Someone Told the Story - Genesis 22:1-14

Good morning on this Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. Or, in keeping with the alternate church calendar that Hannah referenced a few weeks ago, we are now in what I believe is the 16th week of Coronatide. Can you believe it’s been four months? We’ve been at this a while, and with COVID cases on the rise in Arkansas and in so many other places, it looks like a long road ahead. 

If you happen to be a Brene Brown fan and listen to her podcast “Unlocking Us,” you will have heard her begin each show recently by asking her guests how they’re doing. No BS, she says, how are you really doing? The answers reflect what I have heard from so many of you. People are tired, stressed, and scared of an unknown future. COVID alone would be a lot to handle. But the world’s other problems are still pressing. A snarky tweet this week summed it up perfectly, following the news of the Saharan dust storm coming to the United States. The tweet said, “Awesome! I always wondered what it was like to live during the times of the Civil War, Spanish Flu, Great Depression, Civil Rights Movement, Watergate, and the Dust Bowl. Not all at once, mind you, but ya know, ‘beggars/choosers’ and all” (@Cred_Just_ible). It’s no wonder we are all tired. 

When I opened the readings for today, I was hoping for something comforting. Something along the lines of Jesus telling us to consider the non-anxious lilies or maybe the Beatitudes. But they are not what the lectionary gives us today. Instead we have the binding of Isaac from the book of Genesis. Hearing the story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his only son at this point feels about as helpful as the introduction of murder hornets into the plot of 2020. 

Far from being comforting, this is one of the most emotionally terrifying stories in all of scripture. Abraham silently obeys God’s awful command. We don’t understand why God has told him to sacrifice the only son he and Sarah had in their old age. Especially since God once asked Abraham to look up at the stars and promised that his descendants would be as numerous as the night sky. Could God be so fickle about a promise? And what kind of God would ask for child sacrifice? As for poor Isaac, the reality gradually dawns on him that he is the sacrifice. And that his father has bound him and taken up the knife to go through with it. It’s not surprising that the two of them will not speak again after this event. Then, when the angel stops the action and a ram appears in the thicket, the tension lifts and the story turns toward how the Lord provides in unexpected ways. But the rescue at the end is hardly a clean, happy ending. 

What could this story say to us here in quarantine? I first looked to its historical expert, Søren Kierkegaard. He worried that religion in the 19th century had become far too rational. Religion, he thought, had gone off track with its obsession with ethics and universal principles. Look to Abraham, he said, the father of our faith who was asked to suspend right and wrong and kill his son to be obedient to God. Kierkegaard challenged his colleagues to fit that into their tidy ethical systems. The story must show us something else about the religious life, something that can’t just be rationalized. 

Abraham, he said, took a leap of faith. That leap took him out of the ethical realm and into a purely religious one. The two realms are not the same. Abraham’s journey into the religious realm took him far beyond the love he had for his own son. He followed God beyond the love he had for God’s promise of descendants. In this strange holy realm, he oriented himself to his divine source, the true object of religious devotion. And his example invites us into that same holy realm. Our lives, our loves, our actions, are meant to flow from there. 

For people of faith, a reminder of the presence of a holy realm is always helpful. Jesus tried to orient us to it time and again, to that reality he called the kingdom of heaven. But there is a second message in the story of Abraham and Isaac that moved me this week, given the state of the world these days. Consider this: someone, either Abraham or Isaac, told the story of what happened on that mountain. Otherwise, we would not have the story. The trauma didn’t get buried, but told. Perhaps we are invited to see God at work in the truth telling about what happened. So often in families, secrets - especially violent ones - get buried, and then the trauma goes unaddressed, sometimes for generations. Secrets have a violence all their own. But Abraham or Isaac broke their silence. 

Brene Brown recently interviewed Laverne Cox, an Emmy-winning producer and actress. You might remember her from her role as Sophia in “Orange is the New Black,” and the first Black transwoman to star in a TV show.* The interview went to some brilliant and difficult places, like trans-visibility and violence against marginalized communities. I recommend it to anyone who needs to hear their own experience reflected so smartly, or who needs to hear a first-hand account of moving through this world in a body different than your own. In the interview, Laverne said something I found particularly important for this collective moment we share. She said that as a country, we have not fully reckoned with our past. Our nation needs to heal from the legacy of slavery and white supremacy. She then quotes the podcast host. As Brene often says, if you don’t own the story, the story owns you. But if you look directly at the story, you have the power to write a new ending. America needs to look at its own story, and we each have a share in that work.

Abraham or Isaac owned what happened on that ancient mountain and said it out loud. Eventually the religious system into which Abraham was born let go of human sacrifice. We can look at the impact of the binding of Isaac and recognize that healing began with the naming of trauma. That should give us hope for the mountain of work we face today. Our good news this morning is that in these complicated times we’re in, God will be with us as we speak to our personal and collective pain and work to heal that pain. Abraham reminds us to orient ourselves to a holy realm, to the kingdom of God. And as always, our sacred story reminds us that God will provide on the mountain. 

*Here’s a link to the interview.