Origin Stories: The Binding of Isaac
Genesis 21:1-3; 22:1-14
Sermon by Rev. Nathan Hill
"I am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman.”
Last week, we started our origin stories of the Bible and our faith with a fun mash up, looking at the origin story of Superman and of how God created us to be good. And now we turn to the Dark Knight, the Caped Crusader, the World's Greatest Detective - Batman.
Batman's story is as iconic as Superman's - made into multiple movies, numerous animated series, graphic novels, and even a LEGO character. And at its core, the story of Batman begins with family tragedy.
One night, after a show in Gotham City, the child Bruce Wayne is walking with his parents when they are attacked by street criminals. Bruce's parents are killed, leaving him an orphan. Left with a vast wealth, he makes it his life's mission to be a champion for Gotham City, bringing justice and peace to a city made corrupt by forces of evil and violence.
But what makes Batman unique as a superhero is that he is not really special. There is nothing super about him. Yes, he is rich, but even in Batman’s comic book world, that is not unusual. Bruce Wayne is not an alien from another planet - he was not doused with radiation - he is not super strong or super fast or can fly through the air.
What makes him super is that he chooses to make the world better - to use his wealth and intelligence to fight back as a regular person against evil and corruption. He chooses to use the tragedy of what happened to his parents not as a reason to be angry and further destroy the world - but to seek its transformation.
Like Batman, we too have origin stories, and our origin stories are rooted in complicated families and pasts, in tragedy and trauma. Many of us carry with us the pain of losing someone close to us - to violence, to tragedy, to sickness. We all remember where we were on September 11 or the Oklahoma City Bombing or when we heard about the Columbine School Shooting or Sandy Hook. Those events linger on us and our lives. And they can misshape us. Psychologists call it trauma and note the way those disturbing events can limit us from functioning wholly and fully in this world.
I believe, of course, the Biblical stories, as ancient as they are, echo with trauma too, with the effects of violence, of surviving in a world that can be beautiful and messy. Our Biblical texts speak of families who are not perfect but are full of conflict, of individuals of faith who tried to be faithful in difficult times, sometimes getting it right and sometimes getting it wrong.
This morning, in Abraham's story, we hear about the unimaginable - Abraham being asked to take his son, Isaac, and sacrifice him to God on a mountaintop. There is no way to sugarcoat this story - no way to soften the edges. God, according to the narrative, wants Abraham to take a knife and kill his son as an act of worship and obedience.
Ugh. For so many, this kind of obedience sounds abusive - especially in churches that demand loyalty at all costs. Before we dwell too much on this moment, let's recap to how Abraham got here. Because it is a messy and complicated story. A story of family. A story of promise. A story of twists and turns.
Of course, Abram or Abraham is a key person in the origin story of our faith. In fact, three traditions claim him as a grandfather of faith - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
When we are introduced to Abram, God calls him and his wife out of what is present day Turkey to get up and go to a land promised to him and his descendants. He and his wife, who are already well-advanced in years, surprisingly respond to this request. They pack up the U-Haul and set off at the age of 75 years old. Any of you out there in that age range ready to move if God calls?
They begin the journey toward what will be called the Promised Land, present day Israel and Palestine, but their journey takes some detours - even to Egypt.
More than land, God's promise includes babies and descendants. Of course, they are too old. Sarah even laughs when an angel makes this proclamation as she listens on.
Their relationship with God is honest and contentious and respectful all at once. Abram argues and negotiates with God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sin of inhospitality and violence to strangers. When they are impatient that God does not give them a baby as they grow older and older, Sarah suggests that Abraham have a child with their enslaved servant, Hagar, and then as the child grows and Sarah’s jealousy grows, they claim God commands them to send Hagar and Ishmael into the desert to die.
But over and over again, God intercedes. God chooses a relationship with this unlikely and complicated family. At long last, the two bear a child, Isaac. They are elated, so in love with this child, Isaac.
But then God turns around and asks the impossible, "Abraham, take your son up to the mountaintop, and sacrifice him."
The scripture does not give us the details of what was going on in Abraham's mind or Sarah's mind. We get a glimpse of the confusion of Isaac on the way up the mountain, wondering where the animal is that they will sacrifice, who we imagine to be a boy but may have been in his 20s according to the ages of his parents. Finally, at this mountaintop, Abraham shows his complete obedience to God. He binds his son. He brings out a knife.
Suddenly, an angel intercedes. A ram has been caught in a nearby bush. Isaac is spared. Abraham, in response, sacrifices the ram and gives the mountain a sacred name.
One of the strange things about this story…. if you read carefully, Abraham descends the mountain alone. Isaac evidently stays behind or goes a different route home. The two do not reunite until Sarah dies a few years later, and Isaac is married. Was the relationship of the father and son harmed in this moment?
Adding further strangeness, Abraham, after this moment, never talks to God again. Did his relationship with the Creator change? When Abraham argued with God to save people in Sodom and Gomorrah, why did he not argue with God to save Isaac? It's one of those nagging questions that has no easy resolution as we read this story.
Certainly, in our faith lives, sometimes we are called to give up things - things that are sometimes close to us. Obedience to the way of love and justice is central to our striving as a church and as Christians. But to imagine God wanting us to sacrifice our beloved children or loved ones is unsettling.
Rabbis and theologians continue to wrestle with this ancient story.
One prominent Jewish interpretation from Rabbi Ari Kahn interprets this story as a clear, foundational message from God - "God would use the opportunity to teach humankind, once and for all, that human sacrifice, child sacrifice, is not acceptable."
Indeed, this resonates because the mountain upon which Abraham climbed with his son would later become the very site where Solomon would build the temple, Jerusalem, to be the center of religious traditions and practice of the Jewish faith.
I can imagine that Abraham grew up in a world where dealing with your sons harshly - even sacrificing them - could have been seen as the norm, as a faithful response to uncertainty.
In this moment, God breaks a cycle of violence and offers an alternative future, an alternative spirituality for a world that too often knew violence and woe.
Perhaps then there is something in this ancient story that can speak to us in a week of violence and division, even as we sit in our discomfort.
In a week when a young white man can take a gun and end a life or shoot up a high school, in a culture that is divided and wants to point fingers at everyone else rather than take responsibility, when bomb threats and fear grip college campuses and our city streets, we need a break in this cycle of violence and division.
We need a spirituality that honors and protects lives. That challenges us to deal with our problems by sitting together over cups of coffee, by working out our differences at conference tables and public settings. A spirituality that courageously calls out hatred but calls us in to love.
Just like Abraham, we need God to intercede and offer a new direction.
Can we live in a world where children are no longer sacrificed to the gods of political ideology, of war, of famine, of the worship of weapons of war?
I thought about this especially as the video clip of the murder in Utah spread like wildfire, knowing that our young people were seeing this callous death on repeat. The truth is - even seeing that video can layer trauma on our lives, can harm our souls, can make witnessing death feel normal. When it should be anything but normal. Parents, I hope you can have a conversation with your young ones on whether or not they have watched videos of death and violence - and what it can mean when we take that into ourselves and normalize it. Perhaps we need to rethink our usage of social media - perhaps we need to intercede in the lives of those around us, to hold us back from seeing the raised knife as how the world works.
In fact, one way we can heal from trauma is to be connected - to find groups to talk about our pain that we carry from our past, from our present, from the world around us. Do you need space to talk with others in pain? How can we as your church help?
Here is how I want to bring this full circle.
Batman, for all the ways he is depicted as guardian in the night, as a justice bringer, has a core ethic.
Yes, though he is a victim of trauma and a past fractured by violence, he chooses to break the cycle of violence that could have controlled him.
Instead, he adopts an ethic that runs like a bright light through his story, even if some of the movie versions downplay it.
Batman never kills. Even his most-hated foes, like the Joker or the Riddler, Batman’s goal is not to destroy them but take them to the hospital where they can heal.
In one of the iconic comic series written by Alan Moore, Batman: the Killing Joke, after Batman goes toe to toe with his arch nemesis Joker, as violence and conflict escalates, Batman says this to the enemy who tries to destroy him:
“I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want either of us to end up killing the other… but we’re both running out of alternatives and we both know it. Maybe it all hinges on tonight, maybe this is our last chance to sort this bloody mess out… It doesn’t have to end like that. I don’t know what it was that bent your life out of shape but who knows? Maybe I’ve been there too. Maybe I can help. We could work together. I could rehabilitate you. You needn’t be out there on the edge anymore. You needn’t be alone. We don’t have to kill each other. What do you say?”
Yes, even the stories of the Bible are born out of a world touched by violence - but we, with God’s help, get to write a new chapter. We don’t have to kill each other. We don’t have to be alone. What do we say to that kind of future?
May it come - in us, through us, in spite of us - but may it come. Thanks be to God.