So we have to talk about our reading from Genesis today:

Abraham offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice

I hope that all of us feel uncomfortable, a little queasy, and frankly embarrassed when we hear this story.  It’s not a great story.

But we have to talk about it.

We have to talk about it because this is one of those stories that often keeps people away from the Church.

We have to talk about it because this story has in subtle and not so subtle ways, justified private and public acts of unhealthy self-sacrifice, neglect, and abuse within families and communities.

We have to talk about it because this is one of those pieces of scripture which leads some Christians to think the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and full of wrath, while the God of the New Testament is loving and compassionate.

But that is not true!

Jesus in his full humanity reveals the God who relates to the Jewish people through the Torah, scriptures, and prophets.

Jesus is the incarnation of the God involved in this story about Abraham & Isaac.

Hopefully some of you are now thinking “now we really have to talk about this story.”

We have to talk about this story because I believe it has something really important to show us in this time of racial truth telling.

So to begin, I want to acknowledge that all the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have wrestled with this text and sought some kind of spiritual lesson in it.

One school of thought says Abraham passes God’s test by displaying total obedience to God.

Abraham is praised for being totally obedient to God’s will…even when God’s will is confusing or seemingly bad.

This total devotion to God is lifted up as the ultimate virtue.  Some even go so far as to argue that this story is the full embodiment of the first commandment: you shall have no other God’s before me.  Not even the God of familial relationships.

Others focus less on Abraham’s obedience and more on Abraham’s faith.

Remember, faith is not actually about the beliefs we hold in our heads…faith is actually a deep sense of trust in God.  Trusting God with our whole being.

This school of thought notices that Abraham seems to deeply trust that God shall provide some way forward.  When Isaac asks his dad where the sacrificial lamb is, Abraham expresses his deep trust that “God will provide the lamb.”

Abraham passes God’s test because despite the absurdity of God’s request, Abraham trusts God anyways.

The third sort of typical way the various Abrahamic religions have tried to explain or understand this story is to talk about the virtue of self-sacrifice.

It isn’t only Jesus who talks about giving up one’s life in order to find it again and taking up one’s own cross;

throughout the Hebrew scriptures there is the message that those who follow in the way of God, those who follow Torah, will have to give up things that are precious to ourselves.  We shall have to become like suffering servants.

To follow God is to be willing to sacrifice.

In this school of thought, Abraham passes the test because he recognizes that the only sacrifice that is worthy of God is the sacrifice of one’s own life, which in this story is symbolized by Isaac

But I have never found any of these explanations terribly satisfactory.  They too easily paint a rosy picture upon what is truly a traumatic story of human violence.

And, frankly, I think these three ways we have typically understood this story have led to some really horrible ways of living.

If we think Abraham passes the test because of his obedience or his uncritical faith, that easily opens the door to scapegoating and using God to justify human violence.

Because how do you ever know that you’ve heard God correctly?

To see this, let’s think about the history of race in this country.

Slaveholders often justified slavery to themselves along the lines of obedience.

These Africans were disobedient to God by worshipping other Gods, and by not respecting the authority of the white Christians whom God had chosen.

And so, the punishments, the beatings, that were doled out to Black slaves was about teaching them obedience.

Not just obedience to the white slave owner,

but ultimately obedience to a version of the Christian God who had, according to many of the local churches of the day, ordained and blessed this slave-master relationship.

And it’s not only the Black slaves who need to practice obedience; but in fact, the white slave owner is also being obedient to God…obedient like Abraham who also uses violence because God “called for it.”

America’s racial history shows that total, uncritical obedience and faith (like Abraham’s) can too easily allow us to uncritically follow our own human impulses to violence and control, and simply justify that behavior by saying “well God said so.”

But what about the school that says this story is about sacrifice?

While of course healthy sacrifice is a part of our Christian path, the kind of sacrifice displayed in this story seems deeply unhealthy.

Essentially, to say that Abraham passes the test because he is willing to sacrifice even his own son, is to say that we worship a God who requires unhealthy sacrifice in order to maintain peace.

And again, if we look at the racial history of America, we see Christians freely worshiping such a God.

Well after slavery, throughout the Jim Crow era, and segregation, White Christians still widely believed that the American social order was just and blessed by God.

And so when Black people demanded an end to Jim Crow and segregation, this disrupted the peace of this version of a Christian order.

The conclusion was thus drawn that Black people needed to sacrifice themselves, their standards of living, and even sacrifice their children’s future in order to secure and maintain God’s peace in this nation.

Given my own time spent in these past few weeks reflecting on America’s racial history,

What I hear underneath this story is the long history of America sacrificing the Black, Brown, Yellow, and Native people for the sake of God’s promise of being a “great nation.”   

But perhaps I, like Abraham, have misunderstood God in this story.

Perhaps I have, for too long, focused on this story though the eyes of Abraham…

And if we shift the focus, if we put Sarah & Isaac’s story at the center, then we will find a different message.

I want to confess that I needed some help to do this.  I needed voices of Black women engaged in Christian theology to help open my eyes to the violence embedded in most Christian theology about this story.

I needed the help of a local Jewish rabbi to see that when you place this story in its larger narrative framework you can hear something quite different.

If we make Sarah and Isaac the center of this story, and not Abraham, then we discover that this story is not about obedience, faithfulness, or sacrifice.

There is a school of thought in Judaism that Abraham actually didn’t pass the test.  Abraham failed.

This school notices that after this encounter on the mountain, Isaac does not return with Abraham.  Why?  Could it be that Isaac couldn’t be with his dad anymore after such a horrific experience?

Indeed, read the story, Isaac and Abraham actually never have another interaction after this story.  They seem to be estranged forever after this moment.  Even when Abraham seeks to find a wife for Isaac, it is all carried out through a third party, one of Abraham’s slaves.

And Abraham, leaving the mountain without his son, does not return to his wife Sarah.  Abraham travels off to Beer-sheba.  But the next thing we hear about Sarah is that she is in Hebron…there is about 60 miles between Hebron and Beer-sheba…these are not the same place.

And Sarah dies in Hebron, and the rabbi who I spoke to told me that there is one strand of Jewish oral tradition that says Sarah dies because an angel comes and shows her what Abraham has done.  That Sarah dies because of the grief and horror of her husband’s actions.

So if we listen to this particular Jewish way of hearing the story, we see that this story is not a story about victorious and triumphant Abraham.

This is a story about deep human trauma that ultimately destroys a family.

And while that may seem depressing, it is actually far better than the triumphant story.

At least this understanding of the story is honest about our human experience.  If we understand the story this way then we don’t have to somehow justify it, or reconcile our basic human compassion with this brutal story of violence.

But even more importantly, when we see this story in this light…the realization that Abraham fails the test…then we are able to say that God never wanted Isaac to be sacrificed in the first place.

God does not want anyone, especially communities of color, to be the recipient of violence and oppression for the sake of obedience or faithfulness or in order to keep the peace.

When we view this story in this other way, we see a God who is very present and near to human trauma and violence.

God seeks to prevent the death of Isaac.

God hears the cry of the oppressed and responds, just as God did for Hagar and Ishmael, and just as God does for Isaac.

God seeks to heal the wounds left by human violence, as we see God ultimately healing Isaac of these wounds of trauma at the end of chapter 24 of Genesis through the love of Rebekah.

God does not endorse, condone, or call for human violence….

But God is also not absent in those moments either

God is actually present in the midst of human trauma.

God continually seeks life, and salvation, and love,

Depite our human tendency to violence.

Just as Abraham’s acts of violence cannot stop God’s plans to create a great nation through him…so too our own nation’s history of violence cannot stop God’s work of justice, reconciliation, and love. 

If we can be vulnerable enough to sit with the brokenness of this story, this story of a family being ripped apart because of uncritical human violence, justified by appeals to obedience, faithfulness, and self-sacrifice…

Then perhaps, we can sit with the brokenness of our own nation’s racial story.

And by sitting in that broken, vulnerable place….

We may finally begin to follow the God who

Desires mercy, and not sacrifice,

Who desires justice and reconciliation,

And who hears the cry of the oppressed and responds