A Sermon preached on 2 July 2023 (Pentecost V) at St. Augustine’s, WI and St. Christoph, MZ
Genesis 22:1-14, Romans 6:12-23, Matthew 10:40-42
After last week’s story about the banishing of Ishmael, this week we heard about the near sacrifice of Isaac. I really feel I should be calling in Claudia Watson, our safeguarding officer, and I do hope that the Sunday school is not using the story today. The three Abrahamic religions – Islam, Judaism and Christianity - that share this story certainly interpret it in very different ways.
For one thing, most Moslem scholars identify the son with Ishmael rather than Isaac. And in the Qur’an, when Abraham tells his son about the vision, his son agrees to be sacrificed for the fulfilment of God's command, and no binding to the altar occurs. According to the Surah 37:102-105: “And when he reached with him [the age of] exertion, he said, ‘O my son, indeed I have seen in a dream that I [must] sacrifice you, so see what you think.’ He said, ‘O my father, do as you are commanded. You will find me, if Allah wills, of the steadfast.’ And when they had both submitted and he put him down upon his forehead, We called to him, ‘O Abraham, You have fulfilled the vision.’ Indeed, We thus reward the doers of good.” Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice honouring the willingness of Abraham and his son to submit to God’s command is (coincidentally) being celebrated this weekend, from June 28 – July 2.
For our Jewish brothers and sisters this event is called Akedah, the binding. The traditional Jewish interpretation is that Abraham demonstrates his total love of God by being willing to sacrifice the most precious thing in his life, the son for whom he has been waiting for so many years. More recent commentators argue that “Isaac's death was never a possibility – not as far as Abraham was concerned, and not as far as God was concerned. God's commandment to Abraham was very specific, and Abraham understood it very precisely: Isaac was to be "raised up as an offering", and God would use the opportunity to teach humankind, once and for all, that human sacrifice, child sacrifice, is not acceptable.”[1]
In his interpretation, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who Linda also likes to quote, goes even further:
“In the ancient world, up to and including the Roman empire, children were considered the legal property of their parents. … Under the Roman principle of patria potestas, a father could do whatever he wished with his child, including putting him to death. … It is this principle that underlies the entire practice of child sacrifice, which was widespread throughout the pagan world. The Torah is horrified by child sacrifice, which it sees as the worst of all sins. It therefore seeks to establish, in the case of children, what it establishes in the case of the universe as a whole, the land of Israel, and the people of Israel. We do not own our children. God does. We are merely their guardians on God’s behalf. Isaac belongs to neither Abraham nor Sarah. Isaac belongs to God. All children belong to God. …. God does not want Abraham to sacrifice his child. God wants him to renounce ownership in his child. That is what the angel means when it calls to Abraham, telling him to stop, ‘You have not withheld from Me your son, your only son.’ … The Torah ultimately seeks to abolish all relationships of dominance and submission.”[2]
In the New Testament, the Letter to the Hebrews interprets the near sacrifice as a sign of faith: “By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, of whom he had been told, ‘It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named after you.’ He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead—and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” (Hebrews 11:17-19)
Hebrews points to another important Christian interpretation, that this event points to Christ, to the Cross, and to the Resurrection: The wood that Abraham puts on his son’s shoulder prefigures the wood of the cross that Jesus carries. In both cases we have a father who is willing to sacrifice his only son. Isaac and Jesus are both described as sacrificial lambs: Abraham replies to Isaac that "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." (Genesis 22:8) When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him, he said "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!" (John 1:29). The binding symbolises the Crucifixion and the last-minute stay of sacrifice is a type of the Resurrection.
So, is it “all’s well that ends well?” What remains of course is the very disturbing imagery of the binding of Isaac, and even with the happy end, the question, why did God so nearly take away what God had given? Why did God put these two aged parents – Abraham and Sarah – through so appalling a test?
I am not sure I have the definitive answer to that question. We can argue that Abraham always trusted God to make the impossible possible and knew that he would get his son back, but how did Isaac feel when Abraham bound him “and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son”? (Gen. 22:9-10) At least in the Islamic interpretation, Abraham tells his son about the vision and the son then agrees.
I don’t think we can really enter the mindset of people for whom, as Rabbi Sacks contends, child sacrifice was an accepted reality and for whom it was normal for gods to order someone – or some group of people – to be killed. Rabbinic literature argues that the Bible speaks in human language, imperfectly and using concepts and ideas from the context of the times in which they were written down. Just as, in the Letter to the Romans, we heard Paul using the institution of slavery as an example to explain how in Christ we are transferred from one master – sin – to another – God. At the same time Paul is clearly so embarrassed by this analogy that he feels he must apologise for it “I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.” (Romans 6:19) When we try and discern God’s will for us in the Bible, when we struggle to understand how a passage like this can still be relevant for us today, we are sometimes, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians (13:12), seeing through a glass, darkly, for now we know only in part.
But even if we have understandable problems with the setting of the story, its teaching, its core message can still be valid. For some interpreters, as we have heard, it was a sign of submission / total love / true faith. For others it was about a radical change in society’s customs and practice. For us as Christians it does also point forward to the time when God offers God’s only son as the one and only sacrifice to set us free from sin. Traditionally, Mount Moriah, the site of Isaac’s binding, is identified with the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem. When we read “on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided,” (Gen. 22:14) we think of that hill outside of Jerusalem where God provided a saving example of true, suffering love and a way over overcoming evil and death.
And it is also about choices. God had chosen Abraham and provided him the means to become the father of many nations. Abraham had already chosen God when he left his home and family. Would Abraham still choose God now that God’s promise of a son and heir had been fulfilled? Would he dedicate his life and his family to God and God’s greater purpose or to his own? Against all odds and instincts Abraham chooses to trust in God and to believe that God will not betray the promise God had made. And so, like Jacob, Moses, Samuel, and Isaiah after him, when God calls his answer is “Here I am.”
Amen.
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