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Abraham: Genesis 22
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
We are here. We have finally reached the eighth and final week in our series on Abraham. And so next week, we will move into Advent. So that means decorations and candles and all that jazz will be up on the stage next week. We will even have eggnog lattes at the espresso bar.
Speaker 1:And so for all you Christmas nerds, you are welcome. For the Grinches like me, you can just endure it. But today, with our last week in Abraham, we need to look at what is very possibly the most famous and significant story in the entire Abrahamic tradition. We have saved the best for last, some might say, and that is the story of the binding of Isaac. Now, this is another one of those incredibly difficult stories to metabolize.
Speaker 1:And so we do have work ahead. This is a lot to mine from this story. But at the same time, we're at the end of eight weeks, two months we've looked in the story of Abraham. And so I do wanna look back across the story thus far so that we can gather up some of what we've talked about. So we started all the way back at the end of Genesis 11.
Speaker 1:And when we were introduced to Abraham, then known as Abram, he was at one of the low points in his life. And I think often when people think of the story of Abraham, they wanna start the story in chapter 12. I mean, that is after all the big transition from the book of Genesis, from the primeval history to the history of the patriarchs. Except that we're actually first introduced to Abram at the end of the previous story at the end of chapter 11. You see years earlier, Abraham had set out with his father Terah and they had intended to head for the land of Canaan.
Speaker 1:But they stopped for a season and then they settled for a time and then his father passed away. And so when we meet the man who would become Abraham for the very first time, he is not the great father of nations. He is not an obvious choice for anything particularly significant. He's simply a human being stuck where he never intended to be, mourning the loss of his father, wondering what comes next. And this is actually the space where God speaks to him for the very first time.
Speaker 1:And so we reminded ourselves that sometimes that waiting, sometimes that wilderness, sometimes that feeling like we are lost for a season, this is not wasted space. Because sometimes, this is where God is preparing us to hear what comes next well. Now, I don't wanna glamorize or romanticize that space. If you are in that place right now, it's hard. I know I've been there.
Speaker 1:And the last thing the story of Abraham tells us is that that in between space is easy. But what it does tell us is that God is present in the midst of it. Because this is where God speaks. Now, then in chapter 12, we get to some of the more memorable moments in the Abraham story. God tells Abram that he will become the father of nations, that all peoples everywhere, the entire world will be blessed through him.
Speaker 1:But first, he's told to leave where he is and go to the land of Canaan. And so we talked about this idea that God is explicit reminding Abraham that he has to leave where he is, leave what he's familiar if he wants to go somewhere new. Physically, that just makes sense. Right? You can't go somewhere new unless you leave where you are.
Speaker 1:But mentally, emotionally, this is just as significant. You can't move forward in life until you're ready to leave where you've been. And so God begins this deep and complex complex relationship with Abraham where he points him in a direction but he doesn't always give him all the directions. Sometimes we still need to make choices for ourselves. God's goal is not to remove you from the equation.
Speaker 1:It's not to minimize you. That's not what faith is about. The journey of faith was designed so that you become the you God imagines you to be. But you're part of that story. We explored the unexpected ways that God sometimes works in the cracks and crevices of our life.
Speaker 1:We explored the odd stories of Melchizedek and this strange covenant God makes with Abraham. We talked about how God is bigger and broader, more gracious than our language sometimes permits, and how he descends into our ideas and cultures, our traditions in order to show us that he has put himself on the line for us. We looked at Sodom and Gomorrah. A sometimes scary story that is not particularly simple. It is not for someone else and in context is actually not about the scary angry God of the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:It's a story about how this God is differentiating himself from the cruel, vindictive, arbitrariness that was imagined in the Canaanite pantheon of gods. This is God saying, I am different. In fact, in the scene where Abraham negotiates with God about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham says, if there's 50 righteous people in the city, will you spare it? And God says, yes. For 45, would you spare it?
Speaker 1:And God says, yes. 40? Yes. 30? Yes.
Speaker 1:20? Yes. For 10? Yes. And what's fascinating is if you read chapter 19 closely, it's Abraham who starts at 50 and it's Abraham who ends at 10.
Speaker 1:All God says in the story is yes. It's as if God is as gracious as we can possibly imagine him to be. And then last week, we finally reached the birth of Isaac and Ishmael where Abraham knows that he has promised a son but fertility issues begin to cloud his confidence. And so he and Sarah, they take things into their own hands. And yet, even though Isaac, the second son, is the son that is promised to Abraham by God.
Speaker 1:Even though it was Abraham who jumps the gun and brings a firstborn into the equation ahead of God's promise, there's a surprising inherent value that the writer places on this child. It's almost as if God is not prepared to put his own plot above his concern for this boy. And so even as interpersonal conflict seems to write a pretty ugly story in the book of Genesis, God steps in to promise that Hagar and Ishmael will be cared for. God steps in to speak to Hagar to say, not only will her son live, but he will be great. And so even the interruptions are somehow treasured by God.
Speaker 1:And so hopefully, over these past couple months, you're beginning to see that even as God was perceived by the ancient Hebrew culture, he was pushing ahead of their expectations. And he was driving their culture, all these cultures forward in new ways. He was investing himself in the growth and the discovery and the salvation of the human story right from the very start. Now, today we have one final story of Abraham before we move into Advent. So, let's pray before we jump in.
Speaker 1:God of our father Abraham, would we learn from these tales collected, repeated, and preserved for for us. Would we be able somehow to place ourselves into these stories? And would you speak to us through the voice of your spirit to teach us of the continuing repeating human experience of searching for but also being sought by you. In all the ways that Abraham and his world are distant from us, would you remind us of just how close and truly human the heart of your scriptures are? Where we need eyes to see you this morning, would you open us to the grace that surrounds us?
Speaker 1:Where we need to hear you this day, would you open our ears to the peace that you speak to the deepest parts of our soul? And God, we need to sense you, to feel you, to experience you in this moment, would you send your spirit to comfort and encourage and guide us into all truth. May we leave this space today enlivened and enriched by the experience of our communion with you. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Speaker 1:Okay. Today, we have already taken some time to look back on the story but we do have this one final piece to engage and it is the binding of Isaac or what is known as the Akedah in Hebrew. It's just Hebrew for binding. And this has been a story that is central to the Jewish, the Muslim, and of course the Christian religion. It's also a very difficult story as Abraham almost sacrifices his son.
Speaker 1:Richard Dawkins who is a brilliant biologist and also a famously angry atheist says this about the Akeda. A modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such psychological trauma. By the standards of modern morality, this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two asymmetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of the Nuremberg defense, I was only obeying orders. Now, what's interesting however is that both Christian and Jewish theologians have asked all of the same questions of this text. None of us deny the difficulty anymore than Richard Dawkins does.
Speaker 1:I think we'll see that the text doesn't deny that difficulty either as we engage it. Now, at the same time, this story has been a source of incredible imagination and expression as well. This is a traditional depiction of this story from a synagogue in Israel that still stands today. This is Rembrandt's famous interpretation of this story. You can see the knife falling from his hand as the angel of the Lord stops Abraham.
Speaker 1:Finally, this is Caravaggio's quite profound work. I've spent a lot of time over the years reflecting on this one. Just the sadness, almost confusion in Abraham's eyes and the terror on his son Isaac's face. There's the angel grabbing Abraham's hand while he points out the ram nearby. There's a lot going on in this painting.
Speaker 1:But as much as we might have a passing familiarity with this story and these types of images, we may not know all the details. And so let's read the story. And as we do, I'm gonna make a few comments as we go, and then we will circle back to talk about some of the big themes afterward. So this is Genesis 22 starting in verse one. Sometime later, God tested Abraham.
Speaker 1:He said to him, Abraham, here I am, he replied. Then God said, take your son, your only son whom you love Isaac and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on the mountain I will show you. Now, couple things before we move on. In the Hebrew, this request from God is odd.
Speaker 1:And first of all, the NIV, which I read here, is missing a word. And it's the word please. And I don't just mean that in terms of being polite as in when you ask someone to sacrifice their child in a burnt offering, you should say, please. I mean, God says, please. In Hebrew, it's a very small word.
Speaker 1:It's the word nah. And it's used over 60 times in Genesis. And generally, it's translated something like please or I beg of you. Sometimes it'll even be translated by just putting a question mark at the end of the statement. In fact, in Genesis 19 when the angels came to Lot, he greeted them and he said, my lords, please turn aside to your servant's house.
Speaker 1:You can wash your feet, spend the night and go on your way in the morning. Same word there. The thing is in English, we don't always feel comfortable with the idea of God saying please. We kind of feel like somehow that diminishes him and so we leave it out. We imagine that if God were to ever speak in anything less than commands 100% of the time, it would make him smaller.
Speaker 1:But this is not true. In fact, for the Hebrews, it was the very idea that God would speak, that God would listen, that God would enter into dialogue with humanity, that God would ask humans questions. This is what made their God bigger than any other previous imagination of God. Now for Christians, it's the very idea that God would diminish himself enough to become human. That's what makes him big.
Speaker 1:And so speaking with grace and openness and kindness, saying please, this is not a fault, not for you or for God. In fact, if anything, this please, nah in Hebrew, it indicates that God understands just how significant this moment is. Because even the way the request that follows happens is kinda strange. Take your son, your only son, whom you love Isaac. It's a very stilted, stuttering sentence.
Speaker 1:It reads awkwardly even in Hebrew. And so the rabbis wondered, wondered, perhaps we are only hearing one side of a conversation here. The rabbis imagined maybe it went like this. Perhaps God said, please take your son. And Abraham responded, which son?
Speaker 1:Your only son said God. Well, have two only sons replied Abraham. Ishmael and Isaac have different mothers after all. The son whom you love. Which son is that?
Speaker 1:Isaac said the Lord. And we've seen this kind of one-sided dialogue in Genesis already when Abraham negotiates with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. We hear Abraham's side of the conversation and all God says is yes, yes, yes. Now, we see God drive the conversation. And he pushes Abraham to hear, to listen, to acknowledge what he's saying.
Speaker 1:And I think maybe we can resonate with this. We've all had those times where God spoke to us, maybe through the scriptures, maybe through our conscience, all kinds of different ways, but we just didn't want to hear. And so maybe you pretended that the scriptures weren't saying what you thought they were saying. Or maybe you simply ignored the voice that tug on your heart that was telling you to do something. Here, God leaves no ambiguity for Abraham.
Speaker 1:Do this. And so the next morning, Abraham packs up his donkey and his sons and two servants with enough firewood for the sacrifice and they set off traveling. Then in verse four we read that on the third day Abraham looked up and he saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.
Speaker 1:Now, it could simply be that Abraham doesn't want to raise suspicions with Isaac. It could be that this is a Freudian slip of fading hope. But we should know here that he says, we. We will worship and we will come back to you. And in Hebrew, those first common plural we's are strikingly prominent in the story and they have been the subject of much speculation ever since.
Speaker 1:I mean, does Abraham still hope for mercy at this point? Perhaps. Now, as the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up to his fed, to his father Abraham, father. And this is actually the first time that we hear from Isaac in the Genesis story. And if you read this in Hebrew, the writer does not want you to miss this.
Speaker 1:Now, it's almost like the writer intentionally slows you down as you read. Literally, it says something like Isaac said to Abraham his father and he said, my father. Now, in Hebrew, the verb he said is Abraham, Avraham, is essentially a form of the Hebrew word for father, of. And so in Hebrew, you end up reading this, This is a literary device. There's a lot of interesting things going on in the writing even in these ancient passages, but these repeated sounds are telling you to slow down.
Speaker 1:You you kinda have to to pronounce it. The writer is saying, understand this moment. Don't go too fast. Yes, my son, Abraham replied. The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?
Speaker 1:And Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb my son. And the two of them went on together. Now, no matter how you parse it, this is a heart wrenching moment when you try to put yourself in Abraham's shoes. Is he just lying to his son? Is he hoping that somehow he misheard God?
Speaker 1:That God will speak again and he'll hear him properly. Is he simply trusting that somehow in a way he can't explain things will turn to the good? That we will return together. But when they reached the place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and he laid him on the altar on top of the wood.
Speaker 1:And there seems to be so much left unsaid here. Was there a struggle? Was there a fight? Did Isaac try to run? Does he even understand what's happening here in this moment?
Speaker 1:But then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham. Here I am, he replied. The response he gave at the start of the story by the way. Do not lay a hand on the boy.
Speaker 1:He said, don't do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son. Abraham looked up and there in the thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place and the Lord will provide and now we have a happy ending.
Speaker 1:But we do have a very troubling story to get there. And as Dawkins points out earlier, how could a child ever recover from such psychological of trauma of watching their father almost murder them? And that is not just mean spirited idle speculation. Because in fact, the ancient rabbis asked the exact same question. In fact, the rabbis noted that Abraham and Isaac never speak again after this story.
Speaker 1:There's a story in Genesis 24. Abraham is old now and he calls his most trusted servant in to speak with him and he makes that servant promise to find Isaac a wife. He wants a good wife from his people for his son but he tells his servant about that, not Isaac. Is this because Abraham's relationship to his son has been too broken, too damaged, too painfully seared to ever reconcile. Some of you have been hurt so deeply by someone that you imagine nothing could ever heal that scar.
Speaker 1:And I want to offer at least the hope that all of our hurts can be healed but that may take a very long time because forgiveness is not a moment, it's a process that we enter into. And maybe even at his father's deathbed, Isaac just wasn't ready yet. But that brings us to a difficult question. If the hurt from this story ran so deep and if the terror of this tale still haunts us today, that despite the happy ending, we have to ask this, why would God ever test Abraham this way? And it presents a very real dilemma.
Speaker 1:Is that really who God is? And there are two important ideas that I think can help us with this. Contextual, the second theological. And so first, we have to go back to the idea of the gods. A few weeks ago, we talked about how the gods of the ancient world were angry.
Speaker 1:They were petty and vindictive at times. They were arbitrary arbitrary and scary. And the way that you existed in the ancient world with this range of deities was essentially that you bought your safety from them. That's just how it worked. That's what sacrifices were in the ancient world.
Speaker 1:You made a sacrifice and the gods left you alone. That was the deal. And so the bigger the sacrifice, the more personal the sacrifice, the more painful the sacrifice, the better. This is why by all accounts, most ancient cultures practiced some form of child sacrifice. Now, it probably wasn't as widespread as we might imagine it in the movies.
Speaker 1:Wasn't like they were sacrificing children all the time. But when the time called and when things were really bad, when the gods became angry, this ultimate sacrifice was often seen as solution. This is the way out. That's just the world at the time. And so this is why when God speaks to Abraham and he says sacrifice your child, Abraham isn't immediately appalled because this is what the gods do.
Speaker 1:And if this is what the god wants, then this is what the god will get anyway. And so as deeply painful as it was, it was the assumed way of the world. And so that's the test at least on the surface. Would Abraham give to God what was most precious to him? His promised child just the way other gods would ask.
Speaker 1:But see the rabbis also believed that every test from God comes in two parts. There's the test of obedience, will we do what God asks? There's also the test of our listening. Will we hear God well enough to know what God really wants? And when you think about it, both of those are obviously pretty important.
Speaker 1:Right? I mean, you could give God all kinds of important things, but if he didn't want them in the first place, you're still kind of missing the mark. And maybe you could think of it as a two part test. The first half is true or false. Will you do what you're asked?
Speaker 1:Yes or no? The second is an essay question. What exactly did God ask you for and why exactly would God ever ask for that? And after everything that we've watched as Abraham walks through Genesis, from his call to Canaan, from the promises God has made to him, through the mistakes, negotiations, the conversations with God. Doesn't it seem strange to anyone that Abraham would argue with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah and yet resign himself to the death of his son?
Speaker 1:And it's impossible that Abraham passed part one. He was willing to do what God asked but he failed part two. God was hoping he would ask why. Yahweh is hoping that Abraham would realize child sacrifice that's common in this culture is important to this God. Yahweh is hoping that Abraham would realize that he doesn't need to buy grace from God the way his contemporaries do.
Speaker 1:That's not how this God works. Yeah. Everything we've read over the past two months and everything God has revealed about himself to Abraham over these past eight weeks, what would possibly make him think that this God Yahweh would want this? This God who put himself on the line for Abraham and his covenant. This God who is more gracious, more just, more trustworthy than he ever imagined in Sodom.
Speaker 1:This God who brings life to his wife Sarah even after Abraham goes it alone with Hagar. Would that God ever want a child sacrifice? I know it's expected by the gods but aren't you gonna push back? Why does Abraham not turn around to God and say, listen, I have come to trust you completely. You've shown me that.
Speaker 1:And at the end of the day, I would do anything that you ask but this this is not you. See, that's the test in life. It's not just that we do what we're told. It's not just repeating sermons that somebody has preached. It's not just living out the faith of our parents or our friends or our pastors.
Speaker 1:It's coming to know God well enough that we can hear what he's truly asking from us. Not just what is he's expected to ask from us, not just what our culture tells us God wants from us, not just what we perceive but what God truly speaks to our heart. You see, I don't think that God is asking for Isaac in this story as much as God is asking Abraham to give him the imagination of a God who would ever require something like this. He wants him to give up that imagination of God. Because here's the thing, we know God doesn't want sacrifices.
Speaker 1:And not just not child sacrifices. We know God doesn't want animal sacrifices. In fact, we know God never wanted animal sacrifices. This is why the scriptures say things like this, even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Instead, let justice roll like a river.
Speaker 1:Let righteousness flow like a never ending stream. That's Amos. Sacrifice an offering you do not desire, but my ears you have opened. Burnt offerings, sin offerings, you don't require. Psalm 40.
Speaker 1:I desire mercy not sacrifice. Knowledge of God not burnt offerings. Hosea six. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy not sacrifices.
Speaker 1:Sacrifices. Jesus Matthew nine. Then there's this of Hebrews 10. It was always impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to ever take away sins. So, if God didn't require sacrifices to forgive, then who did?
Speaker 1:And the answer seems to be us. You and I. We have this inherent need to project our brokenness and our sin onto something or someone else. And we have this need that something or someone else would pay a price so that we can know, so that we can believe deep in our bones that we are loved and we are accepted. And so when Jesus comes and he dies on the cross it's not because God just really likes to kill things.
Speaker 1:It's because God allows us to do our worst to him so that he can prove to us once and for all that the core of the universe all that is is defined by forgiveness and grace and acceptance not by sacrifices and payment and retribution. God says, you can do your worst to me and I will not pay you back for it. God says, you can do your worst to me and I will still offer you grace and acceptance and forgiveness and love because that's who I am and you need to see me for who I am. See Christ ends sacrifice not just because he was the best sacrifice. No, he's the sacrifice that God comes to show us who he really is that God gives himself away.
Speaker 1:The blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins, only God. And so this is a tough story to digest but it's the foundation for the Christian story that follows it. Because God is moving the bar one step closer to the full picture we will eventually see in Jesus. And if you've ever come close to the idea of faith in the Christian story, but somehow held yourself at a distance because you were afraid of what the divine might ask from you or what this God might take from you, here's what I would offer to you this day. I can promise you that what God will ask will be more than you can possibly imagine.
Speaker 1:And it will be hard stretching and it will test you in ways you can't even conjure. But equally I promise that God is not looking to take from you what is good and true and beautiful and blessed in your life. God doesn't want to take your Isaac. He wants as he did from Abraham to take your misconceptions about him away. Your fears and anxieties about whether the divine would accept you.
Speaker 1:Your sadness and pain that you've accumulated through life. Your your frustration and your isolation that close you off from God, that close you off from other people. He wants your hurt and your bitterness and your unforgiveness. That's what he wants to take away. He wants to take the idea that you would ever need to buy his love or acceptance with a sacrifice or a gift or money or an action and he wants to give back to you what he gives to Abraham.
Speaker 1:A completely reinvented imagination of what a God could be. And perhaps your image of the divine has somehow been distorted or twisted and corrupted like Abraham's was by his culture and his world. And of course today you don't think God wants child sacrifices. That's not of our world anymore. But maybe you have been so deeply ingrained with this idea that God wants payment from you or God wants retribution against you.
Speaker 1:That you could hear God is love a thousand times and you would still experience him as a transaction. Today, would the God of the Ikeda take from you those misconceptions left in your heart so that you would know your father as Abraham came to you? Pure love and acceptance and forgiveness. Let's pray. God, help us as we round out this story of Abraham, to do the mental work to place ourselves back in this world where the gods are angry, where they are petty and vindictive and they demand from us payment.
Speaker 1:That we would need to buy our safety. That we would need to buy our acceptance by giving what is good to you. And he said, God, would you speak to us as you did to Abraham to say that the thing that you want to take is not what is true and good and beautiful in our lives. The thing that you want to take is not what you've given us out of your generosity. The thing that you want from us is our misconceptions, our fears, our anxieties, our sense that we could never be forgiven.
Speaker 1:And God, as you melt that away and as your spirit invites us to come into communion and conversation with you, would we now carry ourselves in every relationship with a full and open heart of acceptance and grace. Welcoming those in our midst, into our circles, into our homes, and into our conversations. Because this is the God you show yourself to be. May we look fully to the story of Christ to see the God who takes all of our anger, our frustration, and our violence and says this ends here. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.