This is one of those Bible stories that I’m supposed to like. It’s familiar. It’s dramatic. It’s one that my parents and Sunday School teachers read to me when I was a child.
But, my gosh; isn’t it just horrible?
God commands Abraham to “take your son, your only son Isaac, and offer him… as a burnt-offering.”
TWO problematic things here.
First, God refers to Isaac as Abraham’s only son. What about Ishmael? One chapter earlier, God even reminds Abraham that Ishmael is also “Abraham’s offspring,” but here, in chapter 22, God seems to have forgotten all about Ishmael.
Maybe it’s not God who forgot, but the story writer. Or, maybe it’s the hearers of this story who forgot, who trace their lineage to Abraham through Isaac. In their minds, Isaac is the only son of Abraham who matters, the only one worth remembering or counting.
But Ishmael also counts. We should remember, when we hear this story, that Ishmael is also a child of Abraham, and that Ishmael also counts in the eyes of God.
Then there is God’s command to sacrifice Isaac. How does one make sense of that?
Anne Lamott wrote about this story that “It made no sense that Abraham could head for the mountain in Moriah still believing in God's goodness. It made no sense that even as he walked his son to the sacrificial altar, he still believed God's promise that Isaac would give him many descendants. It made no sense that he was willing to do the one thing in the world he could not do, just because God told him to.”
Yet Anne Lamott was blown away by the fact that Abraham trusted God’s love enough to sacrifice his own son. What kind of love could be so good and so powerful that would convince a person to do that?
And that, she said, was the beginning of her faith journey.
Well, to me, it’s still problematic that a loving God would command such a thing in the first place—even if it was God’s plan all along to stop Abraham before the knife actually pierced his son Isaac. It seems like a terrible, not-at-all-funny joke. It’s mean. It’s not something a good, loving God would do.
But a helpful tool for interpreting difficult Bible passages is what scholars call “historical criticism:” investigating the origin of scripture in order to understand the world behind the text.
In other words, it helps to see the bigger picture.
The bigger picture is this: Many ancient societies practiced human sacrifice. They believed that a human sacrifice would keep the gods happy and lead the gods to bless and provide for the people.
Often, those who were sacrificed were willing participants. They believed that they would be rewarded in the afterlife, and that it was an honor. Skeletons of some of those who were sacrificed show that they did not struggle, that they did not panic, that they willingly allowed themselves to be sacrificed. (I don’t know enough science to know how archaeologists figure these things out, but I trust that what they say is true.)
Of course, not all individuals who were sacrificed did so willingly. These things varied from culture to culture.
But at some point, nearly every culture transitioned from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice. Their understanding of how the gods acted changed. Evolved. Progressed.
They developed a new understanding of God.
At the time of Abraham and Isaac, human sacrifice was common in that part of the world. When we read the story, we are shocked at the command God gives to Abraham, but maybe Abraham was not. Or at least, it wouldn’t have been shocking in that time that a god would demand such a thing.
Yet Isaac was the one son through whom God had promised Abraham many descendants. Abraham and his wife were old, and they had given up hope that they would have any children at all, but then God promised them that they would have children, and when Isaac was born, God promised that Isaac would be the one through whom Abraham would have many descendants, as many descendants as there are stars in the sky.
Abraham was holding on to that promise. He was holding it in his heart. Abraham trusted God completely, and believed the promise to be true. All his hope rested on that promise.
So maybe Abraham was shocked that God would command the sacrifice of Isaac. As shocked as we are.
And yet, set in the backdrop of a world where human sacrifice was common, it was not an unusual command; it would not have been outrageous, preposterous, or shocking to people in Abraham’s time, to hear that a god was demanding such a sacrifice.
What’s really interesting here is that, by the time we get to the end of this story, when God stops Abraham from sacrificing his son, and gives to Abraham a lamb to sacrifice instead, we see a remarkable change. Because in that moment—in the telling of this story—the people’s understanding of God changed.
In other words, the writer decided there needed to be a story showing how Israel evolved from a culture that practiced human sacrifice to a culture that did not practice human sacrifice, but instead sacrificed animals in place of humans.
Because they no longer viewed God as a God who demanded human sacrifice. From now on, the God they worshiped was a God who did not demand human sacrifice!
This was a new and unique idea at that time in history, in that part of the world.
So, what happened? Did God change? Or did the people’s understanding of God change?
The truth is that our understanding of God is always changing. Our understanding of God continues to grow and evolve, guided by the Spirit.
For everything you think you know about what the phrase “progressive Christianity” means, this is what it means to me. It means having a faith that is open to the Spirit leading us to new understandings of God and how God works; a Christianity that grows in understanding, and recognizes that human understanding has always grown and evolved - or, progressed. It is a Christianity of humility, because we are always admitting that we don’t know everything, that our knowledge is incomplete, and that the Spirit is always working within us to lead us to the next level of understanding.
So this practice of sacrificing animals instead of humans continued for many generations, even up until Jesus’ time. Jesus’ own parents made a sacrifice when they presented him in the temple and dedicated him to God.
Then Jesus was executed by crucifixion, something that many people then and now understood as a new sort of sacrifice. Now, instead of a God who demands human sacrifice, or a God who demands animal sacrifices, our understanding of God evolved into recognizing that God, in Christ, sacrificed himself…
Now, for some people, this means that Jesus is the animal sacrifice, so to speak; the animal onto which all our sins are placed, who dies in our place, to appease an angry, judgmental God and save us all from eternal damnation.
Honestly, though, a God who would send countless people to hell unless someone was willing to die in their place is just as problematic as a God who would demand that father Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac.
But that is not how I, and many pastors and scholars today, understand the crucifixion. Jesus’ death on the cross wasn’t because God demanded death, but because Rome dealt in the ways of death, and couldn’t handle some guy from Nazareth starting a movement that promised life in abundance to all people.
And when we read the apostle Paul, we read that we are to make a sacrifice of ourselves—not by dying on a cross, but by becoming living sacrifices, dedicating our lives to the same way of love that Christ taught.
Which means my understanding of God is a God who does not demand human sacrifice, does not demand animal sacrifice, but a God who demands that we live in love, sacrificial love.
And this idea is echoed by the prophets.
The prophet Isaiah asks: What kind of fast or sacrifice does God want? God demands that we loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, and let the oppressed go free; God demands that we share our bread with the hungry, and house the homeless, and clothe the naked.
Likewise, the prophet Micah asks what sacrifice should be offered. Micah asks: “Shall I come before God with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’”
Well, we know the answer to these questions:
“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?”
That’s the type of sacrifice God demands. And, in the time of the prophets, it was a radically new way of thinking about God and thinking about sacrifice.
And it shows that God’s people had come a long way from the time when they believed that human sacrifice was what God wanted.
Jesus continued this progressive way of thinking when he said that God desires love, not sacrifice; and when he said that the type of sacrifice God does require is to give food to the hungry, give water to the thirsty, give clothing to the naked, and visit those in prison; to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.
The story of God commanding Abraham to take his son Isaac up the mountain is not meant to be the last word about what God is like or what God demands. But it does show the progression of thought, and the way our understanding of God and our understanding of what God demands of us have evolved.
And when we consider the big picture, we see that God’s Spirit is always at work among humanity, helping us expand our understanding, and grow in love.
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