Abraham’s Sacrifice (3/12/06)
The Rev. Robert W. Carlson

Our lesson from the Hebrew scriptures this morning is a very disturbing one, so disturbing that one writer, the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, wrote a whole book about it which he called Fear and Trembling. In the lesson, Abraham, the father of all three of the great monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is told by God to take his only child and sacrifice him on an altar. Abraham and Sarah were childless, but in their old age God had given them a beloved child, Isaac, through whom God promised them he will make a great nation. Abraham makes a lame excuse to Sarah and takes the child with him to a mountain where he intends to do this dreadful deed. But at the last moment God intervenes and tells him not to harm the child. Abraham has passed the supreme test of obeying and trusting in God (as if God did not already know this about Abraham!). The disturbing thing about the story is the distressing thought that the loving God we know and trust would ask a father to murder his child, or even put a parent and child through such a dreadful experience.

There have been numerous attempts to “get God off the hook.” Some scholars suggest that this is a very primitive story going back to a time when early Semites may have practiced child sacrifice, and that this story marks the transition to the discovery that God does not approve nor does God require such sacrifices. Others suggest that God really had no intention of having Abraham go through with this frightful act. But would a loving God put any of us through such an experience, just to test our faith? A rabbi with whom I discussed this story was equally horrified by it and told me that there is a tradition, or “midrash,” that from this time on Abraham is never again pictured as talking to God, and that there is another tradition that Sarah and Abraham never talked again! When I heard of these traditions I wrote two poems. The first pictures Sarah speaking:

I never fully believed Abraham’s story
of why he and Isaac went off
to the desert to make sacrifice,
but when I saw the look
of terror on my son’s face
I knew the dreadful t ruth.

From that day on
I never fully trusted Abraham
or his God.

I live in fear of what horrors
these men may bring
on us and on our children
in the name of God.

Of course, being a male, I had to defend Abraham, and so I thought of his answer:

It was the end of it.
for Sarah and me.
She could never understand.
She continually asked,
“Would you have done it?
Would you have killed our only son
if another of your voices
had not intervened?”

I swear I don’t know.
I was honor bound
to trust in my God,
the God who promised so much
and asked for the impossible
in return.

They say it was a happy ending,
and I am a hero of faith,
but I often wake up at night
with terrible dreams
of what might have been,
and fears of what
tests are still to come.

Of course these thoughts are strictly from my point of view as a parent and grandparent and a husband. From a larger perspective I see two truths emerging from this story of Abraham and Isaac. The first is that God not only does not want us to sacrifice our children, he wants us to preserve and value the life of all children. The murder of anyone’s children is wrong, whether that murder be by war, or by preventable diseases, by neglect or crushing poverty. I’m not sure that we humans have advanced much in my lifetime in valuing human life. While we fuss at each other a great deal about unborn children, we don’t seem to care as much about born children, whether those children be in our own cities, or in third world countries around the world. Emma Lou Benignus, one of the saints of our generation, when she was in her 90's called for a coalition of old people to stand up for the welfare of children throughout our world. One of Abraham’s offspring, Moses, delivered to his people God’s commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Another offspring of Abraham, our Lord, put it even more strongly, saying of anyone that rather than harm “one of these little ones” that “it is better that a millstone be hung around his neck and he be cast into the depths of the sea.” Jesus also said those words, beautifully illustrated in one of our stained glass windows, “Let the children come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Valuing human life, especially the life of our children, is central to our faith, and we are happy to share that value with people of all faiths, or of no faith.
Then, of course, there is an important truth about faith which is central to the story of Abraham and Isaac. It is that only God is ultimate, the finally reliable one, the ground of our being as humans. We still put too much trust in our possessions and in our relationships. One person noted that while we were meant to love persons and use things, we generally have it the other way a round and are inclined to love things and use people. Maybe in another 50 years I may learn to love things a little less, but I’m not promising anything. It’s easier to see the failings in others. I remember being at a conference talking about some very important values and my roommate was a good friend who was considerably wealthier than most of us. It was at one of those times when the stock market was doing badly and Bill spent half of the conference on the telephone with his broker. He knew Jesus’ words about not “laying up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and thieves break through and steal” at least as well as I did, but Bill missed most of the conference.

But if God is ultimate, the only one worthy of our deepest trust, then even people we love and care for need to be “penultimate,” or next to the final value. As a parent and grandparent I sympathize with Ibsen’s “Master Builder,” who, after the death of his two children, refuses to build any more churches. But, of course, human relationships are not ultimate. Our parents die, our children move away, our closest friends, even our spouses and partners, can let us down. Hopefully it is at times less critical than these that we begin to discover who is the source of life, the ground of our being, the promise of wholeness, salvation. Abraham had to let go of Isaac to learn the deepest meaning of faith. May we begin to learn that meaning in many lesser ways as we live out our faith.