This story is traditionally
called "the binding of Isaac," and sometimes the sacrifice of Isaac,
although those who call it that must not have read it that closely
because--spoiler alert!--Isaac isn't sacrificed. Come to think of it, perhaps that isn't such
a bad title after all, because if Isaac's life is not sacrificed, his innocence
certainly is. As one commentator wrote,
this story captures that growing realization we all face as children that (a)
we and our parents are separate beings, (b) we are totally dependent upon them
and (c) there is no guarantee that we will get what we need or be protected
from evil in the world. All of this dawning terror is packed into one line, as
Isaac begins to realize just who the sacrifice is intended to be: "The
fire and the wood are here,” he says to Abraham, “but where is the lamb for a
burnt offering?" Can you imagine
the sense of betrayal, of being alone in the world, of absolute terror that a child would feel faced with this?
I don’t think that was the
author’s point, I don’t think it was intended to elicit sympathy for Isaac, to strike
terror in every parent’s heart. It is a
set-up for Abraham’s reply, which is surely one of the points of the story: “God himself will
provide the lamb for a burnt offering.”
It has been left to modern interpreters to point this out, accusing God of
child abuse for putting Isaac through that emotional hell, which will at the
least produce a big, fat case of post-traumatic shock syndrome in later life,
along with extreme narcissism and repeated psychotic breaks.
Now, I don't want to belittle
these musings, I think they have value, especially in this time of increasing
awareness of child abuse and domestic violence in our congregations. What I don't agree with is the inclination of
some preachers to avoid this passage like the plague, arguing that it is an
abusive text and has no place being inflicted upon modern congregations.
This is certainly their right, it
is a bedrock principle of Presbyterian polity that nobody can dictate what a
pastor preaches, and far be it from me to advocate anything else. But I think
it overlooks a rich opportunity to think about the nature of God, scripture,
faith and a whole lot of other things, only a fraction of which we'll get to
today.
So, I'm going to tackle it, and
the first thing I want to say is this: I do not believe God ordered Abraham to
sacrifice his son, his only son (And
what does that make Ishmael, anyway?
Chopped liver? Last time I
looked, Ishmael was Abraham’s son as well . . . and he was set to become the
ancestor of a great nation, just like Isaac)
But once again: I do not believe that God ordered Abraham to sacrifice
his son Isaac, I do not believe that the God of love would do that to anyone,
much less a child, and before you walk out griping about my lack of taking the
Bible seriously -- those if you who didn't walk out at the thought of God the
child abuser, that is -- answer me this: how many of you believe that The Lord
created the earth in seven 24-hour days?
That it really is an
abomination to wear two kinds of cloth together, or eat bacon? How many believe that God blesses people who
rejoice when babies' heads are bashed against rocks, as is claimed by Psalm 137? If
you’re going to take the Bible literally, you have to deal with those things,
and much more. However, if you agree
that the Bible is a product of its time and place, and in that time and place,
nobody had ever heard of PTS-whatsit and only a thousand years later would
Narcissus be a twinkle in Ovid's eye, you can get past all of that and see this
passage for what it is.
As a matter of fact, it is
unlikely that the original audience of this story-- Hebrew tribes-people a
thousand years before the common era--would take it as historically accurate.
It is only in the last hundred years or so that a certain segment of
Christianity has insisted that the bible is literally and historically
true. The original audience of the Old
Testament understood that the Bible is symbolic in nature, and that only in
broad strokes can it be considered to be historically accurate.
Personally, I consider this story
a parable, and like Jesus' parables they are told to make a point, and whether
a parable describes an historical situation is beside that point. When Jesus said “there was this rich young
ruler,” his disciples and whoever else was listening knew that although there
certainly were rich young rulers, the
one Jesus was talking about was just a talking point. The value in the story is what it tells us—or
doesn’t tell us—about God.
In the case of this scripture,
perhaps it’s more of the latter, perhaps its more in the way of “doesn’t tell
us” about God. Rabbi Rachel Barenblat,
in her wonderful blog “the Velveteen Rabbi,” reminds us that while some
scripture answers questions, others, not so much, and that this is clearly of
the latter variety. Not only does it
answer no questions, but it leads us to ask many more: Why would God ask this
thing? Does God ask it, or is it a
story made up for a particular point?
Maybe it really did happen, and Abraham is listening to the wrong
voices? Why doesn’t Abraham say
anything? Why doesn't he explain
anything to Isaac? Why doesn't Isaac cry out when he's bound to the altar? What
goes through Abraham and Isaac's heads during this traumatic scene? Why is
Sarah absent?
The first line of the passage
says that God put Abraham to the test. If the test was the binding, and
potential sacrifice, of Isaac, did Abraham pass? Was he supposed to be willing to go through
with it, or w as he supposed to resist? What was he supposed to do, when was he
supposed to do it, and what are we supposed to learn from it?
A particularly Rabbinic form of
biblical interpretation, with which Rabbi Barenblat would be well familiar,
seeks to answer these kind of questions.
It’s called Midrash, and though Rabbinic interpretation is every bit as
complex as Christian, it can be said
that midrash "fills in the blanks" of a story in scripture, it
reads between the lines, wondering about that which has been left unsaid. It acknowledges that there might be more to
the story than has actually been written down.
Which makes sense, when you think about it: surely we don't imagine that
what is recorded in even the most meticulous history is the whole story? We don't think that historical accounts of,
say, writing the emancipation proclamation tell all there is to tell, do
we? I'm sure there was a fair amount of
"Mr. President, are you sure you want to do that?" from his friends,
or "you sure that's honest, Abe?" going on, and maybe even some
"Abraham, put down that quill and come to supper.” There's always more
happening than meets the historical eye, and Midrash is a way of performing
controlled speculation on what that might be.
So. With all that in mind, let's do some
midrash. Let's take one of the many
questions about this passage and try to use midrashic interpretation to examine
it. And one that comes up almost
immediately is "why is Abraham silent?
Why doesn't he say anything when all of a sudden, God tells him to kill
his son, the one out of Sarah, upon whom depends the future of the Jewish
people. And one way of answering this is
to say "well, what if he did say
something?"
And in fact, in one of the
delightful volumes of midrash collected by Lewis Ginzberg at the beginning of
the last century there is such a midrash, and it begins like this: "The Lord decided to test Abraham and
Isaac ... And He said to Abraham, "Take now your son." And Abraham said
"I have two sons, and I do not know which of them you mean for me to
take." So God said "Your only son," and Abraham replied "The one is the only
son of his mother, and the other is
the only son of his
mother." God said, gritting the
divine molars, "You are to take the one you love," but Abraham said
"Eh ... I love this one and I love that one." Finally, God is forced to be particular:
"Take Isaac," he said.
And it's interesting to note that
this one midrashic fragment, this one, simple riff on a single question -- why
doesn't Abraham talk back -- addresses a bunch of considerations. It acknowledges that it is odd that the angel
would call Isaac Abraham's only son, when everyone knows he has another named
Ishmael. It inserts Sarah into the
story, where she wasn't before, and makes room for her concerns (and in fact
spins them out in a later portion). But
most of all, it humanizes Abraham, allowing him to show concern through his
bargaining.
And speaking of bargaining, this is
not the first time have we’ve seen Abraham doing that. Remember?
He bargained with God for the city of Sodom, weaselling God down from
destroying the whole town to promising that if there is only one righteous person in all the city, it
will be spared, and though it didn't work out so well for Sodom, it illustrates
one of the major points about midrash: it doesn't just make stuff up. It builds on other scriptures, using other
passages to justify and shore up its interpretations. As I said earlier, it’s controlled speculation
So. Let's do some more. It's clear that Abraham is stalling: he argues with God, he pretends not to get it,
then he uses the oldest dodge in the world: like Moses and Isaiah after him, he
argues that he's not suitable for the task, and
"Am I fit to perform the sacrifice?" he asks, "Am I a
priest?" Then, again in
time-honored tradition—see Adam—he tries to pass the buck: "Get Shem to do
it, after all, he is high priest." And God says "when you get to that
place, I'll consecrate you and you'll be a priest. Happy?"
Of course, Abraham isn't. Happy, that is. He is deeply troubled over what he is being
told to do, and not just for himself:
"how shall I separate my son Isaac from Sarah, his
mother?" But, he's always obeyed
the Lord, and he's never regretted it, God had always gotten him out of a jam
-- that whole telling Pharaoh Sarah was his sister episode, for instance, and so
he saddles up his donkey . . . Slowly .
. . and calls two of his men in from the
back forty and tells them they're going on a little trip, but that they have
time to go say goodbye to their wives, all the time in the world, and he goes
to Sarah and tells her they're going to get religious instruction for Isaac --
he doesn't have the heart (or is it the guts?) to tell her the truth, And he tells the same thing to Isaac . . .
So they travel for three days,
toward the land of Moriah, and they take the scenic route, stopping to take
pictures along the way -- a smiling Isaac standing in front of the donkey, one
of his servants pretending to fall into a well, that sort of thing -- and on
the fourth day, though Moriah is still a long way off, he tells the servants to
wait for them where they were, and Isaac and his father trudge on.
And in this midrash, Abraham is
hardly complacent, but tries instead to walk a middle line ... while not
disobeying God, he does all he can to delay until God, . . . what? Comes to his
senses? Finds another sacrifice? What?
And the cool thing about this form of story-telling, of
question-exploring is that we all can do it, it doesn’t take a degree in
biblical studies, or ordination as a Presbyterian preacher or rabbi, though it
helps to have a knowledge of the Bible.
We can all practice this imaginative form of interpretation, we can use
it as a form of daily meditation, if we like, or daily bible study.
And maybe that’s actually part of
the point of passages like these. Maybe
they’re there in part to get us asking those questions, to get us to think
about the answers, and to understand that God is big enough to countenance
them. As Rabbi Barenblat puts it, maybe
this and other passages are ambiguous and difficult for a reason: because the process of studying them,
of asking the hard questions, is itself a way of learning about God, of
learning to see God in difficult places.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment