Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 6, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070623.cfm

---

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we are challenged by one of the most difficult passages in Genesis – the testing of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.

The USCCB website says this about the passage:

The story is widely recognized as a literary masterpiece, depicting in a few lines God as the absolute Lord, inscrutable yet ultimately gracious, and Abraham, acting in moral grandeur as the great ancestor of Israel.

Walter Brueggeman agrees:

This chapter is among the best known and theologically most demanding in the Abraham tradition. It poses acute questions about the nature of faith and the way of God with his faithful creature.

---

Nevertheless, I have always been repelled by the story of Isaac’s sacrifice. On a human level, it leaves me with a bad taste for Abraham and – yes – even for God. I have made all kinds of excuses for why such a violent story is even included in sacred scripture. And in all these resistant machinations, I have missed the whole point of this Biblical classic.

---

This is not a story about father/son conflict, or an angry god, or of human sacrifice.

This is a story about learning to live a life of resolute and complete faith.

When I prayed with the verses in that light, I remembered how God has been wound into my life in the very ways we find in this passage.

---

I’m sure, dear readers, that each one of you, like me, has heard God’s call many times in your life, trusted God’s promise to lead you, and yet run into a few brick walls along the way. Some of these walls may have been huge, threatening to separate you from your life’s treasures: your health, hope, loves, achievements, reputation or chosen future.

That’s what happened to Abraham. Isaac was his treasure. When that treasure was threatened, could Abraham retain unquestioning trust in God?

---

We find the answer in verse 8:

As the two walked on together, Isaac spoke to his father Abraham:
“Father!” he said.
“Yes, son,” he replied.
Isaac continued, “Here are the fire and the wood,
but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”
“Son,” Abraham answered,
“God himself will provide the sheep for the burnt offering.“
Then the two continued going forward.

---

God himself will provide…

… the expression of absolute trust

---

Although the wall may separate him from everything else, Abraham will not allow it to separate him from God. He does all that is required of him, and then he chooses to trust. And in that choice, all things are transformed and restored to Abraham.

---

Like Abraham, by our choice to trust and believe, we free God to be God for us. We have no control over the walls life might throw before us. But we can control how we face them. We are freed for new life by trusting that God will deliver us from every evil, even if it be in ways we would never design or imagine ourselves.

---

Even though it was centuries before Jesus gave us the prayer, I imagine Abraham climbing Mt. Moriah with sentiments similar to the Our Father in his heart:

Our Father,  in heaven
holy is your Name.
May your holy balance come to us,
Your Will be done, here,
as it is in heaven.
Give us today what we need to survive,
and forgive us for choosing darkness
when you have offered us your Light.
Lead us not head first 
into the walls that threaten,
but deliver us from evil.
For You are God, and that is enough for us,
in all things and forever.
Amen.

---

Music: Faithful Now – Vertical Worship