Essential 100 Challenge: Day 8 — Genesis 21:1-22:19

How about if we just skip today’s reading?

First God does the impossible. Then he asks the impossible.

In chapter 21, everything seems to be working out beautifully, or at least as well as can be expected given the rough and tumble times in which Abraham lived. Isaac has been born to his 90 year old mother, Sarah. Then there erupts one of many family squabbles that will surface during the rest of our journey through Genesis; but it ends well, with Ishmael dutifully blessed but separated from that part of Abraham’s ancestry through which God’s purposes are going to be fulfilled. After a tense interaction with a local king and his general, a treaty is made and Abraham comes into possession of a well — another small foothold in the land God had promised him.

But now God takes his spiritual gloves off in a way that can’t help but shock the most objective reader into incredulity. Anyone who isn’t drawn into this story is made of stone. God not only tests Abraham, he seems to taunt him: “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” This sketch belongs in the horror section instead of under drama.

Of course, everything turns out fine. And the story doesn’t last long, thank goodness, at least on paper. But it’s not like one can just take a deep breath at the end and say, “Whew! That was a close one.” This story may have a happy ending, but it’s not a satisfying ending. It’s impossible to carry on without stopping to ask, “What the heck just happened here?”

I used to think repeated readings would help, that I would become emotionally inoculated after awhile. It doesn’t help. This story still punches me in the gut every time I read it.

But here it is, part of the Bible, part of the Word of God. And for some strange reason I’m glad it’s here, though glad isn’t exactly the right word. Periodically I need this story to take me by the shoulders and shake me into “knowing” or realizing that this is GOD we’re talking about. This is GOD I’m writing and preaching about. This is GOD I mumble my prayers to. This is GOD I’m toying with when I’m trying to decide whether to obey him or not. GOD!

 I sense this is what Jesus was getting at when, in Luke 12, he said to his disciples:

I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!

There is a healthy “fear of the Lord” that should reside in the heart of every believer; fear or awe or reverence for the kind of power he has over our lives, both now and forever. But lest we slip into the kind of unhealthy “fear of the Lord” that has plagued and paralyzed countless religious people through the centuries, Jesus immediately goes on to say:

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

 Though God’s methods are not my methods (Is.55:8,9), God is using this event to reveal more about himself to Abraham (and to us, his spiritual descendants). There is what God could be — someone who has people sacrifice their children, especially since the other gods are exactly like that — and then there is who God actually is. But what a way to get his point across! One commentator writes, ”Does Abraham know, as we do, that a God who would go through with this could not be believed in?” Actually, Abraham could believe in such a God; many of his contemporaries did, and many still do today.

But would Abraham trust him?

God may have had lots of reasons for asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, but the one reason we know about for certain is stated up front: “Some time later God tested Abraham.” This theme of “testing” surfaces throughout the Old Testament story and continues into the New Testament. Jesus is tested in the wilderness (the word “temptation” can also be translated “test”). Some contemporary versions of the Lord’s Prayer use the words “Save us from the time of trial” instead of “Lead us not into temptation.” In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus said to the disciples, “Watch and pray so that you will not fail the test.” In a sermon I preached several years ago I suggested that that Satan’s “temptation” is often God’s “test” and our “trial.” 

So what is God testing? 

A good case could be made for God’s testing Abraham’s obedience, and that’s certainly part of it. But the quality of Abraham’s relationship with God that’s been highlighted so far is his faith. Remember, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Faith for Abraham meant believing God’s Word before it meant obeying God’s Word. Abraham believed God when God said he would make a great nation of Abraham’s offspring. That’s why he obeyed God when God said, “Now go.” Abraham believed God when God said that God would give him a son. That’s why he answered, “What do I need to know? What can you tell me?” Faith is the reason Abraham can push God, bargain with God (the Sodom and Gomorrah story that didn’t make it into the “essential 100″) and, yes, obey God. Not just faith as “believing in” but faith as “trusting in.” Abraham has learned to trust God. He’s still learning to trust God. The only way our trust in God can grow is if it’s tested, especially by circumstances (or commands) that appear to contradict everything we believe about God.

So God tests Abraham. But I think Abraham is also testing God. The more I meditate on this story, the more I’m convinced that there is no way Abraham obeys God unless he is sure, or pretty sure, that this thing is all going to turn out alright. He may not know what “alright” means. Hope never does. But Abraham has to believe that God is still a God who keeps his Word, or Abraham doesn’t step out the door. Abraham doesn’t saddle his donkey. Abraham packs up and goes back to Haran or Ur or wherever his clan is living right now. That’s what I think.

Abraham doesn’t just believe God, he trusts God, so he does what God says, even though it doesn’t make any sense. With God there is always a way. The writer to the Hebrews seems to have the same take on this story:

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

So God is testing Abraham, and Abraham is testing God. It both adds to the tension and relieves the tension for me to imagine God and Abraham playing a game of chicken. They are going eye ball to eye ball (like Abraham’s grandson Jacob would do when he and God got into a wrestling match). Who is going to blink first? Who is going to steer away from the center of the road? Abraham decides to go for broke. Because if God lets him go through with this, if God allows his son to burn like any animal sacrifice, then life’s not worth living. There is no going back and only one way forward. So he steps on the pedal. With tears in his eyes and fire in his heart he raises the knife and whispers, “I dare you.”

And God flinches. God blinks. He screeches off the road and shouts (through an angel — is God is struggling to keep his composure?), “Abraham, Abraham!” “Here I am, Lord.” “Do not lay a hand on the boy! Do not do anything to him!”

Abraham passes his test. So does God.

The disciples didn’t. A Messiah dying on a cross made no sense to them. So finally, one of them betrayed him, their leader three times denied even knowing him, and all the others abandoned him. They flinched. They blinked. They jumped ship. They couldn’t see themselves going down with a lost cause.

I’m glad for this story too, because it says there is a place in the Kingdom of God for faith flunkies, even Christian leaders who’ve flunked faith. Even when we flunk the test, he doesn’t hold us back a grade. He tells Peter, “Now get out there and feed my sheep.” The disciple is promoted to apostle.

Faith that goes for broke. Eventually even those faith flunkies that failed Jesus learned to live that kind of faith. Of course, the resurrection helped. You and I, we have all this “knowing” provided by the stories, images and words of the Word of God to nourish and strengthen our faith — even, surprisingly, the words and pictures of this story. It is a knowing that can happen in the midst of a lot of unknowing. It is a ”faith [that] is…sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).

But faith isn’t complete until it goes for broke. There is a knowing that we can’t know until we’re on the other side of going for broke. Reason can’t get us there. Sorting through the evidence won’t get us there. Not even reading the Bible will get us there. Only going for broke will. Anyway, what is there to lose, really? It’s like that young missionary Jim Elliot wrote a few weeks before he was killed: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

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