giving our time and attention to something, and if I could ever add up all my time and money and attention that I give to things that don’t really mean very much, I would be appalled. At certain times, we all sacrifice our lives, only to find that we have sacrificed them for not much at all.

The story of Abraham and Isaac might remind us that only when we give our lives to God are we giving ourselves to something that is really worth everything we have.

Now, let me give you a different take on our story. Pay attention to verse five. At the foot of the mountain, Abraham turns to the servants who have accompanied them on the journey and says “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Listen again: “We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Why does he say that both he and Isaac will come back if Isaac is going to die on the mountain? You might say that he is being deceptive, but I don’t think that fits his character or the way this story is told. I think that perhaps Abraham trusts that God will not allow the death of Isaac, who is, after all, the son that God promised to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. Abraham trusts God enough to follow the command to go and sacrifice his son, but also trusts in God to bring about a good conclusion in a way that he cannot yet see.

Down in Kentucky last week, there was little banner in the church at Henderson Settlement with these words “the sign that you are following God is that you will be led where you did not plan to go.” We are used to making our own plans, but this story of Abraham reminds us that sometimes we might follow the calling of God into a journey we did not plan, to which we don’t know the conclusion. What a freeing idea it is that we don’t have to know how God’s calling in our lives will work out in the end before we begin. Just get started. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t do the responsible work of planning and working toward a vision – we’ve got lots of people in this church who do that planning very well. What I mean is that we shouldn’t be paralyzed by waiting until we are certain that every outcome is accounted for and everything is safe.

The rabbis tell a story, called a midrash, about the crossing of the Red Sea. It’s a story that is not in the Bible, but offers insight on the Biblical story. You probably remember how the Hebrews reached the edge of the red sea and Moses lifted his rod to make the waters part. But in this midrash, Moses lifts his rod and nothing happens. And so, with the Egyptian army on its way, a Hebrew man named Naschon begins to walk into the sea. He wades in up to his ankles, then his knees, waist, and chest. Just before the water reaches his nostrils, the red sea parts. The point is that sometimes miracles only happen after we jump in.[2] To trust God is to commit yourself even when you don’t know exactly how things will turn out.

I hope that this story of Abraham and Isaac is working now on different levels. The story of Abraham and Isaac challenges us to give all that we have to God, and to carefully examine where we have sacrificed parts of our lives to things that don’t deserve it. This story also gives us confidence to answer God’s call and take action even when we don’t know how God is going to be at work. This is a story that tells us that the God who asks everything of us is also one who loves us and values our lives so deeply that God is the chief mourner over every child of this earth whose life is ever lost.

We are held close by God, and God calls us to give all that we are so that we can be who God created us to be.

[1] Kugel, James L. How To Read The Bible: A guide to scripture, then and now. 2007. I am grateful to this book for much of the background in this sermon.
[2] Jacobs, A.J. The Year of Living Biblically, page 13