“Where is the lamb?” (Genesis 21:1-3, 22:1-14)

Genesis 21:1-3, 22:1-14 (NRSV)

21 The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. 2 Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him.

22 After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your 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.” 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” 6 Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. 7 Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.

9 When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

September 17, 2017 Sermon Notes

This text is one of the most challenging texts in Scripture. People of faith, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, have wrestled with what it means to worship a God who could ask Abraham to sacrifice his only remaining son. People have rightfully recoiled in horror at what seems to be the heartlessness of a God who would seemingly play with a person’s emotions in such a callous way. Most attempts to explain away the vile nature of this text end up making God look like a monster who bears little resemblance to the grace-filled redeemer found elsewhere in the Bible.

Part of the reason that we struggle with this story is the fact that our culture is so far removed from the world in Abraham and Sarah lived. They operated in a region and an era in which child sacrifice was a common thing. The surrounding nations commonly offered up their offspring as a sacrifice in order to curry favor with the gods they worshipped. These practices were known to the writers of the Old Testament and were routinely condemned. Faithfulness to the God of Israel was supposed to require no such child sacrifice. Quite simply, this text is an anomaly when compared with everything else we think we know about God.

Abraham’s willingness to go along with God’s request is also at odds with everything we think we know about parenthood. No loving parent would ever agree to offer up a child, even if someone said God required it. We do not understand how the man who argued so desperately for the salvation of Sodom and Gomorrah could unhesitatingly raise the knife above a bound Isaac. We come to think of Abraham as unfeeling. We try to explain this story away, claiming that our culture is better and stronger. After all, we no longer practice human sacrifice. We must have learned something along the way.

We must have learned something

Or have we? If we are honest with ourselves, the sacrifice of human beings is something our culture does each and every day. We sacrifice our children’s future by our unwillingness to care for the environment. The poor are sacrificed for the well-being of the rich and the powerful. Persons of color are sacrificed through racial inequity and systems of injustice. Developing nations are sacrificed for free trade and big business. Daily we sacrifice our own selves by giving in to worry, stress, and fear. Quite simply, Isaac is bound to the altar each and every day. Sometimes we are Abraham holding the knife. Sometimes we are the servants who stayed at the bottom of the hill, dutifully caring for the donkey, utterly unaware of the part that we played in leading Isaac to his death.

It is because of our complicity in the system of sacrifice that God’s intervention so critical. Just as Abraham needed the angel of the Lord to still his hand, we need someone to enter into our reality and remind us that things do not have to be this way. We need someone to provide an alternative to the endless cycle of violence. We need someone to show us that Isaac’s place is walking beside us, not bound before us as the victim of our weapon.

Thankful for the story of Isaac

Ultimately, this is why I am thankful for this story. The unvarnished brutality of the text is critical to an honest assessment of reality. Abraham’s actions force us to look directly at the violence of humanity. He causes us to see that even those we love can be destroyed by what we do.

Fortunately, this story does not end with Abraham plunging his knife into his son. It is ends with God’s veto over violence. It ends with an alternative being provided. The ram in the thicket took Isaac’s place. God had provided, even when it looked no alternative existed. Abraham’s prediction to his son that God would provide a lamb had indeed come true.

God’s provision did not stop there on that mountain. Isaac would come down from Moriah and become the father of Israel. The claim of the Christian faith is that the covenant offered to Abraham and Sarah was extended to the entire world through Jesus Christ. God’s Son was provided as the Lamb who would take away the sins of the world. He came to provide an alternative to the systems of violence, injustice, and death by which the world operates.

The question we are left with is the same one Abraham faced. We too face a test. Will we continue to sacrifice ourselves, our children, and our world on the altar of unfaithfulness or will we instead partake in the bursting forth of the kingdom of God? In what will put our faith? Will we still our knives? Will we look into the thicket and see that the Lord has already provided the Lamb for our redemption?