A very difficult story
Our
reading from Genesis this week is a very difficult story. Over the centuries it
has engendered heated debate. Is it really a story of an abusive God, a deluded
Abraham? Is this advocating religious violence at its worst? It would be
simpler to avoid it and find a nicer reading. But we cannot ignore it simply because
we find it disturbing. It comes to us as part of a long tradition. For thousands
of years it has spoken to faithful people about God and faith. Today we are
invited to wrestle with it for ourselves.
The
first thing I want to note is that the stories of Abraham are foundational to
Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Muslims tell this story slightly differently from
what we read in Genesis. They understand that Abraham loved both sons equally, and
after Hagar is expelled, Abraham continues to spend half the year with his son Ishmael,
and half with Isaac. Jews, and us Christians, have a different understanding.
But all three faiths tell this story from Genesis. For Jew and Muslim the mountain
where this is set is the mountain in Jerusalem, Temple Mount for Jews, Haram
al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) for Muslims. This is not just our story.
The
name of this story for Jews is “the akedah”[1],
the binding of Isaac. The akedah begins with “After these things God tested
Abraham”. Howard Wallace explores what this word “tested” might mean, and
suggests that it is similar to how metals are tested or proved, taken to their
limits. The Medieval Jewish writer Maimonides described this story as a test
case of the extreme limits of the love and fear of God.[2]
So
what are the things that come before this testing? God’s call to Abraham to go
to a land he has never seen; God’s promise to Abraham that he will be the
father of a great nation; the long years of Sarah’s barrenness; the birth of
Ishmael; and at long last, the impossible birth of the boy they call “Laughter.”
And now, after Ishmael is gone, God demands: “Take your son, your only son,
whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a
burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you” (22:2). Isaac is
not just a son; he is the realisation of his great longing for a son with Sarah
and the fulfilment of the promise that he Abraham will be the father of a great
nation. This is cataclysmic on so many levels.
As
they set out with Isaac carrying the wood and Abraham the knife and fire, Isaac
breaks the silence and asks Abraham where the lamb is. He begins “My father”
and Abraham answers “Here I am” – in Hebrew hineni.
It is used three times, at the beginning of the story when Abraham answers
God’s call, here with his son, and at the end just as he is to bring the knife
down. Each instance is one of great attentiveness. Abraham is attentive to God
and obeys. But here in his grief he is equally attentive to his son. Mixed in
this word is all the grief, horror, pain, love and hope that this story
engenders. It invites us to be equally attentive.
The
story ends with God stopping the horror. This is not the all-knowing God found
later in scripture. Here we see how people’s understanding of the nature of God
grows over time. Here God does not know, and needs to know that Abraham, he who
God has risked everything on, is really faithful and will do all that is
needed. And in a way this is also a test for Abraham. Is this God that he has
risked everything for to be truly trusted. Is God faithful? The akedah finishes
with God seeing that Abraham is faithful, and Abraham seeing that God is
faithful. The word translated as “provided” can equally be translated as see. Each
sees the other. The limits are tested. We too are invited to see.
Kathryn
Schifferdecker concludes. “The story of the akedah makes a claim on us: All
that we have, even our own lives and those of the ones most dear to us, belong
ultimately to God, who gave them to us in the first place. The story of the
akedah assures us that God will provide, that God will be present. And, of
course, as generations of Christian interpreters have seen, it foreshadows the
story that forms the foundation of Christian faith – the story of the death and
resurrection of the beloved son, son of Abraham, son of David, Son of God.”[3]
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