“Do not lay a hand on the boy!”

By Rev. Marcia Sietstra

With thanks to Sr. Joan Chittister for the main idea of this sermon.

Oct. 7, 2007

Gen. 22:1-13; 25:7-10

The story you just heard read from Genesis is a story claimed by roughly half the people of the world, because Abraham is the father of believers in three faiths—that of Jews, Christians and Muslims. Those of you who have been in the current series of Adult Forum classes already know a bit about this. Today’s story, in which Abraham nearly murders his own son is a pivotal story in all three of these religions. Indeed, the story still affects our lives today…but before I get to that, let me tell you a little bit about how this story differs in the telling of it, from one faith to another.

The story of Abraham begins with the “call” to leave his homeland and go wherever God leads him, and to live in relationship with God, in return for which, God will bless him with many descendents and land. All 3 faiths claim this part of the story. The problem is, Abe is almost as old as dirt, and so is his wife Sarah, and they have no children, so where are these descendents going to come from? They decide that Sarah’s slave girl, Hagar, will be used to produce a child, so she becomes the surrogate mother, and gives birth to Ishmael. As you might expect, jealousy develops between Sarah and Hagar, and eventually Ishmael and his mother are abandoned in the wilderness, literally left to die. By this time, Sarah has finally given birth to a son, Isaac, even though she is about a hundred years old. [But remember, this was a centuries old story, very likely passed down orally as a legend for up to a thousand years before it was written down. Factual accuracy was not the point: the importance was the symbolic meaning conveyed by the story.]

Well, according to the story, one day Abraham gets the idea that God wants to test him by demanding that he sacrifice the life of his son. Child sacrifice was not uncommon in the ancient middle east, so Abraham getting this idea is not surprising. So he packs up his boy, probably a teenager because he is big enough to carry the wood that will be used in the fire to burn him, and they climb Mt. Moriah. He ties the teenager to an altar and raises his knife to plunge it into the boy, when the angel of God cries out, “Abraham!” Now maybe Abraham didn’t hear the angel, or maybe he just didn’t seem to be stopping, because the angel had to cry out a second time, “Abraham! Do not lay a hand on the boy!” Abraham stopped.

Thousands of interpretations have been written about what these words and actions mean. Did the angel scream those words, shocked by Abraham’s religious fanaticism, horrified to see that Abraham really thought God would delight in the killing of a child? One wonders, since Abraham so willingly climbed the mountain to sacrifice his son, without even arguing with God about it, which is odd, given the fact that Abraham negotiated with God on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah, to spare them. Why didn’t he negotiate with God on behalf of his son? In a new play I saw in New York last summer, called Isaac & Ishmael, the playwright suggests that this was a test—a test that Abraham flunked, if it was a test to see if Abraham would value a life that God created more than his religious ideas. This is a novel interpretation, but could it be that in his own religious zeal and his willingness to kill his own child, he flunked God’s test? Could it be that the writer of Genesis had the wrong idea about the meaning of this legend?

Here’s where the story gets dicey. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, it is Isaac who is the favorite son who was nearly murdered by his father. In Muslim tradition it is Ishmael, the son of Hagar the slave girl, who is the favorite son nearly sacrificed by his father. Many Jews and Christians claim that the promise of land and descendents made to Abraham is theirs, through Isaac. Many Muslims claim the promise of land and descendents made to Abraham is theirs, through Ishmael. And so the story continues to play out still today. How?

Today, the Arab descendents of Ishmael, the Palestinians, are battling the Jewish descendents of Isaac, the Israeli’s, for possession of what they see as sacred land.

Of course I am talking about the land of Israel, one place in particular that carries deep symbolic significance—the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Temple Mount is sacred ground for many Jews, Muslims and even some Christians. It is where the first and second temples of Israel stood. It is also the site of the Dome of the Rock, considered holy to Muslims, because they believe that’s where Muhammad ascended to heaven and met with God. Many Christians believe that the nation of Israel needs to be in possession of this spot so a second coming of Jesus can occur. Last week I heard a leader of American Evangelicals on CNN say that Christians have to back Israel, even if it means bombing Iran because the land was promised to them and therefore us.

One more thing you need to know about temple Mount. It used to be called Mt. Moriah. Yes, it is the very where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son—Isaac or Ishmael, depending on whose version of the story you accept. And now it is the most contested 37 acres in all the world.

Not far away, 7 years ago this week, we watched on tv the sacrifice of another boy, a 12-year-old boy named Mohammed Aldura. Mohammed was caught in a crossfire of bullets between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians. The boy was filmed by a foreign television crew as he cowered behind a cement block with his father. The father was shouting at the Israeli soldiers to hold their fire. The excruciating scene, including the boy’s screams as he was hit by the fatal gunfire and the father’s cries of horror, was filmed. An ambulance driver was killed as he tried to rescue the boy. It was broadcast on Israeli and Palestinian television that night, and made its way around the world. The 12-year-old boy died; his father recovered from his gunshot wounds.

Isn’t it ironic! People are willing to sacrifice their children for possession of the very rock where God forbid Abraham to kill a child as a sign of faithfulness. “Do not lay a hand on the boy!” Have they, in their religious zeal, been unable to hear God’s words in the story? What happened to the most central lesson in the story—that God doesn’t want us to sacrifice our young men and women? God doesn’t want their blood spilled in God’s name.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, in the book The Tent of Abraham, says it is time for all of us—Jews, Muslims and Christians, to ask ourselves whether it is… an act of idolatry to value physical possession of the land on which Abraham nearly sacrificed his son so much that we are prepared to die and kill for it. Abraham, who wanted to prove his devotion to God on Mt. Moriah, discovered that God is not a God of human sacrifices, no matter how noble the cause. When will the children of Abraham figure that out?

Here’s the thing: The story itself presents us with a solution to this competition for “most favored son status” and it’s found at Abraham’s grave. The Hebrew scriptures say, “Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age…his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in [a] cave…with his wife Sarah. After the death of Abraham God blessed his son Isaac who settled at Beerlahairoi.” Then the text goes on to name the many sons of Ishmael, an indication that he was also blessed by God.

Isaac and Ishmael came together, to mourn their father perhaps, or maybe to grieve his mistakes. In the New York play I saw last summer, Isaace and Ishmael were old men by this time in the story. Ishmael had been gone ever since being banished to the wilderness with his slave mother. Isaac had become a bitter old man, still suffereing the trauma of nearly being stabbed by his father. They argued bitterly over who should get the land, now that their father was dead, and it looked like there would be a fight. But finally Isaac began to question his father’s understanding of God. At one point he cried out to his dead father, “Abraham, you failed the test! God is terrified of your faith! You would kill the life that Adonai created!” Turning to Ishmael, Isaac says, “We need to decide brother…will we bury the living or will we bury the dead?”

On this World Communion Sunday, I want to encourage you to be hopeful. There are many, many Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians who affirm that both sides of the family have a relationship to the land of Abraham. They are ready to share the land, believing that it is the only way that either side of the family can be blessed. We want to stop burying the living and instead bury the dead.

It will mean giving up the idea of “chosenness” which has been used by all 3 groups to serve our self-interest at the expense of others. It will mean working together with our cousins in this family of Abraham so we can bless the whole world with respect and peace.

The world has never needed this model of respect and reconciliation more. If we don’t learn to share the earth, we will continue to risk shattering it. And we will not receive the full blessing of God until we listen to the voice saying “Do not lay a hand on this child!”