"The Question of Sacrifice"

Original Sermon Date: 
Sunday, June 26, 2011
The Rev. Gregory Han
The 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Genesis 22:1-14
I rarely find value in prefacing the reading of God’s word before preaching; I tend to think that God’s word can speak for itself. But I am going to make an exception in this case, as some background would be helpful.
 
The preaching text for today is often called “the sacrifice of Isaac.” A little history is needed. Abraham, or “Abram” as he was originally called (Biblical narratives are fond of changing people’s names almost as much as Hollywood stars and NBA Basketball players do) has heard the call of God before. Back in Genesis 12, God told Abram to leave his country and go, and land would be given to him, and he would be a blessing. Farther along, God promises Abram offspring so numerous that they would be as numerous as the dust of the earth and as the stars in the sky. Yet Abram remained childless with his wife Sarai. And then we get the story of Abram, not exactly trusting God, having a child with Sarai’s slave-girl Hagar, yet another shining example of those vaunted Biblical family values that we all want running American culture. That child was Ishmael, but that’s another story. At age 99, Abram is renamed Abraham (father of many) and is told he and Sarai will have a child of their own. That child is Isaac.
 
Now, listen to this morning’s sermon text:
 
Text: Genesis 22: 1-14
 
1After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” 3So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him.4On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” 6Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. 7Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
 
9When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. 11But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14So Abraham called that place “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”
 
Now, can you see with all that Abraham has been through to get this heir, there’s perhaps a tiny amount of dramatic tension with God’s request?
 
After hearing the text for today, though, you, the astute listener, should note a problem with this common title: there’s no sacrifice of Isaac. That is why, traditionally, this next is known as the aqedah, which is the Hebrew word for “binding,” so thus a more appropriate name for this text would be “the binding of Isaac.”
 
And much ink has been spilled over this wonderfully complex text. Much has been made of the faith of Abraham, that he would promptly follow such a horrific command by rising early in the morning. Much has been made about the text’s eerie silence about whether or not Abraham was emotionally stirred, or, as the text seems to imply, he stoically went about the business of following what we see as a sickening command; what sort of God would order such an act? Jewish commentators have loved pondering just how old Isaac is. He’s obviously old enough to carry the wood for the fire, but is he old enough to understand what is going on? When we hear the question, “where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” is the voice of a young naïve Isaac, or is it the more knowing tone of an adolescent Isaac who is starting to put the pieces together?  How much does he know? And there’s that wonderfully enigmatic line, “so the two of them walked on together.” It’s in there twice. Scholar James Kugel points out that the second time this phrase is spoken is immediately after Abraham’s admission that the lamb will be provided for by God, and “it did not seem too much of a stretch to conclude that the second appearance of the phrase meant that, in the intervening time, Abraham had somehow indicated to Isaac—through a gesture or otherwise—that he was to be the sacrifice, and despite this discomfiting piece of news, they walked the two of them together.” So, is Isaac a willing sacrifice? Is he going of his own free will, for certainly a thirteen year old boy could elude his nearly centenarian father.  Heck, I’m forty, and I can barely catch my seven year old.
 
So, a father and a son, a journey to a sacrifice, questions of knowledge and free will of volition and duty. Of course, Christians have read this story through the eyes of the crucifixion. From the earliest writings of Paul in Romans 8, to Augustine’s City of God, this story has been a prototype of examining the crucifixion story, and the question of sacrifice.
 
The story of the death of the Son of God with which we are familiar may have been new, but it was hardly unique. The story of the sacrifice of the beloved child runs rampant within Scripture, and it becomes even more complex when you begin looking for hints of the other aspects of the story that seem familiar, such as innocence or a sacrifice that is reversible. I would commend Jon Levenson’s brilliant book The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son as one of the most original and fascinating studies about the transformation of child sacrifice, as Levenson points out the long stream of stories about child sacrifice within Scripture. You know, it’s those stories or commands you read and promptly either ignore or gloss over:
 
Exodus 22:28: You shall give me the first born of your sons.
Exodus 13 and 34: Every first issue of the womb is Mine.
 
And for those of you who think that these are merely figurative, Levenson makes a convincing argument that these may have been, at some point in ancient Israel’s early history, Godly commands to be taken literally. Child sacrifice may not have been required, but it seems, at a certain point, it certainly wasn’t condemned.
 
And what stories do we have of beloved children being offered up as a sacrifice?
 
1.     Jephthah’s daughter from Judges 11
2.     The Tenth Plague: the killing of the first born (often glossed over in those family-friendly animated versions)
3.     The death of Abel (the more favored son, as his sacrifice was more pleasing)
4.     The death and “resurrection” of Joseph, the favored son.
5.     The death and “resurrection” of the prodigal son.
6.     The parable of the Wicked Tenants from Mark Chapter 12. The man who plants the vineyard sends his beloved son to them, for the will surely respect him. The wicked tenants end up killing the son.
7.     Not to mention our text for today.
 
And then we could add another twist, that the “beloved son” often is not the first born: Abel, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, and Jesus, often referred to as the “second Adam.”
 
Do you see how amazing Scripture is, and how deep and rich and complex it is? How we should come to it with a sense of awe and amazement and excitement, reveling in its depth and breadth? I’m amazed at how one theme, the theme of sacrifice, is so intricately and meaningfully manipulated and modified through the whole narrative, appearing and reappearing like a dolphin jumping through the waves. How many more themes and narratives are waiting to be discovered? If I could convince you to read the text with depth, I’d be happy with that as the outcome of this sermon.
 
Sacrifice is, to be sure, a controlling metaphor within Scripture, and a controlling metaphor in human existence. It is everywhere within the text, and it is everywhere around us. This notion, the idea, of giving to another, or more often, demanding from another, dominates human consciousness, and it takes many forms. I think that the things most sacrifices have in common are:  it has a giver (or a taker) and it has a receiver, and it has something that is designated as the medium for exchange. The personnel, the medium, and especially the reasons for this exchange vary, and often the explicit reasons are different than the implicit reasons. How often have you and I given a gift with the explicit reason of being generous to a certain person, or donating to a good cause to the greater good, when our more implicit reasons are perhaps less noble? We give a gift with the exterior expression of love, but the interior motivation is for power or prestige? That the gift may seem free, but we hope that it influences another party to make decisions for our own benefit? In some ways, isn’t this the heart of political campaign donations, and all the angst we have about who gives to whom, and how much, and what is expected in return? What are the reasons we give out of what we have to others, and what do we hope happens with this exchange? Our own self-deceptions about such matters are a source of much consternation, misunderstandings, and confusion.
 
And we have our own story of a sacrificed “beloved son,” as Jesus is called multiple times in the Gospels, a sacrifice story that I find has become ossified into a shriveled story, only capable of being accessed via sentimentality. And if you have heard me preach before, you’ve heard me say that one of the great enemies of faith is sentimentality. This great story of child sacrifice, a story that stands in a great stream of stories that convey meaning, gets misshapen into a tear-jerker with a happy ending.
 
One needs to look no further than our sentimentalizing of the Noah story to know this is true. The cute cuddly Noah, looking so happy on the ark, with all those sweet animals looking so happy together. How many books, paintings, murals on childrens’ bedroom walls, have totally emasculated this text? In a different way, but with similar outcome, do we experience the crucifixion story. Mel Gibson’s 2004 “The Passion of the Christ” was nothing more than a hyper-sentimentilization of the death narrative vis a vis gory detail, all with the intent of getting people to leave theaters in tears: “look how much my savior went through….and all for me!” It’s the worst of American culture, with its fixation on both emotion and solipsism.
 
All along, we are distracted by the smoke and mirrors of stuff like Gibson produces, and we miss how the sacrificial cycle still carries weight. How many things have happened in human history that if we just could get the right sacrifice? If we could just give up the right person, the right people, things would be different. This is Holocaust thinking: the finding of the proper scapegoat (see Leviticus 16, that’s a Biblical concept!) for the remission of sinfulness or the restoration of a something that was lost. I remember thinking this when we found Saddam Hussein in December 2003 with Operation “Red Dawn.” I listened as it was announced “we got him.” We got our scapegoat, the magic bullet, and we sacrificed him at dawn. Hear me well: I have nothing but respect for the men and women who fight to protect us. This is not about them; this is about the timeless human desire to find comfort or restoration in finding that right person, and it rings hollow, just as it did with the death of Osama bin Laden. It feels good, it feels like it will make it all better. We got the ringleader, the person who hurt us, but it doesn’t last. The sacrificial system does not work.
 
We come then to the title of the sermon, “The question of sacrifice.” Sacrifice is a human institution as old as humanity itself. It is a Biblical motif that starts in Genesis 3 and stretches all the way to Revelation, when robes are washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. Sacrifice is used to denote sin, restoration, duty, honor, guilt, shame. It is both theological and anthropological. These themes exist far outside the realm of Christianity.
 
Our own sacrifice story of Jesus’ death and resurrection is drilled into us from an early age, whether it is in hymn or in literature (anyone read The Chronicles of Narnia recently?) Christian sacrifice is one of the most important, yet most carelessly imagined, ideas out there. It is one of those ideas that is just taken whole: “Jesus died a death you deserved because you are so bad.” God’s honor was so hurt that God demanded a sacrifice (in the Ancient Near East, this often involved blood). But, thank God that God’s hurt honor is matched by God’s compassion, so you don’t have to “pay the price;” there’s an innocent man names Jesus who will take your place.
 
And then we get into the arguments: “God’s sense is not man’s sense.” “God’s ways are above ours.” And I can accept that…to a certain point. And then such rationale starts to sound a bit hollow, more like, “you don’t have to understand, you just have to accept it.” “Stop overanalyzing this, just do it.” And such excuses work really well when my car mechanic explains to me why my car is fixed, but I think I need a little more than that when faith is involved.
 
Where did we get this idea? Is it Biblical? Is it universal? Would it be helpful to consider that 300 million of the roughly 2 billion Christians look at Western Christendom’s idea of substitutionary atonement, and scratch their heads at us? Those would be the Eastern Orthodox Christians, by the way.
 
The thing I want to leave you with is the idea that this is not an answer set in stone. The notion of the sacrifice of the beloved child did not suddenly appear fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus, with the crucifixion of an obscure Palestinian Jew 2,000 years ago. Biblical writers drew on a rich tradition that evolved over time. The notion of the sacrifice of the Beloved Son has many answers, and both Scripture and the arc of theological thought support a wide variety of answers beyond what we all have been taught.
 
We all have the responsibility of engaging the text and the story as responsible and active readers, bringing a degree of curiosity and even skepticism to the stories, two qualities that I would argue are pre-requisites to being people of faith.
 
So, I could depart from this pulpit by simply saying, “I’ve taken a good chunk of your Sunday morning to open the Pandora’s Box of sacrifice, that it’s not monolithic, it’s not one sided, Jesus’ death was unique but not new. So what’s your response to the question of sacrifice?” And I hope that would spur your thinking for the week and even some emails. (We need a sermon blog!) But I’ll leave you with one quite un-Reformed and even heretical interpretation.
 
People like Rene Girard and Walter Wink call Jesus’ death the end of “the myth of redemptive violence.” This is the myth that violence can end violence. This is the unavoidable human tendency to covet, to want what others have, and to kill for it. Anyone who has children knows this; why is the toy that no one has played with for months suddenly the most coveted one in the house simply because one of the children is playing with it again? This is the myth that purports that we get that right guy, we get back at the right group, we “take ‘em out,” and it will all be better. As I said before, the sacrificial system does not work. That’s what Jesus’ sacrifice is meant to stop the cycle of the myth of redemptive violence.
 
Jesus’ violent death is the end to violent deaths. It is the sacrifice that ends sacrifices. He is the scapegoat that ends scapegoating. No longer do we need to see violence as the only way to social unity as we dance together around the cadaver of whomever we deemed the problem. As Girard says, “The Resurrection is not only a miracle, a prodigious transgression of natural laws.  It is the spectacular sign of the entrance into the world of a power superior to violent contagion.”
 
In the days to come, I wish for you to be like Mary in the Magnificat, to ponder these things in your heart, to take to heart the story of sacrifice that weaves its way through Scripture, through our own lives, and finds its ultimate sign on the cross on in the empty tomb. These are not just stories, but narratives and symbols that shape our lives, that are lived out in our day to day lives in small and great ways, and needs more thought, more insight, and more prayer.
 
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For further study:
 
Jon Levenson, The Death of Resurrection of the Beloved Son. Fascinating study of the transformation of child sacrifice in Scripture.
 
Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling. Perhaps the classic treatment (outside of Paul and Augustine) of the Abraham story via Christian existentialism.
 
Mark Heim’s article “No More Scapegoats,” in the September 5, 2006 issue of The Christian Century. Short and concise introduction to the idea of violence and scapegoating.
 
Rene Girard. Works like The Girard Reader or I See Satan Fall like Lightning may be good places to start, but be warned: he is a complicated writer. I would also very much commend a female writer on this subject, Marjorie Suchocki’s Fall to Violence. Other authors to check out are James Alison and Walter Wink.