“Choosing Compassion”
Genesis 22.1-14
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Tests.
I’ve never been a fan of them.
Growing up, I was never really good at them.
In fact, I was one of those students who became anxious to the point where I would become my worst enemy. You know what I mean, right? I would study day and night, memorize and theorize until I knew what I would be tested on like the back of my hand.
Then test day would come—and I would freeze. Suddenly I forgot all the information I learned, and 6x6 suddenly became Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and the square root of 49 was a squinting modifier.
Of course, all of this was intensified by the clock. One of my worst memories from school was when we started to time test. Teachers use them to check if students can quickly recall math facts (automaticity). However, timed tests also have some drawbacks, which can be really damaging: They promote and single-handedly CAUSE math anxiety. Etched in my head is the memory of taking one of these tests with the clock ticking and watching my classmates one by one turn their papers in. I was so anxious that when I finished the front side, I turned it in. Little did I know that there was a backside to the exam.
Tests are not my favorite. Even open book tests give me problems. Why? Because the answers seem too obvious, right? So I would overthink the question, and though the answer was right there, I would find a way to talk myself out of it because, well, it was too easy.
I guess what I’m trying to communicate here is, test anxiety is real!
Know what else gives me anxiety? The test we encounter today in the Genesis story. In fact, I’m not the only one. Many preachers skip over the story of Abraham binding Isaac because, well, it’s a terrible text that involves a test that makes many anxious.
Why, though? What is it about this text that causes us to squirm? I mean, if we look closely—Isaac isn’t sacrificed, and God does what God does—keeps God’s promise to Abraham. Also, we must remember this story wasn’t written for us by people like us in a time like ours. The story takes place in a time when child sacrifice was a common practice in a polytheistic culture—polytheism being a belief in many gods. With this in mind, we can see then why this magnificently told story, known as the “’Akedah,” or the ‘Binding of Isaac,’ is one of the gems of the biblical narrative. Again, you might be asking, “Why,” or “How?” The simple answer is this: one of the interpretations of this text is that the God of Abraham is not like the other gods—where the other gods require the sacrifice of children, the God of Abraham does not. God chooses compassion.
Let’s be honest for a minute. While we know the ending of the story, it still causes all sorts of anxiety, right? Right from the beginning, it causes fear as God tests Abraham. And it isn’t a times table test either, it is a test to sacrifice Abraham’s favored son, Isaac, whom he loved. The storyteller really makes a point to the story listeners that Abraham loved Isaac. The anxiety builds as Abraham forces Isaac to carry the very wood on which he would be sacrificed. If that doesn’t break your heart, the question Isaac asks of his dad will, “Here are the firestone and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”
What in the world? I want to be angry at Abraham—and yet, I must remember this is a story attempting to communicate something more significant—the way a good story often does in the religious world. Again, though we know the outcome, the heart races, and the adrenaline kicks in when we read, “When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.” To our ears, God’s request is outrageous. The logic of requesting a child’s life to demonstrate loyalty does not fit with the God of love we encounter in the Gospels.
To stop here would miss the most radical part of the story. In the end, God does not want child sacrifices. Thus, the high point in the drama is not the binding of Isaac, but the moment when Abraham is told to release him. As one rabbi explains, the Torah does not allow child sacrifice, which, by contrast, some of Israel’s neighbors viewed as a religiously inspiring act, for a specific reason: the story teaches us that an authentically religious act cannot be done through the harm of another human being. In a world where certain gods required sacrifices, the God of Abraham changes the narrative.
The theme so far in Genesis has been about the counter-narrative—or going against the way we’ve always done it, right? Consider Abraham—in a polytheistic world, Abraham chooses to follow one God. When God wants to destroy Sodom, Abraham argues with God not to and, in turn, changes God’s mind and saves the city. Isn’t it possible then that Abraham is the one testing God—saying in some way, "I am obligated to follow God's command. The outcome is not my problem, but God's." In a world of religious zealots, Abraham, like God, changes the narrative. If God is who God says God is, then God would save Isaac—Abraham calls God’s bluff. The story then is less so about obedience to God and more so about how we can become overzealous In our religious endeavors to the point that we are willing to risk people’s lives for the sake of our own policies, dogmas, or prerogatives.
The text is a terrible one that induces a lot of anxiety. But it also speaks to the power of compassion. God is compassionate and stops Abraham. In this scene, we also see an internal triumph of human compassion over a fanatical zeal that could lead a person to do violence in the name of God. It is a story that illustrates how humanity can, in fact, channel socially unacceptable, inherently violent human thoughts into more acceptable behavior. In this story, a ram is substituted for a vulnerable child.
What do we do with this testing? We must wrestle with it—we must wrestle with why it makes us so uncomfortable. Yet, we continue to sacrifice our children in cages at the border, in food desert communities, and in systems where anything but fostering happens. We must ask ourselves the hard questions—ones that lead us to reexamine our practices of giving. Are we doing more harm than good with our financial monies? Are we acting compassionately, or are we complicit in oppressive systems because it is easier than trying something new? Are we willing to ask the hard questions—like, how are we sacrificing the children of our church for the sake of our appearance?
The thing about the binding of Isaac is that it changes the relationship between God and God’s people. Compassion changes the relationship—changes the world, actually. It is compassion that leads to the unbinding of Isaac and further deepens the relationship between God and humanity. No longer is God a God who demands lives, but instead, God is a God who lives with the people, moving them, US, towards the place of promised peace.
We called her Ms. Fuerst. Not only because that was her name, but she was our student teacher. She taught us English and read great stories. She was the one who introduced us to A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe. She was one of my favorite teachers ever. But not because she introduced me to some of the classic young adult literature. Instead, because one day, she saw my anxiety before a test, and she had compassion for me. Ms. Fuerst was one of the first teachers to teach me about how to deal with my stress by breathing so that my mind could slow down and catch up with my thoughts.
Ms. Fuerst changed my test-taking approach because she had compassion for me.
Friends, in a season of life where so much is being demanded from us; so many voices calling for sacrifices; a plethora of systems that do not act in compassion—we must ask ourselves, “How will we unbind our hearts, our church, our city, and our world?” If the story of Isaac’s binding reveals anything to us, it is that it begins with compassion.
After all, in choosing compassion, Isaac comes down from the mountain, and the covenant continues…
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