St Luke’s, Havelock North – 13^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 29^th June 2008 – ‘Abraham, Isaac & God’

Readings: Genesis 22: 1-14, Psalm 13, Romans 6: 12-23, Matthew 10: 40-42

“After these things God tested Abraham.” So begins our reading from Genesis this morning, and as I was thinking about that reading during the week it occurred to me that I can pretty much map my faith development by how I’ve reacted to this story over the years.

We’ve just heard it, but let’s recap; Abraham has only one son, because he sent the other one away, and God tells Abraham to take his only remaining son to a land far away and there to sacrifice him. So Abraham does as he’s told, and let’s note that not once does he ask ‘why?’ not once does he object or argue, he just does as he’s told. So he takes Isaac to the mountain God points them to, and this is the really nice bit, Abraham gets Isaac to carry the wood for his own funeral pyre until they get to the place of sacrifice. Once they get there Abraham gets everything ready, while Isaac still doesn’t have a clue, and then just as he’s about to do the dreadful deed we’re told an ‘angel of the Lord’ tells him to stop, so he does. Again, no great sighs of relief, no falling down and thanking God for sparing his only son, instead his first thought, his first priority, is to find a replacement for the sacrifice and so a trapped ram pays the ultimate price instead.

I remember the first time I heard this story it was told as an example of great faith and held up as an illustration of the sort of perfect trust we should all have in God, and I remember I accepted that completely. I accepted it because that’s what I was being told by this preacher and we all know the preacher’s always right, and I accepted it because this is the Bible and this is God and if it’s in the Bible and it’s coming from God, it’s got to be good, right? That’s how I first reacted to this story.

Later, in a different place and a different space, my reaction was just as simple – I looked at Abraham and especially at God, and I listened to the story, and I thought they and it were just appalling. No ifs, no buts, no excuses or explanations, it was just appalling and wrong and obviously God couldn’t possibly be anything like that, period.

Today, in yet another place and space, I can listen to this story and look at its details and frankly I’m still appalled. I’m appalled to think that God would or could tell someone to murder their own son. I’m appalled to think that a father might accept that instruction unquestioningly, and I’m appalled that anyone would hold this story up to the general public as an example of Christian faith. But while I remain appalled, I’m also hungry. I’m hungry to know more, to understand more, to figure out what it is within and beyond this story that makes it worthy of being included in the Bible and important enough to feature as one of our Sunday readings.

So I’m appalled, but hungry, and as should be obvious just by looking at me, when I’m hungry I eat. So over recent years – and especially during the past week – I’ve eaten just about everything I can find about this Abraham and Isaac story and I’d just love to be able to stand here and tell you that I have found some definitive answers to my questions, I’d love to be able to do that.

What I can tell you is that this is one of the most written about and studied pieces in the entire Bible. Long before there were any Christians scholars have been locking horns with this passage. In the Hebrew tradition it’s considered one of the seminal stories in the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Bible – and they simply call it the ‘Akedah’ – the binding. In both Hebrew and Christian scholarship almost every imaginable angle on this account has been explored and argued, from the blunt ‘this is the pinnacle of faith’ point of view to that which says ‘this is an example of God getting it wrong.’ And in between those two positions there is a vast countryside of opinions.

Some have argued, and this is a reasonably popular point of view, that Abraham never intended to kill Isaac, that he knew all along that God would stop things before they went too far, so he never doubted for a moment. Another point of view is that Abraham believed God would resurrect Isaac after the sacrifice. To be fair this is actually a Biblical argument, and we find it in the Book of Hebrews where it’s argued that Abraham was willing to go through with killing Isaac because he had supreme confidence that God would restore him. This is part of a major pro-physical resurrection section in Hebrews, arguing a point that had been the centre of a significant Pharisee-Sadducee debate for centuries and it’s based on tenuous evidence to say the least, but let’s accept it could be a possibility, maybe.

Closer to our own century Soren Kierkegaard, the great 19^th century philosopher and theologian, devoted an entire book to this story in which he argued that in Abraham we find the ultimate example of faith founded in the ‘belief in the absurd’, the absurd being ‘that which is contradictory to reason itself’, and that this belief in the absurd is actually the pinnacle of true faith.

I have to admit I’m quite attracted to Kierkegaard’s theory because there is without a doubt a measure of the absurd about our faith in general, but I’m still left wondering whether a belief in the absurd is a good enough reason for sacrificing your son?

There are lots more theories as well, mostly from wise and learned scholars to whom I should probably pay more attention, but the one thing that really struck me while I was looking at all this was just a passing comment in a conversation where someone stated, “whatever God has told him to do, Abraham knows this God through experience well enough to see something more deeply.” Abraham knows this God though experience. I heard those words and I thought ‘yes’. This a different way, a new way, to look at this story and it’s a way we need to take seriously.

The story of Abraham and Isaac we find in Genesis 22 really begins way back in chapter 12. There God first approaches Abram and Sarai and so begins a quarter-century of call and response. Over and over again God calls them and sometimes they listen, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they do what God tells them to, sometimes they don’t, but no matter what they do or don’t do, God sticks around, and if we read these stories, if we explore these encounters between God and Abraham and Sarah as a whole rather than separately, what we begin to see is the formation of a relationship.

Let’s think about that for a minute, God and Abram – and Sarai but I’m just talking about Abram right now – have this relationship, and like any relationship it takes time to develop. Over many years that relationship moves steadily onwards, until it reaches a point, in chapter 17, when God says, ‘now we know each other well enough, I want to make a covenant between us.’ And so God and Abram form this sacred covenant – and a covenant is always a two-way thing – which is so important it demands new names, Abraham and Sarah.

If we want to even begin to understand what’s happening with Isaac and Abraham in chapter 22 we need to come at it from the point of chapter 17. When God ‘tests’ Abraham in our story today this isn’t some distant deity toying with a minion. This isn’t like Jonah being suddenly and unexpectedly approached by God. This is God and Abraham, who have known each other for years. This is God and Abraham, who have a sacred covenant. This is God and Abraham, old friends.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been working through Matthew 10 and last week in Waipawa I talked about the importance of recognising that the hardest of the hard words Jesus says in that chapter aren’t said to just anyone. When Jesus says he’s come to set brother against brother and father against son and that those who lose their life for him will save it, he’s not talking to a crowd of strangers, but to his closest friends. He’s talking to the 12 people who have been closer to him than any others, so when he speaks it’s not just Jesus the Christ they hear, but Jesus the friend, whom they love and trust and have an intimate relationship with, and that makes all the difference.

If I stand here and tell you that I believe you need to give up everything you hold dear that’s one thing, but what if I were your closest friend? What if I were your husband or your wife? What if you and I had the kind of relationship that’s built on total trust and love? Wouldn’t that make a difference?

To be honest, I’m still struggling with this story, just as I’m still struggling with what we find in Matthew 10. I’m still appalled by Abraham’s actions and by God’s. None of it makes complete sense, but if I look at it in terms of a relationship it does make a little more sense, and perhaps that’s a start. I suspect that as my life goes on one day I’ll realise that I’m reacting to this story differently again, that’s the nature of growing older and having a living faith. But I suspect even more strongly that we can never even begin to grapple with stories like this until we start to understand what it means to have a relationship with God, to “know this God through experience” and therefore be able to see something more deeply.

And maybe that’s the real challenge here. Maybe it’s not so much about how much we can trust God or be obedient to God or have faith in God, but rather how close we can be to God. Maybe the real challenge is to be so close to God, to know God so well, that it all makes a different kind of sense.

So may we be those who pursue that sort of relationship with God, may we get to know God and be known, and may we ultimately be those of whom it is said, ‘when we welcomed them, we welcomed God’. Amen.