Dr. John Tamilio III

© 2023, Dr. Tamilio

The story of the sacrifice of Isaac is a tough one.  It’s no wonder that many mainline preachers avoid it.  Some critics of religion say that it amounts to little more than divine child abuse.  Why would God ask anyone to sacrifice their child?  I know — that isn’t what happens.  Isaac is spared at the last minute, but what sort of test is it for God to ask someone to sacrifice his own son?

Some scholars connect this story to the story of Jesus on the cross.  God spared the son of Abraham, but not his own.  In this case, Isaac is a pseudo-Christ figure — a foreshadowing of what will happen centuries later in Roman-occupied Palestine when the Savior of the world shouldered the sins of humanity, carrying them all the way to the cross.  But again, Jesus is God incarnate: the fully human, fully divine Savior who is able to do what no human being could.  Isaac is just a boy — a fully human boy.  People in the midst of evil scratch their heads and say, “Why me?” all the time.  They ask, “If God is all loving and all good, then why do I have to suffer?”  How much more could Abraham have asked this question?  How much more is the righteous will of God called into question by child sacrifice?

This is a tricky story for which there are no easy answers.  Maybe it is all about what it seems to be about: God is testing Abraham’s faith.

It is easy for us to say this and, even in some way, to feel comfortable with this.  However, if we saw a story on the news this afternoon about a parent who sacrificed his or her child because God told them to, we would conclude that the parent was absolutely insane and should be locked up in a sanatorium for life!

God is testing Abraham in this story, though.  There is no way around it.  The good news is that God was never going to allow Abraham to kill Isaac.  The story suggests that God wanted to see if Abraham would trust him when God asked him to do something utterly absurd and, dare we say, horrific.  The logic behind this test is hard to compute, let alone stomach.  Maybe, as the prophet wrote, God’s thoughts are not our thoughts nor are God’s ways our ways.  Sometimes, to use the words of Norman Maclean, we have to love completely (and one could add trust completely) without complete understanding.

Maybe there are times in our lives when God asks us to do what seems (at least on the surface) to be completely crazy.  Think of times in your own life when you felt God pulling you a certain way — coaxing you to do something that you might not regularly do or want to do.  I think all of us sometimes wonder if we are strong enough, brave enough, smart enough, capable enough, righteous enough, or worthy enough.  A task stands before us that seems impossible, like a huge mountain that we know we could never climb.  If we believe (if we truly believe) that we are being led by the Holy Spirit to tackle such tasks, then we need to step out in faith and trust that God will guide and sustain us no matter what happens or how impossible the feat seems to be.

This isn’t easy to do.  Remember that old motto of the Boy Scouts?  Be prepared.  That is part of the point of scouting or any endeavor that requires any sort of preparation.  I can’t imagine, for example, sitting for an exam without studying first.  I can’t imagine trying to run a marathon without doing months and months and months (or better yet years and years ad years) of training.  Who am I kidding?  I can’t imagine running a marathon period.

But you get the idea.  Anything that requires any sort of preparation goads the diligent to get ready for it.  To train.  To plan.  To study.  Unfortunately, God does not always work that way.  Sometimes God calls us with very little notice.  People in the Bible are asked to do all kinds of things with very little time to prepare all the time.  Abraham was asked to journey to a foreign land, because God was going to make his offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand along the shore.  Abraham was pushing 100 at the time.  Can you imagine God asking any of us to uproot our lives at this moment — to go to a place we may never have been to?  Can you imagine being asked to do it when you are a centenarian?  And of course, there are others.  Moses wasn’t ready to be the leader of Jews enslaved in Egypt.  Most of the prophets felt as if they were too young or not articulate enough to answer God’s call.  The disciples did not go to school to get certified to minister in Jesus’ name.  Nope.  No seminary training for them.

Think of our forebearers: the Pilgrims and the Puritans who fled England to escape religious persecution.  They came to the New World not knowing how arduous it would be — and they found out that first winter.  Think of our nation’s independence, which we will celebrate in two days.  Who would have thunk that a band of farmers and merchants could fight off the strongest country in the world at the time: the British Empire.  But they did.  They, too, stepped out in faith to form a nation where they acknowledged that all people are created equal and are endowed with certain fundamental rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  They referred to the establishment of the United States of America as an experiment.  Why?  Well, like all experiments, they did not know if it was going to work.  They had to trust — and trust they did.

You can look through the annals of history and find all sorts of examples of people who trusted in God, especially when it didn’t seem as if they had a prayer — when it didn’t seem as if they had the wherewithal to make it on their own.  They trusted in God.

Abraham trusted in God.  Maybe he knew that God would stay his hand, preventing him from killing Isaac.  Maybe he didn’t, but he trusted that whatever the reason for such a horrible request, there was a divine explanation for it.  Luckily, it was only a test, one that the patriarch passed with flying colors.

God tests us all from time to time.  Sometimes it is a little test (a quiz of sorts).  Sometimes it is a huge exam.  Whenever you feel as if you are in the midst of such testing, pause for a moment.  Pray to God, the way Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before he was crucified: not as I will, but as you will.  Indeed, may our God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, in our lives, and in the life of our church.  Amen.