I really wanted to preach a sermon on this morning’s text from Genesis 22.  All week I looked forward to presenting a God inspired message on the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac but as I realized Friday afternoon – I can’t.  I don’t understand the text.  The God in this text is not my understanding of God and if I learned anything in seminary it was to come on Sunday morning with a sermon in hand that would enlighten the congregation’s understanding of the text and of God.  What does one do, when one comes unprepared? 

This is one of the most ancient stories in the Bible.  It describes a time when God was still unknown to the people of Israel.  In fact, the people of Israel didn’t really exist, but God promised their existence to Abraham.  That’s were we start this morning’s text.  Abraham has been promised descendants numbering the stars and grains of sand.  He wonders about this because he and his wife Sarah have not been able to produce offspring.  But, God promised and so he believes.  We have all heard the story of Sarah finding out that she will give birth.  She laughs and so their child receives the name, Isaac, which means laughter.  Personally, I think a 90 year old woman should laugh if she finds out she is pregnant by her 100 year old husband. 

So Isaac is born.  And he grows and matures into a teenager.  Well, we don’t really know if he was a teenager at the point of this story, but let’s assume for now.  One day, Abraham is called by God to take his son, his only son because Ishmael has been taken out into the dessert with his mother, to a mountain to offer him as a burnt offering.  Abraham’s emotion is unknown.  He is asked to give up what God promised him.  He may have been confused, wait a minute God, you gave me Isaac and now you want him back?  What’s this going to do to Sarah?  She’s not any younger, you know?  But, Abraham does it.  “So, Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his [donkey], and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac … and went to the place of which God had told him.” 

This is where I begin to have trouble understanding this story.  God asks Abraham to kill Isaac.  Does this make God a child murder and abuser?  I’m not the only one to question this.  I found several articles and books written by people who struggle with this view of God.  Alice Miller, a psychoanalyst, studies the depictions of this story in art.  She struggles with Isaac’s silence.  Here is a young man torn between two adults.  He is a pawn, without the ability to fight back.  The laws in Leviticus prohibiting child sacrifice and child abuse are written centuries after this story’s placement in history.  Does this suggest God once condoned a child to be killed?  Well, not even just once. 

Some scholars note the connection between Abraham and Isaac and God, the Father, and his Son, Jesus.  There are three key comparisons.  First, Christ’s return to life and the time between God commanded Isaac’s death and his pardon is each three days.  Second, Christ carried the wooded cross and Isaac carried the wood on which he would be sacrificed.  And third, Isaac is replaced by a lamb and Jesus is the lamb. 

Isaac is not the only time God sends a son to die.  If this is not the God that one has always believed in what does one do?  Ignore the story?  Make it fit contemporary life?  Say this was a two time deal?

The Internet if full of sermons.  As I struggled with this text I decided to google Genesis 22.  Gary DeLachmutt has written a series of Bible Studies and Sermons on this text and thanks to google I found them.  His premise is, “If you follow the one true God, he will test your commitment to him by asking you to give him what you love most.”  Maybe you have heard this theology before.  I’ve heard it applied to money, possessions, health, and even to family members or children.  I find this bad pastoral care.  We have probably all heard the expression, what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger, but to tell a parent who has just lost a child, you will be stronger after this does not affirm the present pain.  To tell a person who’s house just burned down in a fire, God is testing you by taking what you loved most, doesn’t solve the current problem of homelessness or fear or solve the immediate needs.  DeLachmutt continues his sermon by saying, “[God] will test you in order to bless you and never to harm you.”  How does one explain this God to a person with cancer who spends the night throwing up from the drugs?  God doesn’t want to harm you, honey.  God wants to bless you.  DeLachmutt’s closing point doesn’t even help in this pastoral care fiasco.  He ends, “[God] will work through your obedience to advance his plan to bless the world.”  This opens all sorts of doors and windows for me.  So, God, you love the world so much and me so little that you will use my pain to further your plan?  What about me?  I thought you sent your love in the form of Jesus Christ for us all?  What about me?

I have a friend who was raped in college.  She told me that someone came to her and assured her that God would use this experience to the glory of God and she would be a better and stronger person for having had this trauma inflicted on her.  While it is true that she is a wonderful person now, I wonder did she need to be raped in order to be wonderful – to be the person she is today?   

So I struggle – Who is God?  Is God a child murder?  Is God one who uses pain to further a plan?  Is God the God I thought I knew?

At www.preachersfiles.com I found another explanation of this text.  The preacher asked, why didn’t Abraham ask God, Why?  Why is Abraham silent and submissive when God makes such a bold request?  This preacher tried to tell me that questioning God is a sign of faithlessness.  He said, Abraham’s faith was too strong.  He could not question God.  So I wondered, what does this say for all of us ‘normal people’ who may question God every day?  If we are truly to be like Abraham and follow his example in this story, we shouldn’t ask God why, but should demonstrate complete obedience. 

Markus, my husband, and I were talking about this one night last week.  He suggested, but maybe God was shocked that Abraham didn’t question.  Maybe the story was meant to be different, but because Abraham obeyed without question, God had to stop the sacrifice before it got too far.  It wouldn’t be the only time in the Old Testament that God waited to see how things would turn out.  Let’s quickly remember Job.  God gives Satan permission to stretch out his hand and touch all that Job had to see if Job would curse God.  Even when given the opportunity to stop this experiment, God allows it to go further and Job never curses God.  God finally restores Job and provides him with riches for his obedience. 

I’m not sure that I want to believe in a God who toys with humanity.  This God does not seem fair or just. 

Another common expression fits into this mixed up analysis of Genesis 22.  God never tests you beyond your strength.    My jury is still out on the theological ramifications of this expression but lets look at the Genesis application.  How much was too much for Abraham?  If God truly gives only what is within a person’s strength maybe the act of killing would have been too much and God stops Abraham at the boundary between almost too much and too much.  In the end God interferes.  He keeps Abraham from sacrificing Isaac and then provides a ram.

William Loader, a New Testament scholar, tells a story in which Abraham kills Isaac and God does not intervene.  Abraham returns by himself down the mountain grieving the loss of his only son.  He meets Sarah who responds with the same emotion and complete obedience to God as her husband.  Sitting together three days later they receive a visitor covered in ash.  He asks why they are mourning and they tell him about Isaac.  Abraham and Sarah then ask this man his name and he replies, I am Isaac, and shows them his pierced hands and side.  This mix of Isaac/Jesus imagery directs our focus in a new direction.  God does not ask Abraham to do something he himself is unwilling to do.  God proves his willingness and ability approximately two thousand years later.

But, now we are back to the beginning, twelve minutes later and still without an understanding of this text.  All we have is an ancient text that may or may not contradict the image of God we walked into this meeting house with this morning. 

The God of this text may or may not murder children, may or may not demand our most prized possessions, may or may not expect complete obedience, may or may not affirm our questions, may or may not toy with humanity to reach his own end, and may or may not test humanity beyond our strength.

Is this your God?  If someone had asked you yesterday, “Who is God?” would your list be similar to what I just described?  Or, maybe you find yourself in a similar place with me?  What does one do with this picture of God from Genesis 22 if God has always been understood in another way? 

This reflection of Genesis 22 leaves me in awe of a God who I have no ability to understand.  God is too big and even at times too small.  God loves in the midst of wrath and justice, and, yet, God loves in the midst of mercy and compassion.  God seems to give and take.  God expects complete obedience and yet affirms questions.  Who is this God who refuses and yet conforms to human language and thought? 

The god who tests Abraham is God.  The god who created Creation is God.  The god who knew us before we were born is God.  The god who redeemed humanity through Christ is God.  The god who we worship today is God.  God is “I AM.”

Thanks be to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Amen.

www.xenos.org/teachings/ot/genesis/gary/gen22_1.htm, June 22, 2005

Job 1:11-12