June 26 - Proper 8, Year A (RCL)
Today we welcome Rachel Epstein and her daughter, Anita Leibowitz. Mrs. Epstein is a French survivor of the Holocaust, who will share her story with us.
And perhaps it’s appropriate
that the reading from the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures appointed for today
is one of the great stories,
one of the ones
that has been so central to the identity of both Jews and Christians alike.
At first hearing,
it seems abhorrent, God demanding that Abraham take his beloved son Isaac and sacrifice him.
And so, as Christians, we tend to jump straight from it to the story of another sacrifice,
the death of Jesus.
But
when we stay with the story in its original context,
it offers us deep insights in its own right.
And a clue to that
is in the traditional name for the story in Judaism.
Not the sacrifice of Isaac
but the binding
of Isaac.
Because that is indeed
what happens.
Isaac is not sacrificed.
A ram is provided.
But Isaac is bound,
in an act that seems like extreme faith in Abraham
but also
extreme
failure.
It all begins
innocently enough.
Abraham
is minding his own business,
when God calls to him.
“Here I am!” says Abraham.
After all, he had nothing to fear.
Every other time God had called out to him,
it had been good news,
or at least it ended up being good news.
There was the time when God called him to leave his home
and head for the promised land.
There was the time when God called him with the news that at last
his beloved wife Sarah
would give birth to a son.
So this time, when God called,
Abraham expected
it would be another piece of good news,
another promise
fulfilled.
But this time
it wasn’t.
“Take your son,” God said. “Your only son, Isaac,
the one you love.”
Now remember,
Isaac wasn’t Abraham’s only son.
He was his second son.
The first one
was Ishmael,
but Abraham
no longer had any contact with him.
Because Ishmael
was the son of Abraham’s wife’s slave girl,
and once Isaac was born,
Abraham’s wife, Sarah, didn’t want to have him around.
She wanted her son to have no rivals
for the attention and affection of Abraham,
no rivals
for the status
of son.
She told Abraham
that she wanted Ishmael and his mother out,
out of the camp, out of sight, out of mind.
No rivals.
And Abraham
did what she said.
And it makes you wonder, doesn’t it,
what Abraham was thinking
when God called to him
and told him
to take his only son.
Because it was true.
Isaac was his only son - now.
He had had another son,
but he didn’t even know
if that son
was alive.
For all Abraham knew
Ishmael might have died
in the desert.
So it was perhaps with a sense of foreboding
that Abraham heard
the voice of God calling,
“Take your son, your only son, Isaac,
the one you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”
Was he to lose another son?
Was this payback from God
for allowing Sarah
to throw Ishmael out?
Was it his guilt, rather than obedience,
that led him to pack up his donkey the next morning, and set off with his son and two servants
for Mount Moriah?
What if
Abraham
had said no.
No, it’s not acceptable.
No, I don’t want any part of a God
who demands human sacrifice.
NO.
After all,
that’s what he said
back when Isaac
was just a promise in the mouth of God,
when God threatened
to destroy Sodom.
“No, God.
Don’t do it.
Surely not everyone there
is bad, surely not everyone there
deserves death.
Don’t do it.”
And God didn’t
strike Abraham dead,
and Abraham kept arguing, and God listened,
and finally God agreed,
“If there are just ten righteous people, I will not destroy the city.”
So why didn’t Abraham argue
this time?
Why didn’t he say,
“Isaac has done nothing wrong. You can’t demand
his life.”
or even
“The other gods, that the people round here worship, they demand human sacrifice. I thought you were different.”
Instead
he headed out, with his donkey, and servants, and son.
And when he got to the mountain,
he built an altar,
and put wood on it,
and bound Isaac
and placed him on the altar,
and took a knife.
And then God spoke.
“Abraham, Abraham. Don’t do it!”
And Abraham looked around, and there was a sheep, just waiting to be sacrificed,
and he untied his son
and offered up the sheep instead.
And if you read on past
the end of our reading today,
you discover
that God blessed Abraham
for his obedience,
God blessed Abraham, and once again
promised offspring
as numerous as the stars and sand.
But it was a mixed blessing.
Because when the story ends,
and Isaac was safely off the altar,
and God had blessed Abraham,
then Abraham went back down the mountain,
mets up with his servants,
and travelled home.
But there is no mention
of Isaac, not going down the mountain,
not meeting up with the servants,
not traveling back home.
No mention of him
at all.
According to Jewish tradition,
Isaac wasn’t the boy we picture in our story books,
seven or eight years old.
According to tradition,
he was a grown man, thirty seven years old.
And the next time we hear of him,
he was living
but 50 miles south,
close on a week’s journey
from the place he grew up.
Maybe
Isaac didn’t go back
with his father.
Maybe
he couldn’t stand to be with the one
who was willing
to sacrifice him.
There is no mention in scripture
of Abraham
seeing his son
again.
And it wasn’t just Isaac.
The next story in Genesis,
immediately after
the binding of Isaac,
is the death of Sarah,
Abraham’s wife.
Perhaps it had all been too much for her.
She was done.
And Abraham, Abraham
was left alone.
No son,
no wife.
The promise of blessing remained,
and God had always been faithful to his promises,
but it was a mixed
blessing.
And yet there is redemption in this story,
There is redemption, and healing.
Because by the time that Abraham died,
he was buried
back with Sarah,
his beloved wife,
and both his sons were there
to bury their father, Ishmael
and Isaac
together.
The binding of Isaac
is not an easy story.
It is a story
of faithfulness
and risk,
of blessing and heartache.
It speaks of the cost of being
in partnership with God,
the cost of faithfulness.
Sometimes
I have conversations with people
where they seems to think that faith is something
that is always uplifting,
that is all about greeting card sentiments,
that will make your life easier.
But it’s not. It’s never been like that.
What God calls us to
is not an easy road.
It can set us apart from other people,
because it demands of us things
that don’t belong
in a Hollywood world.
Sacrifice - not of our children, but of ourselves.
Obedience.
Faithfulness.
And courage.
Because often the road ahead
is not clear.
Sometimes
it’s Robert Frost’s two ways diverging in a yellow wood,
but all too often
there is no way visible,
or just one way, and that seems to lead over a cliff.
And yet
we still have to go forward -
because there is no going back.
And at such times
we need to be
like Abraham,
talking with his God,
full of fear and trembling,
but also of trust.
And knowing, deep down,
that somehow, somehow
at the end of it all
there will be blessing.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010