(Reading: Genesis 22:1-19)

The title of this piece points to the central event under discussion: Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah. But, given our discussion of last week and the week before, it might also be entitled “Abraham and the Child Problem — Part III.” (The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah actually precedes this event but, for reasons of that “child problem,” I’m moving the Moriah episode up to connect to the last two weeks.)

Isaac is the fulfillment of God’s promise, the long-awaited and almost-despaired-of biological heir and heir of the covenant. Now God asks Abraham to sacrifice him.

For many people, God’s request to sacrifice Isaac is a stumbling block. We can, of course, note that God meets people where they’re at. Sacrifice — even human sacrifice — was not unknown in Abraham’s time. But there is no evidence it was practiced in Israel except when Israel compromised its faith to worship false gods, e.g., the fertility Baals.

But I am not going to appeal to the cultural context, important as that is. This episode teaches us several truths about God that we may not like to admit. That doesn’t change their truth even if we, like Peter, might want to say, “Never, Lord!” Because the proper response to us would be, “Get behind me, Satan” (Matthew 16:22-23).

First, let’s remember the most important theological dimension of this event. Isaac’s almost-sacrifice on the hill of Moriah prefigures Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. What is prefigured in Isaac happens in Jesus. If you reject Abraham’s obedience, you question whether Jesus’ passion and death were necessary. If you do that, reconsider your Christian credentials. Real sacrifice is about more than giving up chocolate for Lent.

Jesus’ death, like Abraham’s willingness, is an act of faithful obedience. That doesn’t mean Jesus would not have preferred otherwise nor that Abraham was not broken-hearted. But it does mean that they sought God’s will and had faith that his will could be trusted.

Nor is obedience simply God’s arbitrary test of “belonging to him.” To belong to God is to be for life, for fidelity, for rights, for truth, for pure intentions, and for worship of God in recognition of one’s creaturely status. “Obeying” those Commandments means simply being what we are supposed to and intended to be, the “image and likeness of God.” Disobeying those commandments is to disfigure that image.

Love — human or divine — demands a common good and, in the case of God, God and good are identical. And when that divine image and likeness, that common good with God, is disfigured, even God cannot pretend “it doesn’t matter.” No, what is wrong must be set right, which means destroying what we have made ourselves into to allow ourselves to be what we were and should be. That is a sacrifice. That is what, beyond cutesy hymn lyrics, “dying to oneself” (Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:11) really means.

So, God already prefigures what he would himself do to restore man, dead in sin, to life: by putting the sinful man to death. It’s why this episode is part of the readings for the Easter Vigil. And it’s why Jesus’ passion and death is more than just a “test” of Jesus’ obedience.

But there’s another aspect of Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice Isaac that deserves mention for moderns. I acknowledge the basic thought came from the late Cardinal Ján Korec, Archbishop of Nitra and leader of the Church in Slovakia after the country’s emergence from communism.

Cardinal Korec spoke of Abraham’s “sacrifice of fatherhood.” God asked him to give up something dearer to him perhaps than his own life. Here was his boy, flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood with his beloved Sarah. Here is the child they longed for until, by human reckoning, they had no reason or basis to hope any longer. Here was the child that represented everything Abraham sought, wanted, and prayed for. Here was the promise of the covenant, the one who would yield descendants more numerous than sand and stars, the promise Abraham himself would live on.

And God asked him to give that all up.

Would he trust God, who has always been faithful to his promises? Or would he now measure God by his standard?

Of course, one will hear the objection: “But how could God do that?” Well, every Sunday we stand up and say we believe in God, “the Lord and Giver of life.” We read in the Bible that “all fatherhood in heaven and on earth” comes from God (Ephesians 3:15). So, now, you make a choice in faith: Is that all blather, only to be confessed when convenient, or do you believe it? Because, is the latter, one must stand in Abraham’s faith, which also prefigured Job’s song: “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away: blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

Nobody said being “the man of faith” was easy.

Yet, in his faithful obedience, God not only spared Isaac but rewarded Abraham more richly than he could ever know. If you believe in God today, you too are his descendant. Be worthy of your spiritual father.

Abraham’s example is also exceedingly relevant to the modern world and its “child problem.” No few number of people nurse the view that having a baby is a “right” not to be denied, even by God. They insist that the Church is wrong when it teaches that not just having a baby but how we have a child matters. They see nothing wrong with manufacturing a baby through in-vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, or other artificial means of reproduction, using their own or others’ gametes. And they blame the Church for saying, “This is wrong. A child is ‘begotten, not made,’ the fruit of personal love encounter, not lab technician legerdemain.”

“But we want to have a baby.”

So did Abraham. He tried on his terms (with Hagar) before finally trusting God. And his trust in God extended even to possibly giving up that child.

In that sense, Abraham is also a model for the infertile couple who are also called to what Korec called the sacrifice of parenthood, the readiness in obedience to God’s moral law to give up having a baby at any cost. For many people today, infertility is a cross. But they, like Abraham, are called to recognize that God — not they — is “the Lord and Giver of Life.”

Do we?

Titian’s great painting, “Sacrificio di Isacco” [The Sacrifice of Isaac] captures that drama. The color palette — dark and gray, with clouds blocking the sun — reflects the somberness of the moment. A massive Abraham is the central figure, joining heaven (the angel who restrains the sacrificial knife in his hand) and earth (Isaac on the altar). His orangish robe almost alludes to blood, while the green denotes hope. The obedient donkey (a relative of a future Palm Sunday one?) who delivered the sacrifice is on the left, the lamb who will be sacrificed already poking his head next to the rescued Isaac. And clouds, while somber, also often conceal the fulness of Divine Glory. That Abraham looks heavenwards is no coincidence: that is always his posture.

The painting can be found in Venice.

(If you want to read more about the intrinsic meaning of Jesus’ passion and death — why it is not a mere “test” of arbitrary obedience, see Margaret Turek’s Atonement, reviewed here.)