Aqedah sermon page 2

For Jepthah the crisis of defeating his enemies created a need for the vow to seal the deal. The king of Moab's crisis is immediate and desperate. He hits the self-destruct button on the future of his kingdom in order to live another day.

Abraham's also a kind of warlord leader. He's not locally insignificant, to say the least. It'd not be unusual for him to do this. He could say to his servants, "stay here till I get back" [though he ingenuously says, "till we get back" - which I'll leave you to ponder, why he's lying here]. Isaac would get it - only one of us is coming back, sure. He'd be OK with it. He certainly seems compliant in the text. The only real question is, "what crisis is this sacrifice in response to?" The text begins with the acknowledgement that god wants to test Abraham. But a test implies a crisis.

Abraham has finally settled down. Hagar and Ishael are gone - so Sarah isn't nagging him anymore. He's on the homestretch - so to speak.

Perhaps Abraham's crisis is that there is no more crisis - how very modern - or that the crisis here is not outside him but inside of him.

He's home; he's settled down. In the quiet of his study he thinks, "I should be content - but I'm not." Maybe he's the kind of person who always has to be doing something. Maybe he's the kind of person who doesn't feel he's serving god unless he's doing some big thing.

Holding the knife over Isaac he could be thinking, "hey, I'm crushing my dreams - that must count for something!" God must be impressed now!

This is the heart of the big hole in the text. Between the two commands. One word to kill your son - the next word, not to. The temptation is to fill the hole with explanation. Or to pretend that the hole isn't there [sotto voice: god never gives you a problem to big for you to handle].
A hole like this invites you to walk around inside - nurture a feel for this great absence. Admit it, it can't be filled. To fill this absence is like filling the Grand Canyon. Of course think how usuable the land would be then. But you can't fill it. If you try to fill it, the hole will laugh at you - which is what Isaac's name means - laughter.
Is this some kind of Joke?

Mind you, all this made sense back then. It wouldn't make sense to not do it. So now, Abraham, who always made sense - who evoked consensus - winds up not making sense. He was performing his duty. He was fulfilling his role as leader - as provider - Abraham is the big provider - he provides for Lot and Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael, quite a large household and servants - except perhaps he doesn't have a provision for himself.

To us all of this offering up a child as a burnt offering is insane. These are typically full grown, well educated, ready to take on adult roles children. That's what makes the offering so very valuable - like running a marathon up to mile 25 and then going back to the start and beginning again. An enormous price is being paid to get these results - which usually involve winning a war or overcoming an insurmountable obstacle. It's called mortgaging the future. We know this phrase. Maybe what Abraham, Jepthah, the Moabite king - let's add Agamemnon and others we might think of - what they do isn't so foreign to our own experience. We're a bit more bloodless.

God tempts or tests Abraham then with something that makes sense. Take out a loan! Put in overtime!
Fill in the blanks with your own mortgaging the future scenario. The thing is, the first word we encounter in the text - the word that seems absurd to us, makes sense to Abraham and anyone else. It's the second word - that's the absurdity. We breathe a sigh of relief - "Isaac's gonna live!", and perhaps Abraham does too - although a kind of quizzical sigh. Again the, "why are we here now?" - that kind of feeling must sweep over him and a kind of dread. Because this deliverance comes with the realization that god will not be manipulated with even the greatest price. This deliverance of Isaac  - who is playing along with it, as this is expected of him, what in his education and training probably falls under the "other duties as required" part of the heir's job description, strike's Isaac as odd too. "What is this about?" The cosmic order of expectations between humanity and god are de-centered here.

The life of faith is confusing. We find ourselves too easily trapped in the conventional. We want what everyone else wants - victory, usually in the form of being in control of our circumstances, if not the circumstances of others as well. Or another kind of victory, not being under anyone else's control, free of obligations. And we will sacrifice even what we love to get that victory, that freedom, that control. We will sacrifice our desire and the desires of others to crate a world in a more pleasing image. We can see this in our world's mad scramble to control and form. We accumulate data and statistics to predict, to advertise, to manipulate. In the beginning we call it socialization, education, training. Later we'll speak of careers and trajectories - did we make enough