"Fire up the BBQ, Part 2: What about Isaac?"
Knox, 4 July, 2010 © Scott McAndless
Genesis 22:1-14, Numbers 8:15-19, Deut 15:19-23, Hebrews 11:17-19
A few weeks ago (actually it was on the day that the tornado hit town, so I know that some of you missed it) I starting talking about the Old Testament idea of animal sacrifice. I think that it is a practice that we have largely misunderstood – a practice that actually made fairly good sense in that particular time and place because it provided them with a safe and hygienic means of slaughtering, butchering and eating meat and safely disposing of those parts of the animal that they didn’t eat. I suggested that it is a practice that we need to understand better because it provides an important window into the ways that they related to their God which in turn helps us to think about how we relate to God today.
I also observed that it seems that animal sacrifice wasn’t necessarily something that they just knew how to do – that they kind of figured it out as they went along through trial and error. They observed what the results were when they sacrificed in certain ways and adjusted their practices accordingly.
Today we turn to what is undoubtedly the most troubling story of sacrifice in the entire Bible because this one isn’t just about sheep and goats and turtledoves. This one is apparently about human sacrifice and has scandalized people for generations. Now, the kind of human sacrifice that we’re talking about is a little different from what was apparently practiced by certain cultures in the ancient world.
What we’re talking about here, for example, is different from what the ancient Aztecs used to do in Mexico. The Aztecs made a regular practice of sacrificing large numbers of people from their unfortunate surrounding tribes who were taken in wars and raids. They sacrificed them to please and appease their gods who apparently needed the blood of these victims just to keep the universe going.
But what Abraham sets out to do – what God tells him to do – is different and, in some ways, much worse. For Isaac is no foreign captive or slave, he is his son, his only son whom he loves. It takes a certain kind of monster to do something so callous and cruel to a complete stranger, but doesn’t it take a whole different kind of monster to do it to a beloved son?
Now, as I said a couple of weeks ago, the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis suggests that the whole practice of animal sacrifice was something that ancient people worked out through trial and error – bringing various things and sacrificing them in various ways and seeing what the results were. This story of Abraham in Genesis suggests something even more surprising – that the sacrifice that happens here is something that not only Abraham but also God is working out as they go along.
God starts the story by telling Abraham, with no explanation, to sacrifice his son. The author of Genesis adds a crucial piece of information. He tells us that this is a test. But the nature of the test we don’t really find out until the end of the story when the angel of the Lord says to Abraham, “Now I know that you fear God.” It says that God didn’t know something at the beginning and needed to carry out this test to find out. I realize that that might be something that’s a bit hard to reconcile with our notion of God – that God is all-knowing and doesn’t need to be taught anything.
I think of it this way: God may be all-knowing but, in order to relate with us human beings, chooses to put that aside because he understands that we need to work out our relationship with people over time through a certain give and take and it’s hard for us to do that with someone who just knows everything.
So I read this story as an example of God working out with Abraham, through a kind of trial and error and give and take, a rather vexing issue. And what is the issue? Well, it actually seems to be an issue of ownership: who gets Isaac. I know, that doesn’t sound right, but it was apparently a real problem.
You see, there is a basic assumption that runs through much of the Old Testament – an assumption that the first born of everything belongs to God. God lays a claim, basically to the first thing that comes out of any womb. It is considered to be holy. This includes a ewe’s first lamb, a cow’s first calf and even animals that were bred for work like donkeys and colts. It even applies to the first produce of a tree – the first figs, for example, that your tree produced were to be picked and given to God. The idea behind this seems to be that it is God who creates the fertility – God who opens the womb in the first place – and so it is only right and good that the first thing out should be given back to God.
But it is important to note that acknowledging God’s ownership of the firstborn did not mean that the owner of the animal’s mother lost all of the benefit of it. According to Deuteronomy, your family still ate the lamb or kid or whatever it was. It was a fellowship offering, like most offerings in the ancient world, which meant that only the bones and fat and other inedible parts were burnt on the altar while the extended family gathered to eat the rest except for a portion that went to the priest and his family for his services. Animals that couldn’t be eaten, like donkeys for example, could be exchanged with another, edible animal.
So acknowledging God’s ownership of the firstborn wasn’t exactly the same thing as giving it up entirely. It was more about recognizing that there was something truly holy about the first opening of the womb and what came out of it. But if this sometimes got a little bit complicated when you were dealing with a firstborn lamb or calf, it just became agonizing when you were dealing with a firstborn child. That’s what the story of Abraham and Isaac is about – it is about God and Abraham working out some sort of compromise whereby the holiness of the birth of Abraham’s first son can be properly recognized.
Abraham plays a rather interesting role in this whole story. Three times, Abraham is addressed. First God speaks to him, the second time Isaac asks him a question and the third time the angel of the Lord speaks to him. Each time Abraham is addressed he responds in exactly the same way. You wouldn’t know this, unfortunately, because it is lost in the translation we read this morning. In the Hebrew text, though, Abraham replies all three times with the same Hebrew word, hNEhi [hinn¢h], which means behold or see.
So basically when God or Isaac or the angel say something to Abe, his answer is always the same. He says, “Behold, here I am.” And I think that this is the author of Genesis’ way of illustrating Abraham’s position in all of this. He is just this guy caught up in the middle of a situation that he can’t figure his way out of. He obviously doesn’t want to sacrifice his son. He also does not know what to do about the claim that he knows God has on his firstborn. But he is completely there – completely committed to doing whatever it takes to work this out.
But Abraham also has a remarkable insight. When he is challenged by Isaac to explain “where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” he gives this vital answer: “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” This is the only thing that Abraham says in this whole story apart from “Behold” and a few brief words spoken to the servants so it is obviously meant to be very significant.
Now, Abraham doesn’t seem to realize how prophetic his words are at this point. For all he knows the way that God will provide the sacrifice is in the way that he has already provided – by giving Abraham Isaac as his son in the first place. But the point of this is, in some sense, that it doesn’t matter. Whether Abraham offers Isaac or he offers the ram, he is only giving back what God has given. It is that recognition that God is seeking.
I don’t think that God is particularly interested in getting the flesh of the ram and the very idea that God is craving Isaac’s flesh is completely abhorrent to me. That is not what this is about and I think that the ancients understood this because, after all, they knew that when they brought the firstborn lamb from their ewe up the temple in Jerusalem (which was traditionally identified as the very place where Abraham had taken his son centuries before the temple was ever built) when they took their lamb to the temple, they got to eat that lamb together with their family. God only “took” the portions that they didn’t eat and these were safely disposed of on the altar.
The sacrifice was about recognizing something important – that God provides. It was about recognizing that whatever you have, be it a ram or a son or a first basket of fruit from your fig tree, that God has ultimately given it to you. You went to the temple to return it to God but the grace of God was always shown by God giving it back to you in some form or another.
The Israelites eventually worked out what was seen as a fair exchange for all the firstborn sons of all the families of Israel. An entire tribe, the Levites, was devoted to the service of the Lord in the place of those firstborn sons. You see, there was no question of them not belonging to God. They absolutely did. But, recognizing that their families needed them, a solution was worked out and the Levites served in the sanctuaries and performed the sacrifices and carried out other vital duties for the sake of the whole society. That alone tells us that this whole sacrifice of the firstborn thing was never really about what God needed. It was about what the people needed.
In this story, Abraham is struggling with a profound truth. He knows that everything he has has come to him from God – even especially his only son, born to him in his old age after so much disappointment. He knows that God has every right to demand from him whatever he desires. But, amazingly, he is ready when the call from God comes. “Behold,” he says, “I am here.” He stands there ready to respond, ready (even more important) to trust in God that somehow God will give him what he needs.
It says in Hebrews that Abraham was there, ready to respond, because he believed that God could give him back his son even though he died. But whatever he was actually thinking at that moment, he apparently knew that he could trust in God’s provision and that’s what kept him going.
My question is this, where do you stand? When God comes to you and points at that thing in your life – that thing or that person that you are clinging to because you think that it will give you life – and says, “It’s mine, you need to let go of it and trust me.” What will your reply be? When God says, “You need to let go of that resentment or hatred or fear that you think is giving meaning to your life but is actually destroying you,” will you say “Behold, here I am.” Or will you just respond and say, “Go ask somebody else, somebody who doesn’t get so attached to things.”
It’s good to be present and ready to respond at such a moment. When we are, when we are ready to acknowledge God’s ownership, we are also ready to recognize something else: God’s provision. When you give all you can to God, God will start giving back in exciting and fulfilling ways. That was the lesson that Abraham went to learn at Mount Moria. Can we learn it today too?