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The Rev. Frank
Logue Sacrificing Ourselves
Human sacrifice is an unholy idea. The Old Testament considered human sacrifice an abomination. The Prophet Jeremiah twice speaks of human sacrifice as being something God did not command. In fact in the book of Leviticus, we are told that a man who allows his son to be sacrificed to the god Molech, the father should be stoned to death. The Bible did call for animal sacrifice in the Old Testament, but that was abolished with Jesus death. And speaking of Jesus, Christians can never call all human sacrifices ungodly while holding that Jesus was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. And yet, we have the story we encountered in this morning’s readings of Abraham heading off for Mount Moriah to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. Isaac is the child that Abraham and Sarah longed for, prayed for, waited impatiently for. And it is this son that God tells Abraham to sacrifice. This story of God testing Abraham is at the heart of three faiths—Christianity, Islam and Judaism. For Christians, the story we usually refer to as “The Sacrifice of Isaac” prefigures God offering his own son Jesus to death on the cross. Abraham is tested but not required to carry through on it, while God the Father does not flinch as God the Son, Jesus, dies as a sacrifice for our sins. For Muslims, the story is not of Isaac. The Koran tells of Abraham being tested by God who wants him to sacrifice his beloved first son Ishmael. For Muslims, the Koran uses this story to affirm both Abraham’s faith and Ishmael’s status as the first born of Abraham. This is why the Dome of the Rock, the great golden dome in the center of Jerusalem, is so sacred to Muslims, for all three faiths attest to that location as being the spot where the near sacrifice took place. For Jews, the story is a central one to their faith for it shows the complete obedience to God their father Abraham had. The great Jewish teacher Maimonides wrote that God tested Abraham for he knew Abraham would pass the test and cause Abraham’s faith revealed in that test to shine like a beacon to the Gentiles. By the way, for many, if not most Jewish interpreters, Isaac is no boy, but 37 years old. This is simple math as the next chapter begins with Sarah’s death at 127 years of age, making Isaac 37 at the time. So it is no mere boy who Abraham leads to Moriah, but a man who would have been physically stronger. This view offers a very different picture from the one I usually hold in my head of a boy Isaac for then Isaac is more of an active agent who is very trusting of his father. For all three monotheistic faiths, this central story presents an interpretive challenge, for none of the three religions has ever practiced human sacrifice. So why does God seem to want Abraham to do just that? One possibility is that is was never God’s intention for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. For the Hebrew text uses two different ways of referring to God in the story. In the beginning, we are told that God spoke to Abraham. The word here is Elohim, which is the usual word for gods with a lower case “g.” This is how the one true God is referred to in scripture, but it is also how other false gods are referred to. Later when the moment comes for the sacrifice, it is a messenger of Yahweh who calls out to Abraham. God is no longer referred to with the ambiguous Elohim, which could mean gods or the God, but now the text uses the personal name of God later given to Moses at the burning bush. So in this interpretation, Abraham was following the will of the false gods, demons really, in going to sacrifice Isaac and then at the penultimate moment, the one true God stops the unholy act. The only problem with this rather tempting solution is that Abraham is commended for not withholding his own son from God. So the text commends Abraham for being willing to sacrifice his boy, which doesn’t square with the idea that this was something God never wanted to happen. I think no matter how we choose to interpret this text, we must at least acknowledge that given his time and culture, Abraham considered the request to sacrifice Isaac to be extremely difficult. Abraham did not consider God’s request unholy, or ungodly. This is, after all, the same Abraham who already stood up to God before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and bargained with God to let the few righteous people out of the cities first—these being Abraham’s kinsman in Lot’s family. So we have evidence that Abraham was capable of standing up to God and saying “no,” or at least bargaining for mercy, neither of which he does when asked to sacrifice Isaac. Another possibility is that the story reveals that while God knew Abraham well, it could also show how well Abraham knew God. We could take Abraham’s words to Isaac at face value when he told his son, “God will see to the sheep for the burnt offering my son.” In this interpretation, Abraham knows that while God may test Abraham, God would never actually require Abraham to kill and burn his son. This interpretation is also tempting, for it helps us understand how Abraham could do this thing I consider so detestable. But the text goes against this interpretation as it seems that Abraham is ready willing and able to carry through on the demand, even if he is also quite ready to change course on hearing the angel call his name. No, it seems Abraham expected that he would have to go through with the sacrifice. So what we find is that while the whole situation may seem so ungodly to us, given Abraham’s time and culture, it was not so out of line. For Abraham lived among peoples who practiced human sacrifice. So it seems that God puts Abraham to the greatest possible test of his times, the test of whether he loves God more than his own dear son Isaac. God’s test of Abraham is call so radical that it would seem it could never be reconciled with gentle Jesus of the New Testament. And then there is Jesus in this morning’s Gospel reading being just as demanding. Jesus says, If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. Take up your cross. To those who lived in the French Revolution Jesus might have said, “Take up your guillotine and follow me.” Or to those in this country 200 years ago or less he could have said, “Put the noose around your neck, take up your gallows and follow me.” So perhaps for us the call is, “Pack the state’s lethal injection kit and follow me.” No matter how you look at it, Jesus calls on his disciples to die to themselves in order to live to Him. Jesus’ call is to an obedience less foreign to our ears, but no less demanding than the test of Abraham. But I still find Jesus’ words less harsh. It is easier for me to decide to give up my own life to God than it would be for me to offer my daughter Griffin’s life. I would die for Griffin, but I would not harm her, even for God. Yet while the context and actions are very different, God does call on me to offer my daughter to God. It may be a move from the literal to the metaphorical in terms of sacrificing my child, but the offering is still real. It is God’s will for her life I am to hope and pray for. Not my will for her and not even her own will for her life, but God’s will. In just a minute, we will baptize Shelby Armentrout. In bringing her here and committing her life to God, Fred and Melissa are offering their little girl up to God. They are offering Shelby up to die to worldly ambitions and hopes in order to live a Christ-like life. Shelby is an infant and for those of other denominational backgrounds who wonder about this, I have handouts on how this action is both scriptural and fits with the ancient practices of the church. But make no mistake about the seriousness of what we are doing today. Baptism is not a ritual bath. Baptism is ritual drowning. In baptism we are united to Jesus in his death so that we may also be united to him in his resurrection. As such we offer up those in baptism in complete obedience and trust in God for their ultimate well being. Today, the test is not near so difficult as Abraham’s test. Within our time and culture, no one would consider human sacrifice to be godly or holy and so that test would no longer work even on Abraham. But we are still called to sacrifice our own desires, our own wills to God and we are called to do the same for our children. God called on Abraham not to withhold his son, his favored one from God. God calls Fred and Melissa to do the same, to not withhold their beloved daughter Shelby from God’s will. Through Jesus, God called on each of us to place him above all else dying to our selves to follow him. Let us continue to follow Jesus through Shelby’s baptism where we will have an opportunity to renew our own baptisms.
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