Ordinary 13 Year A

Sermon Based on:
Genesis 22:1-14,
Matthew 10:40-42

What are we to make of this terrifying and mysterious story of the binding of Isaac—the Akedah or Binding, as it is called in Jewish tradition?

It is a story we would rather not hear, I think; a story we’d prefer to suppress and avoid, for all sorts of reasons: as parents, as a preacher, as people of faith who want God and the world to make sense. This horrifying story of a demanding God, of a son who carries the firewood for his own burnt offering, of a knife.

Of a terrible death that came so close that the rabbis taught that, as Abraham leaned over Isaac with the knife, tears dripped from his eyes into Isaac’s eyes, and Isaac’s vision was impaired for the rest of his life.

In wrestling with this story this week, I’ve drawn comfort from knowing that we stand alongside millions of unknown people of faith who have struggled with its mystery and wrestled with it over many centuries.

The Akedah—the binding of Isaac, not “the sacrifice of Isaac,” because Isaac was not sacrificed—is one of the oldest stories in the Hebrew tradition. It was told orally for generations before it was written down in the form we hear today. It is foundational for Jewish faith, deeply significant for Muslims, and has been pondered by Christians from the earliest centuries of the Church.

There are so many questions.

Where is Sarah, Isaac’s mother? What kind of God would ask such a thing of Abraham, Isaac’s father? And perhaps most importantly: what are we meant to do with a story like this?

Perhaps the point of the story, as one friend of mine commented, is to make us sweat. To struggle in the face of mystery, and eventually to loosen our grip on our desire to make sense of everything—to control everything—to have a tidy ethical framework into which every part of life neatly fits.

In the very first verse we hear these words: “God tested Abraham.” And in the very last verse: “The LORD will provide.”

This is the profound contradiction at the heart of the story.

Calvin once wrote, “The command and the promise of God are in conflict.” Luther described it as “a contradiction with which God contradicts himself.”

And then Walter Brueggemann offers what I think is one of the wisest comments on this passage. He writes: “The expositor must take care not to explain, for it will not be explained.”

That’s quite discouraging news for a preacher!

But he continues: “Without explanation, the text leads us to face the reality that God is God.”

And so here we are. God is God. And we are left, perhaps, at a loss for explanation. Maybe that is where we are meant to be, because that is sometimes where life itself brings us.

Sometimes it can feel as though our faith is all assurances and answers and “ought tos,” with no room for terror and bewilderment, suffering and contradiction. Yet life has a way of bringing us to places where the easy answers no longer work, where explanations fail us, and where we discover just how little control we really have.

There is a wonderful conversation I read between a number of scholars from different traditions, including the feminist biblical scholar Phyllis Trible and the Islamic philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr. They were discussing this story and reflecting that it makes very little sense if we try to read it as an ethical lesson—as a story telling us what we should do. Rather, they want us to see it as a mystical story, one that disturbs us, outrages us, and opens us to the mystery of God.

Phyllis Trible commented: ”It’s not a good idea to make this into an ethical story, a ‘should’ story. But it is very much alive as a descriptive story. This is the human predicament, and this is how God is perceived. There is a terror in God’s mysteriousness and inscrutability.”

Bill Moyers, who was conducting the conversation, then asked: “Crucifixion, Holocaust, suffering, loss, pain—are all of these at the heart of religion and revelation?”

And Hossein, the Islamic philosopher, replied: “They are at the heart of human existence. You cannot exist in this world without these tragedies. Religion tries to make sense of them, but making sense is not always at a single level.”

I share that conversation not because it finally explains this terrifying story. Rather, it reminds us that this story opens a door onto the immense mystery of human existence—its beauty, its fragility, its suffering, and our search for God within it.

As Christians, I think we cannot hear of Isaac carrying the wood up the mountain without remembering another beloved Son who would one day carry the wood of the cross. But unlike Isaac, Jesus is not spared. That, too, is part of the mystery into which this story draws us.

One thing has struck me particularly this week. Throughout this extraordinary story, Abraham keeps saying the same simple words: “Here I am.”

He says them to God. He says them to Isaac. He says them to the angel.

Three times. These are words of availability. Words of attention. Words that refuse to turn away.

In response to Isaac’s heartbreaking question about the whereabouts of the lamb, Abraham simply says, “God will provide.”

At that point in the story we don’t know whether Abraham believes Isaac himself is the lamb God has provided, or whether he trusts that somehow another sacrifice will appear. We’re not told.

What we do know is that Abraham continues to face God.

He does not understand. He cannot reconcile the command with the promise. Yet he continues to say, “Here I am.”

There are moments in every life when explanations run out. When illness arrives. When relationships fracture. When someone dies too young. When violence erupts. When grief refuses to make sense.

Christian faith has never promised that every mystery can be solved. There are moments when God’s ways remain beyond our understanding, and there are moments when God feels utterly mysterious—even frightening.

But when explanation comes to an end, prayer does not. Faith does not.

Sometimes, when all our efforts to understand and to control have been exhausted, perhaps all we can do is what Abraham does: stand in the midst of the contradiction, refuse to turn away, and continue to say to God,

“Here I am.”

This mystery cannot finally be explained. It can only be lived.

And perhaps, in the end, that is enough.

Amen.