After a story of promise, the Abraham story moves in much more melodramatic direction. Family intrigue turns into exile, with the threat of death, for Hagar and Ishmael. Now Abraham is being asked the impossible, to give up his surviving son, the one long promised. He is told that the promise would die at his own hand.
In its way this is a story of multiple testings. Is Abraham almost daring God to go through with the test? Would God allow him to sacrifice his future, the child of the promise? Notice that Abraham’s answer to his son’s questions are almost a taunt: God will provide. How is God testing Abraham? I wonder if this is more than a test of loyalty. After all, Abraham will bargain with God over the lives of the strangers of Sodom. He was troubled, but he did not bargain for Hagar and Ishmael. Is the binding of Isaac a teaching of compassion for them as he contemplates the sacrifice of his son? What did this incident do to Isaac? Later, he would refer to God as the Fear. Is it any wonder? Maybe he sailed through life as nothing could scare him after that incident.
Maybe Abraham’s prayers were all pleading for a change, as he journeyed into the heart of darkness. Maybe they included prayers of lament. After all the years of waiting, the promise was fulfilled, but for how long. How long would God hold the promise away and then snatch it back? How long would he be able to hold his son? Lament is a proper response when we think that God is asking too much of us. We are free to speak to god openly, in praise or lament, in adoration or in desperate pleading.
Christians believe that God directed sacrifice for his son, his only son. It is entirely possible that it was near the sight of the binding of Isaac. God would fully enter into the pain of Abraham and past it as Jesus went to the cross. No last minute substitute would be in the offing. Apparently only a representative of the divine and the human would suffice. How can we doubt our significance when we recall that Jesus Christ offered himself up for all of us?
We rightly recoil from this story, but we manage to sacrifice our children to the dogs of war. To a lesser degree we sacrifice out children to gang violence. So far this year, guns have killed almost 3 dozen children this year. We think we are so far advanced from this primitive story. Yet, this weekend, the smoke will rise from a million barbeques. The smoke from fireworks for 1776 will light the sky and ascend to the heavens. We make lesser sacrifices. Sometimes, we offer our children to our own dreams, such as stage parents and those parents determined that their child will become a professional athlete. We could imagine Abraham and Isaac as part of the self. Sometimes we impose a dream on our children, even if they don’t have the interest or inclination toward that dream. Maybe we too willingly sacrifice parts of ourselves. As we mature, we are too quick to sacrifice the child within, the Isaac-laughter within. Maybe we sacrifice dreams to quickly to the gods of realism and making a living. To fit in maybe we sacrifice too much of our own vision of ourselves. We sacrifice alternative futures for the one we select or refuse to change. We bind ourselves to ways of behaving that inhibit us over time. Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, so we are freed from the compulsion to sacrifice others on altars of our own making. We are freed to live life unbound by the burden of expectations of others.
