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Moriah
Proper
8 Year A
27
June 2014 8 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Holy Eucharist
Parish
Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)
“God said, ‘Take your son Isaac, your
only son, the one whom you love, ... and kill him … for me.’” This is a
sentence of horror. This is a text of terror. This story from the Book of
Genesis is without a doubt one of the most troubling and disturbing stories of
the Bible.
Many commentators discuss it.
Eric Auerbach, in his great tour of Western literature, Mimesis, uses
the story to show how Biblical narrative reaches out to the listener and
demands acceptance or rejection, submission or revolt. It demands
that you react. This narrative element is, I believe, why many
universities are uncomfortable in teaching the Bible, even “as
literature.” The Bible, and this story most of all, does not want to be
taken as mere literature.
Danish existentialist theologian
Soren Kirkegaard gives several different versions of
the story, each showing how not to understand faith. To be a
“knight of faith” like Abraham, you must make a leap of faith into the dark, absolutely
unwilling to sacrifice your child, but absolutely willing to
follow God’s command to do so nonetheless.
Episcopalian writer Madeleine l’Engle tells
the story with a twist: God puts Abraham to the test as in Genesis, but then
expresses to the angels disappointment in how Abraham did. God says that Abraham has failed the test
that She has given him.
The fact is, people who follow a God
who tells them to sacrifice their children often do not find an angel holding
them back from the horrible moment or a ram caught in the bush. Many people
who on the basis of religious faith refuse any medical care for their children
find their children dead from common and easily cured ailments.
Visionaries who hear and follow voices like the one heard by Abraham in this
story usually end up in wards for the criminally insane, having actually
slaughtered their loved little ones.
The rabbis saw the problem in the
story. Talmudic and Midrashic treatments of this text often note that Sarah
dies just after this story, “probably from a broken heart” at Abraham’s
cruelty. Others observe that the phrase “Abraham walked with God” never
again occurs in the Biblical narrative after this story.
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim
understandings of the story have differed wildly, another indication of how
uncomfortable the story makes us.
Christians traditionally have seen
Abraham as a model of deep faith, who trusts God so much that he gives up all
his hopes for the future. We usually call the story “the sacrifice
of Isaac,” and liturgically read it, as today, during ordinary time, when
readings focus on day-to-day living and growing in the faith. Christians
often see in Isaac the beloved son as a hint of Jesus’ dying for our sins on
the cross.
Jews call the story “the Binding (of Isaac)” and usually see it through
his eyes. They identify with Isaac, seeing themselves as the chosen but
suffering nation, blessed and at times afflicted by a demanding Deity. Like
Isaac bound on the altar, they are miraculously saved, again and again, through
God’s loving kindness. They read the story on the Rosh ha-shanah, the first day of the Jewish year, and the beginning of the High Holiday season in the fall, which culminates in the Day of Atonement. The high point of the service is the blowing of the shofar, a
ram’s horn trumpet that brings to mind the ram caught in the thicket that serves
as a substitute for Isaac at the end of the story.
Muslims tell the story somewhat
differently. The festival Eid ul-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, commemorates
the story. Elena and I lived in West Africa a few years ago.
We remember very vividly the days before Adha, called "Tabaski" in
that part of the world, Muslim shepherds would drive large herds of sheep to
the beach and then wash them in the sea before buyers would take them home,
slaughter and roast them stuffed with rice and raisins or dates, and them serve
them as the main dish in their holiday meal.
The Quran says that when Ibrahim's only
son reaches the age of adolescence, Ibrahim tells him that in a dream he has
been commanded to sacrifice him (Surah as-Saffat 37.102-03). The
son, as devoted to Allah as his father, readily accepts. Ibrahim lays his son
face down for the sacrificial slicing of the throat, but a voice calls out
telling him that he has fulfilled the vision and passed the test. Ibrahim
is then rewarded with a large feast, in oral tradition said variously to have
been a ram, a goat, or a sheep. Though the Quran does not name the son,
Muslims have always understood that it is not Ishaq or Isaac, the
ancestor of the Jews, but rather his older half-brother Ismail or Ishmael, the
ancestor of the Arabs.
When we read such a troubling text we
must remember its original context. We moderns tend to forget that human
sacrifice was a fact of life in most cultures of antiquity. Israel
defined itself against such traditions slowly, and only gradually renounced the
practice. This story, part of that process, is riddled with
contradiction as a result.
In Hebrew, different names are used for
God in the story at different parts of the story. “God” or Elohim
at the beginning of the passage demands the sacrifice from Abraham. At
the story’s end, it is Yahweh, or the LORD who stops Abraham. The
impression is that Abraham is listening to a different god at different parts
of the story, or at least sorting his gods out.
Repeatedly in the story, Abraham says “Hinneni,”
“Here I am.” When God first speaks to Abraham, Abraham replies “Here I am.”
When Isaac asks him what in the hell is
going on, he answers “Here I am. When
the angel stops the murder, Abraham says, “Here I am.” Abraham is
open-eyed, open-eared and open-hearted. Abraham is present. Hinneni.
Here I am. And so he hears the other voice of God at the end of the
story.
It looks like Abraham does not want to
do what he thinks God is demanding. He takes two slave boys with him,
ahead of Isaac on this deadly trip. Is he hoping maybe for a
substitute? He takes his time on the way, and the narrative progresses
slowly. Some rabbis thinks that Abraham never intends to sacrifice
Isaac. Abraham is putting God to the test, deliberately stalling
and stringing out the process to see whether God would back off from such an
evil thing.
Yet Abraham, however slowly, keeps
taking the next step of what is in front of him. Just as he left Ur “not knowing where he was
going,” he heads for Moriah without any clear idea of how things will turn out.
And so God does a new thing (at least
from the point of view of that age). He does not demand human
sacrifice. Redemptive violence is questioned, and undermined, and
in the end remains only in as something directed at an animal, the ram.
The deep conflicts in the story are
seen clearest when we note that God blesses Abraham in the end because
Abraham had been willing to do precisely the thing that God eventually
prevents him from doing. This contradiction may have not seemed
unusual for people in antiquity accustomed to the idea of human sacrifice as
something demanded by the gods. But it should strike us as outright
strange. We, after all, have benefited from the religious shift embodied
in texts as this and believe that God does not demand any such
thing.
Those earlier people may have been
justified in praising Abraham’s faith shown by the fact that he almost did
the very thing that he didn't end up having to do. But we must praise his
faith shown by the fact that he ultimately did not end up doing what he
originally had felt he had to do.
Abraham’s openness and presence, within
the context of a developing covenantal relationship with God, meant that his
understanding of himself and of God would, in time, change. Originally,
his relationship with God had started by his trusting God and rejecting the
idolatry around him. Ultimately, his fidelity to the God was expressed in
rejecting the demands and expectations of the religion and society around him
that had found their way into his own heart and mind.
There are still those who claim that
there is redemptive value in violence. In popular culture, we have a cult
of not getting mad, but of getting even. Most action films praise
violence. Many of our nations’ international policies are steeped in
exerting our will on others through force of arms. Within the
Church, there are those whose only understanding of the death of our Lord on
the cross for us is one of substituted penal torture. And in all three of the
Abrahamic religions, there are those who say that the ultimate sign of faith is
willingness not only to die for, but also to kill for one’s God.
Redemptive violence is alive and well in the theologies of our age.
For me, the true faith of Abraham is
expressed in ultimately rejecting these voices. Openness to God, being
present and responsive to a living God with whom we are in covenant—this means
that we must question those parts of our faith and our habits of the heart that
would have us metaphorically or literally slice the throats of others, whether
gladly or mourning, in pious devotion to some voice we think is God’s.
So who was being tested here?
Abraham or God? Did Abraham pass or fail the test? Did God?
Given that the truth of Moriah, the Mountain of the Vision of the LORD
depends on where we stand in the story, I think that it is we who are being tested.
May we during this week reflect on it,
and make it connect to our own relationship with God.
In the
name of Christ, Amen.
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