Sacrificing Children

I’m thankful for Ruth and Dave and their music today.[1] I like banjo music and hope we have more of it in church. And I like the song “Wings of a Dove.” On my computer at home I have a twangy version of that song sung by queens of country music, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette. I play it from time to time when I want to cheer myself up.

There is nothing like country music to tug at the heart strings a bit. Usually the emotion is a little syrupy but sometimes we need a little syrup. And in some ways isn’t the message of “Wings of a Dove” what we most want to hear?

Today’s text also sings a song but in a very different key. For this morning we take up perhaps the most wrenchingly poignant story in the whole Old Testament, the sacrifice of Isaac. At least, that’s what the story is typically called. In the end, of course, Isaac wasn’t sacrificed. God provided another way. But even when we know that, this text grips us intensely and it seems far removed from the assurance of God sending down love on the wings of a dove. Now we’ll come back to that at the end but for now, let’s read this demanding story in Genesis 22.

After these things 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.”

At the top of the bulletin each week I include a quotation which generally relates to the theme of the day or the scripture or the sermon — sometimes all three. For the most part, these quotations are positive and encouraging, maybe even upbeat. But not today. The quotation today is a little raw and I included it because the text is raw.[2] The most dangerous thing we can do with this text is make a sweet or simple story out of it.

That’s why one version of the story in a children’s Bible I looked at gets it completely wrong. It makes the boy Isaac the paragon of obedience. According to this children’s Bible, when Isaac realizes that his father is going to kill him, the boy says, “Father, if God has told you to do this, you must do it.” Then it says that after Isaac acknowledged that his dad should sacrifice him, the boy helped his father build the altar.[3] Like they were working together on some Scout project.

Friends, that is pietistic baloney! It rips the heart out of this scripture, a scripture that intends to rip open our hearts. If we sweeten this story, we miss what the Bible teaches.[4] The text takes us intentionally into a most fearful moment. It appears that God wants Abraham to kill his son, the very son through whom the promise to Abraham was to be fulfilled. And when we sense the rawness of the story, all kinds of questions come at us. What kind of God would ask a father to do that? What kind of father would tie up his son and rip him open with a knife, even if he thought God was demanding it? If any father did that today and used the “God told me to do it” defense, even those who adamantly oppose the death penalty might rethink their positions. This text demands that we ask questions and while there are many we could ask, this morning I want to grapple with two.

First, what can we expect from God? Abraham must have been asking a similar question although we need to acknowledge that in the text he is amazingly quiet. Almost everywhere else when he has a problem with God, Abraham was quite vocal about it. He never seemed embarrassed to argue with God when he disagreed with the divine will. But here he says nothing and just goes about doing what God tells him. But he had to be wondering what he could expect now from God.

Abraham would be wondering that because so far in the story, God has been pretty good to him. Oh, yes, God did call him to leave his homeland and his family traditions. (Genesis 12.1) But God also promised him descendants more numerous than the stars (15.5) and that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed. (12.3) Grand promises. As things worked out Abraham assumed that the numerous descendants and the blessing would come through his first son Ishmael whose mother was Hagar. But then his son Isaac was born to Sarah and a new way was opened into God’s promised future. So even though Abraham was less than honorable with Hagar and Ishmael, as we saw last week, God continued to bless him and while Hagar and Ishmael were struggling in the desert, Abraham and his family became increasingly wealthy.[5] (See Genesis 21.22-34)

God was good to Abraham so he could easily have expected more of the same. Abraham trusted God most of the time but even when he didn’t, blessings came. That’s one reason why today’s text is so agonizing. It takes us where neither Abraham nor the scriptures expect. What can we expect from God?

I read recently about a large cathedral in Milan, Italy where on one side entrance there is a carving in the stone of some thorns, and beneath the thorns it says, “That which pains is but for a moment.” At the opposite side door, there are roses carved into the stone, and beneath the roses it says, “That which pleases is but for a moment.” And then over the huge central doors to the church, there is carved a cross. And under the cross it says: “The only thing that is important is what is eternal.”[6]

Given our choice of those three symbols —thorns, roses, cross — who would not chose roses? And for the most part, that’s our thinking when it comes to God. We like the roses. We like the wings of snow-white doves. We like getting all the good things that God has in store for us. So, too, with Abraham. God blessed him and he was very wealthy. Why not expect more of the same? Everything was coming up roses. Isn’t that the kind of God that we all want to have?

If you listen to much preaching on Christian television, you’ll hear a lot about the blessing of Abraham, a blessing that Christians have through Jesus Christ. (See Galatians 3.6-9) And more often than not these days, the blessing of Abraham is expressed in materialistic terms. A couple of years ago I heard one of the popular television preachers talking about how the blessing of Abraham means he could drive his Cadillacs and wear his $20,000 Rolex watches so he won’t have to change his lifestyle when he gets to heaven.[7] As if being with God in heaven is about having things.

I don’t care how sincere that preacher is, he is preaching debauched religion and today’s text is one of the reasons we know that. What can we expect from God? Today’s text points into a dark mystery so that at the very least we cannot just expect riches and material blessings.

The text also asks us a second question. What can God expect from us? Can God expect us to trust even when it makes no sense? This is the question implicit in the idea of sacrificing children.

At first glance, the notion of sacrificing children makes no sense. The idea seems distant, barbaric, reprehensible. The truth is that we sacrifice children all the time. The sad truth is that untold numbers of children are sacrificed every day on altars of far lesser gods than the God of Abraham and Isaac. We sacrifice our children to the gods of materialism and abuse and violence. We sacrifice our children because humans will not learn the ways of peace or walk the paths of peace. We sacrifice our children when we think that life is just about our own personal happiness. So we give in to divorce because our spouses don’t make us happy the way they used to. Or because we think someone else would make us happier. And the kids? Well, they’ll be okay. But they’re not.

We sacrifice our kids to working eighty hours a week or more. We justify our careers by thinking we’re just earning a living to provide for our families. But our kids need us far more than the things our money buys.

We sacrifice our kids by making them more competitive than kids need or want to be, by being Little League coaches who fist fight with each other, in front of our kids. How stupid is that? The kids know it’s a game. Why don’t parents and coaches know? We sacrifice children all the time to far lesser gods. At least Abraham was asked to sacrifice by the one, true God.

And that’s the point. Can God expect Abraham to trust even when it no longer made sense? Can Abraham still trust that he is dealing with God and he has no choice but to deal with God?

The dilemma for Abraham was being torn between his faith in the divine promise and the command that seemed to nullify that promise. He was torn between affection for his son and heir and his love for God. He was pretty sure that God was providing a future and it seemed to be through Isaac. Now God was taking away that future. Would Abraham still trust that it was God? And would we?

This isn’t just a question for the big things in life. It is really the question every time we wake up and still believe, still trust, still obey. For we never know — never! — where the journey leads, what will happen, or if there will be a ram caught by its horns in a thicket, or only us, caught on the horns of a dilemma, trapped between a rock and a hard place, wondering, wandering, waiting.[8]

Then God speaks (again). Can God expect us to listen (again) and follow (again)? And sometimes, most times, and always in end times, there is a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. Can God expect us to trust?

Most of the time, this text is used to make Abraham a hero of faith or to suggest we are to be like him. But who among us can be like Abraham?[9]

I think the text is less about Abraham’s heroic faith or whether or not we have heroic faith. I think the text questions us in order to point us to God. The point is that regardless of how we pass the tests some of the time or fail the tests on other days, there is nowhere for us to go and no one other than God to whom we can turn. And the real question is, do we trust the God who challenges us in the darkness when nothing makes sense to be the same God whom we meet in Jesus Christ and who sends down his love on the wings of a dove?

That’s why when the sermon is done this morning, we’re going to sing a hymn that tries to express the dark side so we can set it alongside the light side.[10]

Of course, we struggle with that. We would rather not “leave it all” to God. We would rather have “the wings of a snow-white dove” flapping around us all the time. We prefer roses to thorns or cross. But we also know it’s not that simple and if we don’t know, today’s text reminds us.

Yet in very truth, to whom can we leave it all to except to God? And that’s why the Abraham story is ultimately hopeful. Because God is there. God calls Abraham, God challenges Abraham, and ultimately God provides for Abraham. There is only God. For as the apostle Paul said, “In [God]we live and move and have our being.”[11]

There is no where else we can go and no one else to whom we can turn. That’s why we know that though our road be dark some days, God holds us and we shall not fall. Thanks be to God.

[1] The “anthem” just preceding the sermon was a tenor/banjo duet of Bob Ferguson’s “Wings of a Dove.”

[2] “Abraham came back from the land of Moriah smug, contented, smooth and sleek. Isaac came back from the land of Moriah like a wild animal, bound but not tamed. For months afterwards he would wake in the night screaming and his mother Sarah, in the woman’s tent, would hear her boy child sobbing and could not go to him, comfort him, hold him. There was a look in his eyes still, evasive, distant, the look of a man who uses pride to cover betrayal.” Sara Maitland, “Sacrifice,” quoted in Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild, eds. Resources for Preaching and Worship Year A: Quotations, Meditations, Poetry, and Prayers (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004) 191.

[3] Arthur Whitefield Spalding, Golden Treasury of Bible Stories (Nashville: Southern Publishing Association, 1954) 63. This was my childhood Bible, given to me by my mother and father when I was eight years old. I know my mother and I read stories from it when I was a child. Did I ever read “The Trial of Abraham” story? I can’t remember. If I did read it, I wonder what my reaction was to Isaac’s sweet acquiescence.

[4] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 2 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1994) 115. I say this despite Wenham making the point that Isaac was a “perfect, blameless sacrificial victim” because he didn’t run away and he let his father bind him. But the text is silent about Isaac’s actions, comments, and feelings and, for that matter, about Abraham’s feelings. To read into the silence a naïve and unrealistic trust deprives the text of its intended darkness.

[5] Wenham, 113. In contrast to Hagar and Ishmael struggling in the desert, Abraham and Isaac prospered, so much so that earlier inhabitants of the land made a treaty with Abraham guaranteeing him and his descendants water rights in perpetuity. Against this background of success, the opening comment that God tested Abraham alerts the reader that the narrative will strain Abraham’s faith.

[6] C. Edward Bowen, “What To Do When God Doesn’t Seem To Be Making Any Sense,” The Sermon Mall, 26 June 2005, Theological Web Publishing, LLC, webedit@theology.org.

[7] The preacher was Jesse Duplantis, preaching on TBN sometime in 2000 or 2001. Duplantis is known for his “humor and warmth” but even though he said this with a smile, he wasn’t joking. Shame.

[8] James P. Shuman, “Who Forgives God?” The Sermon Mall, 26 June 2005, Theological Web Publishing, LLC, webedit@theology.org.

[9] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982) 194. Brueggemann cites 1 Corinthians 10.13 (“No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”) and comments that God will provide a way to escape temptation: “It is the same God who tempts and provides. The connection is that God is faithful. In the end, our narrative is perhaps not about Abraham being found faithful. It is about God being found faithful.”

[10] The hymn was written by Samuel Radigast who was born in Groben, Germany in 1649 and died in Berlin in 1708. He was the son of a Lutheran minister and attended the University of Jena. He later joined the philosophy faculty there and for a time served as co-rector at the Grayfriars Gymnasium in Berlin. Cyber Hymnal, www.cyberhymnal.org, Internet, 23 June 2005.

[11] Acts 17.28: For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’