The curious story of the Binding of Isaac
Pastor Holly Johnson
Spirit Garage
Genesis 22:1-14
August 4, 2024
This summer we’ve been exploring the idea that God is also creative and quirky and curious. In August we are beginning our month of curiousness about God.
When we talk about our curiosity, I mean that we bring curiosity to our approach to the Bible, our questions of faith, our view of the neighbor, and how we think about things that push our own boundaries a little bit.
But when we started applying those same ideas to God, we got a little stuck. One could say that God was curious and so Jesus came down to earth to check things out, and find out what it was like to live on earth. This gets a little sticky because God being curious about God’s creation seems to suggest that there are things God doesn’t know, and that means we’re questioning the omnipotence of God, and that’s a dicey proposition to me.
However there are curious things about God. God is a curious God because the stories we have about God are…curious. Sometimes they are worse than that. Sometimes they represent a God that most of us wouldn’t choose to believe in. And I think we often just ignore those parts.
We’re going to look at curious stories about God this month-The story of the binding of Isaak, the story where Jesus curses the fig tree; the story of the valley of dry bones, and we’re just going to wonder about these stories; maybe learn some more curious things about who God is and how God operates.
The story of the binding of Isaak is a story that takes hold of us collectively, disturbs us, and will not let us go. I guess we just accept it often-that we have this loving graceful God who once upon a time told one of God’s first representatives that he should offer as a burnt offering the son they waited so long for. This is Abraham. And you remember the story-they were old, and childless, not that there’s ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. The Bible, if that will be your guide, makes room for faithful living with the instruction to be fruitful and multiply, but also, Jesus the son of God lived on earth and was childless. And as far as we know, so was the apostle Paul, and others. In other words, if you’re looking for clues from the Bible about what God desires, it’s different for different people. It seems there are plenty of ways to live a good and faithful life.
Back to Abraham and Sarah-they did that; lived a good and faithful life but also wished for children, and when they were OLD, God made this audacious promise that they would have children as numerous as the stars. And they waited some more. And then some more. Then they tried to interpret God’s promise in some creative ways involving Hagar as a concubine, which I would argue are a part of the promise of God. But Sarah was still childless.
And then one day she conceives and then bears a child.
The son God had promised.
The son whom he loved.
And when that baby is a boy, Isaac, Abraham hears God say that he must sacrifice Isaac.
Curious.
And also contrary. We know from other parts of scripture that child sacrifice is not something God desires. We have text in other places that helps –the prophets talk about it, using the voice of God in Jeremiah, who talks about the children being offered, “which I did not command or decree, nor did it even enter my mind.”
So given that information it seems worthwhile to wrestle with the text until we can receive a blessing from it. And many have. There is midrash on this story—discussions and stories that try to make sense of the difficulties from within the Jewish faith, where there seems to be lots more room for questions and pushing back on the text and finding new ways into the text. You may have one too; a way to turn this story into the good news of God.
That is what the Bible is supposed to be-Good news of God. So if a story isn’t good news to people; if it isn’t life-giving, then we need to keep studying and wrestling and finding a way in. It certainly isn’t good news to me to think about God “testing” anyone in such a heart-wrenching, torturous way. Be honest-would you follow a God who did things like that? Tested your loyalty by asking you to kill your child? That’s spiritual abuse.
I am going to share one way of understanding this story that was life-giving to me, in case it also seems life-giving to you.
One thing we know is that the context of the people of the Hebrew scripture is a people living among other people who follow other Gods—who practice other religions. That isn’t always very clear because the origin stories we hear in Genesis, like this one, don’t really mention that, but they are actually stories that were written many years after they were proposed to have happened, in some 1500 years before christ, and they are just that: Origin stories. Stories a group of people tell themselves about who they are and who God is, and the stories help to illustrate what they are to learn about God. It is helpful to understand some things about who they are to understand the stories they tell.
And some parts of the scripture we consider Holy is about a people telling stories that help themselves understand how this God—the God of Abraham, is different; set apart, from these other Gods. Different than the Gods they know of that other groups of people worship. This God they have come to know— the God of Abraham, is doing a new thing, from what they understand about other people’s Gods. They will have new ideas about how these people will follow the God of Abraham, [and if you went to Vacation Bible School as a kid, perhaps you are singing in your head, the song… "and I am one of them, and so are you…”] and it is a way for them to be saying, “we are God’s people and we are separate and holy,” apart from the Amorites or Hittites or the other groups of people in the lands of that time.
So what if this is one of those stories. A story that looks at the common practice of child sacrifice and tries to teach something new? What if in that context the understanding of what deities desire is human sacrifice, and they especially like children. First born sons, or, I think we all know of the trope of the sacrificed virgin daughter.
Maybe the writers of the Bible came up with a story to tell people to help them learn that sacrifice is not what God wants.
I first learned these ideas from Jonathan Magonet, Vice-President of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and a biblical scholar at a talk at Chautauquah Institute in New York in 2007 during a week that focused on the tent of Abraham. I don’t know Hebrew, so I am trusting Jonathan Magonet on this. He reminds us that there are two names commonly used in the Hebrew scripture that we can see. One is something like Elohim; one is Yahweh.
He wonders if the two names might not be randomly used, but rather that they might serve a narrative purpose.
Elohim, referring to the conventional religious voice of the time. How we understand that God, or God’s work.
Yahweh referring to a more personal God, who is speaking in new ways, teaching something new about God, and how we relate to God. Inspiring Abraham specifically.
So, the conventional religious voice or understanding of the time was that deities desired sacrifice. In this case, then perhaps transforming religious values of the cultural context into something new and more life-giving. Literally.
If you look at our text, this story is using two names for God as well, which in English, and in the Christian translations of the Bible, we often use interchangeably without even noticing we’re doing it. “God” and “Lord.” Or sometimes it says “LordGod.” As you read through that scripture passage, Genesis 22: 1-14, and notice where the name for God changes.
It changes when God stays Abraham’s hand and keeps him from sacrificing his son.
It seems possible that this is a story of hope, meant to teach that the conventional religious voice of the time that believes God will be pleased by a burnt offering made of the first-born son. And perhaps it takes The Lord giving this experiential lesson, this visceral story to stop people from killing in the name of God. To differentiate between what we think is required, and what God actually wants from us.
Perhaps this can still be a lesson for us today? We can still try to pay attention to the things we think are required by God, and where God might be doing a new thing. A new life-giving thing. This we should come to expect from our God, who has promised to make all things new.
Here is an example. The conventional religious voice of our time; a voice that tends to speak loudly in our culture says a bunch of things: that God hates gays. That science is inacurate because it goes against the poetic story of and it was evening, and it was morning the first day-the 7 day creation story. That men are the head of the households.
[So I guess I have a headless household. Some of you might have a two headed household, or more.]
There are stories they can look to in the Bible to support these ideas, but there are all kinds of ways to read a story. And as mentioned before; be fruitful and multiply, in the OT but Paul thought it best if you never married and just focused on God. The writers of those two thoughts were living in two very different times. One was trying to birth a whole new people (hence the command to be fruitful and multiply) and the other thought the end was coming soon, so you should be ready to go and not tied down to domestic duties. We might be living in both of those times because that’s kind of always happening. There are all kinds of different ideas in the Bible about how to live right.
The Bible is hard. Because it’s old, and it takes work to figure it out for it’s time, and also for our own. That is also why it is a living Word-a Word that we keep working with and puzzling with, but in the end, it’s many stories and poems and proclamations and ideas and history and thoughts and letters tell about a God of love.
Whatever you read, read it with an eye towards the number one and two commandments: “Love God, and love your neighbor. Everything else is commentary,” the saying goes.
Child sacrifice isn’t love. I don’t know that any of you who have children were wondering about this, but this maybe gives us some information that helps us not ignore the problematic stories in the Bible; that help us to see the God of love in the difficult stories.
The binding of Isaac. A curious story for sure. A curious way to teach a people about how to relate to their God, which is not through sacrifice like that. But we have a curious God, and that’s good, because we are curious too.