Aqedah sermon

I'm not going to tell you what this text is about. That is, I'm not going to tell you this text is about how to live - or such typical things as how to succeed in something - or that it has any comfort in a kind of laid back "it's all going to be OK" sense. This text is difficult and it's intended to be difficult for a reason: to goad you into asking big questions and accepting the fact that the value of big questions is that they don't have answers. If you have a simple answer or any answer, it may be that you've misunderstood the question.

Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling is spawned from this text - and Kierkegaard emphasizes there the quality of the life of faith - that it doesn't make sense. That in trying to make sense of it, it ceases to become a life of faith. My synopsis there hardly does justice to it. Much as my sermon will not do justice to it. This text creates a space and it is a creatively fruitful space to be in. The only requirement for being in this space is that you not try to understand it; that you not try to answer what question if provokes. As if a "why this is just this" or a "this is just an example of that" provided an adequate accounting.

This is the space that Paul is in when he writes to the Galatians - and also the space the rabbis are in when they pick up the pieces after the destruction of the temple. This is the space that birthed three religions. It is the space that writers, composers and artists still grapple with to this day.

What space is this? It is the space between two words - two voices: one voice tells Abraham to sacrifice his son and the second voice tells him not to. Both voices express the intention of a god we theologically define as immutable - who as the hymn says bound creation in a "changeless decree".

You see the problem. Oh, that's just our crazy theology. In any relationship we depend on speaking and being understood - waffling back and forth seems indecisive. Abraham might say, "why'd you drag me all the way out here if you were just going to be this way?" When people treat us this way we grow tired of them and begin avoiding them - unless we like getting stood up.

By the way, this is the theme of the book of Jonah - god's changing of his mind - which is a constant in the Old Testament - not so much a fear as a gnawing sense. You remember Jonah's not so much afraid of speaking to the citizens of Nineveh about their ultimate and impending destruction as he is dreading the moment when god's mercy trumps god's vengeance. He knows that's going to happen. He does it anyway - he browbeats the Ninevites into fear and trembling - and then god shows what a good fellow and merciful he is. Jonah feels like an idiot. He says so much as that. He'd rather be in a fish. Prophets have to have strong egos.

For Abraham thank goodness there's that ram trapped in the thicket. Remember Isaac's question: I see the fire and the wood but where's the animal of be sacrificed? If god had treated Abraham like he did Jonah, there'd only be the injunction to stop and no ram. What a strange scene that would be - like something from Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a play where a couple of guys have an aimless conversation in a barren landscape along with passing strangers waiting for the arrival of someone who will probably never come: here would be Abraham, his son Isaac tied up, standing there holding a fire, brandishing a knife, waiting.

Here's the thing about child sacrifice in the Old Testament and ancient times as well. When you're the leader or king, it's expected of you. We have two other examples from the OT : Judges 11 - the story of a Judge Jepthah and his daughter; 2 Kings 3 - a story of the kings of Israel, Judah and Edom besieging the king of Moab.

Jepthath was a judge whose story is told in Judges 11. He makes a vow to god in order to achieve victory over his enemies - he will sacrifice the first thing that greets him out the door when he returns home. This turns out to be his daughter, who offers a very mature and calm negotiation as to how her sacrifice will be carried out.  She says, "if you've opened your mouth to the lord perform what you said you'd do - just give me a couple of months." If this had happened in a Greek story Zeus would have turned her into a constellation. In a Hebrew story she just gets turned into a festival. In this case the hero is the victim - stoic in the face of duty.

In 2 Kings 3, the kings of Israel, Judah and Edom gather to punish the king of  Moab. Besieged the king of Moab seeks to escape and cannot. So he does the logical thing - he sacrifices his son and heir. And it works! Sacrificing your first born in that era must have been a cosmic trump card. Yahweh's helping Israel and then, just as the noose tightens, the bad guys escape.

Typically sacrifice is demanded in response to a crisis.