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Reflection for March 12, 2006

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Who's testing Whom here?

Today's first reading begins with the sentence, "God put Abraham to the test." But a survey of ancient Jewish commentaries or midrashim on today's passage from Genesis (eloquently and profoundly summarized in the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's book Messengers of God) suggests that it wasn't so much God who was testing Abraham but Abraham who was testing God.

For hadn't God seen to it that Abraham and his wife Sarah in their old age would miraculously have a son and heir? Until then their prospects were hopeless. And hadn't God promised Abraham (even before Isaac was ever conceived) that he would derive from his loins not only Isaac but a subsequent great nation? Indeed, hadn't this God also predicted in a prior chapter in Genesis that his descendants would be as countless as the stars? And hadn't this God he knew and trusted saved him and Sarah several times from dangerous monarchs? And hadn't this God of his shown himself to be merciful enough to go not one but almost endless extra miles - at Abraham's request - to save Sodom and Gomorrah from the consequences of their greed?

And now suddenly this about face, this contradiction of all these divine promises and evidence of God's benign, gracious nature! Now this same God wants Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and with Isaac the grand future that God had laid out before him. There was something wrong there. That's not what Abraham had been led to expect of the God he knew. And so, because of the horrid nature of this new command of God to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham decided to put God on the spot! Abraham decided to bet on the God he knew and carry out this command to the letter, to the extreme - in confidence that true God could only be a just and merciful God and never so enigmatic - an arbitrary beast who liked to toy with us.

So, according to the rabbinical interpreters, Abraham set out with Isaac as commanded, and with the wood and knife went up Mt. Moriah and built an altar - to push God to the limit, to defy any such God who would make any father sacrifice his only son for whatever reasons, who would play such atrocious games with the human race, Or as Elie Wiesel imagines it, Abraham says in effect to God, "I defy You, Lord. I shall submit to Your will, but let us see whether You shall go to the end, whether You shall remain passive and remain silent when the life of my son - who is also Your son - is at stake!"

And, again according to the rabbis, God caves in. His radically caring, life giving, merciful nature is forced to the surface. The notion men have that God is an enigma, not to be trusted, is tossed onto the ash heap of human history - thanks to Abraham's defiance, his decision to put God to the test. Indeed, Wiesel says God was so embarrassed by his command to sacrifice Isaac that he sent an angel to tell Abraham to stop. But will a defiant Abraham allow God to hide his mercy in some closet? No! He refuses to accept the angel's mediation, saying, "God Himself ordered me to sacrifice my son, it is up to Him to rescind that order without an intermediary." In other words, God must reveal himself to humanity not as a monster but as benign and caring."

And note how the passage ends, with the Lord shoving the angel aside to renew personally all his promises to Abraham - to make his descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore - as befits a God of life and not of death. And let's not forget that later time God came forth in history to reveal himself as our source of life and grace - in the person of his own son, Jesus, who is transfigured in today's Gospel reading.

-- Geoff Wood