Bound

 Boy, the reading from Genesis was a real gut punch, wasn't it?  

People, by and large, really hate this reading.  People, I don't care what religion you are, you're going to kick back against, and fight the reading where Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac.  By God.  God told Abraham "Take your son, your only son whom you love, and offer him up as a sacrifice to me."  People hear this line, and they get immediately upset.  They get angry, bothered, or any combination of negative emotions.  And this is probably the point where you'd expect me to step in and tell you that this story actually isn't about what it says it's about, and is actually very nice if you know the context.  

But I won't.

This story is exactly what it looks like on the surface.  Exactly.

What do I mean by that?  I mean that God literally told Abraham to kill his son, Abraham told his son to carry the wood up the mountain, and Abraham tied Isaac up, and put him on the altar, and was ready to kill him.  That's literally what happened.  No apologies, no obfuscation, and no idea that God in some reason isn't doing what he's doing.  Now how do you feel?  

How do you feel that God, the God of creation, told Abraham to kill his child?  Does it bother you?  Really, it should.  It ought to trouble you deep down, it should cause you some unease.  I'd wager that you can picture the scene in your mind right now, the image of Abraham trudging up the mountain with Isaac, knowing what waits for Isaac up there, even though Isaac doesn't know.  Isaac even points that out, saying 'I see the wood, and the fire, but where is the sacrifice?' All Abraham can say is 'God himself will provide the sacrifice, my son.'

This scene is bone-chilling.  And it bothers us all.  It troubles, disturbs, and disquiets us, down to the very core of our faith.  For some reason, it bothers us far more than the story of Noah and the Ark, where almost everyone dies.  It bothers us so much because this is Isaac, the one and only son whom Abraham loves, being led up the mountain by his father, who was prepared to sacrifice him.  His father who loved him, who should have protected him, laid down his life for him, was ready to sacrifice him instead.  That should bother you, it truly should.

But it shouldn't stop there.  Folks, we're in Lent, and Lent is a season for penitence, abstinence, and reflection on the sufferings of Christ.  The thing about the sufferings of Jesus, though, is that we tend to miss the magnitude of it most of the time.  Yeah, yeah, Jesus on the cross, big surprise, right?  Of course, Jesus would be on the cross, why wouldn't he be?  Of course Jesus sheds his blood on the cross for the sins of the world, that much is obvious.  But crucifixion is ghastly.  It's horrendous.  It is, by nature, excruciating, which is a word with its root in crucifixion - pain from the cross.  That's the worst kind of pain.  We forget about it, because we are too familiar with it.  We have it blurred out of existence, and we don't think much about the reality of it.  How can you shake your head enough to get a handle on it?

Think about Isaac.

All the things that horrify you, rightly, about the almost sacrifice, you really need to think about that in relation to the story of Jesus, which you, and I, take too lightly most of the time. The story of Isaac is there to point to Christ, but not only in the sense that there is or would be a sacrifice, but also in terms of what was offered up.  Let the anger well up in you at the Old Testament reading, let yourself feel the anger that is well deserved, well justified at the potential sacrifice of a one and only son, who is loved.  And take that anger, that discomfort, and transfer that over to the death of Jesus.  Feel the anger at someone who didn't deserve to be in that situation carrying the wood up the hill to the site of his execution.  Feel the discomfort at the beloved son being placed upon the wood.  But when Abraham's knife is turned aside at the last second, think on Jesus, and the spear that went into his side.  

Lent is the time to get re-acquainted with the difficulty of the Christian faith.  This isn't a faith of moonbeams and laughter all the time.  This is a faith in which the righteous dies for the unrighteous, once for all . This is a faith where Christ took the place that Isaac was in.  In many ways, for most of the year, we get too comfy with the shocking nature of what it is that we believe in.  But in Lent, it is there, large as life, and there is no getting around it.  Instead, embrace it, understand the price that was paid when God himself provided the sacrifice, and understand that the wages of sin is death, and that death was the death that Christ died to sin, once and for all.