Fathers and Children - Gen 22: 1-19

We are now in the final week of our sermon series exploring relationships in the book of Genesis. We’ve talked about our relationship to God, to our brothers and sisters, those we love, and ourselves. This week we will be focusing in on the relationship between children and parents. 

The story of Abraham binding Isaac is a familiar one, but I would invite us to hear it with new ears today. Abraham is commanded once again to go, to go and take his son Isaac and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. Abraham has been commanded to go before. Go and travel to the land God would reveal to him. Go and become a father of the nations, even though he did not have any offspring and his wife Sarai was beyond being able to conceive children. Go and send away his other son, the son he had circumcised and loved so dearly that he pleaded with God not to take him away, Ishmael. Abraham is so familiar with the command of God to go that he does not even ask any questions or tell God to spare this child of promise, fighting as passionately for him as he had fought for the condemned cities. He simply goes.

And where is Isaac’s mother, Sarah in this passage? She is silent. Her voice is missing. She is not able to argue with her husband or God to spare the life of her child. We want Sarah and Abraham to fight for their child. We want to understand how Abraham could ever consider killing his child, let alone walk for three days with him, knowing how the journey will end. 

Can you imagine all that is weighing on Abraham’s heart during those three days? How heavy his feet must have felt. The burden of the secret he was keeping from his son and his wife. 

This story is complex and unsettling - calling to the carpet family relationships and our relationships with God. Abraham is being asked by the God he loves to do the unthinkable to the son he loves. Can he even look at his son when Isaac asks where the lamb is for the offering? 

For many of us the story seems so distant from our reality. We love God and we love our family, but there is no way we could see ourselves offering up the ones that we love to the Lord. Once when speaking at a baptism service about offering our children up to God for service the mother started to weep. When I asked her about it later, she recounted this scripture passage, fearing that God would ask the same thing of her. Its incompressible. 

And yet. And yet, so many children are offered up on alters every day. Children that are not cared for by their parents. Who are treated as a nuisance instead of one to be embraced and raised. Not given proper food or clothing, even if the family can provide. There are so many stories of children that are treated as if they are unloved. One such story is chronicled in the book A Child Named It, an auto-biography of Dave Pelzer. Dave was horribly mistreated as a child - starved by his mother, physically harmed, and even made to drink ammonia. The torture went on for years until one of his teachers stepped in. 

And is that not exactly what Abraham needed? Someone to step in as the angel does at the critical point in the narrative. When the angel of the Lord called out to him, just as God had called out to him before telling him not to harm the boy in any way. 

Too many children in our world today are being sacrificed on the alter of greed. Too many are being abused and harmed. Too many are being neglected and forgotten. Who may not be physically harmed, but have affection and love with-held. Who never heard the words “I love you.”

Friends, it needs to stop. We need to read this passage and see that while yes, God tested Abraham’s relationships, the sacrifice was not what God desired or demanded in the end. We need to step up as the church and reach out to parent not only our own children, but those who have been sacrificed by so many for too long as well. We need to be spiritual parents to children who are hurting and are in need of direction. And we need to help parents who are struggling learn how to be parents. 

We pretend that the story has a happy ending - and in a very real way it does. But it also is a story of shattered relationships. Isaac and Abraham go home different ways, never speaks again as we are only told that Isaac returned upon Abraham’s death. How many of us know families that have shattered relationships? Where children and parents are estranged? Where family members haven’t spoken in years and carry around regrets? How can we as the church bring forth a message of hope and faith to people who are hurting. 

We also need to ask how this event effected Isaac? We see him growing into an old man with dim sight, who passed the family blessing on the younger son after being tricked. The stories of Isaac we see in scripture from this point on show a weak man. A broken man. A man who doesn’t seem to know his place in the world, even though he is carrying with him the weight of the promise of God. How can the church reach out to men and women like Isaac who don’t understand their own parents actions so they cannot be the best parents they could be themselves?

The truth is that children need strong adults in their lives. Adults who speak words of hope and truth for them. Adults to learn from. Research on children and faith shows that children who grow up with parents of strong faith tend to have strong faith. And those whose parents do not have a strong faith, tend to have the same level of faith. When things are perfect, parents can provide these needs for their children. And when things are broken, the church is called to step in, just as the angel of the Lord stepped in, and say enough is enough. To teach the lessons the children need to learn and teach parents how to be parents so that our world does not wander around looking for substitutes for parental love. 

When parents cannot train their children in the faith, we can help as the church. And when children lack personal discipline, we can help as the church. Growing up I hated the fact that when I went to church I felt like I had fifty parents instead of two, with as many people scolding me and teaching me and shaping my faith. But that’s the job of the church! To help raise up children. To help parents be parents. We need to help love and honor people. 

At the end of the day Abraham passed the test with God, but lost two sons in the process. I think God tests us in the opposite way today. God asks us to raise up children, not sacrifice them. God asks us to care for the children around us without families to raise them. Care for the children who have suffered for far too long, and care for the parents that suffered at the hands of their parents. May we be a place that cares for children, a place of healing for relationships, and a place where we step in when called. Amen.