[Sermon composed for the Mattins broadcast at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Phoenix AZ (https://www.stmarysphoenix.org/online) for the evening of Sunday, June 28, 2020, the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost]
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
On some Sundays, the Lectionary presents us with a unified suite of readings that neatly tie into each other and provide the preacher a fertile bed into which they can plant a theme and reap a bumper crop of homily.
Today is not one of those days.
Instead, we have from the Old Testament a choice between Abraham’s abortive sacrifice of Isaac or for the squeamish a smackdown between Jeremiah and a rival prophet. St. Paul writes about sin (big surprise). The Gospel is short, where Our Lord states anyone who welcomes anybody coming in His name will not lose their reward.
Since I am not particularly squeamish, I will tackle the uncomfortable thought of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. Now, I want the modern audience to understand that Middle Eastern Bronze Age cultures would not have batted an eye at the thought. A careful and attentive reading of the Old Testament will bring to light all sorts of practices that the modern Western mind shies from, and child sacrifice is one of them. Archaeological evidence throughout the Middle East in Phoenicia, Mesopotamia, the Transjordan, and the Holy Land itself shows the practice was widespread throughout the Bronze Age and even extending into the Iron Age. As a native of the area and the time, Abraham surely would have been familiar with the practice and even numbed to it as “normal”. Any time it is mentioned in the Old Testament, despite the accompanying condemnations, one gets the impression of its widespread adoption and practice. In fact, the mitzvah of pidyon haben[1]() in Exodus has echoes of possible past sacrifices of the first born,[2]later mitigated by providing for a buy-back or redemption.[3] In this case, one might see here Abraham fulfilling the most ancient form of the pidyon haben, or at least an unenlightened version of it.
So when Abraham is asked to sacrifice Isaac he does not question, he does not blink, he does not balk. After all, he was able to conceive with Hagar to beget Ishmael, God made it possible for him to conceive with Sarah to beget Isaac, so why with such a show of devotion would God not be able to make it possible for Abraham to have more children by Sarah or any other woman for that matter? Our Western twenty-first century mindsets absolutely cringe at this, but keep in mind this is likely the natural mindset in the Bronze Age Middle East. Isaac is kind of in the dark about this, which stands to reason. Who wouldn’t, after being told, “Hey, you’re going to be a blood sacrifice/burnt offering in about three weeks’ time,” not be the least little bit freaked about it? On the trip, Isaac notices that they seem to be short of a sacrificial victim, so he asks Abraham about it, possibly with the thought running through his mind, “This can’t be good…”
So Abraham gives Isaac the line, “The Lord will provide.” Okay, not a lie, because God actually provided Isaac to Abraham and Sarah, but vague enough to hold out for Isaac the possibility that they would find a victim at the sacrificial site, maybe from a distant herd Abraham was keeping that Isaac didn’t know about. Still, I am sure Isaac must have been a bit jumpy about this.
So if you were paying attention, you know how the story goes. Abraham and Isaac get to the mountain, Abraham restrains Isaac, Abraham raises the knife, the story goes up to the melodramatic absolute last second, and an angel stays Abraham’s hand. The epilogue is that there is a ram caught in a thicket nearby and a substitution is made.
GREAT theatre, by the way. The storyteller who compiled this part of Genesis knew exactly what makes a good story and how to glue us to the edge of our seats.
Now what do WE do with the story?
Discomfort with the story begins at some point during Classical Antiquity when cultural mores shift and human sacrifice loses a lot of its cachet. Jewish commentary over the centuries has several variants, ranging from denial that an actual sacrifice was intended and this was a playact between God and Abraham to illustrate and emphasize the absolute prohibition against sacrifice, to Abraham testing God’s end of the covenant, to illustrating the strength of the resolve and self-sacrifice of the Israeli people, and my favourite, Maimonides’ instruction that it is a parable showing the limit of man’s love and fear for God as well as how prophetic vision is equal to philosophical argument.[4]
The Christian view, however, is more nuanced, particularly since we have our own Tradition with which to view the story.
The Epistle to the Hebrews showcases this story as one of the many examples of faith, where the writer states:
By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, of whom he had been told, “It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.” He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead—and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.[5]
To the writer, Abraham, who left his urban life in Mesopotamia for an uncertain existence wandering the Middle East, who believed God when God told him that he would have more descendants than could be numbered even though he was old and childless, who trusted God to save his nephew Lot from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, showed the absolute height of faith and trust when he would not even withhold Isaac, not even say, “Lord, but you promised!”
Origen presents another view,[6]whereby Isaac foreshadows the sacrifice of Jesus. Both willingly carry the wood of the sacrifice, the sacrifice narrative stretches over a three-day period, the sacrifice is of the only son, the one was figurately snatched from death and the other was raised from the dead. One may argue, however, that while Isaac is replaced, redeemed, even, like any child in a pidyon haben, Jesus goes on to His death, but Origen is clear that the redemption of Isaac is a resurrection of sorts, a resurrection accomplished by him being redeemed, a resurrection of sorts promised to every Jewish male child who is the first-born of the family. The child belongs to someone else, something else, and must die unless it is redeemed. This is the nature of allegory, and the story of Isaac, to Origen, is allegory of the highest order.
Normally, Origen gets short shrift because of some unfortunate and unorthodox flights of speculation, but here he strikes gold. Our Tradition tells us that thanks to Sin coming into the world, and with it Death, Death therefore owns all of us.[7] We come into this world, but we do so already under a promissory note where at the end of this life Death, that final, eternal Death, gets to claim us. If no one redeems us, that is it. The note comes due, Death knocks at the door, and we are no more.
That is, if no one redeems us.
As it happens, outside Jerusalem a couple thousand years ago a price was paid for all of us, those who had gone on before, and those who came after. God had united His Divine nature in the person of the Son to our human nature in Jesus Christ, and then He offered himself up as the price to redeem us, humankind, from Death’s claim on us. Because human nature is subject to Death but Divine nature cannot be subject to Death, when Jesus died, that human nature allowed Him to die, but because it was perfectly united with the Divine nature, the Divine nature broke the absolute hold that Death held. In giving Himself, God bought back humanity from Death and raised it to a new and incorruptible life. As Isaac was bent back over the altar, then raised up again at his Divine redemption, we too in our baptisms submit to our fates only to be raised up to new life because we too have been redeemed by God Himself.
So the next time you hear the story of Isaac, put yourself in his place. Like Isaac, we are destined for oblivion, but like Isaac, God stays the hand that would destroy us. Like Isaac, we are bought for a price.[8] Like Isaac, we are restored to our Father for a life of promise. A new life in Christ Jesus. Thanks be to God.
Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour, save us. Amen.
פדיון חבן
[2] Ex. 22.28-29.
[3] Ex. 34.19-20.
[4] Wikipedia’s article on the Binding of Isaac (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac) has an excellent condensation of these attitudes, but keep in mind it is the Readers’ Digest condensed version and has wide generalizations.
[5] Heb. 11.17-19.
[6] Origen, Homilies on Genesis, 11-13.
[7] Rom. 5.12.
[8] 1 Cor. 6.20.
