When Abraham—or at the time Abram (in chapter 12 of Genesis), before his name was changed—went as the Lord commanded him did he ever think that his goingwould involve what he would be commanded to do in Genesis 22? That is, the near slaughter of his son at God’s own direction. And Abraham’s willing complicity in this attempted murder…. In today’s time and place, such a person would be rightly locked up if they said that they heard a voice saying for them to kill their child. Sadly, we have seen events in the news where parents do just that and we are revolted—rightly so—by the circumstances. Why is it that in the Bible this seeming divine sanction for child murder is tolerated at first? When Abram went, the narrative relates in chapter 12, did he ever think that following God might just cost him everything? Including the child of the promise, the one whom he loved.
The first time that a reader even encounters the word love in the Torah—the Pentateuch, the first book of which is Genesis—is in this passage: the Sacrifice, or the Binding (Aqedah in Hebrew), of Isaac. In a three-fold call of deepening relationship—just as he was called by God in chapter 12 in a three-fold way of deepening relationships from which to leave and abandon his previous life: “Go forth from your land and your birthplace and your father’s house…”—God summons Abraham to do the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the inconsiderable (Gen. 12:1). In the heart-wrenching words of the biblical text—again the first time the word love is used in the Bible—“Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love….” And then his name is given: “…Isaac, and go forth—the same command as in Genesis 12:1, lekleka—to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering…” (Gen. 22:2). What are we to make of this?
Perhaps, it’s helpful that we know it is a test. The first verse of chapter 22 states that. But, still this begs the question: what type of God would subject a father to such a test? It’s sadistic at best. Yes, the messenger of God (the angel) stays Abraham’s hand wielding the butchering knife (cleaver) before he goes through with the act against his bound son (and the word for bound is used only here and it connotes what one does to the legs of an animal before slitting its throat), but why put one to such a test? And what about Isaac, what was he to think, seeing—and there is a powerful play on this idea of seeing throughout the story—the near zealous intensity with which his own father was ready to take his—Isaac’s—own life?
It’s a disturbing story, and there have been not a few lines written to comment upon and understand the text. And people are all over the map on its interpretation. Some rabbis say that Abraham failed miserably, in that he gave into the temptation to engage in child sacrifice, a not too uncommon practice in the environs of Israel in the early biblical period. Some say, like Soren Kierkegaard, that it is the test of faith. Can one offer it all away for God? Can one give up what one has held on to, longed for, beheld as dear and loved, for the sake of the love of God, including one’s very own child?
This also tends to be a Christian interpretation of this mysterious passage. Included in it would be seeing Jesus as the Beloved Son who is sacrificed, offered up out of love for sinful and lost humanity and resurrected—given back—as Isaac was given back to Abraham. Perhaps, that is why we have this passage linked to the gospel passage of the Transfiguration—Mark’s version of it this year. Perhaps, though not as frightfully dramatic and tense as the scene on Mount Moriah, the disciples are being asked to go down from Mount Tabor after this fantastic religious experience to continue on the journey—the way—that will lead to the suffering, passion, death and sacrifice of their dear and beloved Master.
The same question that I asked about Abraham at the beginning of this reflection is appropriate for the disciples: When the disciples went—in this case went down the mountain—did they ever think that following Jesus might just cost them everything? Did they ever consider what it would entail? Did they think about the sacrifices that they would have to make? Yes, they could be all sorts of fervent up on the mountain with their Master illuminated talking to the heroes of bygone eras and a voice from the sky and a cloud, etc., etc. It’s easy to be fervent and faithful when you’re high and on a high, in this case a religious high, but can you keep doing it when the world comes crashing down around you and when you return to the valleys of life, far from the mountain peaks, and when you see the one whom you have given everything to treated as a criminal, beaten and then condemned to die an agonizing death? Can you keep doing it when the world or your family or life or God demands the very thing you love to the end from you?
“Abraham.” “Here I am!” “Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth….” This is why this story is here. Yes. It’s frightening and brutal and tortuous and unkind. But, so is life. You and I have had to sacrifice our Isaacs in a manner of speaking, so that we could be transfigured. You and I have had to offer up what we thought the world would give us—our dreams and hopes and fulfillments, and so be transfigured. You and I have had to come down off the mountain to trust only in the way that is before us, hoping against hope, that somehow we were doing God’s will, so that we might be transfigured.
In my own life as a priest, there has been many a moment of having to come down off the mountain, of having to “sacrifice” Isaac. Yet one of the psalms, Psalm 121 in particular, makes me see. Psalm 121 begins: “I will lift my eyes to the mountains; from where will come my help? My help is from/with the Lord who made heaven and earth.”
In many ways small and large, you and I are called to sacrifice, bury, our Isaacs, our ways/my ways of relating to the world and life and God and see—see—what God provides. Twice the text says that Abraham raised his eyes and saw; and perhaps most poignantly, and heart-wrenchingly, when his son asks him about the sheep for sacrifice, Abraham’s response to Isaac, the one he loves, his only one, his son: “God will see/provide….”
And so the story, though harrowing, is also tender and heart-wrenching and poignant, because it is a human story. It is the story of life and it is the story of faith and it is the story of Jesus Christ—God and man.