Homily for Sunday, June 29, 2014 Graves Chapel
Indignation.
Outrage. Those words describe the reactions I've observed from parents when
they discuss our Old Testament lesson for today. How could Abraham have taken
his beloved little boy, the child of his old age, up on that mountain and
prepared him for sacrifice? How
could he raise his arm with knife in hand and even begin to contemplate
lowering that knife into his son's flesh? Without exception, people say,
"I could never have done that." Count me in that number. I can't even
imagine it.
The
usual interpretation of this incident is that Abraham's faith is being tested.
In fact, the first words of the passage from Genesis 22 are "God tested
Abraham." Since Abraham obediently follows God's instructions, he passes
the test. Through Abraham, God shows us in an unforgettable way that our
complete trusting faith in God will be rewarded in unexpected ways.
But
if the near-sacrifice of Isaac illustrates Abraham's faithful obedience, how do
we explain his actual sacrifice of his older, illegitimate son Ishmael? In case you've forgotten that part of
the story, both Abraham and his wife Sarah were very old--Sarah past
childbearing age--when Isaac was born to them. Some ten years before Isaac's
birth, Sarah tells Abraham that he should sire a child with her young servant
Hagar since she herself is unable to bear him a child. From that union, Hagar
bears a son for Abraham who is named Ishmael, and Abraham loves the boy. After
Isaac is born, Sarah's jealousy of Hagar and her child overwhelms her. She fears that Isaac will not be first
in his father's heart, so she demands that Abraham send Hagar and the boy away,
and that is what he does. Abraham gives Hagar some bread and a skin of water
and takes them out to the desert. As far as Abraham is concerned, his son
Ishmael is dead.
After
the bread and water are consumed, Hagar places the boy Ishmael under a bush and
sits opposite him "a good way off" so that she doesn't have to watch
her son die. But an angel appears to Hagar, shows her a well, and tells her not
to fear for her son because God plans to "make a great nation of
him." [Genesis 21:8-21] Jews trace their lineage back to Abraham through
Isaac, but Muslims (that other preordained nation) trace their line to Abraham through
Ishmael--the son who truly was sacrificed by his father.
What
are we to make of these stories about a father who sacrifices his sons? Is the ultimate takeaway that God will
make everything all right in the end?
Since we live in a world where Jews and Muslims are often at odds (to
put it mildly), we may still be waiting for God's peace to prevail. At the very
least, in our modern lingo, we might wonder if Ishmael and Isaac both suffered
terrible psychological scars from their common experience of having a father
who was willing to kill them.
Those unhealed wounds may still reverberate.
But
there is another way to understand this complicated story. Since Abraham sent
Ishmael into the desert some years before he took Isaac up on the mountain with
a bundle of sticks and a knife, surely the story of Isaac is the definitive
one. Set some 2000 years before the birth of Christ, the story of Abraham and
Isaac may actually be about the beginnings of civilized life, as we think of it
today. Abraham lived in a place where he was surrounded by what the Bible calls
pagans, and the sacrifice of children was common practice among the pagan
peoples. When God requires Abraham to stage a child sacrifice but then orders
him to STOP before he can "lay" his hand on the boy, we may interpret
a lesson for succeeding generations: God says that His people will no longer
sacrifice other human beings.
Even
so, today we live in a world, this advanced and highly civilized world, where
children's lives are sacrificed every day. We like to think that the
too-frequent practice of parents selling their children--often to horrific
ends--takes place only in faraway lands. But even here in the United States,
children are sacrificed. Sometimes
that happens when parents have such rigid expectations of their children that
they are pushed onto certain paths at very young ages. Think of child beauty
contestants or athletes, like Tiger Woods, who was on the Tonight Show demonstrating his golf skills when he was only two
years old. It isn't difficult to imagine that the adult lives of such children
might take a different and healthier path if they are not sacrificed to the
dreams and egos of their parents.
Still,
it isn't just parents in our country that are sometimes guilty of sacrificing
their children. As a society, we share a collective guilt for child sacrifice.
According to the latest statistics on child poverty (from the Children's
Defense Fund), one in five children lives in poverty in the U.S. Although we
hope and pray that they will rise above the difficulties of their young lives
as they grow to adulthood, it is hard to ignore what that statistic suggests--children
who are malnourished, who are either homeless or live in substandard housing,
who attend under-funded schools, if they attend school at all. Poor children
are far more likely to be exposed to violence and abuse than more affluent
children. They are also more likely to be neglected. As caring people, and as
Christians, we try to do what we can for the poor, but I urge us not to forget
the sacrificed dreams and lives of these precious ones that Jesus called
"the least among us"--who were most favored by Him.
AMEN.
