Abraham has always fascinated me. A man of contradictions, he is both hero and coward, with a story alternately honourable and appalling. A man who left his homeland to follow God into the unknown.
He believed in God’s promise that God would make him a great nation through his descendants. It was a promise that would take generations to be fulfilled. He was a man of faith, yet when God told him he would have a son, he doubted and had a son by a slave woman, Hagar. Abraham was hugely wealthy, with silver, gold and livestock. He was a powerful man.
But as Abraham’s story unfolds through Genesis, we also discover his indifference to God, his lack of principles and his cowardice. When Abraham seeks refuge in Egypt during a famine, he fears that the Pharaoh will kill him and take his wife, Sarah, because she is beautiful. So Abraham tells her: “Say you are my sister, so that it will go well with me, and my life will be spared.”
I found this appalling the first time I read it. Nowhere in that story does Abraham inquire of God what he should do. At no point did he think to save both of them, and seek refuge elsewhere, away from Egypt. Yet God intervenes and saves them all. Later we discover Abraham ignoring God’s promise that Sarah would have a son. Coerced by Sarah, he makes her slave Hagar pregnant. Then, we discover him abandoning Ishmael his first born, and Hagar. God intervenes again, and fixes their messy lives.
In today’s reading, we meet Abraham in a different place. This time, he is vulnerable. This story is difficult to understand, because it begs the question of why a God of love would request such a sacrifice. To be honest I am not quite sure of its interpretation or what it all meant. Richard Dawkins, in conversation with Rabbi Sachs, asked the Rabbi how he could believe in a God who asks a father to sacrifice his son. A reasonable question, which many have asked – including myself. The Rabbi’s response is fascinating. He says God was teaching Abraham and his descendants a lesson: that unlike the other cultures around them, they should never offer human sacrifices. If this was an intention, it appears the lesson worked – the Israelites never made human sacrifices. But however we interpret the story, there is an element of mystery to it.
One thing we can know – either way, God never intended Isaac to die. Had Abraham refused to obey God, Isaac would have not died. When Abraham attempts to obey, God stops him and Isaac is saved. So this is not a monstrous God desiring the death of a boy, forcing a man to kill his son. We are told, God was testing Abraham. We don’t know why but it was clearly something to do with Abraham’s faith and his relationship with God.
God seems to make a terrible request. Yet, when I read this passage again a few days ago, I thought that maybe God was executing a certain poetic justice with Abraham. He was a man who tried to save himself by passing his wife Sarah off as his sister and prostituting her to other men. Giving Sarah to Pharaoh, he says “you are a beautiful woman, the Egyptians will know you are my wife, and kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and my life may be spared on your account.” As he gives her to a king, he makes a request: “This is how you can show your love to me: everywhere we go, say of me, ‘He is my brother.’ Abraham also makes his slave pregnant, treats Hagar and his son as expendable, abandoning them as life got complicated. I wonder if God brought it home to Abraham that day, how heartlessly he destroyed and sacrificed people for his own ends.
And so, God asks Abraham for a sacrifice that would drive a knife through Abraham’s own heart, even as he drove it through Isaac’s. Because I think, this story was not about sacrificing Isaac, it was the sacrifice of Abraham’s own bleeding heart. God’s words sound merciless: “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love.” This was not Abraham’s only son and the words must have been a bitter reminder that Ishmael was also a son he loved – but sacrificed and abandoned for domestic peace.
God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering. This offering required slaughtering the animal, exposing its innards, and burning it completely. It symbolised a total surrender to God. To ask for Isaac to be sacrificed like this is horrific and must have appalled Abraham. But for some reason we don’t understand, God requests this and Abraham agrees – without questions, without bargaining. This was the man who bargained persistently with God to save the people of the town of Sodom, pleading with God for the lives of the people. Yet, now, Abraham sets out in strange silent determination, with the task of sacrificing his son. He keeps telling Isaac that God would provide the sacrifice, but we don’t really know what Abraham felt or thought throughout this shocking story. We know he went as far as lifting the knife to kill his son.
When the angel stops Abraham from killing Isaac, God tells him something strange: “for now I know that you fear God.” This begs the question, did Abraham not fear or live in awe of God before this?
Certainly some of his actions tell us he didn’t. Although he had faith, and followed God into the unknown, we know he was selfish and brutal, that he didn’t ask of God what he should do when facing difficult situations. So, maybe this was the first time Abraham took God really seriously.
Abraham’s story is remarkable. He sets out from his homeland to journey to an unknown land, with this unknown God who called him. But, as we read the story of Abraham in Genesis, we see Abraham’s persistence with God, and God’s persistence with him. We see a relationship growing between them. We see God talk to Abraham and intervening time and again to save him.
This is the God we know today. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as the Bible calls Him. But today we are privileged to know him so much more intimately than Abraham did, because in Christ, we approach God as our Heavenly Father.
Do we have faith to follow God as Abraham did, and let God lead us into the unknown? Like Abraham we will always have an imperfect relationship with God because we are imperfect people, and God is a holy God. Like Abraham, our lives will get complicated, we will do things that cause damage to ourselves and others. Yet, God will walk with us, as he did with Abraham, through all of life – loving us, forgiving us, calling us on, testing our faith and giving us new chances to walk in newness of life.