"The Meaning of Sacrifice"

I'm baaaaack! After two weeks off from preaching, I was back at the St. Barnabas lectern again (we don't have a pulpit really. All readings and preaching happen from a wooden lectern).

And while it would have been a good thing to focus on the importance of "welcome" in light of some of the things happening in the country, when the first reading of the day is the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac.....kind of hard not to spend some time unpacking that cheery tale! 

See what you think.

Texts: Genesis 22:1-14; Matt 10:40-42

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As many of you know…I’m in an interfaith marriage.

My wife converted to Judaism more than 20 years ago and has been very active in her Temple.

We have an agreement about the holidays.

She will come to church and be with us for Christmas Eve…and I will go to her Temple for the  Rosh Hashanah morning service.

I love the blowing of the shofar…the traditional tune settings for the prayers and the marking of the Jewish New Year.

What I don’t really love is that every year…the Torah portion that is read…is this passage from Genesis 22…the Akedah…the binding of Isaac.

It strikes me as odd that this is the Torah story told each time to start the new year.

It’s not a joyful part of the Bible. And it makes Jews just as uncomfortable as it makes us.

This is one of those readings that the late theologian Phyllis Trible called, “the texts of terror.”

But I’m of a mind that when we come across one of these stories…the ones that leave us feeling a little itchy…that’s usually a sign that we are to slow down…and consider what might God be up to and why are we reading these passages?

So…here we go.

Let’s look at the binding of Isaac.

An important thing to remember is that this is all taking place about five thousand years ago…well before Jesus….even before Moses.

Abraham and Sarah were living in a time when there were several other cultural groups around them that practiced human sacrifices.

We know this because archaeologists in Southern Iraq have uncovered ruins and artifacts that show there were sacrifices made of adults and children.

So for Abraham to hear and to understand God’s command to make a literal sacrifice of Isaac was probably not out of the realm of the possible given the culture of that time.

As they approach the mountain…Abraham tells his two servants to stay behind with the donkey and…”we will worship, and then we will come back to you.”

Was Abraham trying to cover his tracks for this horrible deed he was about to do?

Or maybe did he have an understanding that Isaac wasn’t going to die?

Abraham and Isaac head up Mount Moriah.

Mountains in the Bible are places of great “a-ha’s!”

Moses receives the stone tablets at Mount Sinai.

Jesus undergoes his transfiguration on a mountain.

He gives his major teaching in the Gospel of Matthew…as the Sermon on the Mount.

That this particular mountain is called Moriah is also significant.

The name “Moriah” derives from Hebrew root word…”rah” …meaning “to see” as in “coming to an understanding….a discernment.”

What is it that Abraham is going “to see”?

What is Isaac going to understand about all of this?

What is God seeing in this moment?

There aren’t any simple…and short-cut answers to those questions.

The scriptures often leave us with these things to contemplate…and wrestle with.

In that way…this is our own challenge “to see” or “to understand” the lessons of this story.

What’s strange and can’t be pushed aside is that this ask that God has made of Abraham regarding Isaac…comes from the same God who has repeatedly said that from Abraham will come many nations.

In fact…God repeats that promise again in the verses that immediately follow our reading this morning.

So…what’s being seen…or understood…or revealed…in this story?

Why would God make this ask of Abraham?

Well…luckily…Abraham hears a voice of an angel that stops him. It’s then that he sees the ram…the actual and promised sacrifice…caught in the thicket.

But Isaac is left with the discomfort of having been bound and placed on an altar as his father’s supposed sacrificial offering.

And yet…even Isaac…who despite artistic depictions of 17^th century artists as a young boy…he was actually a young man in the story.

And he didn’t fight back against his father.

He seemed to be going along with this scheme.

That’s some level of trust!

Is it any wonder that for the rest of their lives…there are no more conversations recorded between Isaac and Abraham?!

We don’t have the benefit of knowing what was in the heads of Abraham and Isaac during this whole episode.

But like with all “mountain top moments” there is clearly a change in them.

And perhaps this led them to do something of a self-examination…and some critical thinking about the meaning of sacrifice.

For God’s part…these two have demonstrated their willingness to follow even the most outrageous of commands.

And—thankfully--God stepped in to stop them from carrying out a human sacrifice.

This helped lay down the bright line for Jews about killing people to appease God.

From that time on…Abraham and his descendants shunned such practices…no matter what was happening even among the other cultures in ancient Mesopotamia.

The message from God seems clear enough.

God doesn’t want or need bloodshed.

God is looking for a different…and a much deeper and more sincere… and transformative type of sacrifice.

Think of what we hear in Psalm 51:

“The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit;

 a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

We can imagine that both Abraham and Isaac came away from this experience with a troubled spirit.

Troubled both in that sense of trembling from the adrenaline pumping through their veins at such a drama of near-death.

And troubled in that way that the Spirit pokes and prods at us and makes us reflect upon our actions…and how the way we live our lives effects those around us.

In this case…we have two men who have had their hearts broken open to the understanding that to “sacrifice to God” means the giving of ourselves…our own lives…out of our own free will…and not making a sacrifice of someone else to appease some higher power.

A lesson that should not be lost on us living in 21^st century in this country.

Now I’ve heard a lot of people…especially church people…shy away from this and other “texts of terror” out of the Old Testament by saying…”That Old Testament God is so mean and violent.”

But…and I’m putting this nicely…that’s a bunch of hogwash!

The same God who we read as testing Abraham is the same God who gave us Jesus to preach…teach…and reach us with a message of mercy…love…compassion and justice.

This is the same God who… when the bullies and tyrants of the world tried to kill the message of Love as way to protect their own greed and desire for power…defeated their evil scheme…through the resurrection of Jesus thus declaring that Love Wins.

This is the same God who is at work in the world today…that Holy Spirit that is always with us…nudging us…urging us…calling to us to live out the work of Love in our everyday lives.

And as Jesus says in our Gospel…we are called upon to make sacrifices.

And that sacrifice we make of ourselves is to be a people of welcome.

Welcoming the foreigner…the stranger…those who differ from us in color…national origin…income…age…ability…orientation and identity.

It’s through our inclusion of others that we grow a world… a place…where we learn from and about each other…forming stronger connections and building the type of relationships that create community.

And in creating community we discover that we have more in common with each other than differences.

This is the kind of world God has been dreaming of since those first plants poked up through the rich soil in the Garden.

We can make this happen…if we are willing to lay down our prejudices…and sacrifice our desires to keep to ourselves…pushing away anyone that isn’t who we call “one of us.”

In this time where we hear constantly about division and isolation…we are being called to do the work of welcoming and building community.

That’s a sacrifice acceptable to God…even something as simple as offering a cold cup of water to that person thirsting for kindness.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.