Between a God and a Hard Place

"Between a God and a Hard Place"
Genesis 22:1-14


I have not talked to anyone since that day.  Except I did talk for a long while with my son, Isaac, right after we sacrificed the ram together.  It was only then that I could pour out my feelings to him concerning the path that God had put me on.  We talked until we were tired of talking about it.  When we were through (and I have always found this quite startling when I think about it) we never, ever again talked to each other about the events of that day.  It was like a vivid dream both of us had, had.  Upon the edge of waking we discussed our dream with energy and total recollection.  But as full wakefulness chases away the memory of dreams, lost forever, so it was that my conversations with Isaac never brought to life our time together again in the land of Moriah.

I wish I had someone else I could talk to.  There’s more to the story than anyone knows.  I’ve been made out to be such a hero.  Such a pillar of the faith.  If I were honest, that pillar is made of salt.  And its feet are made of clay.  Please, hear me out.

The scriptures have only told the story from the side of my actions, as if I were some drugged zombie.  Or a robot who responded only to push-button control.  Nowhere did my tangled web of conflicting love and loyalties make it into the written record.  I kept silent.  Now, even the silence must be silenced.  Now is the time to speak.  The record must be complete.


I suppose there is something to be said for knowing the heart and voice of God.  That night, when God called to me, I could tell by the tone that it was something significant.  I was unprepared, though, for God’s demand.  There entered my first level of confusion and bewilderment:  was it a demand, or was it a request?  Was it open-ended, or was there no way out of this slap-in-the-face horror of what God had asked me to do?  One of the questions that kept coming back to me, as I lay staring into the night, was, “What would God do if I said, ‘No’?  No, I will not sacrifice my son, Isaac!”

Wouldn’t God be able to understand?  Wouldn’t God have some compassion for my position?  Certainly God would realize what has already happened to my life because of such demands.  I’ve been cut off from my entire past.  I have left my family in following God’s Voice.  My family wrote me off as a dead man.  I have not seen or heard from my father or mother since that day I walked away from them.  I left the land of my childhood, the land of my father’s childhood, and of his father’s childhood in order to follow the Voice.  Surely God knew that I no longer had a past.

And before the birth of my son, Isaac, I had no future.  Without a son, I was doomed to die a forgotten man with a forgotten name.  How long had I talked to God of a son?  How many times I had hounded God, at times in disrespectful ways.  “I have no past, God,” I would rant.  “At least give me peace about my future; give me a son!”  Maybe God got tired of listening to me.  Or maybe it was in God’s plan all along.  With the birth of Isaac, my future was secure.  And not only that; God promised that nothing would get in the way of that promise of security.

Now God is asking me to separate, nay jeopardize, nay destroy my entire promised future.  “You promised!” I shouted at God like a child who had been lied to by his parents.  “Are the good things you give us only the prelude to some cruel, cosmic joke?”  The total lack of fairness and justness of God’s demand was beyond the scope of my faith and understanding.

Certainly God had said, “No,” to me several times.  Did I not have the same right of refusal from my side of the relationship?  What would be my consequences if I told God, “No”?  What if I told God that this was to much--this was beyond the limits of what I could take?  What if I just begged God to take this cup of vinegar away from my lips?  That I had swallowed enough?  What if I told God, “You’ve sent enough my way;  I have been tested enough.  If you don’t know if I’m going to be faithful by now and stand up to the stress of your demands, then forget it!  Find someone else; but I doubt if you can.”  What would happen if I said that to God?

I think what kept me from saying that to God (even though I thought it) was the tone of that Voice.  I discerned a feeling of gravity in that Voice.  That there was something happening, from God’s side of it, that was very important.  But hidden from me.  This was not going to be like the time when I bargained God down at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Then, God was willing to bend.  Not now.


Another question that kept coming back to me, not only that night, but during the entire journey to Moriah was, “Why was God testing me in this way?”  Certainly God knew what was in my heart.  I was an open book to God.  There were no dark corners in which I tried to cram things from Gods sight.  Certainly God knew I was an obedient man.

Would you not agree with me that this test was a bit too much--even cruel?  Would you blame me if I found it an attractive idea to look for an easier, less demanding alternative to God?  It wouldn’t even have to be another god.  Maybe just no god.  Wouldn’t that be the most harmless?  Wouldn’t that be the path of least resistance?  Would any of you blame me if I did such a thing?

You probably would.  I can tell by the looks on your faces.  You would probably be right to do so.  To reprimand me just as you would with anyone amongst you who was falling away from God’s leading.  If I were to be truthful, deep down, I could not live with myself knowing I had gone against the wishes of God.  Especially in something that seems to be so important to God.  I could not live knowing I had been so rebellious or indifferent.

But on the other hand, I am finding it very hard to live with that same God who demands the death of my only son!  How can I, by saying “Yes” to God, say at the same time, “No” to my son?  How can I pledge myself to God’s leading, whatever that means, and yet have to bind my son, and put him in the place of one of a thousand other sheep I could sacrifice at this very moment?  How can I look into the very heart of God, and at the same time be forced by that Heart to look into the very eyes of my only son as I raise the knife to strike him dead?

If I only knew for what reason I have been asked to do this deed.  Maybe, in some remote way, I might find peace in that reason.  Why was God asking, even forcing my hand into this dreadful situation?  What could be worth the price of my son, in God’s eyes, to make this request?

I prayed out these questions a thousand times and a thousand more questions a thousand more times that night--until I could contain myself no longer.  I jumped to my feet screaming into the silent stars, “Why, God?  Why have you backed me into the crack of a rock and begun to squeeze that crack closed?”

No answer this time.  In fact there was nothing.  Squeezed and abandoned.  Not forgotten by God.  Just left alone by God.  Intentionally.  I was left to make this no-win decision on my own.

Just before daybreak I had made up my mind.  I hope that you don’t think less of me for choosing to follow through on God’s orders.  I have tried to show you, even though it is not in your scriptural record, the agonizing I went through to make this decision.  I know how easy it is to love a son who is here and now, immediate and close and touchable.  And how, on the other side, God seems so remote and untouchable.  Nevertheless, God’s demand was clear.  Which made my decision all the tougher.  I could have written it all off as a figment of my imagination.  Some desert hallucination.  But it wasn’t.  The Voice was unmistakably God’s.  And the following silence was unmistakably God’s.

My decision to follow the Voice of God and sacrifice my only son was made ultimately on an old desert saying:  The cure for the bite of the snake is in the very same venom.  That is, sometimes the cure we need, the healing we seek, being restored to wholeness lies within the very thing that caused the pain in the first place.  My only hope, as small a thread as it was, was to hope that God, who brought me such pain, would be the healer of that pain.  That in some way God would provide a way for Isaac to live, or for me to live after Isaac’s death.

Albeit, in my mind it was a very thin thread on which to balance the life of my son, as well as my own faith in God.  And, I must confess, that thread was weakened even more by the fact that I had given up.  I knew there was no turning back on this one.  I had hoped that by my decision I could save the two I valued most in life, which were now in deadly conflict:  my God and my only son.  But I signed my sons death warrant when I said, “Yes,” to God.


I suppose I was much like your scripture record portrayed me on that journey to Moriah.  I said nothing.  I became a zombie.  I stared down at the trail ahead of me.  One foot in front of the other.  I felt the times when Isaac would be starring at me, wondering what had happened to his father--what kind of madness had overtaken me.

When we finally arrived at the spot where we were to offer our sacrifice, Isaac and I went on ahead, leaving the servants behind.  When we were nearly finished piling the sticks for the preparation of making the burnt offering, and when Isaac wasn’t looking, I hit him on the head with a rock and knocked him out.  I know I wouldn’t have been able to go through with him looking up at me with those little boy eyes turned suddenly terrified, looking with horror at his own father whom he had come to love and trust.

As I lay his limp body on the dry, stiff sticks, I made another pledge.  This time not to God, but to myself.  If God wanted a sacrifice, then that’s what God would get.  After plunging the knife into Isaac, my only son, I decided I would set the wood on fire, and then plunge the dagger into my own heart.  I would fall upon my son so that we would die and burn together.

I bent low and kissed my only son, Isaac.  I prayed for his forgiveness.  His soft skinned body lay motionless upon the wood.  I unsheathed my knife and held the point over his heart.  I began to bear down on the carved wood handle, but the knife wouldn’t move.  Every muscle in my body had become paralyzed into motionlessness.  And then came the Voice.

“Abraham!  Abraham!  Do nothing more to harm your only son.”  Then silence.  Then, again, the Voice:  “There have been consequences for both of us in this testing.  Here is part of it.  I needed to prove to you that I was faithful to my promise.”
“Do you mean,” I muttered out of my dizziness, “that I wasn’t the one being tested?  I mean, my faithfulness to you?”
“No,” replied the Voice.  “I already knew you were faithful.  But, could you trust ME to be trustworthy and hold to the promise I have made to you?  That is another matter.  I needed to show you, my son Abraham, that I can be trusted, even in the midst of the worst, even craziest of situations.  My promises are not pebbles, but instead the strongest of bedrock upon which you may stand.  Do you understand, Abraham?”
I said that I did, and slowly Isaac and I were coming awake:  me from my dread, and Isaac from my blow to his head.
“But there is more,” God went on.  “Remember I said there were consequences for both of us?”  And here God’s Voice turned very tender, almost sad.  “You are close to my heart, Abraham.  Because you are so close, I wanted to see through your eyes, and feel through your heart a shadow of what I must feel some day.  But even you have know known the pain I must feel.  I must watch the sacrifice be completed.  Your son was spared.  Mine must die.  The pain I have encountered through you does not make me anxious for that day.”  And here the Voice trailed off into a whisper, as God said, “But I will again provide, just as I have provided for you and Isaac, a way for life to overcome death.”

“What does this mean, God?  It is a riddle too hard for me to understand.”  And once more the overpowering presence of God was replaced with the mysterious silence of God.