Origin Stories: Faith Becomes Sight

Origin Stories: Faith Becomes Sight

Genesis 22:1-14

Genesis 22:1-14

After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” 6 Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. 7 Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.

9 When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

Every story has a beginning. With more and more comic book characters hitting the big screen, we’ve become accustomed to seeing origin stories that establish the heroes and their primary desires. Spider-Man’s responsibility, Batman’s pain, Superman’s small-town values. Each of these help to ground the stories that follow, often circling back to the same themes and concerns of the origin stories in new ways. We do the same thing as Americans, telling almost mythic tales of our founding – with heroes, villains, and all the drama found in origin stories. And we inevitably circle back to these stories when we go astray, framing our political processes through this primary story.

The book of Genesis functions like the origin stories for the people of God. The first eleven chapters serve as a sort of prologue, placing all of the pieces on the board so that Abram’s arrival in chapter 12 finds its context. Yhwh – a very different god from the others in the Ancient Near East – calls Abram from his homeland in order to make a new nation, one that will bless the world and call all people to faith. At its core, the story of Genesis is the story of God’s relationship with Abram and his family. The story first existed as oral history, told in community in ways that are as familiar to us as the beginnings of Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, and Peter Parker. But there were moments in the story of God’s people where the story took new shapes. What we have now was mostly likely edited together as God’s people returned from their exile in Babylon, a thousand years after Abraham. But in the collection and distribution of these stories, the people of God are reminded of their origins and the promises made to their ancestor. Their past helped to shape their present and future.

But we learn early in the story that Abraham is not drawn to be the perfectly righteous hero. He is part coward, part liar, and part unbeliever. But he is also boldly faithful, protecting, and resolved. And so this story of Abraham and the binding of Isaac – probably the most famous of Abraham’s stories – seems like a departure from the character we have come to know thus far. Here, Abraham is principled, quiet, reverent, and fully possessed of faith in God. Ten chapters ago he was self-protective, scheming, and unsure of God’s promises to make his family a great nation.

In fact, this is the last story of Abraham that we read before the narrative shifts fully to Isaac, and then Abraham’s grandson, Jacob. And it is a story with appropriate closure, a bookend to his beginning. In chapter 12, Abraham is called to leave his home and homeland in order to follow God. He will be cut off from his past and all that defined him in order to discover the new promises of God – promises of family and land (two themes that run all the way through scripture and define the people of God). And here, we find another call of God, but this one that threatens to cut off Abraham from his future. Will he sacrifice his son, Isaac, the one who bears all of the promises of God for a future family and future land?

And so a life of deceit and resistance and doubt now, finally!, yields faith, even the faith that risks the very foundation that faith was built upon. Most of us, especially when this story was new to us, react incredulously. What is Yhwh asking?!? How can God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? Our gut is to rationalize the story, apologizing for God’s request by saying that God never really intended Abraham to go through with it, it was an elaborate setup, etc. But I think this rush to explanation really is an attempt to explain the fearful reality that presses upon us: surely God wouldn’t ask too much from us? Surely God wouldn’t ask us to risk the assurances of those promises made to us?

We wish that God’s promises came without challenge to us, that God’s call was easy to say yes to and that we came across as heroes when we obliged the requests. We want God’s commands to be those things we do already, maybe just do them a little better. Be nice to your neighbors (or, at the very least, don’t be mean to them; smiling is sufficient). But as Israel returned from exile, they realized that God’s promises threatened their security. And we, with equal reflection, come to realize that blessing others requires sacrifice, and that sometimes suffering comes even though we are God’s people. Our spiritual lives are not easily reconcilable as we would hope. There is loss, chosen and unchosen.

But within this passage is a recurring theme, a word that helps to establish the core message of this element of our origins. God will provide. But the word contains within it a connotation of vision, the God sees – in fact that God will see to it. So beyond God’s provision to Abraham, we also find God’s presence. And after a lifetime of witnessing God’s provision and presence, Abraham finally gets it. And for those who first assembled this story in written form, God’s provision and presence was necessary for their daily existence. The poverty of the land and the hopelessness of their cause pressed them to understand God’s desire to be with them and to give them what they would need.

And so, like Abraham, we do not need to fear the threat against our future with God, even if God calls us into the very things that threaten us. When we were in Yosemite a couple of weeks ago, we hiked to the footbridge at Vernal Falls. A hot day and a steep climb are not really anybody’s idea of vacation, and Kathryn was tempted to go no further. So I made her a promise. The climb to the top of the falls will be steeper, and it won’t get cooler til we get to the top. But it will be worth it. Now, I have not made the climb myself, and so this promise was also a hopethat I would be right. She relented, and my promise turned out to be true: it was harder, but it was worth it.

God calls us forward too – to reach out to neighbors who are different from us, to take up causes that benefit others before it benefits us, to be exposed to ideas and information that may threaten long established convictions. But in the midst of these calls, God also extends presence and provision. Not only will a way be made for us, but God will be with us as we go. And this makes even the most dangerous paths worth the journey.

This is a story of faith, but not of blind faith. As God will see to it, Abraham also sees the potential for redemption. Before they head up the mountain, Isaac notes that the whole enterprise smacks of sacrifice – except for the animal to be killed. “God will provide what we need,” Abraham tells his son. Abraham is present to God’s presence, tuned in to the capacity of God to do something miraculous. Another theme is played throughout the passage, with Abraham responding three times – to God and to his son – “Here I am.” I am here, I am present, I am attentive to the moment and all that presses upon it from our past and future.

You might be like me, someone who is often not “here.” I tend to be in the future, anticipating what might happen and how I might avoid it or respond to it – frustrated by the threats that impinge upon my future plans. You might not be here, but in the past, reliving your regrets and mistakes. But few of us are really here, able to see where we are and where God may be among us. So many things disturb our presence. Our task, like Abraham, is to become faithfully aware of God’s presence and provision among us, even if the circumstances challenge these commitments.

Can we worship God beyond our best-case scenarios? Can we find God’s promises coming true even if our world is threatened? Will we say, “Here I am” when God calls our name, enlisting us into a story that presses us to change and grow and fail and rely upon God? Do we have an imagination for redemption – maybe not for the specifics, but at the very least acting as if God knows what we do not?

I am surprised by one element of the story, often overlooked because of all that’s going on with Abraham and Isaac. As God calls out to Abraham atop the hill, staying the execution, a remarkable statement is made: “for now I know that you fear God.” The way the story is told, we do not presume that God knew what would happen. God was eager to see – eager to hope – that Abraham would be committed to faith. God learns something about Abraham in this story, functioning like a character in this tale just as much as the father and son.

I bring this up not to challenge the difficulties of systematic theologies or pick fights with Calvinists among us. But I do think this element of the story gives us insight. As much as we often read Jesus into the story as the ram among the thorns, the substitutionary sacrifice, I think we can also see a bit of God’s character in this statement. This was a test of Abraham’s faith, but it was also a test of God’s understanding of Abraham’s faith. In this story, it is impossible to read God as a disembodied idea, empty space just filled with commands and shouts. This origin story shows us that God moves with us, anticipating and hoping alongside of us. God is not aloof, but just as engaged and committed to our relationship with us as we are with God. And this means that God learns more about us. And there are times when we need to hold fast to God’s omniscience, but there are also times, especially when our faith is tested, that we know that God has skin in the game.

In this story, God’s will is not some immovable reality that we either get right or get wrong, but instead is about our proximity to God (and God’s proximity to us). And it is at this moment that our faith – often a near-sighted sort of faith, cursed with astigmatism and myopia – nevertheless becomes sight. Like Abraham, we count on God’s provision when we arrive at the place of sacrifice. Like Isaac, we stay close to the one we trust, even if we don’t know the what’s next. My hope is that we are reminded of our past, that we see that our origins as the people of God relies upon the God who sees to it and sees us even in our doubt.

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