Texts: Genesis 12:1-3; 22:1 -14
ABRAHAM CALLED
No one really knows when the story of Abraham was first written down, but we know it was hundreds of years prior to the birth of Jesus. We know that in 250BC it was translated into Greek for the first time, but the stories themselves stretch back into prehistory—2100-2000 BC. Let’s call it 2018 BC just to keep things interesting. This is important because of what today's narrative actually reveals.
Consider Abram: not great or mighty by the world's standards—originally a kind of drifter. Mesopotamian, not Hebrew, from Ur, which is today in either Iraq or Kuwait. I imagine Abram looking rather unimpressive, for God’s strength is revealed through human weakness. I think of Woody Allen: kind of a wimp, kind of a nerd, and no saint by any stretch.
Four millennia ago, out of all the people in the ancient world, God selects him, Abram, and tells him he's won the cosmic lottery. God chooses Abram to be…chosen. “Your descendants will by like stars in the sky. Though you and Sarah are already old, she will bear you a son, a people, and a chosen race. You, little Abram, are the one I choose.”
He walks back into town with his head held high, brushing the shoulders of taller, buffed-out pagans (picture Arnold Schwarzeneggar). They say to him, "Little Abram—what's gotten into you?" And he says most superiorly: "It's Abraham now, thank you, and the One True God has chosen ME above all to father a chosen nation—a nation of priests—through whom all the world will be blessed."
The laughter is deafening. The pagans stifle it enough to ask, “And just who is this God of yours?” Abraham furrows his brow and scratches his head. “Well-l-l-l, he didn't really say." More laughter. “And what does he look like? What form does your God take.” Abraham sputters out, "He has no earthly image—he is. . .invisible.” The pagans double over laughing as they leave Abram to himself.
Abraham goes home to tell Sarah. She asks him what he ate today and wonders whether or not he picked any strange berries or mushrooms during his walk. She's probably doubtful, but loves and supports her husband. Faith has the humblest of beginnings. It is always out of weakness that God brings strength, out of barrenness that God brings fruition, and out of improbabilities that God grows faith.
PATIENCE
Abraham and Sarah wait into their nineties. Their nineties, and still nothing. How many times along the way did they give up expecting God to provide? How many times, say in their early eighties, over morning coffee, did Sarah say: “Alright Abe, tell me again.” And Abraham, credibility spent, still has the weight of conviction in his narrative. “It happened Sarah--it is true. Don't disbelieve--God will provide.” Sarah may have laughed under her breath as she did in her 70s when she heard those three visitors announce that she would bear a son.
At a point, it seems the waiting—the patient trusting in God’s work in God’s time—was too much. Sarah hands over Hagar, her maid, to bear her husband a son. That must be it, right? We’re in our 80s, come on!
I remember being a child on a field trip to a dairy farm. What sticks in my mind was watching chickens hatch from their eggs. These poor little baby chicks looked weak and pathetic, slimy with egg goo, and barely able to move even the lightest bit of shell. What was my instinct? What did I want to do? I wanted to help them. I wanted to crack the egg a little or just move some of the shell out of the way. They seemed so intent upon emerging that I wanted to help them emerge. Of course the teachers wouldn’t let us touch them, wisely, but it still didn’t make sense to me. They wanted out and I wanted to let them out—why not help them?
Similarly, in our classroom that year we had been watch a couple off cocoons. We’d seen the educational movie of a caterpillar attaching itself to the underside of a twiggy branch, splitting its skin and exuding a what would become its cocoon. We all knew there was a butterfly inside but why was it taking so long? The day came and the butterfly began to emerge. We watched and watched. I was thinking, “What’s the matter with everyone—why don’t we let it out? For Heaven’s sake—there’s a butterfly trapped in there trying to get out. Why can’t we help it out?”
The answer to both instances is the same: that struggle—the long, slow wrestling with the encasement—is absolutely necessary for the development of strong limbs and wings. Were we to help them out, they would perish every time.
Abraham and Sarah wavered in their trust of God. They doubted that he would provide. So they took the job into their own hands. They rushed things along. They picked away at the eggshell and attempted to peel back the chrysalis.
SACRIFICING SONS
Sarah may have laughed when she first received the promise of a child, but when she bore a son in her 90s she laughed out loud—so hard and resounding that they couldn't name hime anything else. Isaac, for those of you who may have forgotten, means laughter. Out of barrenness, weakness, and improbability: Laughter, provided by God.
And now God comes to Abraham again—this time he asks him to sacrifice it all: all the promise, all the faithfulness, all the waiting, all the future inheritance—all the future. Abraham, who loved Isaac, his only son, will have to make a human sacrifice of Isaac to prove his faithfulness. What greater act of faithfulness can we possibly imagine?
Sacrifice is proof of integrity and sincerity. Every “natural” religion made by human beings involves some kind of ritualized sacrifice. Consider why. Early pagans, believing in some manner of God or gods, see their fortune tied to the gods' good will towards them. Calamity hits—a flood, a drought, or an earthquake—so they feel they need to appease and be right with the gods. They take something they value—something good and pure and precious—and they take it to a high place and offer it. Animals are killed, blood is spilled, and a virgin is cast into the angry volcano—through the destruction a statement is made: "We give you our best keeping nothing of it to ourselves, to appease your anger and secure your favor." Appeasing the anger of the gods in order to restore a broken relationship. Every culture in the history of the world has expressed its religious longings through sacrifice, reinventing it time and again. It is part of the natural language of human beings towards the divine. It says, we really mean it. It is how we communicate our faithfulness, through sacrifice.
Now Abraham is asked to make the ultimate sacrifice. To take his son, his only son Isaac whom he loves, and make him the sacrifice. Listen to the details, and remember this was written hundreds of years before Good Friday.
Quoting the text:
God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on the mountain."
6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
Can you see him? Can you see the fear, the rage, the faithfulness all combined?
Can you see his son’s face saying, “Father! Father, why?”
11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram[a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
Now, if you were listening, and I know you were, you know why Genesis 22 is prophetic.
- •Father Abraham is our image of God the Father.
- •He too had a son, an only son, whom He loved.
- •And after riding a donkey up to Moriah—the main hill of Jerusalem,
- •he too put the wood of the sacrifice upon His son
- •and His son carried the wood up the mountain.
- •and The Son was bound to the wood,
but when God the Father raised the knife over Jesus, his only Son whom he loved—who cried out “Father! Father, why?”where was the voice to cry, “Stop! Don’t do it!”
There was no higher voice. The only voice was that of Humanity, which said, “Do it! Crucify him!”
We demanded blood, and as there is no higher power than God himself, there was no one to stay his hand—none to cry, “Stop!”
As such, the prophecy of Genesis 22 was fulfilled. On the Mountain of the Lord, God did provide. He provided the lamb on the mountain as a sacrifice, and in doing so, God reverses the order of the universe. So get this:
In our own language--the language of human religion—God speaks back to us. While it is in our nature to sacrifice something to appease God's anger, in Christ it is as though God makes a sacrifice to us—even as though we were above him and he needed to secure our favor. Using our own language, he says to us: “Be not angry—I so wish to be in right relationship with you. Here is my son, my only Son—a clear, pure, spotless lamb who is worth more to me than all the universe—I sacrifice him to you.”
APPEASEMENT
What greater act of faithfulness can we possibly imagine?
“Are you appeased?” asks the Spirit,
•“What more can I do to prove my sincerity, my integrity?"
•”What more could I give to let you know that I really really mean it?
•”I really do love you and want you to be in good relationship with me"
• "People of the world, please accept this sacrifice as a sign of my faithfulness. Be not angry, but be appeased and let us be reconciled."
Every culture, every people, and every individual should be able to hear this loud and clear: God so loved us, that he gave his only Son whom he loved. Whoever accepts and receives his sacrifice will have the eternal inheritance God intends for us all.
Four thousand years ago, the man who was met by God and blessed to be a blessing for the whole world named that hill “God will provide.” Not “God did provide” or “God once upon a time provided,” but in the future tense, “God will provide” as in “God will provide the lamb for the sacrifice.”
God did indeed fulfill that prophecy two millennia later—two millennia ago—by walking his Son, his only Son whom he loved, up that hill carrying the wood of the sacrifice. That lamb was slain, once and for all, in order that our anger be appeased and we be permanently reconciled to the God who loves us so unspeakably, unimaginably much..†