Isaac: Will God Keep God's Promise? By Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

This summer my husband Kurt and I have been binge watching an old science fiction TV show with our kids on Amazon Prime (think Netflix). If you don’t know what binge watching is, it’s when you pick out a TV show that was on for several seasons and you just watch all the episodes as fast as you can. The kids will watch several seasons in a weekend. We have taken to watching a couple of episodes every night and it has become our no-homework summer family evening activity – at least for July. 

 

The show is called Eureka. The setting is the secret town in the Northwest, filled with super smart scientists. They all work for the government developing new technologies. Crazy stuff we only dream of: time travel, two generations beyond human cloning, nanobots – these tiny robots that can do anything; shrink rays – you name it. Of course, in every episode, something goes wrong and the town is nearly destroyed. Colin Ferguson plays Jack Carter the town Sheriff, one of the few people in town with only an average intelligence.

By the end of just about every episode he has to do some death defying feat because some science experiment has gone terribly wrong. Sheriff Carter has to save the town by fighting against a force field to flip some switch on some device or he has to jump across molten radioactive lava in a pitch black cave that is filling up with sewer water and plug up a hole before the whole town is flooded with poison… whatever. You get the idea. 

Every week we think he is going to die. OR the whole town, or the plant is going to be destroyed. Of course, we know he is not going to die because he is the star of the show, (and after all, it’s not Game of Thrones) and yet he is a good actor so he has us on the edge of our seats, fists clenched, worried that this might be the time Jack Carter does not make it. 

This is how I feel every time I read the story of Abraham walking up the mountain with Isaac. And in fact, I am really mad at Abraham. I am, after all, a mother of a son. To think that a parent would ever consider listening to a message from God that says: “You must sacrifice your own child to show your faithfulness to me” is ludicrous to me. In fact, when a parent does such a thing in our society, we send them to a mental health facility, if not to prison. We do not believe that God tells people to kill their children in order to prove their faithfulness to God.

And yet, here we have this story in our sacred book. This is one of the hardest stories in our book. I thought about choosing another text and just skipping right over this one. This is what we call a text of terror.  

This text shows God as a child abuser. In seminary we learned that sometimes you don’t preach a text, you preach against a text, and this is one to preach against. 

As I consulted articles this week, I read one by a respected Old Testament scholar who urged pastors not to preach from this text. I wanted to follow his advice. But just last week I talked about how Abraham and Sarah are our ancestors in the faith.   And even though they were really old, God had blessed them with a child.  This sacred book begins with their story. These stories are our family stories. I feel compelled to try to find some bit of learning in this story for us. 

So, as hard as it might be, I invite you into this story with me. Theologian Soren Kierkegaard wrote a whole book about this story. His book is called Fear and Trembling. In his book he wrote several hypotheses about what might have been the back stories for this story. There is so much we just don’t know about this story. 

One of his ideas is one I like. He says that Abraham told Isaac: “It was not God’s idea that I kill you, it was my idea.” Because even though it was God who told him to do it, Abraham said he thought it would be better for Isaac to die mad at his father than to die angry with God. What an amazing idea, that Abraham would take the fall for God. That is how much Abraham loved God, at least according to one of Kierkegaard’s ideas. 

So as the story goes, Abraham walks up the mountain with Isaac and gives him the wood to carry for the offering. And Isaac says to his father: “Where is the sheep?” And Abraham says, “God will provide.” 

And when they get to the top of the mountain, Abraham builds the altar and puts the wood on it and then ties Isaac to it. There is nothing here about Isaac fighting or resisting or crying. We don’t know what happened between the two of them.

But then God says: “Stop. Don’t lay a hand on that child. You have been faithful in your willingness to sacrifice your child.” And then Abraham looks over and sees a ram which he and Isaac sacrifice. And then God reminds them of the promise “I’ll bless you—oh, how I’ll bless you! And I’ll make sure that your children flourish.”

Because remember God had made a promise to Abraham and Sarah in their old age that they would have children and grandchildren.

We thought that the story would end in despair but it ends in blessing. God’s promise of generations of children and grandchildren to inherit the land and to be in relationship with God – well, that promise continues, and is still in place.  

Like another episode of Eureka, just when we think all is lost the sheriff saves the day. The good people of the town live on to do their amazing work all in the name of science and technology. 

But there is that moment in each story, when all seems lost. The actors in the TV show convince us week after week that everything has gone wrong and there is no way out. In the story of Abraham and Isaac, the situation seems absolutely hopeless. Not only is the only child of the really old couple about to die, but our understanding of God as a loving God is about to be destroyed.  I am in despair as I read this story.

We can’t be sure what was in Abraham’s mind. We can’t even be sure whether or not this story is historical or if it was written to teach us about trust in God. There are so many unanswered questions. What was Isaac’s response? And what about Sarah? What did she have to say when they came back down the mountain, if they told her about it? Did this family ever speak of this event again or did Isaac and Abraham have a pact to put it behind them.

We do have to understand that animal sacrifice and even child sacrifice was a part of their culture in way that it is not a part of ours, and still that does not completely take away the horror of the story for us. 

But this is what I take from the story. In the end, the ram was provided. Another way out was provided. For this family, that put their trust in God’s promise completely, even when it looked as if the promise was about to be destroyed, there was a way. They looked over, and there it was: perhaps standing there all the time.  Abraham had to look up to see the ram there.  

How often are we in a situation when we don’t see a way forward, and then something happens: we close our eyes and open them again, a friend asks the right question to help us look at the situation differently, someone comes along to help, and suddenly what seemed insurmountable becomes possible? 

Last week, I talked with you about my call to plant this church. There came a point after we had gathered people together around a vision. Enough time had passed that it really seemed like it should be time to launch weekly worship. I talked with my coach about it. 

Before you launch weekly worship, there are certain ministry leaders you want to have in place with what we call a launch team before you launch weekly worship with a new church start. You need a band leader, children ministry, hospitality, facilities team, people to follow up with visitors, people to lead small groups and to plan outreach. You want some ministry to do with these folks beyond worship. 

I did not feel like I really had enough of the right people yet gathered in order to launch. My coach said: “Sometimes you just have launch with what you have.” So we had a meeting with the people we had, and we came up with a team. And apparently it worked because here we are five years later. 

At the time, the task seemed insurmountable to me. I thought there was no way possible to get The Village from a dream in my head to an actual worshipping congregation in a location that met at a certain time every week with real people there. I needed my coach to show me the way. I needed to trust God, to make what seemed impossible, possible.  

There are situations in life that challenge us. They make us question whether or not we are on the right track. Even when we are following what we believe is God’s deepest desire for our life, it can get hard. God never promised Abraham that life would be easy. God only promised that Abraham would eventually have many descendants and they would inherit the land and God made good on those promises.

So when you are living into God desire for you, there will be hard days. And there will be days when you will doubt, and question whether or not you are on the right path. Really? You may ask? Is this what I signed up for? Those are the times it is important to have friends around you who also love God because they can help you discern whether or not you are on the right path. They might also be the ones to point out to you something that God is trying to show you that will help guide you out of the particular mess you are in at that moment. 

Our task is to listen to God. The most important thing is to trust God, and to stay in relationship with God. God does indeed provide a way, when we look up and when we put our trust in God. Amen.