Text: Genesis 22:1-14
“There’s a body on the altar, God. What are you going to do about it?”
I imagine that man of you have this
morning’s Old Testament lesson before. It is a famous story common to Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. In Hebrew, this story is called the Akedah, literally “the binding”, for
that is indeed what Abraham does to his beloved son – and very nearly
slaughters him at God’s command.
This story is so familiar that it’s
easy for us to become numb to how terrible it actually is. So just to be clear:
this is a story about a boy who is about to be murdered. A story about a father
who is willing to kill his own son. This is a story about a God who is willing
to risk Isaac’s life to get a peek at Abraham’s faith.
Now, Abraham may be one of our
founding patriarchs, a man repeatedly lifted up in both the Old and New
Testaments as a model of faith. But I want to let you know that if Abraham were
to walk through the doors of this church, he would quickly be barred from working with our children and youth. Believe
me, “I took my son on a three-day journey to sacrifice him on Mount Moriah, but
I stopped right before I killed him,” would not
pass muster with any child protection policy.
And
for that matter, if God’s character
in this story were to walk in those doors, God would not pass that background
check, either. What parent would leave their child with someone whose resume
read, “Commanded Abraham to kill his son as a sacrifice to me – but don’t
worry, I changed my mind at the last minute, once I saw that his faith was pure”?
Small comfort, to say the least.
It’s a difficult story, a perplexing
story, even a horrifying story. And friends, I’ve wrestled with this text all
week, looking for a sign of light, a truth that needs to be heard. Listening
for the Holy Spirit to speak a Word from God. And what I’ve heard, and come to
see, is that this is a story about bodies. Bodies at risk, bodies in action,
even a body laid bare and in danger on the altar of sacrifice.
The entire story of Abraham and his
family is a story about bodies, come to think of it. It’s a story about Abraham’s
body, in which God locates the promise of a new people through whom the whole
world will be blessed. About Sarah’s body, which was unable to bear children
and yet in her old age is awakened with the gift of new life. Of Hagar’s body,
used against her will by Abraham and Sarah to secure a son for Abraham. It’s
about Ishmael’s body, cast out in the desert to die, and then saved by an angel
who brings him the gift of water, that substance which all bodies need. It’s a
story about Isaac’s body, filled with life and energy, the one through whose
veins course the seed of God’s promise to bless God’s people.
In Abraham’s story, bodies roar with
laughter at the announcement of a child in Abraham and Sarah’s old age, and
bodies heave with sobs when Hagar and Ishmael are left to die in the desert.
It’s a story about sex, birth, and death. Even the covenant that God establishes
with Abraham is a covenant about bodies, sealed in the sign of circumcision, a
covenant made in flesh.
We who are the heirs of modernity
and so-called “Western thought” tend to think of the world somewhat
dualistically, with the body and the soul as separate entities. And the soul is
always the more important of the two. But it wasn’t so for the Hebrew people to
whom this story belongs. No, the ancient Hebrews looked at the world holistically. Which means body and soul were
intertwined, they could not be separated, and so flesh itself was something
sacred and beautiful. For the ancient Hebrew people, bodies mattered.
Which
is part of why this story was so shocking to its original audience. Because
Isaac is the one flesh and blood descendant Abraham has left in his household. God
has promised Abraham, and even made a covenant with him, that he will be the
father of a great nation through which all people of the world will be blessed.
And Isaac is the one body left in whom that promise can be fulfilled.
This is a story about bodies, but
it’s also a story about God.
The
narrator begins by telling us that God is testing Abraham. And that is true: Abraham’s
faithfulness is put to the test, and he passes. But there is another being
tested in this story, and that is God himself. After all, there are two sides
to every covenant. This story asks the question “Will Abraham be faithful?” But
at a deeper level, it also asks “Will God be faithful?” There is a body on the
altar, God, a life on the line. What are you going to do?
In
perhaps the most poignant moment in this text, Isaac himself looks up at his
father Abraham and says, “I see we have the fire, and the wood, but where is
the lamb for the burnt offering?” And Abraham answers, “God himself will
provide the lamb, my son.”
Is Abraham making up a story to calm
his fearful son? Maybe. Or is he, perhaps, proclaiming that, despite all
evidence to the contrary, God will be
faithful to God’s promise? Even demanding
that God will be faithful – reminding God that there are two sides to this
covenant. Reminding God that his son’s own body – that God’s own promise – is lying
on the altar, vulnerable, and exposed, and moments away from death.
Because
that’s the thing about bodies; they are vulnerable. They get sick. The get
injured. They break, and they are broken. They suffer, they hurt, they bleed,
and they die. Bodies are so precious, flesh is so sacred, in spite of and
perhaps even because of the fact that
they can be taken from us in an instant. Because bodies are vulnerable, and
both in this story and in our world, some bodies are more vulnerable than
others.
This
week, as I studied this story of the Akedah
– “the binding” – I came across a sermon offered by the Rabbi Tamara Cohen[1]
two years ago during a celebration of Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year. Rabbi
Cohen spoke of how she was hearing the Akedah
differently, more urgently, this year than she had in years past. She
attributed this difference to a phone call she received from a friend who called
her distraught over the news about Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman who
was pulled over for failing to signal before changing lanes, was inexplicably
arrested, and three days later was found dead in prison.
“There’s
a body on the altar, God. What are you going to do about it?”
At
first, Rabbi Cohen admitted, she was confused by her friend’s reaction to this
story. Cohen was upset by the news, to be sure – even outraged – but she could
not understand the urgency, the outright terror she heard in her friend’s
voice.
“And
then,” Cohen writes, “I saw it clearly. I saw her daughter, 17 years old,
headed to Princeton after graduating as the only black Jewish girl from her
yeshiva high school. I saw her suddenly, briefly, through her mother’s eyes. I
saw the terror of having to release one’s child, one’s black child, to an unknown world, the terror of having to allow
one’s baby to drive on a street through Princeton. Anywhere, really. And I felt
shaken awake in a new way to the difference between my reality and the reality
of my dear friend, both of us Jewish mothers who love our kids and would do
anything to protect them. One of us white, and one of us black.”
Rabbi
Cohen goes on, “This year for me, Abraham is a black father. And Isaac is his
beloved son. And what happens in this story is that Abraham, through binding
his son on the altar, passes on to his son the terrifying truth that his body
could be taken from him at any moment.”
“This
year,” she says, “I am seeing Isaac – and asking you to see him – as an
American boy with a black body. I am doing this because black bodies are the
bodies in America today that hold the position of Isaac – the position of fear,
of lack of freedom, of being struck, bound between the promise of a grand and
fruitful future, and the very real possibility of immanent, unexplained, and
incomprehensible death.
“But
at the same time that I want us to hold the image of Isaac as a black child, I
also want to hold him as every child. Because the binding of Isaac is a story
that reveals that we all have bodies.
And that, actually, every one of our bodies is vulnerable. Every one of our
bodies would cry out, ‘I can’t breathe’ if it was put into a chokehold and we
had asthma. Every one of our bodies would be destroyed if it was bound and
driven around in the back of a police van.”
“There are bodies on the altar, God. What are
you going to do about it?”
Friends, we, like Isaac, are
children of Abraham, children of God. And if there is one thing we share with
every other child of God, it is this: we have vulnerable human bodies. If you
cut us, we will bleed. If you tickle us, we will laugh. If you poison us, we
will die. We are all fragile, vulnerable, human beings.[2]
If
I understand the text, the truth at the center of this story – this Akedah – is that God chooses to fulfill
God’s promises in bodies. God takes the risk of working out his faithfulness
and his desires for all of Creation in the messy, dirty, vulnerable world of the flesh. God’s purposes are accomplished in our world. God’s promises are held in our bodies.
As
Christians, this should perhaps come as no surprise to us. Because we who have
come to know God in Jesus Christ know that the Word was made Flesh, that God comes
to us with skin on. If the incarnation of Jesus Christ teaches us anything, it
teaches us this: that bodies matter to God. They matter so much, in fact, that
God took on flesh, becoming just as human –just as vulnerable – as you and me. Just as vulnerable as
Isaac, and Sandra Bland, and Eric Garner, and Freddy Gray. Just as vulnerable
as the war-weary refugees we see on the news. Just as vulnerable as the 22
million people in our own country whose access to healthcare hangs precariously
in the balance of a Senate vote.
In
Jesus Christ, God said “My story is a story about bodies. Your story is a story about bodies. Your faithfulness, your
discipleship, will be worked out and made known in bodies. You will meet bodies
who are hungry: give them food. Bodies who are thirsty: give them something to
drink. When you see bodies who are strangers: welcome them; and bodies who are
naked: clothe them. In this world there will be bodies who are sick: take care
of them. And bodies who are in prison: visit them. Do this because you have a
body, and they have a body, and I myself, your Lord Jesus Christ, have a body. Truly
I tell you, what you do to these bodies, you also do to me.
There are bodies on the altar.
Friends, what are we going to do
about it?
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