Epic Fail
Text: Genesis 22:1-14
There are so many ways not to understand this story in Genesis. They all boil down to the same single question: “How could God do this?”
How could God demand such an action? How could God test Abraham in such a way? What sensible God would ask a father to sacrifice his son?
You might answer that the sensibleness of God is not the issue. That God is mysterious and unfathomable. But the Bible is a means of understanding God and the universe God made. The Bible is an articulation of God—the Word of God, we say—representing God in human language and idiom. God is ineffable, but we cannot, we should not, in our reading of the Bible hide behind God’s mystery.
How could God ask any parent to kill his or her child? Take your son, God says, your only son, your son whom you love, Isaac. And not only Abraham and Sarah’s child, not only the child miraculously born in their old age, the son born long after their hope should have been (and was) extinguished—not only their son, but the child who represents God’s founding promise to Israel. A personification of the covenant. The covenant to Abraham that his offspring would be a great nation. A child particularly named by God—through Isaac your descendants will come, God has said—named as the genetic seed through which Israel will come to be and prosper. If this child Isaac is sacrificed, not only will his parents mourn, but existence of the nation will be nullified; there will be no Israel. The promise will be unfulfilled, unfulfillable, betrayed by the execution of this test.
The story is full of strangeness. Why did they have to go to Moriah, three days away by foot? What did Abraham think would happen there (did he anticipate God’s intervention)? Did Isaac guess what was in store (Isaac is not a dolt, as one scholar says), and if so, why did he acquiesce (this is a test of Abraham, after all, not Isaac). Did Abraham lie to Isaac (or seem to) out of fear that Isaac would flee or out of mercy that he would be terrified?
Some explain this story as a test of faith. That Abraham knows God has a secret plan, that God will provide the ram as Abraham explains (and therefore not lies) to Isaac. But then is this a test, or just a grim drama acted out, and for what purpose?
Some explain it as a test of obedience. It is not what Abraham thinks, but what he does, they say. Abraham follows God’s command even in the face of God’s apparent cruelty. He shows thereby that nothing, not even his love for his son, or his hope that God will fulfill God’s promise, has as great a claim on him as God does.
Some, seeing this story through a Christian lens, explain it as a model of Jesus’ death on the cross, a sacrifice of a son by his nevertheless loving father. Or as a narrative version of the prophecy in Isaiah about the suffering servant, who like a sheep led to slaughter does not resist.
To these who see the story in such ways, their intellectual efforts seek to mitigate their shock that God would put Abraham to such a horrible test, and that Abraham passes it.
Yet it seems to me that this is not a story of success but of failure. Abraham fails. God’s test does not succeed when Abraham takes Isaac up to the mountain top, but rather fails when he does. Abraham would have passed the test if he had refused to sacrifice Isaac. It is not a test of faith, nor a test of obedience, but rather a test of understanding of the nature of God, God’s hopes for the world and for this particular people. Obedience and faith are only means to an end, which is the kingdom of God.
The act that Abraham carries out almost to completion is repugnant to us and one that people have long recognized as evil. It seems evil, and it is. Those who think that Abraham passes the test have to contort their thoughts into a shape that holds both this evil and their understanding of God’s goodness and loyalty to his people.
But if you think that God hopes that Abraham will refuse to act, then God’s action in replacing Isaac with a ram is an intervention on behalf of Abraham and Isaac. To, in effect, save Abraham from himself. God, as God often does in the Bible—and in our lives—God extracts the good from an evil act.
Abraham’s error is a common, human, one. We often do not read, or misread, or ignore God’s word to us. We do not hear God clearly. We do not believe God’s promises, we do not accept God’s love for creation, we do not follow God’s commands. We do not care for widows and orphans (that is, for those who suffer), we worship idols and other Gods, we hate our neighbors and our enemies. We mine in the traces of God’s Word our own desires and terrors, and we interpret them in that light.
But we do this not because we are evil, or stupid, but because we are sinners. Or rather, that is what makes us sinners—being out of sync with God, sometimes willfully, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes indifferently.
Yet the story of the Bible is mostly a story of God’s forgiveness in spite of our sinning, of God’s welcoming us back in spite of our turning away from God. The prophets are sent by God to reiterate God’s faithfulness to us in spite of our own forgetfulness and infidelities.
In the books of the prophets, God steps in when the kings fail; God restores justice when the rich cheat the poor. In the parables of Jesus, the lost sheep are searched for; the wicked welcomed; the outcast embraced. Christ comes both to remind us of the law, and to announce that at the same time God forgives sinners. As we say, we are sinners and saints at the same time.
Abraham has a history of fighting with God, of disagreeing with God. He has bargained with God about the destruction of Sodom, and prevailed. Perhaps God remembers this when he tests Abraham here, so thus expects a better fight. Perhaps God thinks about the amazing gift God gave Abraham in the birth of Isaac, and thus expects Abraham to remember that God loves Isaac as much as Abraham does.
Perhaps God thinks Abraham is made of sterner stuff than he turns out to be. Or perhaps not, as God knows that Abraham has in his life been as cowardly as he has been brave. Like all of us. We do not know. And we do not know what goes through Abraham’s mind as he walks to Moriah with his son.
The strangeness in this story is only the strangeness of human stories, of people of good will and weakness finding themselves in confusing events and tough spots. Not part of a godly test, but of general human mixedupedness.
Nothing in the Bible just happens. Stories, poems, speeches, commands—are included there because they tell us something about God. For us, this story of Abraham and Isaac is not a test of faith or obedience—there are plenty of other passages that do that. It is a test of our understanding of God. Who is God? What is God’s nature? What does God ask of us? What do we answer?
