Take Your Son

             Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.   

 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.  He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” (Genesis 22:1-5)

I don’t need to include the whole narrative. If you don’t know what happened, you can go read the rest of the story in Genesis 22. This incident has been described as appalling. Both God and Abraham are appalling. What a horrible thing to ask of someone. What a horrible thing to give without a fight, especially after Abraham had fought to save Sodom and Gomorrah (or at least his nephew’s family.) At least, according to Ellen Davis in Getting Involved With God. I agree that it is appalling from our fallen, Human perspective, but it’s also obvious and inevitable.

If it is appalling that God should demand the sacrifice of Isaac, and that Abraham should submit, how much more appalling is it that we should demand the death of God, the Son, and that God, the Father, should submit. You might protest that you didn’t demand anything from God, but your deeds and mine made the sacrifice of the Son necessary.

If it is appalling for Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice, what can we say about a society today that not only demands the “right” to sacrifice millions of children before they are born, but demands that we celebrate the act and impose on other nations and cultures the “right” for women to sacrifice their children?

But as much as it is appalling, it is also obvious and inevitable for God to demand. For God to be God in Abraham’s life, He must be God. He must come first. Anyone or anything that gets in the way is an idol, a false god. God had promised Isaac to Abraham, but not in an unhealthy manner in which Isaac became “everything” to Abraham.

At some point, it’s likely that you and I will have to choose between God and something we are tempted to make more important than God. It could be a person, a place, a thing, an ideal, or even what we believe God has called us to. This is what I faced a few weeks ago, when my knee troubles were bad enough that I thought I would have to give up my job, my garden, and pretty much my life. I had to ask myself if I would be willing to go down that route if that was what God asked – even though I believe gardening is something God has given me to do. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac was a Gethsemane. We may face more than one. It seems appalling, but it’s necessary for us.

                While I didn’t quote the portion at the end, God told Abraham that He now knew that Abraham was willing for God to be God, willing to sacrifice his son to please God. He always knew it, but Abraham didn’t. It may have been a statement made by a teacher rather than by a lawyer. The other possibility is the difference between knowing something because someone told you that it was so and knowing it by experiencing it. God doesn’t treat us like lab rats, even when we think we’re in a maze from which there is no escape.