The Binding of Isaac

In the Jewish tradition, the story of the binding of Isaac is called the Akedah.  It is a story that has challenged many scholars and pastors, especially in our modern time and it is a story that has caused Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike to be seen as suspect by the atheist community.  One prominent Atheist, Christopher Hitchens, in his book “God is not Great,” uses the Akedah as an example of why religion poisons the world.  He argues that it is appalling to think that faith traditions would lift up the story of a man so ready to take the life of his own child to prove his faithfulness to a deity as a bastion of faith, and that a deity who demands child sacrifice is abhorrent in and of itself.  From a preaching perspective, this text is certainly a difficult one. 

How do we be faithful to this story while admitting that a God who commands a man to sacrifice a son who he waited until he was 100 years old to father is quite troubling? Especially in an age when child sacrifice in and of itself is disturbing and where children are highly valued.  A god who commands such a thing is off putting.  A father who agrees to such an act without so much as a “why?” is distressing. So the easy way out would be to toss this text out the window and move on. 

Except, that there is a lot that we can learn from the story of the binding of Isaac.  It is obviously an important part of the Genesis narrative, or the folks who wrote Genesis would not have included it as part of the tale of God’s relationship with Abraham.

Last week, I mentioned that Abraham was very devoted to his God, following from his home to a land he had never seen before, entering into a covenant with God that required the institution of circumcision, believing in God’s word that he would one day be the father of many nations.  And God made good on every one of his promises…even though the last promise took a little longer than most people expected…so long that Sarah and Abraham laughed when they were told that at 98 and 99 years old, respectively, that Sarah would become pregnant and give birth to the son that Abraham had been promised so long ago.  But though it was later on in life, God made good on his promise and Isaac was born. 

I can imagine that Abraham and Sarah loved and doted on their long waited for son greatly…buying him the finest clothes, the most well-bred camels, making sure he ate the finest foods so that their son would grow up to be healthy and strong.  Spoiled was probably an understatement for this couple that waited until their 90’s to have their first, and only, child.  Nothing was too good for Isaac, the son of Abraham. 

It seems, though, that with the clothing and the camels, the toys and the fine meals, that Abraham and Sarah’s attention shifted away from the God who had called on them and provided for them for so long, to the comfortable life they had as a happy family of three.  They were content, they finally had what they had wanted for so long, and their focus changed. 

So God decided to test Abraham’s loyalty.

God had provided everything that Abraham had, his land, his family…all of it had come through God making good on his promises. And so Abraham’s test was to give something back.  Something that was so precious to him that it had caused God to question Abraham’s continuing devotion to him.

“Take you son, your only son Isaac, whom 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.”

To us, this seems like a barbaric command, but to those who live in the time that Abraham lived, a time when child sacrifice was common place, it wouldn’t have been an outrageous request.  In the ancient world, it was believed that offering up the first born child as a burnt offering to the gods was an act that showed great reverence to the gods, and it was believed that such sacrifices would garner favor and protection from the Gods.  So this command to take Isaac and sacrifice him to God would not have been shocking to them like it is to us.  What would have shocked them, however, is that, in the end, God sent his angel to stop Abraham from taking Isaac’s life, offering up – instead – a ram.  Abraham’s loyalty to God had been proven in not only attempting to follow through with God’s command, but in having the faith to be confident in telling Isaac that God would provide the animal for the sacrifice. 

There are many things that we can take away from this text, but I’d like to touch on two of them.  The first is that human sacrifice has no role in our God’s plan.  There are many other gods out there who demand human sacrifice of one form or another, the gods of war and violence demand the sacrifice of not just young men and women who serve their country in the military, but also of our children, of the elderly, and of people of all ages, on the altar of fear and increased gun sales.  The gods of greed demand the sacrifice of the well-being of children at the hands of rising food prices, human trafficking, neglect, cuts to education funding, homelessness, etc,.  These are not sacrifices that our God demands…in fact, scripture tells us that they are contrary to our God’s plan. 

The second thing I wanted to touch on is that sometimes our God does put us to the test.  We don’t like to talk about it…in fact we like to talk about it so little that there has been at least a generation raised up in the church that believes that the sole point of religion is to make them feel better about their lives.  But the truth is that when we faithfully follow God, we are going to asked to do things that don’t make us comfortable, we are going to be challenged to be better at loving our God and loving our neighbor by being called to be honest when we confess the things we have done that we shouldn’t have and the things we should have done by failed to do. We are called to make sacrifices of time, talent, and treasure for the sake of God and for the sake of his gospel. We are called to provide for the needs of others on God’s behalf and to help others to stand up when they have been laid on the altar of sacrifice to other gods.  Sometimes being a follower of God is as far from comfortable as we can get because it means admitting that we are not in control.  And we pray that God will not lead us into temptation out of fear that our lack of faith will be found out, that the curtain we are hiding behind will be pulled back and it will be discovered that we have chosen to seek out a less demanding alternative to God.   

There is a need to return to being honest about what being a descendant of Abraham and a follower of Christ means.  It means that God will test our loyalty to him from time to time…it means we will be asked to make sacrifices of our own time, talents, and treasures…and it means that other, more “fun” and “easy to please” gods are going to come our way and try to take our attention and our loyalty away from our God. 

And we can remain confident in our God, because unlike other gods, our God will not demand human sacrifice, our God makes good on his promises, and our God has shown us the ultimate power of his love for us by giving up his own son so that we could receive the promise of abundant life and of a future with him in paradise.  It is because of these things that we can have confidence in the face of other gods when they come knocking on our door.  For we know that our God provides for every need, even if it means calling on us to be the ones to do the work on God’s behalf, and while sometimes our loyalty to him comes into question, God’s loyalty to us never fails.