Today’s first lesson, the baffling, frightening “Binding of Isaac,” can’t simply be ignored, can it? Believe me, preaching on the Gospel lesson looked really appealing to me today! But as soon as we hear Genesis 22, we’re caught up in the horror of child sacrifice and the repellent nature of God’s testing of Abraham. The story is even written in such a way as to draw us in to feel Abraham and Isaac’s predicament. Library shelves are filled with the attempts of both Jews and Christians to analyse and make moral sense of this story. There are so many issues to deal with: Should we really obey an abhorrent command from God? Isn’t that what the suicide bombers do? What if we think we’re following God, but it’s really just our own craziness? Shouldn’t Abraham have at least argued for his son’s life a bit, like he did for the strangers in Sodom and Gomorrah? And what about poor Isaac? And Sarah? And then, of course, atheists have a field day with the cruel God that’s portrayed here. I saw that there’s even a really popular computer game out there called, “The Binding of Isaac.” I gather that its storyline is one of escaping religious abuse, what happens when a mentally-ill parent abuses her child through evil religious zeal.
It’s tempting to hold the biblical story away from our modern-day lives as a dangerous and offensive relic, an example of ancient beliefs no longer useful to us morally-enlightened Episcopalians. But I believe that the relevance of the story to our lives lies precisely in the horror of it. Its horror pierces the heart of our own challenge as faithful people in a world, and with a God, that sometimes makes no sense. That’s why the story has such a hold on us. It touches us deep down in tender places. We’ve all seen the promise gone awry, even if we haven’t experienced it ourselves yet: God seeming to give with one hand and then taking away with the other– Our Loving God promising us life abundant and then seeming to put us to the test for reasons that we cannot know or understand. Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis writes:
“This story of Abraham and God and Isaac is the place you go when you are out beyond anything you thought could or would happen, beyond anything you imagined God would ever ask of you, when the most sensible thing to do might be to deny that God exists at all, or deny that God cares at all, or to deny that God has any power at all.”[1]
That’s what I did about twenty years ago. I had just been made a postulant for the priesthood. After years in the complex discernment process, I was “in!” I’d been accepted to seminary. After running from an insistent call to ministry for half my life, I had finally made my peace with God and accepted my call. I thought that I finally knew God’s special plan for my life. I was giddily in love with God—and pretty proud of myself, as well. I was finally getting an A+ in discipleship. Or so I thought.
One ordinary afternoon I came home from my teaching job and flipped on the answering machine. There was a message from my doctor: “There’s a problem with your mammogram. We’re going to need to do some more tests.”
Four of my teaching colleagues in our small school had just been diagnosed with breast cancer that year—a very unusual statistic—and we used to joke, without laughing, that there must be “something in the water” at school. So I was afraid. Very afraid. When all the “more tests” still looked suspicious, they scheduled me for a biopsy, and that’s when any hope and obedience that I had felt gave way to fury and flailing.
“Why should God pick on me now?” I fumed. I had already given myself over to God and accepted a call. I had prayed “thy will be done.” For goodness’ sake, I had offered up my comfortable old life. I had upturned my children’s lives. I was willing to spend my savings to go to seminary. I was willing to do the kinds of hard things that priests have to do. But, O God, I was NOT willing to have you yank away your promise! How could you lead me on like this? How could you give me hope that I could still answer my call, when you were just going to slap me down with cancer at the last minute? They won’t ordain me if I’m sick! I fretted, ranted, and raved at God. I pouted. I despaired. I held up to God all of those dreams of myself as a priest, and I smashed them one by one at God’s feet.
When God’s promises seem to disappear before our eyes, do we, like Abraham, obey God anyway, or do we rebel? The problem of obedience is a tricky one here. We must be clear that Abraham’s obedience in this story isn’t the blind, fanatical obedience of the suicide bomber. It isn’t the rule-bound obedience of the soldier. It isn’t the servile obedience of a dog trailing its owner for a treat. Instead, Abraham’s obedience in this story is the result of a long and loving relationship. It’s the trust that comes after a life-time of knowing and following and wrestling with a God, who, despite all of the ups and downs of Abraham’s 100-plus years, has always been present. Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, a student of the Holocaust, imagines Abraham walking with God to Moriah, meat cleaver in hand, and Isaac by his side, and praying, “In this situation I do not understand you [God.] Your behavior violates our covenant; still, I trust you because it is you, because it is you and me, because it is us.”[2]
Throughout his terrible ordeal, Abraham answers both God and Isaac with a little Hebrew word that we translate, “Here I am.” In Hebrew, though, this word has connotations of, “I am yours: I am open and listening. I am alert to you,” it means. Abraham, in the darkness of his trial, trusts that his God can see what he can’t see. When Isaac asks his father where the sheep is for the offering, Abraham answers, in the Hebrew, “God will see to the sheep for the offering.” Abraham even names the place of his testing Adonai-yireh, “On the mountain of the Lord there is vision.”
Without Abraham’s openness to God’s sight, rather than his own, his blindness could have led to disaster. Poet Wilfred Owen, a soldier who died as a young man in WWI, penned before his death the poem “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young,” his take on the Binding of Isaac. The poem begins to recount the well-known story, with parapets and trenches, instead of a wooden altar. Then, when the angel appears to Abraham, Owen shocks us with the twist. The angels says, “Behold,/ A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;/ Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him./ But the old man would not so, but slew his son,/ And half the seed of Europe, one by one.”[3] Here is the true horror story, the story of human pride and certainty not in relationship with a God of Love.
As for me, in the midst of my anger with God all those years ago, I had a dream. In my dream, an x-ray of my chest revealed a tiny glowing cross, instead of the expected lump. When I woke up from that dream, my anger with God was gone. It was strange. Somehow, I knew that God had etched that cross on my breast—not to cure a cancer—but to remind me that I belonged to Christ, whatever the outcome. In seeing that cross, I remembered God’s trusting love in sending God’s only Son to become flesh for my sake. I remembered Jesus’ trusting love as he hung from the Cross, forgiving us all. It’s the trusting love that binds us to God in Jesus Christ still today—and the trusting love that God asks from us in return. After all my anger, it turned out that I didn’t even have cancer. For that, I am indeed thankful. But my own testing taught me a much-needed lesson: that I belonged to Christ no matter what, that ordination wasn’t the end of being an obedient disciple, but only the beginning. That my relationship with God in Jesus Christ is what’s going to get me through, so I’d better be more about tending it than spinning dreams of glory.
There’s a woodcut by the artist Margaret Adams Parker that gives us an image to cling to in the midst of this difficult story. On a black background, dark as night, you see Isaac, etched in white, curled up innocently on his side and bound hands and feet upon an altar of sticks. He looks peacefully asleep and totally vulnerable, totally trusting. Above him, you see Abraham bending over his son, the sharp cleaver in one hand behind his back–yet holding out the other hand in tender blessing over his child’s head like a parent about to kiss his sleeping child goodnight. And above Abraham, hovering just over the grieving father’s head, you see the Angel of the Lord, looking down with a face of loving concern, holding open arms protectively over Abraham—and Isaac—on all sides.[4] Even here, even in horror and absurdity, Abraham’s love for Isaac and God’s Love for them both never falter.
[1] Ellen F. Davis, “Radical Trust.” Faith and Leadership, July 26, 2011. Found at: http://www.faithandleadership.com/sermons/ellen-f-davis-radical-trust. My sermon is very indebted to Davis’ interpretation of this text.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Wilfred Owen, “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young.” Found at The Parable of the Old Man and the Young by Wilfred Owen – Poems | Academy of American Poets.
[4] As shown in Ellen F. Davis, “Radical Trust.” Faith and Leadership, July 26, 2011. Found at: http://www.faithandleadership.com/sermons/ellen-f-davis-radical-trust.
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