Our Lady of Lourdes Church and School

Today’s first reading narrates perhaps one of the most difficult stories of the Old Testament. It tells of a father, Abraham, preparing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to a God who has asked for the particular sacrifice of the only child born to Abraham and Sarah. To our modern ears, I suspect the very thought or idea of child sacrifice is utterly abhorrent. There is no way that God could ask such a thing. There is no way that a father would willingly sacrifice his offspring.

By the time we read this story in Genesis, we already know that the ultimate hope and desire of Abraham is that he would leave behind descendants. The long and difficult story that ultimately saw Sarah giving birth to a child is a story that speaks of the faithfulness of God and the triumph of human faith. Abraham is to be the father of generations, whose number will be greater than grains of sand on the seashore, or stars in the sky. The posterity for which Abraham has yearned, and for which he has sacrificed over many years, is the just reward for his fidelity to God.

But now everything seems to be upended. Abraham takes Isaac with him to the land of Moriah to carry out the sacrifice. He doesn’t share with his son his immediate intention to make of him the sacrificial offering at the altar. We read the dramatic and harsh line in scripture: Abraham “reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.”  If this was Isaac’s first awareness of what was about to befall, then I can’t even begin to imagine how that might have impacted the relationship between father and son.

But then how are we to understand this narrative? How do we dig deep and begin to enter into the deeper questions, because it is plainly obvious that the surface reading of this story is simply not where this is at?

Is this a narrative that in some way devises a way for the ancient authors to share with us how God the Father has to somehow be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of all his hopes and dreams made flesh in his Son? Surely no father would go so far! Yet in the Christian understanding of the world, this is what ultimately unfolds. God the Father offers up his own Son as the sacrifice for salvation of the whole world.

Could not the Father have sent angels to rescue his Son as he hung upon the cross, thereby saving him from death? Yet to do so would remove the freedom of his Son in denying the choice that Jesus made for the good of all. In this light, Abraham’s willingness to give up his own son is an image for God’s willingness to give up Jesus. These are extreme sacrifices, there is no doubt. But what is achieved in the sacrifice is equally intense. Descendants through the generations, salvation and life eternal.

All of this suggests the question of our own understanding of what sacrifices are about in our own lives. We all make sacrifices in life, but to what end? Do we make sacrifices because we must, or because we choose to? And do we make sacrifices for the good of our own lives, or for the good of all? And where do our own lenten sacrifices fit into all of this? How do they measure up in terms of making a real difference to the quality of our own lives, and indeed the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ?

In our scriptures today we are given some profound insights into who Abraham is, and indeed who God is for the world? What do our sacrifices say about who we are for the world? What do they tell the world of our hopes and dreams for our own lives and for the life of the world? Dare we dream so big?