SCRIPTURE: Genesis 22:1-14
TEXT: 14aSo Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; THEME: God loves us. INTRODUCTION Amy Jill Levine, New Testament Professor at Vanderbilt University Divinity School recorded a series of lectures on the Old Testament Stories. She said something in these lectures that I’ve never heard before. In them she says that the books of the Old Testament were written during the time of Israel’s Babylonian Captivity, around 700 B.C. when a written language was beginning to emerge in Babylon. Up until then the Hebrews used an oral history to pass their stories down from one generation to the next. While captive in Babylon, their children were learning Babylonian stories, so they decided to write down their history. In doing so, they also took a few of the popular Babylonian stories and rewrote them with Hebrew themes. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is one such story, the details and characters of the story have been changed along with an added Hebrew twist. SCRIPTURE In stories, like a good joke, the characters and details can be change, from one telling to another, as long as the message or punch line of the story remains the conveyors of truth. I’ve always had problems with this passage, because from my New Testament perspective of the Old Testament, God does not test us, as we should not test God. But here it is, God wants to test Abraham. This passage begins with “After all this” What about the 25 years of waiting to have a child with Sarah and wandering and wondering around waiting for land and an heir? Wouldn’t God know of Abraham’s devotion already? This is my first hint, that the god in this story may not be the God that we know. The second hint is that God is about Love and relationships. The description we have of God’s love is confident in its self. Love does things to build someone else up, it is patience, it is kind, it is happy for others, it is humble, it is comfortable when others are given attention, it has respect for others, it is other-centered, it is tolerant of those who may be different, love forgives, love speaks the truth in ways that brings light, love protects, love trusts, love hopes and love is steadfast. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7). I am going on a bit of a rant, then I’ll come back: Love does not play mean tricks on others for their own amusement. Love does not require proof of love but loves anyway. Love does not manipulate the people they love. Love does not sacrifice innocent people for their own ends. Love does not marginalize the helpless. Love is not violent. I’m back. The god (small ‘g’) portrayed here is not our God, but a Babylonian god, who sacrifices for favor, goes on heroic quests for favor, violently vanquishes foes for favor and is deeply flawed. It’s just that they changed his name to a capital ‘G’ for the purpose of retelling this story. This story was familiar to the first readers in Babylon, but with a surprise ending. This is a Babylonian story about child sacrifice. Two people go up the hill and one person comes down. (Amy Jill Levine, observes that in the retelling of this story, coming down off the mountain, the rewriters forget to name Isaac, so two people come down the mountain). The irony of this story comes in verse 14 when Abraham calls this place “the Lord will provide” because, God never required a sacrifice in the first place and it wasn’t God who was testing Abraham because God already knew where Abraham stood with God. But the punchline of this story is not to kill your kids so that you can have a better life for yourself. Don’t participate in the Babylonian practice of child sacrifice because everybody else is doing it. Trust in the God that loves you and the knowledge that God is there to help you, no sacrifice necessary. How many knives do you think this story took out of the hands of Hebrew fathers? This the point of the story. APPLICATION How is the story of Abraham and Isaac our story? Don’t make our God into a Babylonian god who vanquishes evil with the violent act of sacrificing his son for your life. Google is a wonderful resource, I googled the Babylonian Creation Story and came up with Cliff Notes of clashing Titans whose guts create the heavens and the earth, a cleansing flood that that was supposed to wipe out human beings except a husband and his wife survive. One god had to convince the other god with soft words that it’s okay. Then there was a fruitless search to the underworld for immortality. Sacrifice was used heavily to appease and solicit favor from powers beyond human control. But this is not how sacrifice work for the Hebrews, who already have the favor of God, being loved, and made in the image of God. Unlike the cosmic powers of the Babylonian gods, there is no form of justice that has to be balanced, paid back or satisfied. Our God is above any perceived cosmic force and does not answer to anyone. This challenges us to rethink what happens on the cross of Jesus and ask if God actually does require a violent sacrifice of God’s son to wipe away our sin? We already have favor with God simply because God never stops loving us. If this is so, then should we shift our focus at Easter off of the cross and focus more on the disturbance of the Resurrection? Focusing on life after death and what it means to live as resurrected people. CONCLUSION Don’t give up the God that you know for a god who tests us to see if we are worthy. When we realize that this is not our God, but a retelling of a story to keep us from sacrificing our children for our own selfish fears, then like at the end of Creation, we can enjoy a Sabbath time with God and each other. This story changes the punchline, not to kill Hebrew babies, but to be free in the gracious love of God and life. Don’t t get caught up in a God who is testing or judging us to see if we are obedient enough to deserve to be loved to life. If God is saying don’t kill your kids, then why would we think that God would sacrifice his Son to die violently as a payment for our sins on the cross. Could the twist to this story be; God loves us and gives up power, to show us a love that creates life in us beyond our death? God, through Jesus, shows us a love that forgives and is more powerful than any payment procured from a violent act. In fact, love is the only thing that can create immortality in resurrection.
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