God will provide Himself
Most of us who have preached on this text, Genesis 22:1f, the Sacrifice of Isaac, have contemplated how Sarah must have felt as Abraham told her why he was up so early that morning, and where he was going, and why.
As someone wrote, "God said WHAT?" Sarah, the boy's mother, who, eavesdropping behind the tent flaps, had giggled as she overheard the Holy One promising to return for, she could only imagine what, as "it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women". Sarah who had named the boy "Laughter" for so many reasons. Sarah who, catching Ishmael tormenting his little brother, had burst into a rage of motherly protection and demanded that Abraham get his firstborn son out of her sight forever along with Hagar, his mother.
Sarah now feeling betrayed by God and man, bereft, distraught, screaming with grief that if he did such a thing, Abraham need never come home again.
I recall, as an aside, the story from my own family history, told me by my father's oldest sister, about my beloved grandmother Mom's feelings toward Pop, Alfred's father, after Alfred's death. Mom had begged both Pop and Alfred that Alfred, her oldest son, NOT sail with the Annie & Jennie that bitter cold winter night in January 1918. Pop and Alfred had scoffed, laughed at Mom's fear. Tossed about in fierce wind and waves in a squall going out the Old Pass, the schooner grounded on a reef, cracked her keel and broke up, and Alfred was drowned. In her stories to me decades later, even Mom told me that she would never stop wishing she had not roused Alf from his nap that midnight, to make the voyage. My aunt told me many times, that Mom's love for Pop was never the same.
In my years as a parish priest, this story was up on Good Friday, and my preaching take on it was always precisely the syntax of the King James Version as father and son make their way to the place of sacrifice (Gen 22:7,8)
"And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together."
Subtle. Long ago and far away. But as the implications dawn, on Good Friday it's jarring, the emotional impact is overwhelming. That is still what the story means to me. Prophecy. A trial run, the Father, through his beloved friend Abraham, testing himself to see if he will be able to go through with it when the Time comes. Lamb of God, Himself the Lamb.
There is the story from rabbinical chat, it's been many years and I don't remember where I got it, the rabbis pointing out that after this, Sarah never spoke to Abraham again.
This morning I could if I would but I won't, look up in the Koran, the Islamic view that the son for sacrifice that day was Ishmael. In my library of material for midweek Bible study and Sunday School, are a dozen or so copies of the Koran for just this purpose, and if we were having Sunday School this summer we would take that adventure. Islam's prophet knew our Bible stories long before I did.
Maybe a new favorite notion, that I recently came across, is an essay by Russ Ramsey entitled "That Laughter Might Live". There's a link to it below in case anyone wants to go there. Russ uses the Rembrandt painting too.
This story from Genesis is always discussed in Old Testament class in seminary. Every year. I remember the horror and lively discussion in my own seminary class forty years ago, "How could God have asked such a thing?" the professor taking part and facilitating to make sure our outrage was stirred up! I've been a teacher and Adjunct at least, a college professor! And from that point of view I remember the need to stir and maintain high excitement about the issue and question at hand, for this year's students, no matter how many years and times I'd been through this exact same conversation before. I always tried to remember to engage an encouragement from the Dale Carnegie Course we took the summer of 1960, in our early twenties, "ACT enthusiastic and you'll BE enthusiastic!" And with an excited class, it was always fun and easy. Teaching is the best that life has to offer anyway.
But I've wandered off topic. Here are the Propers, our Bible readings for next Sunday:
The Collect
Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Old Testament
Genesis 22:1-14
God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He 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.” So 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. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then 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.” Abraham 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. Isaac 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?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
When 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. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He 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.” And 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. So 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.”
The Response
Psalm 13
Usquequo, Domine?
1 How long, O Lord?
will you forget me for ever? *
how long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long shall I have perplexity in my mind,
and grief in my heart, day after day? *
how long shall my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look upon me and answer me, O Lord my God; *
give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death;
4 Lest my enemy say, "I have prevailed over him," *
and my foes rejoice that I have fallen.
5 But I put my trust in your mercy; *
my heart is joyful because of your saving help.
6 I will sing to the Lord, for he has dealt with me richly; *
I will praise the Name of the Lord Most High.
The Epistle
Romans 6:12-23
Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Gospel
Matthew 10:40-42
Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple-- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”