We hear
this reading of the Transfiguration every Second Sunday of Lent. It’s the
reminder we need before we enter into the darker parts of Lent of Jesus’ glory.
It helps us remember that Jesus’ shiny glory is never actually extinguished
even when human sin threatens to dim it. But, the story of Abraham’s near sacrifice
of his son, Isaac, at Mount Moriah, a story called the Akedah (which
means ‘binding’ in Hebrew), we only hear that once every three years. So, this
week, I looked back on what I’d preached 2nd Sunday of Lent 2015,
and I was kind of disappointed with it. I’d started with a cute story, which I’ll
probably tell again at some point, then I’d talked about the gospel reasonably
competently, and it’s certainly an important gospel, but I left the Akedah hanging.
I don’t know if I was hoping people would just have forgotten about the first
reading by the time we got to the homily, but I don’t think we have. Or at
least I hope we haven’t. Because a story about God telling someone to offer
their child as a sacrifice isn’t something we should just gloss over, even if
the slaughter never actually happens. Recall that God had promised Abraham a
great line of descendants, but Abraham and his wife Sarah thought themselves
too old to naturally create life, then God gives them Isaac. And, then, God
says to Abraham, “take your son, your only son, your beloved son… and sacrifice
him.”
I think
I left that three years ago because there’s nothing I could say in 9 minutes
(or 9 years!) to make that story easy to hear. But as Christians, along with
the other daughters and sons of Abraham, our Jewish and Muslim sisters and
brothers who also have this story in their holy books, we have to hear it. And
our job isn’t to explain it away, to make it easy, but to let it explain us,
let it bring us closer to the God that it makes us want to wrestle with.
Explaining it away isn’t just a modern temptation. There’s ancient Jewish interpretation
that says that Abraham misunderstood God, and certainly Abraham made plenty of
mistakes in his life, but the Bible doesn’t suggest this was one of them. There’s
more ancient interpretation, this strand mostly Christian, that makes Abraham a
magic fortune-teller rather than a daring trust-er, saying that he knew God
would miraculously provide a lamb. And there is a verse, that our abridged
lectionary actually skips, where Isaac asks, “Hey, Dad, we’ve got the wood and
the knife, but where’s the lamb?” And Abraham says, “God will provide.” But I
don’t think that means Abraham knew about the lamb in the thicket. No, Abraham
trusted. In the Mishnah, more or less the oldest writing we have from the
rabbis, there’s one part where a rabbi is listing off a list of Jewish heroes
who prayed when things were difficult and were heard. The list starts with
Abraham, praying at Mount Moriah. Nowhere in Genesis in this story does it say
that Abraham prayed. But, that’s the piece of ancient interpretation that grabs
me. That Abraham loved Isaac and loved God enough that he would do whatever God
asked, he would smile at Isaac as they walked together up that mountain,
enjoying what he genuinely thought could be his last minutes ever with his son,
his only son, whom he loved, and all the while kneeling inside pouring his
heart out in fervent prayer to God: “Not Isaac, God, please.”
I never
learnt to pray until my mother died. I mean, I learnt prayers, I said please
and thank you and sorry to God. But I never learnt that fervor of prayer. I
never learnt what it meant to be mortal, never wrestled with how being
wonderfully and fearfully made is part and parcel of being mortal. I never knew
how tender a mother the Church is, or how wonderful a father God is. And I’m
not saying it’s the same. I didn’t sacrifice my mom on Mount Moriah. But
consenting to mourn someone is somewhat like that, because we can actually
refuse to mourn. The easiest (and most tragic) way to refuse to mourn is to
refuse to love and that’s to slaughter not our sons but ourselves. The alternative
is to let ourselves feel love and feel loss, and that too is sacrifice. Not
slaughter, but sacrifice, a consent to know death in our bones. And somehow to
keep praying, praying in a way we’ve never known how to pray before. To keep
saying, “God will provide.” Not because we foresee a miracle, but because we
trust in a way we never have before.
In the
Lord’s prayer, we ask God: lead us not into temptation. And we should really
mean that. Because the suffering or the death of someone we love is always a
temptation to love less and so hurt less. And we still know that temptation,
that testing. And God still asks us to consent to it, praying all the while.
And we don’t do that expecting a miracle, a lamb in the bushes, we do that
expecting, demanding, confidently, humbly, lovingly, that God will provide.
And God
in Christ says yes. God in Christ provides the Lamb. Lamb of God, you take away
the sins of the world, grant us peace. Lamb of God, provide a land where every
tear is wiped from every eye, a banquet where all rejoice, a place to stand,
saints among saints. Lamb of God, show us what’s on the other side of the way
of the Cross. Lead us, because it’s too hard to walk alone. Lamb of God, provide.
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