All the Families of the Earth: SALT's Lectionary Commentary for Fourth Week after Pentecost
Fourth Week after Pentecost (Year A): Genesis 22:1-14 and Matthew 10:40-42
Big Picture:
1) This week’s reading from Genesis is one of the most famous, infamous, vexing, compelling, repugnant, fascinating, horrifying, suspenseful stories in the Bible: the so-called “Binding of Isaac” or “The Command to Sacrifice Isaac.” It’s a dangerous story, so we have to tread carefully. And it’s a story full of treasure, which is why it’s been prized in both Jewish and Christian traditions for thousands of years.
2) The story is a culmination, the last of a series of episodes in Abraham and Sarah’s life, beginning when God calls Abram to “go from your country… to the land that I will show you,” promising that his descendants will be “a great nation,” and that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:1-3). Thus Abraham’s epic opens with the themes of descendants and blessing and trust - but Abraham and Sarah, it turns out, are unable to have children. Years pass, then decades. Is God’s promise false?
3) Perhaps harboring doubts, Sarah and Abraham hatch a plan to use Hagar, an enslaved Egyptian woman in their household, as a surrogate mother - and Ishmael is born. But when Isaac miraculously arrives, Sarah and Abraham contemptuously dismiss Hagar and Ishmael, exiling them into the forbidding wilderness, so that Isaac alone will inherit God’s blessing (see last week’s commentary). A blinding spotlight falls on Isaac: he’s now the sole means for Abraham and Sarah’s legacy, for the fulfillment of God’s promise, for the “great nation” to come, and ultimately, for God’s plan to bless “all the families of the earth.” And then comes this week’s harrowing story.
4) These two accounts - the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishmael, and the story of Abraham and Isaac - are written as a consecutive, parallel, resonant pair, and so should be read together. In both stories, the central drama is an apparent death march for one of Abraham’s children, with God saving the child at the last moment. Both stories circle around the themes of descendants and blessing and trust. And in both stories, divine promises are vindicated: from Ishmael no less than Isaac, God will make “a great nation” (Gen 17:20; 22:17).
5) This week’s reading from Matthew follows immediately on last week’s; Jesus is commissioning the disciples into the countryside to preach and heal, and as they go, he wants them to think of themselves as intimately participating in him and the One who sent him, so much so that their identities overlap: Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me...
Scripture:
1) It’s important to begin with this: God desires neither Ishmael nor Isaac to die. On the contrary, God protects them both, cares for them both, and fulfills promises to make them each ancestors of multitudes. The NRSV titles this story “The Command to Sacrifice Isaac,” but we might just as well title it, “God Tests Abraham,” since the “command” here is only a supposed one, a ploy, a device; God has no intention of Abraham actually going through with it, and indeed prevents him from doing so. With this in mind, the question many ask upon reading this story - How could God authorize the death of a child? - is in one sense exactly the right question: from Abraham’s point of view, this question may well ring out in protest, horror, and disbelief. But the storyteller (and so the reader) knows from the outset that God is doing no such thing. What is God doing? Testing Abraham.
2) OK - but why? Why is this kind of test necessary? The storyteller begins this way: “After these things God tested Abraham” (Gen 22:1). What things? What’s just happened is the story of Sarah, Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael. As we saw last week, for jealous, self-serving, likely racist reasons, Sarah and Abraham decide to exile Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness: “for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac” (Gen 21:10). The episode lays bare the mixed motives driving Abraham and Sarah at this point in the saga. On one hand, they have faith in God’s promise; but on the other hand, they maneuver to hoard the promise’s blessings, to advance their own legacy by excluding others - thereby dishonoring the spirit of God’s larger goal that, through them and their legacy, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3). Indeed, their scheme to use Hagar as a surrogate itself betrays a lack of trust in God; it’s an anxious, domineering attempt to take matters into their own hands. If the first section of the larger saga is propelled by the question, Is God’s promise false?, now a second question comes center stage: Is Abraham’s faith false?
3) But wait a minute - doesn’t God endorse the idea of dismissing Hagar and Ishmael (Gen 21:12-13)? Given Sarah and Abraham’s callous contempt, it’s more likely that God’s response to their plan is a kind of jujitsu, laying groundwork for the poetic justice in the saga’s next and final chapter. It’s as if God says: Alright, Abraham, if you’re willing to turn your back on your own kin, to send your own child to his death for your own selfish gain, let’s see how that works out for you. You want to exile Hagar and Ishmael? So be it. I will protect and care for them in any case. But then let’s give you a taste of your own medicine. Let’s see how you like it when it’s you, and not Hagar, who’s walking into the wilderness on a death march, your only child at your side. Let’s see how you do as you contemplate being cut out of the covenantal promise. Let’s see how you do when I push you to choose between serving me and serving your own interests, between faith-for-the-sake-of-love and faith-for-the-sake-of-gain…
4) And so God tests Abraham. The word for “test” here is nasah, the same word in Deuteronomy for the trial God gives the Israelites in the wilderness, expressly “in order to humble you” (Deut 8:2). The death of Isaac would mean the death of Abraham’s beloved son, and at the same time, it would mean the death of God’s promise, the death of the dream - which Abraham’s now been nurturing for years - that his descendants will become a great nation, and that Isaac will inherit God’s blessing. It would cancel that inheritance, the very thing Abraham and Sarah tried to hoard when they exiled Hagar and Ishmael.
5) Thus God presses the questions: Where do your bedrock loyalties lie? What’s really driving your “faithful obedience”? Are you serving me and my mission on behalf of “all the families of the earth”? Or are you actually serving yourself, using “faithful obedience” as a strategy for gain? This “test” will tell the difference, because you cannot carry out this command without renouncing your own interests: your legacy, your descendents, your fame, the inheritance of blessing that would come to your lineage. All that will die with Isaac. Within the world of the story, this is a “command” that can only be followed out of sheer fidelity to God for fidelity’s sake. If Abraham is willing, that willingness will demonstrate that his faith is no longer a camouflaged strategy for serving himself.
6) This basic ambiguity, the temptation to use faith and blessing for self-serving purposes, is present from the outset of Abraham’s saga. As soon as God calls on Abram to “Go [Hebrew, lek-leka]... to the land that I will show you,” promising descendents and blessings, the ambiguity appears. Will Abram follow God’s command out of obedience, or opportunism? Out of loving respect, or hunger for advantage? Humility, or arrogance? After ten chapters of mixed evidence, God arranges a test. One last time, God calls on Abraham to “Go [lek-leka]... to a mountain that I will show you” (compare Gen 12:1 and 22:2).
7) As the journey unfolds, what’s Abraham thinking? It’s hard to say; the storyteller uses conspicuously spare, restrained, precise-yet-open-ended language. On one hand, Abraham eventually “takes the knife,” suggesting a willingness to carry out the terrible act; but on the other hand, several details suggest that he may be harboring a faith that God will somehow rescind or transform the order. For example, before the last leg of the journey, Abraham tells the two men accompanying them that “we” - that is, both he and Isaac - will return after worshiping on the mountain; and when Isaac asks him, “Where is the lamb?”, Abraham replies, “God himself will provide the lamb” - a remark at least potentially consistent with an enduring hope-against-hope that somehow God will yet deliver them from the unthinkable (Gen 22:5,8).
8) In the end, what’s the test’s result? Abraham’s faith is vindicated, God’s promise is vindicated - and God says to Abraham, “Now I know that you fear God [i.e., that you regard God with deep respect, reverence, and awe]” (Gen 22:12). It may be that God learns something about Abraham here; perhaps God administers the test to determine whether Abraham is fit for covenantal partnership. But it’s also possible that the “test” is less a diagnostic for God’s learning and more a trial for Abraham’s benefit, a culminating crucible within which his faith is refined, clarified, and strengthened - including a humbling purge of the arrogance that drove his dreadful dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael.
9) All this takes place on Mount Moriah, the very spot, it is said, where the Jerusalem Temple Mount is later constructed (2 Chron 3:1, the only other biblical passage that mentions “Moriah”). In this way, all Temple sacrifices are poetically linked to this episode in Genesis - no doubt a hopeful association with Abraham’s exemplary faith, and by the same token an inescapable association with Abraham’s harrowing, humbling trial. All sacrifices, including everyday acts of “obedience” and “faith,” take place under a temptation to maneuver for gain; every “offering” is ambiguous. Is this truly a gift, given with no strings attached? Or is it an attempt to curry favor, to secure advantage, to strike a bargain, to obligate a blessing in return? For his part, Abraham names the mountaintop with a phrase often translated, “God Will Provide,” but which literally means “God Will See” - an evocative echo of Hagar’s name for God, the “God Who Sees” and “The Living One Who Sees Me” (Gen 22:14; 16:13-14). If Hagar testifies that “God sees” those whom the powers that be attempt to exclude and erase, Abraham testifies that “God sees” the hidden motives of our hearts, our “offerings,” our faith - and will provide whatever purgative, humbling rehabilitation we require.
10) Jesus’ instructions as he commissions the disciples paints a picture: when they embody his mission, they enter into a kind of communion with him, just as Jesus lives and moves in communion with the One who sent him. In other words, Jesus’ being or presence or body - “the Body of Christ” - is constituted by his mission. If someone carrying out that embodied mission is welcomed, then Jesus is effectively welcomed as well, as is the One who sent him (Matthew 10:40). Viewed through this lens, the essence of the stories in Genesis 21 and 22 is that Abraham is out of step with God’s embodied mission, and so is at risk of falling out of covenantal intimacy with God’s presence. God “tests” him, then, to help bring him back into the intimate companionship of the covenantal path.
Takeaways:
1) The story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishmael and the story of Abraham and Isaac should be read together, and when we do, we can see why God “tests” Abraham in the first place. Abraham’s prior actions suggest an ambiguous mixture of obedience and arrogance, fidelity and entitlement - and so God “tests” (Hebrew nasah) Abraham, just as God later “tests” (nasah) the Israelites in the wilderness, expressly “in order to humble you” (Deut 8:2).
2) With a kind of poetic justice, Abraham’s trial echoes the ordeal he’s just put Hagar and Ishmael through. It’s as if God says to Abraham, Just as you sent Hagar out into the wilderness on a death march with her only child - now you will taste your own medicine; now you will be sent out on a death march with your only child. Just as you attempted to cut off Hagar and Ishmael from inheriting the covenantal blessing - now you will taste your own medicine; now you will contemplate being cut off from the covenantal blessing, by your own hand. You attempted to exclude; now you will feel what it’s like to be excluded, by your own hand. You maneuvered for gain; now you will face losing everything, by your own hand. Now you must renounce and relinquish. Now you must be humbled. Now you must choose between arrogant faith and genuine faith, between faith-for-the-sake-of-gain and faith-for-the-sake-of-love - for love seeks to serve and to share, not arrogate blessings to itself!
3) The poetic justice here has an “eye for an eye” or “hoisted with his own petard” symmetry, but as the larger story makes clear, God’s mercy transcends mere reciprocity and punishment. What initially appears to Abraham as “just deserts” or accountability for what he has done to Hagar and Ishmael is indeed that, but it’s also more than that: a merciful divine “test,” a crucible for clarifying and strengthening his faith, purging it of arrogance and contempt.
4) Abraham’s faith on Mount Moriah - chastened and humbled by his ordeal - has become exemplary in Jewish and Christian traditions. But his ordeal also stands as exemplary, a reminder of the ambiguity of religion in general, and the ambiguity of “acts of faith” in particular. In light of this story, we are wise to beware temptations to practice faith as a strategy for gain, rather than as a humble form of love and generosity. The good news is that God will keep faith with us, mercifully transforming our fidelity into a more humble, more generous, more beautiful, more pervasive presence in our lives - and in so doing, bring us more deeply into God’s embodied mission of love and redemption, such that “all the families of the earth,” especially families such as Hagar and Ishmael, “shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3).