God and Abraham in Genesis 22: The Trust that Binds
First of all, I invite you to follow along with the Genesis text* in your bulletin, as it will serve as a guide to what I have to say this morning. Second, I offer two caveats before I actually begin to explore the text with you.A. We cannot ignore the fact that throughout the centuries, this text from Genesis 22 has been mis-used. Just as some have selected particular scripture passages to justify slavery, others have used passages like this “to justify the abuse of children.”[1] Specifically, in some artists’ renderings, Isaac is not only silent, but we do not see any personal features. Isaac is rendered by many artists, for all intents and purposes, as an object, not a human being.
This passage is also not meant to justify the very ancient pagan practice of child sacrifice. In fact, some scholars argue that one reason this text was included in scripture was to set the Israelites apart from pagan tribes who followed this practice.B. Abraham calls his son “the boy” when he speaks to the servants—“The boy and I will go up there; we will worship and we will return to you”—so we interpret that to mean Isaac is a child. However, the evidence in the text itself does not really support this. In the 21st chapter of Genesis, just before this story, we read that Abraham was gaining power, land and sheep as he made deals with some local tribes. Chapter 21 ends with this sentence: “And Abraham resided in the land of the Philistines a long time.” Chapter 22 begins: “Some time afterward. . .”We are not told just how long “some time afterward” is. We hear Abraham refer to Isaac as “the boy.” Yet remember that Abraham is way beyond one hundred years old by now. Even if you are in your teens or twenties, you are a boy to this very old man, right?Now let’s put something else in perspective. If you have ever built a fire to cook hamburgers and hot dogs then you know how hot the fire must be, and what size it must be in order to cook food. God has told Abraham to go offer a sacrifice—traditionally a sheep. So despite what God has said, let’s say that somehow, Abraham really believes that God will provide a sheep to sacrifice. That would take a lot of wood, right?The text says that when Abraham, Isaac, and two servants reach “the land of Moriah,” Abraham puts all the wood on the shoulders of his son Isaac. A child would never be able to carry that much wood on his shoulders—even a strong child. Of course this begs the question of why Isaac did not rebel, why he did not say no. Why he didn’t just overpower this old man? I believe it had to do with trust, and I will say more about trust in a moment.Now with these points, I turn now to what I would like to say today, and I hope that something I say will help deepen your spiritual journey.Anyone sitting here today who is in a relationship with someone— either spouse, or children, or siblings, or long-cherished friends—knows that the core of that relationship is trust. When we are in relationship with someone, no matter how deep our love for that person, that relationship must be built on trust, and it will always be tested in some way, at some point in time. We will have to sacrifice something—and that something may just be our desire to be right, rather than to be in relationship. So out of love, out of trust, we give up something for the good of that relationship. We may question it. We may disagree or argue about it. Yet out of love and trust, we let go of something in order to make room for something else—something we could not have known, something we could not have seen from our own limited perspective.“Sometime afterward, God put Abraham to the test.”God and Abraham have had a long and complicated relationship. God has put God’s hopes and dreams on this one man. Adam and Eve didn’t get it right. The families that followed didn’t get it right. Finally, God gave up on the whole lot, and chose one family to continue God’s plan. Yet even Noah didn’t get it right. He built a vineyard, got drunk, then some other R-rated things happened with family members. Then came the Tower of Babel, and God scattered human beings all over the earth.
Along comes Abram, who eventually earns God’s trust so much that God changes his name. The father of many nations. Yet Abraham does not always up hold God’s trust. On at least two occasions, he passes Sarah off as his sister, rather than as his wife—with a Pharoah in Egypt, and once with a tribal leader named Abimelech. Why? Because he wants to save his own skin. The truth is that if those leaders had known Sarah was his wife, not a sister, they would have killed Abraham and taken Sarah as a wife. So rather than trust God, Abraham takes matters into his own hands.Then you will remember that Abraham gives in to Sarah’s plan for an heir. Sarah decides this heir thing was never going to happen, so why not have a child with the slave woman Hagar? She’s property. The child she bears will legally be ours. Problem solved? Not exactly. Sarah’s taking control ends in disaster. Because Abraham gives in to Sarah’s jealousy and rage. he must watch Ishmael, his firstborn son, trudge into the desert with his mother Hagar. A little water, a little bread. A lot of sun. Likely to die. There goes one son.God has a lot at stake in this one man named Abraham. After all these years, God needs to know if God can trust Abraham.So, the question that hangs in the air is this: What kind of God would require you to offer your son as a sacrifice? And the other, tangential question is this: What kind of father is this who responds, “Here I am,” saddles his donkeys and leaves at dawn with his one remaining son and two servants?Maybe it is a man who remembers that over thirty years ago, when he was seventy-five, the LORD commanded Abraham to leave his native land of Ur and go “to the land that I will show you.”[2] In other words, you don’t know this land. You’ve never seen this land. All you know is that you are leaving the ancestral home of your fathers and grandfathers out of trust in me. And I am not even going to name that place yet. But get you going!Abraham does. Obviously, Abraham has trusted God so deeply, he is willing to make “a perilous journey across the desert to the Promised Land. He believe[s] God’s promise of land, prosperity and children.”[3]Abraham has trusted God. God may have taken God’s own, sweet time about the children part, but eventually, Abraham has realized this dream of land, prosperity and children. So perhaps now, in the face of a horrible test, he still trusts God—not just with his life, but the life of his one, remaining, beloved son. Beyond all hope, beyond all evidence, Abraham trusts that no matter what, God will provide.“Father!”“Yes, my son.”“Here are the fire and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”“God will see to the sheep for His burnt offering, my son.”God will provide. My heart is breaking. I cannot look into your eyes. My heart. My heart. Please, God. Please, provide.Then we get one of the most powerful sentences in scripture. “And the two of them walked on together.” No more conversation. Silence. Silence that overflows with unasked—and unanswered—questions.Dr. Ellen Davis, Old Testament professor at Duke University,[4] has explored this passage in great depth. Ellen argues that in this story of the Binding of Isaac, vulnerability is required on both sides. That is because true love and relationship demands our willingness to be vulnerable to each other. So in this relationship with God, Abraham must be vulnerable. However, she contends that not only must Abraham be vulnerable. God must be. In fact, she notes, “a God who is vulnerable, terribly and terrifyingly so, in the context of covenant relationship.”[5] In other words, Abraham is in relationship with a God who loves him, who has called him, who is faithful and committed to him—a God who needs to trust one man to carry out God’s work in the world. Will Abraham come through?It seems that God needs some important information about Abraham that God does not yet know. Only by trusting God does Abraham show God that he is, after all these years, trust-worthy.God will provide. Abraham trusts that God will provide. Thanks be to God, God does provide, through an angel. Yet the cost of Abraham’s trust in God, and God’s trust in Abraham, is very high. It is a cost that requires total trust, courage, vulnerability and risk. It is a cost that—if you read the following biblical texts carefully, you will see—tears a family apart.I have not had to pay that high a cost. Nor, I suspect, have you. Yet the truth is that in the twenty first century, thousands of people do pay the cost of sacrifice of their children. Most of the time, it is not a sacrifice of their own choosing.For example, gun violence, especially targeting people of color, has exacted a high cost. According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, 2,647 children and teens die from gunfire in America every year. That’s seven a day.”[6]Or this: mothers so destitute, they must sell their daughters into the sex slavery trade—some of whom show up for the Super Bowl every year, but you won’t see them.Or mothers and fathers who have sent their children and teenagers north of the border, praying they will find safety, freedom, education, and escape from a sure and certain violent death. Yet many children, and teenagers, and adults, are currently being sent back to a dangerous homeland, or kept at the border in bureaucratic limbo.These sacrifices are not ours, yet they are.If you wonder how, I suggest that you ask S.M., a parishioner, how she responds when one of her ESAL students ask, “Mrs. M., will my mama be home when I get home this afternoon?”Perhaps on this day, you and I are not in Abraham and Isaac’s place. Instead, maybe the place where we are called is to stand behind them. Perhaps we are called to be the angel who God trusts, the one God sends to intervene. The one who reaches out to hold, protect, heal, reconcile.Towards that end, I invite you to look at the etching on the front of your bulletin, one by artist Margaret Adams Parker. Ellen Davis explains her friend Peggy’s artwork:
Etching by Margaret Adams Parker, whose artwork may be seen at http://www.margaretadamsparker.com/
“Abraham has one hand behind his back, holding the knife. But the other, he stretches out as if to caress his bound child—Isaac curled up as though asleep on the cloth his father laid down to protect him from the rough wood. And above them both, we see what Abraham does not see: the angel stretching out strong, protective hands to enfold them.”[7]The trust that binds. The trust that sets free. The trust where love is both bond and freedom.So today, pay attention. There may be an Isaac somewhere in this neighborhood, in this diocese, in this nation, in this world. In fact, there probably is. Because God loves you—and I hope you love God—then God has given you the heart, the voice, the hands, the feet of God. God has entrusted us to do God’s work.Go out of here, and be God’s good news in your very self. Do what you can to feed the poor, to work on racism issues—especially if you are white. To speak for those who have no voice, to work for justice, maybe even be willing to speak tough truth to power.I end with three questions today: Do you love God? Do you trust God? Can God trust you—and me—to do something to make a difference in this world? In God’s holy name. Amen.© The Rev. Dr. Sheila N. McJilton*Translation used is from the TANAKH, the Jewish Bible.[1] Psychoanalyst Alice Miller, whose work is noted in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. I, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 499.[2] Genesis 12:1[3] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2017/06/abraham-isaac-guns-god/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork[4] Ellen is the Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School, as well as my former Old Testament professor at Virginia Seminary in 1996-1997.[5] Dr. Ellen F. Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament, (Cambridge & Boston: Cowley Publications, 2001), 62.[6] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2017/06/abraham-isaac-guns-god/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork[7] From a sermon preached by Dr. Ellen F. Davis in Duke Chapel on June 26, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SZRnmcxZRM