Fireworks, Raised Fists, & Ram’s Horns
Genesis 22:1-14
Sunday July 2nd, 2023
Rev. Rhonda Blevins, pastor
After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. And the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them walked on together. 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[a] his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide,” as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
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On December 16, 1773, American colonists dressed as Native Americans boarded ships owned by the British East India Company, dumping hundreds of chests of tea into the Boston Harbor. This demonstration was a catalyst that launched a movement, uniting colonists in their opposition to British oppression and setting the stage for the American Revolution.
The Boston Tea Party fueled a growing sense of resentment among the colonists towards British rule and their increasingly heavy-handed policies. The spark of discontent ignited by the Boston Tea Party would burn brightly, ultimately leading to the American Revolution and the eventual establishment of an independent United States of America, which Americans celebrate on the Fourth of July, often with fireworks. Is anyone planning to watch fireworks this Tuesday?
Sometimes it’s one simple act—one simple act that changes the world forever.
That’s what happened in our scripture text today.
It’s a weird, even disturbing, story to those of us with modern sensibilities. It seems so foreign. Reading this text, it’s natural to have a lot of questions:
· Why would God demand Abraham kill his son, the child of his old age, the one from whom God would make a “great nation” of Abraham? I’ve heard of “tough love,” but murder is a little extreme.
· And why would Abraham be willing to obey? I have two sons, and I don’t think I could murder either of them in cold blood. (Most days.)
· Why was this weird, disturbing story included in sacred writ? Give me a story about Abraham taking Isaac fishing or teaching him to play baseball. Not this.
· How in the world can we learn something that we might apply to our contemporary lives, seemingly so far removed from this ancient text?
I hope to address all these questions today.
We might as well start with, perhaps, the most difficult of these questions. “Why would God demand Abraham kill his son?” That’s a most interesting question. God seems like a real jerk in this story. I think it’s stories like this one that make people tell me from time to time, “I don’t like the God of the Old Testament.” A God that required the murder of a beloved son isn’t the kind of God many of us would want to worship. And yet, a lot of people interpret the New Testament as God requiring the murder of God’s own son, Jesus, the Christ. (This Old Testament story, by the way, is often seen as a foreshadowing of what happened on Calvary, but instead of God supplying a ram to spare Isaac, God supplied Jesus to spare us.)
“Why would God demand Abraham kill his son?” I’m not so sure God actually DID demand this of Abraham. One might argue with me: “What? It’s right there in scripture! God “said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering.’” To which I might reply, “I know exactly what the Bible says. I also know there are multiple ways to INTERPRET what the Bible says. Let’s consider three ways to interpret this story for starters, shall we?”
1. Literal Interpretation. We all begin here, with literalism. “The Bible says it, I believe it.” This is usually the simplest way to read the Bible. It’s not the only way to read the Bible, but the simplest. With a literal reading of this story, the reader accepts, quite literally, that God told Abraham to kill his son. Which leaves the reader with a choice: to love a God that would demand this kind of murder, or not. For people who have a hard time worshipping a murderous God, they might leave the faith altogether, or try on a new interpretive lens through which to read the Bible. Which leads me to . . .
2. Historical/Critical Interpretation. Just beyond literalism, there’s a way of reading the Bible that takes into account history, archaeology, anthropology, all the “ologies.” There’s an appreciation that, while the Bible may be God-inspired, the Bible was written by humans. We human beings, we are meaning-making creatures. We interpret our human experience so that it can make sense to us. So looking at this disturbing story through the lens of textual criticism we begin to ask questions like: What human penned this story that we now have in our hands? Was it Abraham? Was it Isaac? Was the story passed down orally for generations and eventually written down by one of their descendants, maybe Moses, who was credited with writing the Torah? Why does the Koran tell the story without naming which son was nearly murdered? Did God really tell Abraham to murder his son, or is it possible that Abraham merely believed that to be the case?
Let me pause here and ask, have you ever known anyone who said, “God told me to do this or that,” and you wonder, “Did God really tell you that, or did you just imagine that to be so?”
When I was a campus minister at the University of Georgia, I got to hang out with some incredible young people, many of them very devout Christians. These are kids who are 18, 19, 20, 21—they’re consumed with dating. From time to time, I would have a young man or young woman tell me, “God told me to break up with (fill in the blank.)” Or occasionally, “God told me to ask out (fill in the blank.)” There was one young man who came to me once very upset, saying, “God told me to ask out Jennifer, but when I asked her out, she said no. Why would God do that to me?” We had a long talk about how difficult it is for us to distinguish the voice of God from the voice of our own ego. “Is it possible,” I asked the young man, “that it wasn’t God telling you to ask Jennifer out?”
Looking at this story of God telling Abraham to kill his own son, we can use textual criticism to recognize at least two ways to read the story:
· God really did tell Abraham to kill Isaac, OR
· Abraham merely believed that God was telling him to kill Isaac.
Textual criticism also takes into account history and anthropology, which helps us recognize that child sacrifice was a fairly common practice at that time. Putting the pieces together, we can theorize that this story was included in the Torah to explain why Hebrew people didn’t practice child sacrifice when this was likely a common practice among neighboring tribes.
3. Mythic/Wisdom Interpretation. If the literal reading of scripture asks, “What is happening in the story?” and the historical/critical reading of scripture asks, “What is happening around the story?” the mythic/wisdom reading of scripture asks, “What is happening through the story?” In other words, where is the power in this story for me? For us?
A higher level of reading scripture—the way of many great wisdom teachers—takes into account first, the literal reading—what’s happening, literally, in the story. Then it considers what’s happening around the story—the history of how it came to be, what was happening culturally when the story was fashioned, etc. Taking all of that into consideration, one can then appreciate a story like “The Binding of Isaac” from a mythical/wisdom point of view.
Now, a lot of people dismiss “myth” as merely a story that isn’t factual or true. That couldn’t be further from the case. Myth is a story, that while maybe isn’t fact, it can offer profound truth. Joseph Campbell, famous author of The Power of Myth, says that, “Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.”
The structure of all myths, regardless of tradition or culture, according to Campbell, is this is the same. Think about Abraham as the hero in the story we’re contemplating today in light of Campbell’s description:
“The hero of every myth takes the same journey. Each hero departs, interacts with other archetypal beings, and encounters the same sorts of trials, completes his quest or fulfills his purpose (which is sometimes not to complete his quest) and returns, changed in some way.”[1]
The story of “The Binding of Isaac” is a perfect example of the archetypal “hero’s journey.” There’s power in this weird, disturbing, ancient story for us, even today.
In a couple of months, our Jewish brothers and sisters will celebrate Rosh Hashana, the beginning of the Jewish New Year. One of the Rosh Hashana customs is to blow the shofar, a ram’s horn. Why? To remember the ram God provided—God’s faithfulness in response to Abraham’s faithfulness on Mount Moriah. The story continues to hold power today, no matter whether you read it literally, historically, or mythically.
In a couple of days, Americans will celebrate independence. One way we do so is to set off fireworks—a dazzling display of fire and gunpowder—to commemorate the end of British rule. And it all started at the Boston Tea Party, when colonists got fed up with paying taxes. That’s the story we’ve been told. But was that the real story?
Not quite! It was actually the opposite of that. Because of a downturn in the economy, the British East India Company had a surplus of tea that they couldn’t sell. King George abolished taxation on the tea, to make it more affordable. This made the price of the East India tea “cheaper than what smugglers had been charging for tea they were bringing” in from Holland, circumventing British taxation. The abolishment of British taxes “dealt a direct blow to the local underground tea economy in the colonies.”[2] And so, on December 16, 1773, American protestors dressed as Native Americans boarded ships owned by the British East India Company, dumping hundreds of chests of tea into the Boston Harbor.
Knowing this, does that take away your interest in celebrating the Fourth of July? Probably not!
Myths, you see, have meaning, whether factual or not.
Here’s the thing about “The Binding of Isaac” and the “Boston Tea Party.” They were both paradigm-shifting events.
· The Boston Tea Party sparked what we would eventually call the “American Revolution,” leading to independence from Britain and the oldest democracy in the world.[3] Fireworks is how we celebrate the end of an unjust system.
· The “Binding of Isaac” is thought to be the end of child sacrifice among the Hebrew people. That seems kind of important. Blowing the ram’s horn is how our Jewish friends celebrate the end of an unjust system.
As I was thinking about these two symbols, fireworks and the ram’s horn, and how they celebrate the end of unjust systems, I thought about slavery in our nation—another unjust system. And I wondered what symbol is used to celebrate the end of that unjust system.
Sure, the U.S. recently began observing Juneteenth, the day the last American slaves received the news of their freedom. But to my knowledge, there isn’t a celebratory act like fireworks or the blowing of a ram’s horn to commemorate the end of this unjust system. There’s only the raised fist—the symbol of solidarity and the fight against oppression.
Like fireworks celebrating independence and the ram’s horn celebrating God’s faithfulness, the raised fist is a symbol of victory too—but it’s a victory that is not yet realized. It’s a future victory—one we must fight to achieve. Juneteenth marks the end of slavery as an institution. But I believe we still have a long way to go to win the battle of hearts and minds.
One act of faithfulness. Abraham not sacrificing Isaac. And the institution of child sacrifice was abolished.
Sometimes it’s one simple act—one simple act that changes the world forever. What small act might God be calling you to do against the unjust systems of our day? One simple act, change the world forever.
[1] https://www.popmatters.com/132546-joseph-campbell-on-the-power-of-myth-with-bill-moyers-2496120081.html
[2] https://freerangeamerican.us/boston-tea-party/#:~:text=While%20the%20Boston%20Tea%20Party,circumstances%2C%20and%20for%20different%20reasons.
[3] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/jul/11/paul-ryan/paul-ryan-claims-us-oldest-democracy-world-he-righ/