“Who Has Our Ears? The gods of Sacrifice or the God of Mercy?”
You can listen to the audio of me giving this message above. The transcript of my message is included below.
It would appear that God is not letting me off the hook. You see, I grew up in the Evangelical church. If there was a thing I was certain of, it was that there was a proper interpretation of every passage of scripture. To this day, you can throw any passage of the Bible at me, and I will give you the Evangelical interpretation of that text. The Evangelical church was skilled in its abilities towards the education of its congregants.
Then, in 2004 my certainty started to come apart at the seams. It was in the classroom of my first biblical studies course at the Christian college I attended. The professor, a man of deep faith, and a biblical scholar for over 40 years encouraged us to dig into the text, and to wrestle with the not so easy answers we came into that institution with. At first, I was ready to label him a wolf in sheep’s clothing…a man leading me away from my faith, but I couldn’t permit myself to go there, I know sincerity and authenticity when I see it.
“The Sacrifice of Isaac” Rembrandt
And that was just the first few weeks of my time in an institution of higher learning. What followed over the next four years was a fundamental deconstruction of the framework by which I built most of my Christian life. Suddenly, the Bible wasn’t so easy to read and interpret. The contradictions in my worldview, next to the words in the Bible, they were disorienting and troubling.
Last week I spoke about one of the texts that I’d rather glaze over. In my Evangelical days, it was one of our favorites. Jesus said, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” That text became the justification text for the war on terror, and the killing of nearly 110,000 Iraqi men, women, and children. But last week, God invited me into sitting with this text again, and I emerged seeing that Jesus was talking about the challenge of maintaining relationships in light of the call to be a Jesus follower in a world that upholds the scapegoat as the glue that holds our relationships together.
Perhaps it was because I showed a willingness to take on a biblical text that didn’t sit well with me that God decided to hand me another. And this one is a doozy. Abraham and Isaac.
The story, as recounted in Genesis 22 is likely familiar to many of us, especially because it is a story that is talked about in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith communities. For this reason, the near-sacrifice of Isaac exists in our cultural narrative. But, I will read the text still:
22 After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 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.” 3 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. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5 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.” 6 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. 7 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?” 8 Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
9 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. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill[a] his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 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.” 13 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. 14 So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”;[b] as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”[c]
Likely, many of us have wrestled with this text. The source of that wrestling often is, “What kind of God would do this? Would put a person through this kind of test? What kind of jealous, power-hungry God would require a father to show his loyalty by telling him to sacrifice his only child?”
At least, those are the questions I have. This week, as I studied and read about this text a few things really stood out to me. First, it is hard for us to read these words in a proper cultural context. It can be hard to believe, but in Abraham’s day, child sacrifice was, shockingly, “normal.” Professor Gil Bailie puts it this way, “Far more than we moderns generally realize, human sacrifice was a fact of life among the peoples of the ancient Near East in tension with whom Israel first achieved cultural self-definition.”
Appeasing the gods (noting here a lower capital “g”) via human sacrifice was a part of Abraham’s world. So, the next revelation that comes here fascinated me. If we look at the text again, we note that there is a shift in language at the moment in which God intercedes and stops Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. At that moment we shift from the word God to Lord. When we look at the Hebrew here an even more fascinating thing comes into play:
“In Hebrew, there are two words used for God. In verses 1, 3, 8, and 9 the word “God” appears. The general Hebrew word for “God” is Elohim, which is also used to refer to false gods such as in the First Commandment: “Thou shall have no other gods before me.” In this commandment, Elohim refers to false gods. But at the climactic moment when God intervenes, it says “angel of the Lord,” with “LORD” in capital letters. The Hebrew word behind “LORD” is the special name for God given to the Hebrews through Moses in the burning bush. Moses told God he doesn’t know what to call him. God replies, “Yahweh,” that is, “I am who I am.” At that point, “Yahweh” became the special name for the one true God…”
http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper_8a_2011_ser/
What if the story of Abraham and Isaac is more of a story about the lengths we will go to in following the false or idealistic voices that masquerade as God but are nothing but the false gods of empire, violence, and death? What if this story is about the true God breaking through into that narrative and making themself known? “This is what this story is showing us: Abraham passed the test of faith in the true God when he finally heard the voice of Yahweh say, “Stop! Don’t do it! Stop this madness of human sacrifice…”
Jesus says to his followers, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'” He is quoting the prophet, Micah, here, “With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
I cannot help but see the glaring consequences of humans following the voice of false gods in our present situation. The country in which all of us call ourselves citizens was founded by men who believed it was God’s will that they should settle this land, and purge it of the savages that occupied it before them. We enslaved black Africans, believing that we were listening to the voice of God and that we were justified in this. We have sacrificed millions of God’s precious children to the false gods of empire. The false gods of political power. The false gods of wealth, and status. And yet we, as followers of the LORD, we are the ones who need to have our ears tuned to the one who cries out, “STOP” I do not require sacrifice. What does the LORD require of you? To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.
That is the breaking in of the voice of Yahweh to a people who have been so deceived by the false voices of idols, that we would do their bidding…to continue in a legacy of sacrifice in order to maintain the lie of harmony as fed to us by those wishing to maintain order and power. What if we examined our framework each and every moment? Is the voice of God we are hearing desiring mercy of us? Is the voice of God requiring us to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly? Then that is Yahweh, that is Jesus, breaking in and stopping the knife from falling again.
As we reckon with the legacy of white supremacy, and the co-opting of Jesus’ message within the narrative of American exceptionalism, I think it is important for us, as followers of the Jesus way, to consistently assess whose voice we are listening to. Is it the voice of the one desiring mercy, justice, humility, and kindness, or is it another voice? I think we know that voice, the voice that shakes us from the spell of violence and domination. It is the voice that is awakening us now. Let’s not be fooled any longer.
Queries:
What are the voices that have led you away from hearing the voice of the true inward teacher, how did you identify them?
Have you had to do reframing in your life? What did that look like for you? How did it change the way you listened?