God Will Provide

Dr. Ellen Davis, a professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School, says that “The 22nd chapter of Genesis is the place you go when you do not understand at all what God allows us to suffer and, it seems, asks us to bear — and the last thing you want is a reasonable explanation, because any reasonable explanation would be a mockery of your anguish.”

It is not reasonable, this story. God’s promise to Abraham to give him a son, to make generations of children to sing about Father Abraham, has been fulfilled just as he celebrated his 100th birthday, and now God calls him to – well, it is almost too horrible to talk about.

What should we even call the story? The Jewish people call it the “Binding of Isaac,” referencing the rope that his father brought and tied around him before laying him on the wood that he arranged ready to light after he lifted the knife. Do you call it the sacrifice of Isaac? God tests Abraham? God’s call embraced? He’s lucky Sarah didn’t know? Whatever we call the story, we have to remember that it is part of the oral tradition of the Hebrew people and it is Hebrew storytelling at its very best.

This story was told and re-told as generations gathered around the fire at night and shaped God’s people, Israel. Abraham and Sarah now lived in the land of Canaan, where child sacrifice was common practice. And God calls to Abraham, “Take your son (which one), your only son (both are only ones, one by Hagar and one by Sarah), the one you love (I love them both!), Isaac (oh, this is about the promise!). Take him and go to the land of Moriah (that’s a long way, and I don’t travel much anymore, makes my arthritis act up, you know ever since I turned 100, I just don’t get around like I used to), go to the land of Moriah (that’s 3 days from here!), go to a mountain I’ll show you there and offer him as a sacrifice.

Silence. Abraham didn’t respond. He didn’t argue…for the first time he says nothing. He doesn’t remind God of his promise. He doesn’t ask “Why?” He doesn’t ask how this is part of God’s plan. Instead, he goes to bed.

The next morning, he rises early, and he and Isaac and two of their young men set off. And when they get to the mountain, they leave their men and head off together, just father and son. Isaac carrying the wood. Abraham carrying the fire and the knife.

They walked along, side by side, each lost in thought. Until Isaac’s young voice broke the silence, “Abi?” The children gathered around listening to the story would notice that was Isaac calling his father using the familiar name their mothers had taught them for their daddies when they were just learning to talk.

“Daddy?” “Here I am, son.” Just like he had been there for God, he was there for his son, faithful Abraham.

“Daddy, I’m carrying the wood, and you have the fire. Where is the lamb?” The storyteller lets the listener remember the knife…Isaac doesn’t remind his daddy that he has a knife in his hand.

Since the moment he stood silent before God’s call, Abraham has been just putting one foot in front of the other. He has done what was necessary. He has been on automatic pilot.

And now, his son, the one he loves, the one he waited 100 years for, who now walks beside him almost a man, almost brings him to his knees. “Daddy, what’s going on? Where‘s the lamb?”

Abraham responds, “God will provide.” He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know what. He doesn’t know…yet he trusts. Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann says of Abraham’s statement, “It is a statement of utter trust and confidence, but one that is quite open-ended. Abraham does not tell Isaac all he wants to know because Abraham himself does not know. He does not know at that moment if Isaac is God’s act of provision. He does not know that God will provide a rescue for Isaac….Abraham has turned from his own way to the way of God which lies beyond his understanding, but upon which he is prepared to act in concrete ways.”

It is this moment on the mountaintop with Abraham that speaks to us when we suffer, when we don’t understand why God is allowing atrocity, when we are at the breaking point of what we can bear – and when any reasonable explanation would be a mockery of our anguish.

“God will provide the lamb, my son.” Was all he said. He quietly built the altar and arranged the wood for the sacrifice, bound his son and laid him on top of the wood, and as he lifted the knife the rabbis say that Abraham was so grieved that his tears fell into Isaac’s wide eyes.

“Abraham!” God calls again. “Do not harm him, for now I know that you revere God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

Abraham’s primary loyalty was to God, not to his son, not to the promise God made him, but to God. Abraham was done trying to make the promise happen on his own, trying to help God along to fulfill the promise. Abraham now trusted God’s promise, God’s way.

Erin Counihan serves as a pastor in St. Louis, Missouri, now. But 15 years ago, she lived in an apartment just off Broadway in New York City. If you are participating in the Season of Peace, you may have read her story yesterday.

In it, she describes the days after September 11, “we got up in the morning, went to work, and then immediately came back to what we called “the bunker.” Really it was just 4 sleeping bags laid out in a row in front of the television. We checked in with Tom Brokaw, to absorb any new information, to stare silently at the images on that screen, and to pray for peace. Zipped tight in our bunker,” she says, “I prayed and prayed for peace and safety and peace and more peace. I didn’t want to be outside. I wanted God to just fix things. Fix us….Because it would be so much easier if God would just do it for us .”

Just like Abraham and Isaac, climbing the mountain to an unknown and scary future, 9/11 left us fearful and begging to know “Daddy, where is the lamb?” What is going to happen? People flocked to church in record numbers for a few weeks. But, evidently, they didn’t get the answer they were hoping to hear. There was no promise that God would fix everything. There was no promise that sacrifice wasn’t required. There was no promise that bad things don’t happen to good people. No promise that life will be easy; that there won’t be pain or challenge or unknowns. There was no promise that everything would be fine and dandy.

The promise is that God will provide. This is the covenant God made, “I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.”

And the Word comes to us, full of grace and truth, “God will provide.”

The story of Abraham and Isaac bears telling and retelling because we will suffer, we will have hard times, we will desperately want to know “WHY, GOD?” And if we come to church and someone gives us a nice, neat, understandable, rational answer, if someone tells us what credits we need to earn to get what we want, we need to be cautious. Because faith is not a means to an end. God is not looking to make a deal with us. God has promised relationship. “I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Even as it seems our hopes are about to die, the response of faith is to steadfastly trust that God will provide. And that is enough.