Genesis 22:1-19
Micah 6:6-8
Romans 12:1-2
“After these things, God tested Abraham.” Such a simple sentence, a little
foreboding perhaps, but a rather bland introduction to what is surely one of the most
horrifying episodes in biblical history, a story so viscerally revolting that the tellers and
interpreters of the story have had to produce the most bizarre and elaborate
rationalizations to justify its inclusion in our Bible. This is a story that can adequately be
described only by the phrase coined by Old Testament scholar Phyllis Trible to cover a
handful of extremely disturbing texts in the Bible. It is, as Trible would say, a “text of terror.”
What are we to do with this text of terror, particularly on a Sunday when we wish
to observe and celebrate Gay Pride as part of our commitment to be an Open and
Affirming church? What do child sacrifice and gay pride have to do with one another? Iwish that I could say that there was no connection; I wish that this could be a day only for light-hearted joy and celebration. But a few years ago when I was studying this particular
biblical passage during my doctoral program at Union, I stumbled upon a very disturbing
connection between this story and the theme of Gay Pride Sunday, and so I feel
compelled to preach on this disturbing story today, and to allow this text to raise some
hard questions about the authority of the Bible and the nature of faith.
As the story opens in Genesis, Abraham is called to embark on a perilous journey.
Attempting to read this text as Scripture in the 21st century is an equally perilous task,
because it’s fraught with spiritual danger. And so, before we dive in, we need to
remember a key tenet of our faith in the United Church of Christ, which is that the Bible,
while it witnesses to the Word of God, is not itself the infallible, inerrant words of God,
as our fundamentalist friends believe. Folks in the UCC and other mainline Protestant
churches by and large acknowledge that the Bible was shaped by the cultures,
worldviews, and time periods of its writers, and so we are free to assert, for example, that
slavery is not compatible with the gospel, no matter how many times it was condoned in
the Bible. We can approach this passage with assurance, then, that it is not blasphemous
to question its authority for us today. And yet, the attempts to rationalize this story and
take it at face value are astounding. Every biblical commentary I have read on this
passage accepts the premise that God needed to test Abraham, and praises Abraham’s
obedience to God as the very pinnacle of faithfulness. No one seems to ask what kind of
a God would put Abraham to such a test, and what kind of father would so
unquestioningly obey such a God.
What we need, then, is a fresh look at this story, a new interpretation that doesn’t
flinch from the hard questions. How might we go about finding such a new
understanding? I would suggest that what we need is a subversive re-reading of the story,
what you might call a “reading from below.” The text tells Abraham’s story, but what if
instead of hearing Abraham’s story, we were to listen instead to Isaac’s story? What if
we were to release Isaac from being merely the object of God’s command and Abraham’s
obedience, and allow him to become a subject with his own voice? Let’s put ourselves in
Isaac’s place for a moment, and pulling together everything we know of Isaac’s life both
before and after this episode, as it’s reported in Genesis, let’s imagine how he might have
told the tale.
Isaac speaks:
“I shall never forget that day, for as long as I live, and I have vowed that my sons and
daughters will never forget that day, and that they will tell their sons and daughters how it
came to pass that Abraham, my father and their forefather, prepared to offer me, child of
the promise, as a burnt offering to our God. I shall never forget that day because it
marked the end of my age of innocence and the end of my father’s relationship with my
mother and me.
It was before dawn, the sky a rosy promise of a beautiful day ahead, when my father
roused me and told me to saddle up and prepare for a long journey. I was excited as I
always enjoyed trips with my father, and I eagerly prepared to leave. Two of our servant
men went with us, good friends of mine since childhood. How could I have known that I
would never return to my father’s tents after that day? I didn’t know where we were
going but it hardly mattered; my father and I were embarking upon an adventure together.
But this journey was different from the start. My father, usually light-hearted and kind,
was moody and irritable. A cloud of tension emanated from him which dampened all our
spirits. All I knew was that we were going to fulfill a religious obligation, but why was it
upsetting my father so? The third day dawned dark and cloudy; it was threatening rain,
but no rain-clouds that could compete with my father’s countenance. He walked as
though he were carrying ten bushels of straw on his back, as though the weight would
crush him. I longed to help him carry this strange burden, but he had gone to a place far
beyond my reach. Gruffly, he told the servants that we must finish the journey alone, he
and I, and I wondered what this meant. Then he told me we must offer a burnt sacrifice
on the crest of the mountain.
I carried the wood for the offering, and he carried the coals from our fire and the knife.
Everything should have seemed normal and yet I sensed that something was terribly
wrong. Finally, I blurted out, Father, where is the lamb for the sacrifice? For I had an
unnamed dread growing in my heart. He tried to reassure me with his words—God
would provide—but his face and his eyes had turned to stone. Fear gripped my stomach
and crushed the air out of my lungs until I could hardly walk or breathe. Finally, he
stopped. Methodically, he started building a fire, but still no lamb, no animal for the
sacrifice. By then I knew something unspeakable, some ungodly crime was about to be
committed, but I didn’t know who had been appointed victim and who priest. Was I to
be the offering, or would he ask me to slay him, my father, as an offering to God? At the
same moment that the question formed in my mind I knew the answer. I would not,
could not, sacrifice my father to his God, but if he asked me to climb onto that pyre, I
would do it. How could I defy him, how could I refuse him anything. He had given me
life, and as his son, in life and death I belonged to him. He owned me, as surely as his
God owned him.
You know the rest of the story. His God did provide, but not before an impenetrable wall
had come down between us. God’s gift of the lamb spared my body, but my heart had
already been sacrificed. As much as I loved my father, I could not follow him down that
mountain. It turned out that my mother also could not bear the sight of him after hearing
what had happened. When I married my wife Rebekah, it was to my mother’s tent that
we returned. My father we knew again only in death—when he buried my mother, and
when I buried him. In life, he was dead to me already.”
And so, Isaac speaks, shattering millennia of silence, cover-up and
rationalizations, and tells this story in his own words, as I imagine them. It is a very
different story, isn’t it? You see, it is dangerous to let survivors speak, because when
they open their mouths, they turn the world upside down. What seemed right now
appears horribly wrong, heroes fall, traditions crumble, and virtues crack open and reveal
a rotten core. It takes courage to listen to the Isaacs of this world, when we have been
taught only to hear the Abrahams. Some of us have a lot to lose, and others a lot to gain,
but the one sure thing is, we’ll never be the same.
So what can we learn from Isaac’s story, and what on earth does it have to do with
Gay Pride? First of all, we learn that Abraham’s actions came at a terrible price, to him
and to his family. If you read between the lines of the biblical text a little you find that
the real conclusion to this story is not with God’s blessing and promise of descendants in
verses 15-18. The real conclusion comes in verse 19, almost as an afterthought. The text
says, “So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to
Beersheba.”
Something, or rather someone, is missing from this supposedly happy ending.
Where is Isaac? His life had been spared, but when Abraham comes down off the
mountain and returns home, he is accompanied only by his servants. In fact, reading
carefully the next few chapters of Genesis, it becomes clear that Abraham and Isaac
never see each other again, until Isaac buries Abraham in Genesis 25. Even more
startling perhaps, when Abraham returns from the mountain of sacrifice, Sarah has
moved to Hebron! Abraham continues to live in Beersheba, and only goes to Hebron to
bury Sarah after her death. God’s first family, the family of the promise, is shattered by
the events that took place on the mountain of Moriah. Abraham has his blessing, but all
of the joy has been drained out of it, and it must ring hollow in his ears.
Who is this family? Who are the Abrahams and Isaacs and Sarahs of our world?
Once you know what to look for, they’re not hard to find. Mostly, you find them in
families that have been ripped apart by allegiance to false gods or false creeds. You see,
Abraham thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was being obedient to
God, following the religion of his day, but I would like to make the fairly heretical
suggestion that it was not the voice of God that Abraham heard, or at the very least, that
something got lost in translation.
Consider this: every year, thousands of women and girls are murdered in Muslim
countries in so-called honor killings. Perhaps you heard or even saw on the news the
gruesome death of Du’a Khalil Aswad in Northern Iraq, who was stoned to death by a
gang of men that included a number of her male relatives, while nearby policemen
watched and did nothing. Du’a was killed simply because she was a Kurdish girl who
was dating a Sunni Muslim boy. Honor killings occur when fathers, brothers and
husbands feel honor-bound to hunt down and kill female family members suspected of
premarital sex or adultery. The irony of course, is that Islam, at least as taught in the
Koran, does not require or even sanction these honor killings.1 They are justified by
twisted interpretations of Islam rooted in ancient tribal beliefs that the Prophet
Mohammed condemned. And yet generation after generation of men continue to
sacrifice their wives and daughters out of obedience to this moral code.
But it’s easier to point the finger at other cultures than to look at our own. Surely
we don’t have anything resembling honor killings or child sacrifice in this nation. Well,
consider this: gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children account for up to 40% of
the youth living in homeless shelters and foster homes in our nation’s cities.2 Consider
that gay, lesbian and bisexual youth are three times more likely than heterosexual youth
to attempt suicide.3 Queer youth are much more likely to run away, end up as teen
prostitutes, attempt suicide and suffer beatings and abuse inside and outside of their
homes than heterosexual youth.4 Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children and
youth are among the Isaacs of our day. Although the climate for these youth is slowly
improving, they often end up as the sacrificial lambs on the altar of our society’s
morality. Whether they are explicitly targeted by the Christian right, shamed by more
moderate religion or merely neglected by liberal Christianity, they get the message.
Tragically, some GLBT youth feel that they are better off dead than alive.
This message comes in many forms: frequently, it comes from family members,
who often without even knowing that their child is gay or lesbian, give off homophobic
messages that cause severe internal suffering. Often the message comes from other kids
at school. Tragically, the message comes even more frequently from the pulpits and the
political leaders of our nation, who tell these youth that they are sinners, or less than fully
valued and equal citizens. I can’t help but think here of a quote by the famous
psychologist, Erik Erikson, who said, "Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed,
well-considered, and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible
sins is the mutilation of a child's spirit."
I myself carried the pain of these internalized messages for many years. My
college years, while they had some bright moments, were haunted by periods of deep
depression that arose out of my budding realization that I was different from the other
girls. I carried within myself a growing knowledge that was so shameful to me that I
could not speak of it to anyone…not my parents, not my pastor, not my closest
friends…the knowledge that I was undeniably attracted to the wrong gender. In my
youthful imagination, and in the context of the Southern Baptist college I was attending
in South Carolina, I thought that nothing could be more shameful than that, and I guarded
my secret with all my strength. In the meantime, I feared that my calling to ministry, that
I had felt since I was sixteen—which was the single most important thing in my life—
would be revoked by God if I embraced or lived out my feelings. I saw no future for
myself, no way out, and at times, though I was never actively suicidal, I sincerely wished
that I could simply cease to exist.
God brought me through that long, dark period, and I was gradually able to find
my voice, my courage, and my integrity, to live as a whole person, in the fullness of who
I was created to be by God. But I think that that experience shed some light for me on
this story of Abraham and Isaac that I would like to share with you.
Returning to the text for a moment, let’s think about what happens to the children
who get caught in the tornado of social and religious homophobia. The biblical Isaac
gives us the clue. Most people imagine Isaac to be a small child in this story. But Jewish
tradition, and a careful reading of the text, indicates that Isaac was at least an adolescent,
if not fully grown when this took place. Everything in the text suggests that Isaac went
along with his father’s wish to sacrifice him on that mountain. Old and unaided,
Abraham could not have subdued and bound Isaac. As far as we can tell, Isaac
participated in the preparations for sacrifice. He was complicit in his victimization.
Shocking? Yes. But surprising? Not really. People who have experienced any
kind of victimization or oppression, whether it is due to child abuse, or domestic
violence, or racial discrimination, or sexism or homophobia, have to learn how to resist
their victimization; it doesn’t come naturally. You have to learn how to fight back and
stand up and celebrate who you are.
That is what this day is about. That’s why every year, gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender folks, and their parents and friends and allies from churches like Rock
Spring, need to dress up and have an outrageous parade to celebrate gay pride. That’s
why almost forty years ago a bunch of drag queens at the Stonewall Inn in New York
City got fed up and started rioting when the police tried to arrest them for the umpteenth
time. We, and I mean all of us now, for different reasons, have to learn two things in this
world. One is how to love, and the other is how to resist, which is the same thing as
learning to love ourselves. Abraham’s failure was a failure to love; Isaac’s was a failure
to resist. Both are equally destructive and abhorrent in the eyes of God. I thank God
every day for churches like Rock Spring where people have learned both to love and to
resist, and where proud parents of adult gay and lesbian children have been at the
forefront of our journey to be an Open and Affirming church.
Well, Abraham thought that he was correctly discerning the will of God, and
biblical commentators down through the centuries have accepted this view, but I would
like to suggest that Abraham was tragically mistaken. For I believe that blind obedience
to religious or cultural norms which destroy the human spirit is repugnant to God. But
lest you think I am a complete heretic and escort me out the door, I hasten to add that I
am not throwing out the authority of Scripture. Far from it—I am merely following the
time-honored Protestant principle that Scripture can be called upon to correct Scripture—
and that you have to read any particular part of the Bible in light of the whole testimony
of scripture, which above all is the testimony of the radically inclusive love of God. And
so I call upon Paul’s letter to the Romans to help me out of the corner I’ve painted myself
into today, with his stirring words in chapter 12, reading from the New International
Version now: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve
what God’s will is—God’s good, pleasing and perfect will.”
You see, in Genesis 22, we are told by the narrator that God tested Abraham. But
Paul turns the tables on us and empowers us to test God’s will for ourselves. As
Christians, we are called to refuse conformity to norms and values which are destructive
to human life, even if they come cloaked in religious authority. Instead, we are to allow
ourselves to be transformed by the Spirit of Christ into people who are able to discern
rightly the will of God or the desire of God for us, in any given situation.
And so, in closing, we must ask, where was God in the story of Abraham and
Isaac? If the god who commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac isn’t the God we worship
and serve, then what does God command us to do? It’s really quite simple. A later
prophet, perhaps remembering the story of Abraham and Isaac, tells us all we need to
know about what it means to be faithful to God. As Micah says.
“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I
give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? God
has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do
justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.?” (Micah 6:6-8)
1 As Tahira Shahid Khan, professor at Aga Khan University in Pakistan, has written, “There is nothing in the Koran, the book of basic Islamic teachings, that permits or sanctions honor killings. However, the view of women as property with no rights of their own, is deeply rooted in Islamic culture.” This quote from Khan’s book, Chained to Custom, was cited by Hillary Mayell in her article, “Thousands of Women Killed for Family ‘Honor,’” in National Geographic News (February 12, 2002), available at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/02/0212_020212_honorkilling.html Fortunately, there is a growing movement in Muslim countries to prevent honor killings and change the cultural mores which allow these crimes to happen and go unpunished.
2 National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness,” report released on January 30, 2007, available at http://www.thetaskforce.org/press/releases/prHY_013007
3 See Diana Zuckerman, Ph.D., “Research on Teen Suicide,” on the website of the National Research Center for Women and Families, at http://www.center4research.org/suicide.html and Scott Hershberger, Neil Pilkington, and Anthony Augelli, “Predictors of Suicide Attempts Among Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth” in Journal of Adolescent Research 12, no. 4 (October 1997): 477-497.
4 See the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force report cited above for in-depth analysis of these risk factors for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth.