Genesis 22:1-14; Romans 6:12-23
In September last year, I went to “preacher camp” with five other pastors. We spent a few days together looking through an entire year’s worth of preaching materials. With the common lectionary as a guide, we tackled a season at a time – exchanging ideas, resources and themes. When we got to today’s texts that included Genesis 22, the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, the room groaned. Someone offered a solution – it would be the end of June and the perfect time to be away on vacation. I wrote at the top of my notes for this date: Guest Preacher!
This is one of those stories we would like to avoid, toss out altogether, perhaps. You know the kind – in the family tree – when someone starts to recall them, people groan or say, “let’s not talk about that.” (i.e. the broken ankle on vacation…that year the cat found the Thanksgiving turkey, when uncle just went away for a month and “no one knew where he was”) We all have these stories that are part of our family history. Origin stories that have made us who we are for better or for worse. This (Gen 22:1-14) is one of those stories.
God sounds harsh. Abraham seems like he has lost his mind. If I ever come to you and say that God told me to sacrifice my child… I need to be taken for psychiatric evaluation. And I promise to do the same for you.
The outlandish complexity of the story assures that it is rich with meaning. We might wish to re-write it, but let’s not avoid it. Let’s not look away. In fact, let’s look harder into it.
Why is Abraham who, just a few chapters ago, argued so vehemently with God to “prevent mass deaths in Sodom (Gen 18)” now so complicit in God’s terms?[1] It’s a question that has led many, many preachers and rabbis and theologians to provide explanations.
Jewish midrash (ancient storytelling, wisdom adjacent to the Hebrew scripture)[2] has much to offer here. Some say Abraham obviously misunderstood God. Others say the real test was to see if Abraham refused to carry it out, recognizing the absurdity and violence in God’s request. Some rabbis imagined Sarah, in such distress, that she asked to be sacrificed, too. In a modern retelling, Sarah sneaks up the mountain with a ram and pretends to be the voice of an angel to save her son.[3]
You may not like someone taking such liberties with the text, but the truth is we are often doing this when it comes to God’s interplay in our lives – to rationalize, to explain, to make it make sense. From the very first verse, I don’t like it. It doesn’t make sense. This origin story is notoriously problematic for sure. And I’m down to about 1000 words left to deal with those problems. So, let’s wade in with these: Why is God testing Abraham? Why does God tell Abraham to take this beloved son –this one so long prayed for – Isaac, God’s own answer to the covenant with Abraham and Sarah– to the top of the mountain, to be killed and given as an offering? What kind of god asks for such a thing? And why doesn’t Abraham refuse? Is Abraham blindly obedient, or unflinchingly faithful?
If we can set aside the questions of blame, as in whose fault is it that we are even here, can we admit that modern versions of this story play out in our world almost daily?[4]
Was testing Abraham really necessary? Hadn’t he already passed God’s test? Each time God called him, he didn’t waiver, he just went. “Here am I,” he answers, ready to listen, ready to go where God calls. But…, Abraham’s track record hasn’t been pristine, has it? There is the Hagar indiscretion when he detoured from God’s original plan. There was the passing off of Sarai as his sister rather than his wife. So, maybe a test of Abraham’s trust was in order here at the beginning of a new nation that would launch the redemption for all of creation. But in one commentator’s words, this seems… harsh.
With Abraham, we learn as we go, that God is both Tester and Provider. These two identities for God frame the story. Both are true at the same time. It doesn’t matter if I like it, nor if I can explain it. In verse 7, Isaac calls out to his Father. And Abraham answers – the same way he answered Yahweh when God called, “Here I am.” He is ready to listen. Ready to answer his son when he asks, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” (The innocence of the question is heart-wrenching.) Abraham responds in verse 8 with what sounds like an absolute bowing to God’s will and at the same time his trust in God. “God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Is this a game of chicken? Who will flinch first? I
Or could this be what covenant looks like? Is there more trust beneath the surface of this relationship than we can see in the dialogue? Though Abraham cannot know what God will do, he “finds his only refuge in the divine provider” who is “inscrutable but reliable.”[5]
John Claypool, many years ago, preached a sermon on this text only four weeks after his 10-year-old daughter died from leukemia. In it, he shared a conversation he had with her.
“When will this leukemia go away?”
“I don’t know darling, but we are doing everything we know to make that happen.” Then she said, “Have you asked God when it will go away?” And he said, “Yes, you have heard me pray to him many times.” but she persisted: “What did he say? When did he say it would go away/” and I had to admit to myself… I had done a lot of talking and praying nd pleading, but the response of the heavens had been silence.” After Laura Lou died, Claypool describes the ways he had been counseled to respond to his grief and thus to God.
Many well-meaning folks suggested that he had to accept what had happened with unquestioning resignation. “The way out is to submit. We must silently and totally surrender. We must accept what God does without a word or murmur.” He admits this way has its wisdom as humans are so insubstantially prepared to face such horrors.
But he concluded, this way denies the relationship that God has with his own children, with human beings. This way reduces our interactions to transactions. It denies that God is “the One who moves through these pages (scripture)… by nature a Being of love,” a compassionate Father.
The back and forth of questions and dialogue are at the heart of the way people ought to relate – especially fathers and children. Therefore to be in relationship with God, to share in a covenant with God means that it is a mistake to suggest that we must not question God. That mocks the story of Job and the cries of the Psalmists. It dilutes the prayer of Jesus in the garden and from the cross, agonizing with God. Claypool said, “There is more honest faith in an act of questioning than in the act of silent submission, for implicit in the very asking is the faith that some light can be given.” [6]
If I could re-write this origin story in Genesis 22, I would reveal what I believe to be (or hope to be) the unspoken conversation between Abraham and God on the way to Moriah.
Because if Abraham didn’t question God’s command to kill the boy, then I’m very tempted to wonder if Abraham had it wrong from the beginning. People (Families!) have turned their backs on one another in the name of religion more times than we can count. I believe we sometimes get it wrong. I also think we HAVE to own that as a nation we have sacrificed our young for wars too quickly and cavalierly waged by old men –
What if God never wanted Abe to sacrifice Isaac and that’s just what he thought he heard? Maybe, more often than we care to admit, we’re wrong in our certainty about what God asks of us, and God has to interrupt us before we do something harmful. The truth of this origin story that we can still cling to is– that God will provide if we will take a moment to breathe and to look aside for the ram in the bush. That is the certainty within the Mystery. We cannot always see or know how, but we can trust whether it is through the miraculous or the people of God being who they are called and gifted to be, God will provide.
Claypool acknowledged that his and Abraham’s stories ended very differently. After all, Abraham came back down from Moriah with his child. Perhaps the stars were out – reminding him once again of God’s Promise – and the boy, laughing, still laughing ran and played all around him. For all those, like Claypool, these pages (scripture) would remind us that God’s own son endured the most terrible test. From the hill of Calvary, the Son did not return with his Father that day either. The veil was torn in two – an image of God’s own heart.
We cannot read this story about a boy who asked his father about the lamb and carried the wood on his own back and not also see God’s own son and that terrible grace that took place on the cross.[7] This God who reigns over life and death invites us to still look to the stars, look to the heavens. For that many of us there is the vast, eternal promise of life beyond what we have the ability to understand. The certainty in the Mystery is God will provide.
… is the same, the same One who, in the gospel lesson, gives cups of cool water to the little ones (Matthew 10:42).
[1] Rothaus, Kyndall Rae, Sojourns Magazine, Living the Word commentary for June 28
[2] https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/6464321/jewish/What-Is-Midrash.htm
[3] https://www.midrashicmonologues.com/ per Rothaus’s commentary
[4] Weber, Derek. UMC Discipleship Worship Resources for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost 2026
[5] Breuggemann, Walter, Genesis, Interpretation series commentary
[6] Claypool, John. Life is Gift, A Chorus of Witnesses is a collection of sermons, ed. Long and Plantinga
[7] Weber