When the lectionary offered up Genesis 22 as the text for this Sunday, I paused and shook my head, what is one to say about this story?  It is distressing, it is violent, it is confusing, it has moments of grace, but it is messy.  I sat with it for a moment and then decided that surely there must be an alternative text that would be better for me to pursue than this.  I started poking around for other texts of interest and inspiration, but this story kept haunting me and leaving me disquieted at my attempt to ignore it.  Last Sunday during the service we had a dramatic reading of the book of Jonah – now there’s a story that will teach you the consequences of practicing the art of avoidance. So I came back around and acknowledged that my hesitation and discomfort with this text was not enough cause to avoid it.  Instead, I decided to dig in and seek what might be found within this passage.

Of course as soon as I committed to exploring this text I read a blog post this week that suggested that we ignore this text because of its violence, the writer’s point being that “we preachers need to learn to speak of the demands of faith without resorting to stories that employ the abuse and murder of a child to make a point.” And while part of the disquiet I felt about engaging with this text in the first place was just that – a hesitation to be misunderstood as glorifying this tale’s bizarre request of sacrifice, another part of me cannot simply ignore a story that is foundational to the three major monotheistic faiths.

Christianity has in times aligned this test of faith and requested sacrifice of a child with Jesus’ own test of faith and death on the cross, Judaism clings to this story of the binding of Isaac as a supreme act of faith on the part of Abraham, and Islamic tradition suggests that it was the sacrifice of Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar, that was requested by God not the sacrifice of Isaac. Beyond the significance of this text in these traditions, is the fact that this text opens us up to the messy layers of what it means to be in full relationship with God.

Another pastor responded to the original post I read with a belief that this text should not be avoided stating “As pastors, we have the ability to let our congregations know that it is okay to question and wrestle with scripture and with God.” This is not a news flash to this community – this is a community that values questions and wrestling with scripture and with God. This is even a community that strives to live into those questions and struggles in our daily individual living and also together, in community.

If ever there was a text for us to struggle with and have questions about it is this story.  It is messy and uncomfortable.  In this encounter we find God testing Abraham’s faith by requesting of him a sacrifice.  A sacrifice that cuts to the core of the blessing that God has promised Abraham – from you will come a great nation.  A great nation of generations to come and yet, here is God, the one who offered this promise of blessing, asking for a sacrifice that will put an end to the nation before it is even established.  And the text tells us that Abraham responds to God without hesitation:

Rising early the next morning, Abraham saddled a donkey and took along two workers and his son Isaac.  Abraham chopped wood for the burnt offering, and started on the journey to the place God showed them.

What the text does not tell us is if or how Abraham struggled with this request of God’s.  We can only assume that he carried dismay in his heart as he journeyed for three days with his son, knowing what was to be done.  We can only guess that as he walked with his son up the mountainside that he was silently, desperately, praying for God to intervene, to take back the request.   We don’t know what he was thinking or feeling, but what we do know is that the faith that moved Abraham to follow through on God’s request was not a simple or naive faith.

The faith Abraham had in God was a faith and a deep sense of trust that had been built up over time and through the back and forth of relationship as God and Abraham journeyed together.  This was a pair that tugged back and forth on each other. God promised Abraham a blessing: that he would be the father of a great nation, Abraham doubted how that blessing would come true since he and his wife Sara were of advanced years and had no children of their own.  Yet, Abraham continued to walk with God even while carrying a sense of doubt about future offspring. At every turn in his life story Abraham stayed in relationship with God; at times trusting God, at times fearing God, and in other moments challenging God. So it was, through many years of relationship, that Abraham cultivated a deep faith in God.  A faith that would do as God asked, even without understanding why God was asking it, because he trusted this God that had journeyed with him for so many years.

It may seem hard for us to understand such a faith.  A faith that is willing, seemingly without question, to follow through with such a request of sacrifice. In many ways the notion and practice of sacrifice in this manner is foreign to us in our current culture (which is not to deny that there are many types and forms of human suffering and sacrifice going on in our culture and around the world).  We may not easily understand what would move Abraham to be willing lay down his son’s life for God. Yet we, as Mennonites, come from and celebrate the Anabaptist tradition; a tradition built on the backbones of the martyrs, those who were willing to sacrifice themselves – to lay down their bodies and their earthly lives in order to not sacrifice their faith in God.

The faith of the martyrs was a deep faith like Abraham’s.  A faith that was forged by their commitment to stay in relationship with God in authentic ways despite the external pressures of the context they found themselves in during the days of the Reformation.  But here’s a key difference: while the martyrs were willing to sacrifice themselves for their faith in God, Abraham wasn’t laying down his own life, he was offering up the life of his son. What does it mean for one person’s act of faith to be at the expense of another?

What happens in the lives of those who have been offered up as a sacrifice? Where is Isaac’s voice in this moment and what on earth was his response to this situation?

Once again the text is not forthcoming on the emotional state of Isaac during this encounter.  The only insight we get into Isaac’s experience is that he is clearly aware that something out of the ordinary is taking place:

Isaac said, “Father!”

“Here I am, my child,” Abraham replied.

“Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

Isaac notes that there is something amiss and he speaks up about it.  Asking for clarification he gets this response from his father:

Abraham answered, “My child, God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.”

Just as Abraham trusts God, Isaac trusts Abraham’s response and willingly travels on with him to make the unknown sacrifice. And while, in the end, God does provide an actual ram for the sacrifice, just as Abraham tells Isaac God would, the ram is only provided after Isaac is bound and at the point of Abraham’s knife.

How did it go that far?  And why was it asked of Abraham in the first place? How can we respect a God who asks for such a sign as a test of faith?

Without answers to any of these questions we must pause and acknowledge something, which like much of our knowledge of God, was learned in hindsight: God never intended for Isaac to actually be sacrificed. At no point was God really asking for Isaac’s life. God’s mercy was all along shielding Isaac from actual harm, but it sure is messy that from the perspective of Abraham and Isaac that mercy isn’t fully seen until after the fact.

This is what I meant when I said earlier that this text opens us up to the messy layers of what it means to be in full relationship with God. To be in full relationship in any form is in moments to be vulnerable, to be hurt, to be misunderstood, to be challenged, to be disappointed, to be confused, and to question.  The fullness of relationship also means learning to trust, to share, to be present, to unconditionally love, to be forgiven and to forgive. God practices these layers of relationship with us and we must also practice them with God if our faith is to be authentic.

It is clear that Abraham’s journey with God allowed him to experience a fullness of relationship that cultivated a deep sense of faith within him. It must also be that Isaac muddled through the messiness of this moment and found a way to reconcile and join in full relationship with God so that, even after such an encounter, Isaac still ended up passing on the blessing of relationship with God to his sons.

May we open ourselves up to full relationship with God so that we can seek deep faith like Abraham, yet have the resiliency of Isaac to respect and journey through the struggles and questions that necessarily come with authentic relationship.