Why Was Abraham Tested?

“Why Was Abraham Tested?” was preached at Sunnyside Presbyterian Church on Sunday, July 2, 2017. Inspirations for this sermon include Scripture, commentaries, Challenging Prophetic Literature, and recent events within our congregation.

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Genesis 22:1-14

1 After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” 6 Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. 7 Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.

9 When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

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This is not a light story. We need upfront and direct about this from the very beginning. This is a difficult, emotional passage. Genesis 22 is a tough one to hear.

I want to be explicitly clear about what God appears to be asking in Genesis 22. And that’s the key phrase here: “appears to be.” God appears to be asking for human sacrifice. Specifically, God appears to be asking for the sacrifice of Abraham’s son. God appears to be asking for the death of a child.

There’s even a Yiddish folk tale that goes something like this: Why did God not send an angel to tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? And the answer is God knew that no angel would take on such a task. Instead, the angels said to God, “If you want to command death, do it yourself.”

If we don’t give this passage the full weight it deserves and if we don’t let it shake us to our core, then we’re not staying true to what power this passage holds… or what grace it can show.

The near-sacrifice of Isaac as we Christians call it, or “the akedah” (also known as the binding of Isaac) as our Jewish neighbors call it, is one of the most puzzling and perplexing stories in our Bible. For centuries it has faced heated, even dangerous debates because it leaves us with so many questions. Is this a story of an abusive God, a misguided Abraham, a not-so-wise Isaac, an example of religious violence at its worst…?

Or is Genesis 22 a story of faith and obedience? Is there some profound meaning locked away between the lines in the depth of the narrative? 

This summer we have been asking the “Why’s” of Genesis… and each week it seems these questions are getting a little bit more tangible and a little bit more personal and a little bit more difficult. I promise it won’t be like this for the rest of summer—this might be our peak our difficult whys—but this is a part of the Genesis narrative. This is the order of the first book in our Bible. Difficult parts and all. Today we are asking the question, “Why was Abraham tested?”

Our passage today begins with “After these things God tested Abraham…” Noting these “things” is an important part of the story. Before this point: Abram has been blessed to be a blessing, he has been called by God to go to a land he has never seen, he is promised by God that he will be a father to many nations and therefore his name Abram becomes Abraham, Abraham then endures the long years of Sarah’s barrenness, then he has Ishmael with his wife’s servant Hagar, and then at long last, at the age of 100, there is the impossible birth of the boy they call “laughter” – Abraham’s son, whom he loves, Isaac.

Call after call, Abraham responds faithfully. Therefore, promise after promise is delivered.

But when all seems right and well, Abraham would face the greatest test of all. God calls down to him, “Abraham! Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering…”

I want us to imagine this story, frame by frame: God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son. For three days, Abraham and his son journey together. The trip is quiet. Abraham says little and Isaac says even less. Together the two walk up the mountain, Abraham gripping the knife and the fire, which leaves Isaac carrying the wood to which he will soon be bound. The altar is built, and without word and without protest, Isaac is bound and laid on that altar. I imagine Abraham takes one last look at his son – maybe a tear coming down his face, maybe he’s numb to all of it – and then he raises the knife high above his head, ready to do what God has commanded.

“Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay hand on the boy or do anything,” calls the angel of the Lord. “For now I know you fear God, since have not withheld your son, your only son from me.”

In the very final moments, Isaac is spared for God knew that Abraham trusted that God is a God of provision and providence. We’ll never know exactly what Abraham believed would happen: did he believe God would spare Isaac? Did he believe God would give him another son? Did he believe God would raise Isaac from the dead? Or did Abraham believe God would do something so miraculous that we can’t even imagine what that might be? Whatever Abraham believed, it doesn’t make this story any easier of what was asked of him. And to make us question it even more, Scripture says little to what Abraham was thinking or feeling during this entire interaction.

But for the rest of us, when we read stories like this, we are overwhelmed with emotions so raw and so powerful that our instinct is to close the book and find something lighter, something happier—something more clearly and explicitly filled with hope. This passage reminds us of every moment that God has tested us, the moments where we believed God didn’t deliver promises of providence. It makes us think of every moment we felt abandoned by God and when life just seemed too much to bear. This passage brings forth every moment of heartbreak and pain and tragedy because it’s the story of a man who was asked by God to sacrifice his only son whom he loved.

I, too, found myself with the instinct to close myself off from this story. Each time I opened my Bible, I found myself saying, “Not today. Maybe later. But not today.” I knew I needed to spend time wrestling with this text but I felt I didn’t have the emotional strength or capacity to do so. But it was when I forced myself to dive deeper into Genesis 22, prayerfully asking God for some sign of hope, I came across this:

Julia O’Brien in her book, Challenging Prophetic Literature, writes about a student of hers named Lyn, and Lyn’s sermon preparation on Genesis 22. O’Brien writes, “[Lyn] gave up trying to make this text into something beautiful and uplifting and simply wept. She wept not only just for the characters in the story but also for herself and for her culture. [This student] gave her congregation permission that the text had not given Abraham: to weep for the tragic situations of their own lives, for the horrible choices they feel they have no choice but to make.”

My friends, this right here is the good news in this text: the permission to weep, the permission to cry out… the permission to feel and to know we are not alone in any of our heartbreak.

We, like Abraham, are tested with things too tragic and too unbearable. Isaac may have been spared at the end of this story, but we know all too well that we ourselves are not always spared from heartbreak. It’s a sad, unfortunate part of life, and these words alone can’t cover what emotions we actually feel. The majority of us know the pain of heartbreak. It can be a move to somewhere new and leaving behind a place you love. It can be in the end of a relationship or in a divorce. It can be in a new diagnosis or another cancer treatment. In can be in unforeseen tragedy and even the death of someone we love. It’s in every moment of fear and anxiety and pain. And this pain has us crying out to our Creator just like in Psalm 13: “How long, O Lord? How long!”

At times, it feels like life just hits us again and again… but when life hits hard, our God comes to us greater and stronger and harder filled the provision of grace, love, joy, hope, forgiveness, power.

When we weep, our God weeps with us. And when we cry out, our God responds. Remember this for all of your days.

In a few moments, we’ll all be invited to the table. And we’ll taste a meal so great, so divine, so full of love that it reminds us that we are never alone as we are brought together before God and Christ in the heavenly kingdom with saints of every time and place, not separated by life or death. Heartbreak isn’t the end for us.

As we come to the table, we’ll be reminded of a body broken, blood shed, God the Son sacrificed. It was a death full of heartbreak, and I believe God wept that day. But in God’s weeping, we were delivered the hope found in the resurrection and the promise that one day pain will be no more.

Why was Abraham tested? Why are we tested? My friends, maybe there’s no satisfactory answer to this. But truly, an answer wouldn’t make the pain we feel any less. But what we do know is that when we are tested, God does respond faithfully to us. We must remember to recognize God’s providence and provision in all situations, the ordinary, extraordinary, and especially so, when everything seems futile.

When you read Genesis 22, and if you are still left with feelings of unease or anger or frustration or sadness, maybe that’s the point. It’s not supposed to be something filled with joy or beauty. This text is one of reality and tragedy. That is how God shows that God is with us through it all.

You have the permission to question, and you have the permission to feel. Life will test us, but we know in heart of hearts that God is working for us: never against us. This too is the good news. Thanks be to God.

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