Don’t Kill Isaac!
Rev. Alison
Longstaff, Feb 9, 2014
Bath Church
of the New Jerusalem
Genesis
22: 1-14, Jeremiah 28:7-9, Selections from Arcana Coelestia 1492 and 3839:4
“And
… God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 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.’”
Many scholars through the
ages, including Swedenborg, have approached this story as a spiritual metaphor,
not historic fact. Some believe it to be
a primitive oral parable depicting how our earliest ancestors transitioned from
human sacrifice to the less barbaric animal sacrifice. Indeed, many Hebrew scholars have assumed all
along that Abraham here misunderstood God’s will. They say the
story is written as if God actually
commanded the sacrifice of Isaac, but the true God of love would never have
wanted this. Since primitive
human cultures wrote the Bible, these early biblical stories reflect what the
primitive peoples thought God wanted,
not necessarily what the God of love actually wanted for them.
And Swedenborg agrees,
saying that God never tempts us. He didn't tempt Abraham and he doesn't tempt
us. A spiritual temptation is a conflict
between what we love and what we believe.
God doesn't send them. They occur
naturally as we mature. What we love is
never all the way pure, and what we believe often has some fault-lines in it, so
God allows the conflicts that arise from these impurities and fault-lines to refine
us, little by little into wiser, gentler spiritual beings. Abraham’s story amply illustrates a clash
between what he loves and what he believes. In this case, it was his belief that was
faulty, not his love.
Abraham was born
and raised in Ur, where they practiced human sacrifice at the time. They offered young maidens, little children,
and especially newborn babies as burnt offerings to try to win the favor of the
gods. Abraham grew up with this as the norm,
and so it would have been built into his deepest psyche that human, and
especially child sacrifice was the most powerful way to prove his devotion to
God. Knowing this, we can understand why
Abraham could have thought God wanted
him to sacrifice Isaac. He was very
devout, so he set his intention on obeying this command. What a mixture of innocence and false
beliefs!
Now remember,
Abraham is a part of you and me. In this
part of the story, he is showing us what we are like when we have a genuine desire
to do God’s will mixed with false ideas about God’s will. Swedenborg says it is when we are still
“worshiping other gods.” In other words, false ideas of what is right are
leading us. Abraham here represents the
times in our life when we may be full of good intentions but have very little
actual wisdom. This part of us is most
likely to cling to religious dogma and to follow it blindly from fear. This ignorant innocence is pretty much
spiritually unconscious, yet it is the beginning of all that we can be. God honors Abraham’s innocent quality—his devout and
sincere intent to do what he thinks is right—even though God
would never, ever have commanded such a terrible act.
The book of Genesis is
about a very early part of our spiritual journey. It shows a step of growth
from a more primitive spirituality into increasing love and enlightenment. The mountain called Moriah here is actually mount
Zion—the mountain upon which Jerusalem is now built. It is
the mountain upon which Jerusalem is now built. This tells us that this story is about our first
steps toward a genuine and living spirituality. The fact that the divine being is here called
“God” (Elohim) and not “The Lord” (Jehovah or YHWH) means that this story is
describing our relationship with our (faulty) beliefs or our understanding, not
our loves.
Now, the way this story was
taught to me throughout my childhood was this: God commanded Abraham to
sacrifice Isaac. He did, but it was just
a test. God never meant for Abraham to
actually kill Isaac, and Abraham passed the test, so it was all good.
No adults around me ever
questioned the violent content of this story, nor considered the trauma this experience
would have brought on Isaac. No one expressed
alarm over what it would really have meant for Abraham to have to murder his only
child. It was as if Abraham just lowered
the knife, untied Isaac, dusted him off, and they had a good laugh about it
all. “Just kidding. Now let’s really go barbecue
that ram over there.” As far as I saw
modeled around me, this story was a lovely and unquestioned illustration of how important it is to be obedient to God,
no matter what. Don’t question. Don’t think.
Just obey
It wasn't until I had
children of my own that the emotional impact of this story began to hit. However, obedient and devout Christian that I
was, I jammed my discomfort and unease out of sight, because I didn't dare
question what my religious leaders and teachers had taught me with such solid
authority. “Obey without question!” was the moral of the story. If I was questioning, I wasn't doing the good
thing Abraham did. Right?
The blind and devout me
pictured Isaac lying there, all tied up on the wood, serene and trusting,
docile as a—well—lamb. But when my reason kicks in I can’t help but
ask, is that really how it would have happened?
Didn't Isaac have a few problems with this scene? Maybe there is a good reason he was bound up
tight before being laid on the wood. He
must have put up a fight, the same way our reason objects to being sacrificed
on the altar of religious dogma. And this detail changes the whole feel of the
story.
Swedenborg tells us that
that emotional content of a Bible
story contains important clues as to what meaning the story holds for us
today. Imagine Abraham’s inner torment
as he looked down at Isaac. Imagine
Isaac struggling and crying out, “Dad!
Dad! Don’t do this!!” Imagine Abraham, torn between his intense
desire to follow God’s will and his breaking heart. See him lifting Isaac’s chin in order to slit
his throat. Can he really kill this
precious, long-awaited son of his old age?
This is Isaac, his only child
with Sarah—the son whom God promised to him, whom Sarah bore to him when she was in her 90s! The anguish,
the conflict that Abraham would have felt, is just what we feel when our love
challenges old and deeply held religious beliefs.
“But
the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’
And he said, ‘Here I am.’” (‘Here I am,’ Swedenborg tells us, represents
a person coming spiritually awake, or coming to ones senses.) “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.
There is a way out of this
temptation. Abraham faces a temptation
we all face, and in this story chooses the love of his son over the religious
dictates of his upbringing. When we bump
up against deeply buried religious fears, and yet are courageous enough to make
the choice for love, we also choose as Abraham did. When we do, we stand in the space between the
old culture and the new, between death and life. After we choose for love, we may even hold
our breath, waiting for lighting to strike.
But when nothing dire happens, we breathe, and breathe again, and begin
to relax into our new way of being. On
the other side of this temptation, when we choose for love, there is always a
new dawning. We find a fresh new start, things
look different, more spacious. There is
a greater light, and deeper peace.
This story is about the
stage of our spiritual awakening when we first move away from a dogmatic,
inherited, or “historic” faith towards an intelligent, thoughtful, and internalized
faith—one that springs from an ongoing spiritual dialogue with an intelligent
God, not one that involves strict obedience to what religious authorities told us God said.
And here is where the deep
irony comes in.
The devout and ignorant
mind encountering this text believes it telling us to value staying devout and
ignorant. The importance of complete
obedience is what it draws from this story, not
the importance of the exercise of reason.
The story is actually about
allowing our reason (Isaac) to live, yet many use it to glorify blind
obedience. Irony of ironies. It is about allowing our intelligence to
live, and yet it is used to exhort believers to blind obedience. If wasn't so twisted, it would be funny.
But this is the human
condition. We draw from the Word what we
expect to draw from it. That is why
Abraham believed God said to
sacrifice Isaac. From his culture and
upbringing He expected God to command it, so that is what he heard. When we are in a state of devout and
unquestioning allegiance to religious “law,” that is the sort of thing we hear
also.
Ooh. Problem. So, if we draw from the Word what we expect to
find in it, how does anyone ever get free from false understanding?
Well, here is how it works:
Abraham represents you and me taking the first baby steps of our spiritual walk—which
is most commonly to learn the religious “rules” around us and to try to follow
them perfectly. There is comfort and safety
in following rules. There is safety in
going with the crowd. Obedience without
intelligence is not what God intends for us, but it is all we've got at this
stage. It feels good. It makes us feel
safe. This is Ur. We start there, and we
are meant to start there.
BUT: obedience without
intelligence is not all that we've
got. God has given us Isaac. Isaac, who is flesh of our flesh; Isaac, who
is our birthright and our future. Isaac,
representing our intelligent and rational side, whose very existence challenges ignorant and blind faith. Isaac, who is from God, and is meant to be in
our future.
Do you think this ancient
parable is irrelevant to our modern problems? We see Isaac sacrificed again and
again, every time Christians burn the Koran, every time a suicide bomber
succeeds, every time a Sunday school child is scolded for her questions; every
time someone who is gender variant or loves someone of their same gender is
spurned, shamed, shunned, or cut off. It
is indeed any time you or I feel compelled in any way to judge or cut off another
human heart just because they do not believe the same things that we do.
Make no mistake, Abraham is
you and me, and everyone else who makes the spiritual journey. You very likely will never believe that the
best way to prove your love of God would be through murdering another human
being. But would you sacrifice a human
relationship? Would you cut off someone you
love because of a lifestyle choice, or a different religious path? Each one of
us does indeed hit regular choice-points like this in our spiritual walk—points
at which we must choose between the religious expectations we inherited or that
make us feel safe, and the call of our beating heart.
Can you recall any
such choice points in your life? A
time when you hung between two futures—one which conformed to the religious rules
around you and one which bucked them and made a daring choice for love?
I can think of
several times in my life when I felt myself at such a crossroads. The day my middle sister told me she was in
love with a woman was one. I was faced
with rejecting her “for her own good” because I had been taught that God
considered homosexuality an abomination, or continuing to love her for all the
fine qualities and gentleness that she embodied. It tore me up inside to consider this
decision. I was caught between fear of
transgressing “God’s law” (as taught to me) or losing my sister and hurting her
deeply by rejecting her.
In this case, my
love for my sister and my love for the unmistakable goodness in her character
trumped the “rules.” I dared make a
mistake in God’s eyes, because I simply could not slay my relationship with her
nor reject the innocence I saw in her soul.
My heart won over my head.
Now, before I go
further, I caution anyone against believing that choosing a personal
relationship over a cut-off is always
the better choice. That would simply be
making a new religious rule that exempts us from needing to discern and choose
on a case by case basis. True faith is
living faith, which means it must adapt and discern moment by moment, case by case,
using the best it has of love and wisdom at the time.
In truth,
choosing to continue to lovingly accept this sister and her partner was also
choosing a cut-off in another area of my life.
It meant I would no longer be in the good graces of all those who
continue to believe that homosexuality is a sin. In choosing this sister, I lost, in part, my
other sister, one of my brothers and my father.
Those losses were not easy and continue to ache, but for me the choice
for greater and more inclusive love was the only choice that sat well with my
soul. The lesson here is about using
ones heart with ones intelligence and
conscience, and not simply allowing other people’s rules to choose for you.
Regardless of what you may
feel about my personal choices, I submit that today’s Scripture speaks with
tremendous relevance to issues still very active in our modern world. Christians
and many other faith communities across the world face modern issue after modern
issue calling us out of dogma and into a more loving, well-reasoned belief
system. This is the
story about the parts of us that we think
we need to kill to prove we love God. This is about the regular confrontation
of our heads with our hearts. Fear makes
us cling to absolutes and blind obedience.
Loves gives us the courage to step away from a rules-alone approach to
faith, and to engage in the discussion with heart and intelligence.
Isaac must live.
He is our only path to a mature spiritual life.
It is scary to allow our questions to challenge our beliefs, but we need
not let that fear control us. Isaac is
our birthright. God gave us Isaac and intended
him to live, to give Abraham (which is our spiritual beginnings) a hope and a
future. When we, like Abraham, let our hearts speak and over-rule our fears,
love wins.
And when love wins, we all
win.
Amen
The Readings
Gen 22: 1-14 1 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 servants,
"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."
Jeremiah
28:7-9. But
listen now to this word that I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all
the people. The prophets who preceded
you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against
many countries and great kingdoms. As
for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true,
then it will be known that the LORD has truly sent the prophet."
Two selections from Arcana Coelestia (aka Heavenly Secrets)
From paragraph
1492 The internal sense is such
that it is the emotion itself lying hidden within the words which constitutes
the internal sense.
From paragraph 3839:4 This
being so, angels are acquainted with the emotion enclosed in the subject-matter
of the Word; and this entails every variation according to the types of emotions
present in the angels. From this it becomes quite clear how holy the Word is, for Divine love, that is, love coming from
the Divine, is utterly sacred, and since the subjects within the Word spring
from the Divine love, this means they are utterly sacred because they are full
of the Divine Love.
Revised from a sermon called “Love Wins” By Rev. Alison Longstaff, preached June 26th, 2011
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