Before it became as dangerous as it currently seems to be, I traveled to the Holy Land and visited Jerusalem on a number of occasions. During my last few trips I spent a considerable amount of time on and around Temple Mount – the most sacred place in all the world for Jews, second only to Mecca for Muslims and most significant for Christians, who care about the history of God’s dealings with humanity before Jesus came. Beneath the mount, as if buttressing it, stands the so-called Wailing Wall -- all that remains of Herod’s reconstruction of the ancient Temple that King Solomon built about 3,000 years ago. Upon the mount, itself, where devout Jews are loath to step for fear of inadvertently treading upon the location of the Holy of Holies, stands the Dome of the Rock from which Mohammed is said to have ascended into Paradise. There, under that golden dome, which has become the most distinguishing mark of the Jerusalem skyline, lies exposed the crest of the hill around which Jerusalem was built. Surrounded by columns and bathed in electric light cracked stone protrudes, and the Muslim guide in various languages explains to pilgrims from around the world, “That is the very spot on which Abraham prepared to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God.”

Whether or not the tradition the guide quoted is correct on that point, and the 3rd chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles seems to bear out the location, there is no question that this story that we heard for our first reading is the very bedrock of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is a story that I find most reprehensible in all of sacred scripture. The very idea that God would test Abraham in that way, the very idea that the Creator of the universe – the One who knows all things – would put Abraham and Isaac through such trauma, the very idea that God would even suggest that faith should be expressed by murdering and burning one’s child or any person, the very idea that Abraham – the example of faith -- would entertain the impression let alone act upon it offends me to the core. I want to explain it away. I want to deny that any of it ever happened. I want to deny it and put it out of my mind completely. And that’s what most people want to do – perhaps especially preachers and teachers of the faith, except the ones, of course, who like to say that God kills people who displease Him – whether by strokes, hurricanes or tsunamis – and who wants to be like them!

But here’s that story – that blasted story – and it is bedrock to our faith tradition. That’s what motivated the Jews to build the Temple there – to repeat the sacrifice of that ram that Abraham made there – to atone for the sins of all the Jewish people over the course of 1,000 years. That’s what motivated Mohammed to go there and what motivated the Muslims to erect the Dome of the Rock over that site. And that’s what Christians see as the foreshadowing of the Christ’s execution, some 2000 years after Abraham. This story is core to our tradition; and I think that if we fall prey either to the blind acceptance of it, as some so-called Fundamentalists do, or blithe dismissal of it, as some so-called Liberals do, we miss the enrichment that this story can bring to us by wrestling with it.

So let’s wrestle with God over this story. Any time that you want to understand a portion of the Bible, you have to try to understand its context. It’s important to try to understand how important Isaac was to Abraham – perhaps even more important in some respects to him than our children are to us. You see, back then, without the notion of life after death, people believed that they lived on after they died through their descendants. For Isaac to die, especially since Abraham and Sarah were aging fast, would have left Abraham without an offspring to bear his name – without any life after his death. Remember, too, that back then they had no social security to support them after they worked, and it was up to children to provide and care for their parents after they were unable to do so for them selves. Beyond that, it’s important to remember that Abraham saw Isaac as a miracle – a special gift from God and the fulfillment of a lifelong hope – the promise that God would give him a son. His relationship with God had been intertwined with his belief that God would provide him with a son. Isaac was the embodiment of all Abraham’s dreams, hopes and beliefs, quite apart from his naturally love and affection for the boy.

How could he, even for a moment, have entertained that God would have him give up and kill his son as a sacrifice? Why Abraham didn’t even bargain with God about this, which he did on other occasions! Context might help. Scholars point out that, back then, there was a fairly widespread practice of tribal religion in that part of the world – parents believed that they could earn the favor of gods like Baal by killing one of their children and burning it as a sacrifice to ensure that the god would provide for the rest of the family and their survival in that harsh climate. It was seen as a duty. With mortality rates as high as they were, death was seen as a distinct possibility. A newborn would be killed and the body burned to protect the rest, or when famine struck due to drought or a plague hit – one would be killed as a sacrifice to try to protect the rest. Their sensibilities were not like our sensibilities when it came to human sacrifice – even of their own children. Sensibilities are shaped by cultural norms. And often the only things that can change cultural norms or sensibilities are dramatic crises – such as invasion by another culture and the imposition of their norms or sensibilities.

That’s exactly what this story and whatever the experience was that gave rise to this story – a crisis! Notice the way the instruction that Abraham first heard was phrased: “Take your son, your only son, whom you love.” Notice the emphasis on Abraham’s relationship with Isaac. This idea of killing the one that Abraham loved more than anything else for the sake of the one without whom neither of them could live was a complete double bind. There was no way out of it. That was a crisis – one that shapes perspectives and sensibilities. And that crisis was what shaped Abraham’s faith and his descendents’ religious sensibilities from then on. The idea of God calling for human sacrifice and then forbidding it and providing a substitute means of sacrifice instead, ironically, inoculated his descendants against it from that time on – even when tribes all around them practiced it – because of this very story. This story teaches that abuse of loved ones is never appropriate and can never be justified for religious reasons. God does not permit the abuse of other people for religious purposes. This story also teaches that God sometimes uses crises – painful crises in life – to help shape our faith and our sensibilities.

But there’s one more very important meaning to this story. There’s a cryptic statement at the very end of it. It says, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” What will be provided? Jews found the fulfillment of this future-oriented promise in the establishment of temple sacrifice – provided by God to forgive sins. Christians find the fulfillment – almost allegorically – in Christ: that God would provide a ram – the Lamb of God, caught in the thorns, and sacrificed in place of Isaac and all of us – to forgive sin and bring blessing, that God would provide His son, His only son, the son that He loves, as a sacrifice for all of us, that this story is simply a foreshadowing of what God would do out of loving devotion to us and all humanity. Does this sound contradictory? Does the idea that God would forbid human sacrifice only to sacrifice His own Son seem inconsistent? Not if you see God’s Son, God’s only Son, the Son that God loves, as God. Seen in that way, the real sacrifice was less Christ’s death, as it was His life – God putting aside divinity to become a human being. In that sense the provision that God made for Abraham and Isaac and all of us was sacrificing His Son’s divinity to take on our humanity in order to make atonement for us – to reconcile us by his death and to lead us by His life. That’s what God has provided – Jesus to forgive and to lead us.