Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Lamb, the
Lamb, O Father, where’s the sacrifice?
Faith sees, believes, God will provide the Lamb of price! (LSB 547 v1)
I do not understand this morning’s Old Testament lesson. I
don’t. I suspect you don’t either.
As a father, I cannot grasp my mind around the fact that
Abraham is being called by God to sacrifice his son, his only son, the one for
whom he had so long waited, the one whom God had long ago promised, the one
that was missing when God said that Abraham’s descendants would number like the
sand of the seashore and the stars of the sky. You have to start with one to
have that many and Abraham had no boy of his own, just a boy of his servant, Elieazar,
who wasn’t even his own blood. Abraham tried the whole surrogate mother thing
with Hagar and Ishmael and that was a disaster – Sarai tried to kill the woman
whose body could do what hers could not, forcing Abraham to send away his son,
even if it wasn’t a son from his wife. There had been so much between the
promise and the birth and now God wanted him to sacrifice his son? The flesh of
his flesh, the one who brought great laughter to Sarah’s heart – first, in
sheer incredulity that such a thing could happen; then, in child birth, that
the Lord did, indeed, provide as He promised. That one? That son?
And, from a father’s perspective, having to take the son on
a three-day journey to the place God identified, Moriah, and offer him as a
sacrifice? I cannot imagine how quiet that trip was. What was he supposed to
say? If he said too much, it might give away the true purpose of the journey.
If he didn’t say enough, the son might figure out something is wrong. If he
said the wrong thing, he might not be able to do what he knew he must do. Moses
only records one simple verbal transaction – Isaac identifies two parts of the
necessary trifecta, that they have fire and wood but no sacrifice. Abraham’s
reply – maybe men were tougher then, maybe Abraham had a sterner disposition,
maybe Abraham truly was so rich in faith that he could say it without breaking
his voice – his reply is so strong in faith that I cannot begin to fathom it.
“God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son,” he said.
If faith is the substance of things hoped for and the
evidence of things not seen, as Hebrews tells us, Abraham is a remarkable
figure of faith.
He trusts God’s promise. “You will be blessed to be a
blessing,” God said. It’s what he had been doing for the past ten chapters of
Genesis. From the time God said pack up and leave your homeland and go to where
I will tell you, to his journey to Egypt (which, by the way turned into a
disaster of international proportions), to the whole Lot thing (another
disaster; if you recall, when Mrs. Lot’s turning to look back crystallized her
place in the history books for all time), to the promise of descendants…all
Abraham had was God and His word of promise, spoken to him time and time and
time again. It wasn’t perfect a perfect faith, to be sure, but it is faith that
trusts the promise of God. The substance of things hoped for; the evidence of
things not yet seen.
It’s always about the Son. An heir. The Son of the promise.
Every time, God, you bring Abraham back to the promise – it’s about the Son.
The next generation, and the one after that. And the next. The stars, the sand -
remember? So shall your offspring be. And Abraham believed. And that was
counted righteousness. It’s about the Son.
God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering,
my son. My son…my only son.
Abraham had faith…but where’s the understanding?
Abraham believed God and that was counted as righteousness.
He had faith – he trusted God. He demonstrated it many times, so why this test?
For that matter, why this text? Don't you see? Don't you get it? He had the
faith, but where is the understanding? He trusted God before he ever had a son.
But now this “Take your son your only son whom you love and go to the mountain
of Moriah and their offer him up as a sacrifice,” just doesn’t make much sense.
Abraham had proved his faith with or without understanding. He trusted God
before he had the son, now he has to trust God after he has the son. When is
enough faith enough faith?
This story is about Abraham and faith and testing and
proving and improving faith. It is perhaps the most poignant, and profound, and
pain-staking-ly told narrative in all of Scripture, this Villa de la Rosa, this
way of sorrows, journeyed by father and son together, heading towards the
sacrifice, a three-day journey where God Himself will provide a substitute
lamb.
Generally speaking, our English translations are very good.
They are very trustworthy. When we say, “This is the Word of the Lord,” you do
not have to wonder, “But, is it?” The translations are very good, but sometimes
they miss the nuance – sometimes, it’s because of readability, sometimes
because the nuance would really be awkward, sometimes because the nuance is so
elaborate that it would be impossible to include without altering the text.
This is one of those instances. Bear with me for a minute.
God tells Abraham to go to Moriah. In Hebrew, there are
three possible root words behind this: to teach, to fear, to see. The end of
the story is clear: God says that He now knows that Abraham fears God in not
withholding his son, and then Abraham and Isaac see the ram. Abraham calls the
name of the place “The Lord will see.” Now, here’s the thing – our translation
says, “God will provide,” but that’s not what the verb means. It means to see.
Some translations try to get around it by saying, “God will see to it,” but
that is not the same thing. It means see.
Don’t you see? Even when I don’t understand, when you don’t
understand, when we don’t understand, don’t you see? Yes, this is about
Abraham, but only secondarily. Don’t you see – this story is about God. It’s
His narrative, His story, His promise, His son, His sacrifice, His seeing so
much more than we can ever possibly see. Even with eyes of faith and trust, we
can only see by faith what God gives us to see – which, is oftentimes, unseen
to unseen eyes. You see, faith is not about our sight. It’s about God’s vision,
His sight, His seeing. Trust is not about us, but about God and His promises
that never fail or fade. It’s not about our testing or worthiness or trusting.
It’s about God’s trust worthiness. He sees. He knows. He provides the Lamb. And
us? We receive. In faith, we receive His gifts and His blessing.
We even get to be part of the story; secondarily, to be
sure. But, our story becomes God’s story and God’s story becomes our story
because the Word was made flesh and took our story into His story, and gives
His story to us to become our story. He gives His Christ to us, and His body
into us, and we are made into His body.
Yes, God says to Abraham, “Because you have not withheld
your son, your descendants will be as the stars in the sky in the sand on the
shore,” but that was hardly Abraham’s doing. It wasn’t caused by his faith or
by his proving his faith. God had told him back at the beginning, remember, to
leave his past and his family and go to the land that He would show to Abraham.
God would cause Abraham to see it. We see because God gives
us the sight. God saw the Lamb long before Abraham did. God saw the ram and the
Lamb long before Abraham did. God saw the Son, His only Son long before and
long after Abraham did.
And so the story moves on. We know how it ends, but it’s
still going on: His song prolong - it is finished; and then comes Easter - He
sighs, he dies…He rose, He rose, my heart with thanks now overflows. The lamb
that was slain has begun his reign! The lamb is raining on his throne. We have
seen the end but, in the wonderful mystery of God’s workmanship, it is only the
beginning. Every day we begin anew, every day, Baptized into Christ, every Lent
and Easter the story is new. We see it. We get it. We are part of it. Today, we
celebrate anew the Lamb given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.
The fire and the wood. Where is the sacrifice? Behold the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Amen
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