The fourth sermon in a series on sacrifice in scripture. This sermon explores Abraham’s experience, called to sacrifice Isaac.

My enemy will say, “I have prevailed”; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. – Psalm 13:4-5

Earlier in this series on the meaning of Christian sacrifice we considered how by Abraham’s sacrifice of faith he was reckoned righteous before God. Often the way that is preached is like an altar call, just believe and be saved. These words of course are true, but we often think of faith as like intellectual assent to doctrinal positions. The passage from Genesis today shows us that it is a struggle, that God is not under our power but we are under his wild and awesome power, and at times that can make some absurdly wild. Our mission is to cultivate, renew and transform the earth with civilization rather than barbarism, to make disciples of all nations, and submit to a good and gracious king. A good and gracious and wild king. Put simply God is not nice. What he demands from us is not nice.

Our passage today, Genesis 22 starts with “after these things” which gives me an excuse to summarize Abraham’s life. His Father Terah led him as a young man out of the urban center of the world into the wilderness. God met Abraham in the wilderness, he met with a command to leave the comfort of his father’s household, to follow him. God met Abraham with a promise: follow me and I will bless you and make your name blessed, I will make you a great nation, those who bless you I will bless, and those who curse I will curse. So Abraham took his barren wife and followed God to Egypt, and then to the Jordan, and there God showed the land where Abraham’s descendants would live. Abraham fought with Melchizedek a priest-king and was blessed by him. Abraham wanted to seal the deal with God so tried sacrificing heifers and rams and turtledoves. As they grew older Sarah grew impatient for a child and demanded that Abraham sleep with her servant Hagar and she gave birth to Ishmael. Sometimes insisting on our plans means much pain in following after God’s for Ishmael’s descendants have been and often remain enemies of Isaac’s. God demands after this that Abraham and his descendants be different from the nations of the world and calls Abraham to be circumcised. Three strangers, three angels, three voices for God appear to Abraham then and promise that Sarah will give him a son, Isaac. Abraham prayed for his cousin Lot and saw him delivered from the just destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah for permitting sodomy and eschewing hospitality. Isaac the promised child at last is born while Abraham fights to defend his family from the tribal warlord Abimelech. Hagar and Ishmael flee into the wilderness.

Through all this Abraham is struggling to align his life with the absurd, that out of all the people of the world the God of heaven has called him to make a great nation to bless the whole earth. Faith is not a moment. Faith is not entirely apart from the stumbling that led to his having a son with Hagar. Faith has him carrying lamps through discarded carcasses, has him chasing birds away from them with sticks.

After all this, at the sunset of his life, God calls him and says “Abraham, Abraham 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,”. What! God is calling on Abraham to take the only assurance he has of his faith in God, not only that but his child whom he loves, and to kill him to satisfy God. God could have just taken Isaac from Abraham. God could have commanded Abraham to offer Isaac right there and then But he makes it a journey. Step by step Abraham knows that God is asking something terrible from him. Step by step Abraham hopes this is God who determines what is good and what is evil. Step by step he trembles. Early in the morning Abraham rose, saddling his donkey. He took servants to help cut the wood, Isaac helped too, then Abraham sent the servants away. “Dad where is the sacrifice?” Isaac asked. Jehovah Jireh Abraham answered, the Lord will provide. The Lord will provide the lamb for the sacrifice my son. Together they build an altar there, they pile wood on it. Then Abraham, this old ancient man, turns with fury upon his own son, a youth in the prime of his strength. Abraham takes him and binds him to the altar he has built. He does not hesitate any longer. He takes out his knife and is prepared to stick that knife into the chest of his son, his only son, whom he loved.

Does this image disgust you? Good. It is grotesque. Do you think God only sends you sweet pleasant nothings? Did you think faith was all polite and nice and sanitary according to your comfort? Do you know what we are seeing here? We are seeing the crucifixion. The father willingly offering his own son, with whom he was well pleased. The son obediently at the hand of his father. Upon the wood he himself carried to this mountain in Jerusalem. The wrath of the father coming and striking against the son. Behold your God. This should make you tremble, this should fill you with fear and with awe, and in the end looking up and beholding the wrath and the mercy of God should make you new, sometimes in the moment, but it is a contention for a lifetime.

Soren Kierkegaard argues that Abraham’s faith cannot be understood solely as blind obedience, but as a subjective passion that surpasses ethical norms. He contends that true faith involves an individual’s willingness to suspend reason and embrace the absurd, as Abraham did when he believed in the possibility of both sacrificing Isaac and receiving him back from the dead.

Kierkegaard criticizes sermons that try to reconcile the ethical dilemmas presented in the story. He argues that by attempting to rationalize Abraham’s actions, these sermons diminish the significance of faith and reduce it to a mere moral code. Instead, Kierkegaard emphasizes the importance of recognizing the tension and anguish inherent in faith, which goes beyond conventional ethical considerations.

Faith is not in submission to our comfort, our values, our norms, our reason it is not our handmaid. Faith makes us worthy to be God’s servants. As Abraham’s hand was prepared to make this offering an angel of the Lord came and called to him ” Abraham! Abraham!” And Abraham says “Here I am” as if to say I am here where have you been! The angel goes on “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God and have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” Just then there appeared to them a ram, who was caught and stuck in a thicket, so they took this ram and offered it in praise to God and they named that place Jehovah Jireh for the Lord provided the sacrifice.

Christian sacrifice is the offering of all of ourselves, all of our lives to God. And this is going to involve fidelity through the absurd, this is going to involve the giving up of all things, and the receiving of all things anew. But it is not easy to give up what we love. It is terrible and traumatic, but those who lose their lives will find them. Those who covet their lives under their own control will lose them as slaves to this perishing world. As Paul says in Romans today “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,” (6:22-23). Tremble then and trust the God who provides to give you the faith you do not have, and to make an offering of your life made possible by Jesus who makes mercy and justice to meet in your soul.

My enemy will say, “I have prevailed”; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. – Psalm 13:4-5