The Impossible Call, Part 1 - Genesis 22:1-19

 I have been thinking (off and on) about this story for the past two weeks.  I've not been thinking deeply necessarily, but instead thinking about how I don't really want to engage with story at all.  This is one of the most difficult and shocking stories in all of Scripture.  I had this passage in mind while writing my last post about Abram's call and part of me didn't want to engage with this story at all.  I'm pretty sure that when I come across a Scripture that I actively want to ignore, that's an invitation for deeper engagement.  Other than my intention to look at the concept of call throughout Scripture (which means going through Abraham and his call), I have been prompted to look at this story by my own recent interaction with it.  Every night, Toni Ruth and I read to our children from The Jesus Storybook Bible (which is a great children's Bible, in my opinion) and the other night I was reading this story to my daughter.  The author tried to present this story in such a way as to not be too terribly frightening, but the horror of the story is not able to finally be suppressed.  So here are some thoughts about the Abraham and Isaac story with an eye towards God's call of Abraham.

1. In the first two verses, two things grab my attention immediately.  First, my Bible (NRSV) says, "God tested Abraham".  I've got to admit that I'm pretty uncomfortable with God testing people in this way.  But there it is.  And, after a few minutes of research, the Hebrew word (nasah) doesn't offer any relief either.  There may even be a lesson in that effort - how often do we Christians try to wriggle ourselves out of what God calls us to do in Scripture through interpretative gymnastics?  The implications, theologically, of God "testing" his chosen vessel for blessing the world by commanding him to sacrifice his son (who was promised and made possible by this same God) are staggering.  What kind of God does this?  There is a sizable difference between the God who asks Abraham to sacrifice His Son and the God that is revealed in Jesus Christ.  I honestly struggle with that tension.  The second thing that grabs my attention is God's reference to Isaac as Abraham's "only son" - what about Ishmael?  Chapters 21 and 22 of Genesis are brutal chapters.  Tough reading. 
2. Perhaps these stories are not so tough when you can engage them in the abstract.  I have children - two little people who I love more with each passing day.  Two children for whom I would gladly and without hesitation offer my own life, if need be.  So, I cannot engage these stories in an entirely abstract way.  I read the name "Isaac" and I picture my own child.  I read about Ishmael being rejected (along with Hagar) and that stings.  I read about Abraham being commanded to sacrifice his son and I can't begin to imagine contemplating putting my own child up on an altar, not even for a second.  I'm quite certain that I would fail that particular test. 
3. It's also very easy to read this story through my 21st century lens.  This story was written, after presumably being handed down as part of a larger oral tradition, in a culture that is radically different from ours.  As the first line of L.P. Hartley's book The Go-Between states, "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."  Indeed.  One of the lessons that I learned in seminary is that it's not appropriate to hold ancient peoples to the moral and ethical standards of our time.  We should not expect people who lived some 4000 years before our time to live by the standards of our time.  For me, though, that does nothing to lessen the horror of this story. 

4. Reading the (too) brief description of this story (also known as the Akedah, or "Binding") in my seminary Old Testament textbook, the way they handle this is to say, basically, that the end justifies the means: "This story is at once a story that repudiates the ancient custom of sacrificing the firstborn to the deity and a story of the testing and miracle of faithfulness - both Abraham's and God's…(this story) affirms confidence in God's faithfulness."  That's a positive spin on a story that I think is a bit more difficult than that.  And yes, I do believe that God is faithful, that is a cornerstone, non-negotiable article of faith for me.  If God is not faithful, well then, the whole "being a Christian" thing just kind of collapses, doesn't it?

5. Perhaps this story is more of a reflection on the culture in which Abraham found himself - a culture with several religions/cultures that were perfectly ok with human sacrifice, including Canaanites and Sumerians (people  from Abram's homeland).  This story ends with God providing an animal sacrifice in place of Isaac, allowing the reader to exhale and tying the story up into a nice little bow.  Maybe this tells us more about religious and cultural expectations of that time and place than it tells us about the nature of God revealed to us in Scripture, or as a Christian, in Jesus Christ.  Perhaps this story is a reflection on a God that calls God's people to a different way of life, that removes children from altars instead of killing children on them. 
6. Jewish theologians have grappled with this text for centuries and have approached this story from pretty much all conceivable angles.  Some thinkers involve Satan in the story, others theorize that Isaac was actually sacrificed, some state that it was an angel and not God that called for Abraham to stop, while others see God's testing of Abraham as punishment for his rejection of Ishmael.  There's even one Jewish interpreter who concluded "that Abraham offered up Isaac as a burnt sacrifice, and subsequently God transported Isaac's ashes to the Garden of Eden, where the dew 'reconstituted' Isaac." (A Journey Through the Hebrew Scriptures, pg. 172-173)  When I learned in seminary that there were numerous interpretations of this story, I was encouraged by the freedom to have a conversation with the text.  This is something I am still challenged and inspired by.  I am by no means an advocate of excising difficult and even horrific stories from Scripture - the world is a difficult and often horrific place.  As much as it is the inspired Word of God, Scripture is also a reflection of human life and death, including in this instance the reality of human sacrifice in Abraham's time. 

Next week (or maybe later this week, if time allows), I'll look at how this story intersects with our faith in Jesus and how this relates to a concept of God's "call".

Thanks for reading!

Wes