Moriah
Proper 8 Year A
26 June 2011 10 am Morning Prayer
Congregation of the Good Shepherd, Beijing
God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." 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." 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. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 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." 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. 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?" Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.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. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." 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." 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. 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." (Genesis 22:1-14)
“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 comparative literature, Mimesis, the Representation of Reality in Western Literature, uses the story to show the basic character of Biblical narrative—it reaches out to the listener and tells its story in such a way that you cannot be a dispassionate observer. It demands acceptance or rejection, submission or revolt. It demands that you react. This narrative element is, I believe, why many university faculties remain 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 theologian Soren Kirkegaard, in his classic of existentialist theology, Fear and Trembling, tells the story in several different ways, each to underscore how not to understand faith. To be a “knight of faith” like Abraham, you must make a leap of faith into the dark, without knowing how God might “provide a lamb for the sacrifice.” You need to be absolutely unwilling to sacrifice your child, but absolutely willing to follow God’s command to do so nonetheless.
Episcopalian novelist and essayist Madeleine l’Engle in her fine book The Rock that is Higher gives a striking retelling of the story: God puts Abraham to the test with this command, the story proceeds as in Genesis, but then ends in a conversation between God and the angels. God is disappointed in Abraham, and says that he 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 didn’t like this story any better than Madeleine l’Engle. Talmudic and Midrashic treatments of this text often note that in the chapter that follows this troubling story, Sarah dies, some rabbis say, “probably from a broken heart” at Abraham’s cruelty. Others note 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 traditionally differed wildly.
Christians traditionally have seen Abraham as a model of deep faith, who trusted God so much that he was give up all his hopes for the future, hopes only gained through long and steady work and sacrifice, and turn them over into God’s hand’s. We usually have called 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 have seen Isaac the beloved son in this story as a hint or a type of Jesus’ dying for our sins on the cross.
Jews call the story “the Binding (of Isaac)” and have usually seen the story through his eyes. They see themselves as the chosen but suffering nation, blessed and at times afflicted by a demanding Deity. Here, Israel is identified with Isaac bound on the altar at God’s command, but miraculously saved, again and again, through God’s loving kindness. They read the story during the High Holy Days, on Rosh Ha-shannah. 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 Islamic 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 herders from the north would drive large herds of sheep into the city where we lived, and then wash them all in the sea so that they would be clean and beautiful to fetch the best prices from buyers who would take them home, slaughter and roast them, usually stuffed with rice and raisins or dates, and them serve them as the main dish in their holiday meal.
The Quran (in Surah as-Saffat “those ranged in ranks” S. 37) says that when Ibrahim's only son reached the age of adolescence, Ibrahim told him that in a dream he had been commanded to sacrifice him (S. 37.102-03). The son readily accepts, showing he is as devoted to Allah as his father. Then, when Ibrahim lays his son face down for the sacrificial slicing of the throat, a voice calls out telling him that he had fulfilled the vision and had passed the test. Ibrahim is then rewarded with a large feast, said in the oral traditions surrounding the Quran (the haddith) variously to have been a ram, a goat, or a sheep. Though the name of the son is not given in the Quran, it always has been understood not to be Ishaq or Isaac, the ancestor of the Jews, but rather his older half-brother Ismail or Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs. This is because it is only in the verses following this story that the birth of Ishaq is mentioned.
Clearly, such widely divergent readings and retellings of the story reflect how uncomfortable it made those who heard it, even in antiquity.
It is important when we read such a troubling text to remember the context when it was written. We tend to forget as moderns that for the people of the ancient Near East, human sacrifice was a fact of life. Israel defined itself over against such traditions slowly, and only gradually renounced the practice of human sacrifice. 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 (or at least a different presentation of the same God) at different parts of the story, and that the narrator is suggesting that Abraham is sorting his gods out.
In his poem, "The Unpleasantness at Moriah," Professor John Harcourt writes of the story,
... Sometimes it's helpful
To view the old heroic stories aslant,
Enough about Father Abraham,
Exemplar of unswerving, blind faith.What of Isaac? How long
Did his limbs tremble, his bowels churn,
Hysterical tears mixed with hysterical laughing?
For how many years was his sleep shattered
By the recurring nightmare:
"That old bastard
Was really going to kill me!"What of Sarah,
She who had borne the son
Of her old age. What did she think, after Moriah,
Of Abraham and Abraham's God?And the ram
What of its dumb terror at finding itself
Inextricably entangled in a thicket of thorns?
What of its brief glory in momentary release
Just before the true natures of man and God
Were lethally revealed?
It is not an easy story. But the art with which it is told reveals its key point for us. Repeatedly in the story, we hear the phrase “Hinneni,” “Here I am” on Abraham’s lips. “God tested Abraham and spoke to him, ‘Here I am’” replies Abraham. Isaac calls on his father to ask him his troubling question of what in the hell is going on, “Here I am,” says Abraham. The angel puts out his hand to stop the knife, and calls Abraham. “Here I am,” Abraham replies. 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.
Similarly, he clearly does not want to do what he thinks God is demanding. Note the detail that he takes the two slave boys with him, and these are put ahead of Isaac in the list of people making this deadly trip. He is hoping for maybe a substitute? He takes his time on the way, and the narrative progresses slowly. Some rabbis take this element of the story to suggest that Abraham never intended to sacrifice Isaac, regardless of what God had said. In this view, Abraham was putting God to the test, deliberately stalling and stringing out the process to see whether God would back off from such an evil thing.
However that may be, Abraham in the story is present, and open, and takes the necessary next steps in trying to do what he thinks God is demanding. Just as he left Ur “not knowing where he was going,” he does not know just how things will turn out on Moriah.
And so God does a new thing (at least from the point of view of that age). He does not demand a human sacrifice. Redemptive violence is questioned, and undermined, and in the end only remains in the story 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, have benefited from the religious shift accomplished by such texts as this one 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 I do not think that this is a good way for us today to see the story. 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 ignoring the demands and expectations of the religion and people 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 ignoring 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? And if it was Abraham, did he pass or fail the test? 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.
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