(Reading: Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-20, 22:1-18)

God promised Abraham many offspring. By human logic, that was incredible. But Abraham gave it credence. Yet Abraham and Sarah also decided to take matters into their own hands and “help God along” on the how by having a boy (Ishmael) through Sarah’s Egyptian slave, Hagar. While the union resulted in a child, it also led to familial and clan relations going south.

(Some have claimed this is an example of biblical surrogacy. That claim is false. Ishmael is never taken from his genetic/gestational mother nor raised by Sarah. The closest analog seems simply de facto polygamy.)

But since God’s plans are not man’s, God insists Abraham will have the promised offspring by Sarah, his elderly wife. That again is a test of Abraham’s faith, adherence to which gained its outward expression in the covenant of circumcision. And, as we saw, Sarah eventually did give birth to a son, Isaac, who will become the heir of the covenant promise. We’ll talk more about Isaac later. But, for right now, we need to step back to before his conception.

After the birth of Ishmael, God corrects Abraham’s assumptions: the child of the covenant will not be the child of Abraham’s wife’s slave girl but the child of his wife. And God himself delivers that promise. 

Abraham is sitting at the entrance of his tent under the oaks of Mamre. He sees three “visitors” approaching him in the scorching sun. He welcomes them and shows them extraordinary hospitality (the flour measured out in Genesis 18:6 comes to about 35 pounds). They eat Abraham’s bread and one of them, asking where Sarah is, declares that at this time next year he will return and Sarah will have a son. 

Sarah perhaps had less faith than Abraham because, hearing this at the entrance of her tent, she “laughed,” which elicits the visitor’s response that nothing is impossible for God. His statement, of course, merely reaffirms what Abraham has already heard from God. The “visitors” then leave. 

Christian theology has long recognized these “visitors” as the Triune God and seen in this passage one of the first allusions to the Trinity. 

What lessons might we draw from this episode?

The most important one is the visitation of God himself. This revelation is an important one for subsequent Christian theology.

But what about Abraham’s “child problem” that we have been discussing? We saw how Abraham and Sarah initially chose to take that challenge into their own hands through the agency of Hagar. But this passage makes clear: It is God who is the “Lord and Giver of Life.” Even if Sarah has her own “how can this be?” doubts.

The child conceived by human designs is not the heir God chose. The heir God chose will be conceived by his power, regardless of human expectations or doubts.

How often does our modern world believe that God is “Lord and Giver of Life?” How often does it not assert, either through contraception and abortion that we will refuse that life or through artificial reproductive technologies that we will nonetheless “make” it? And, if God is the “Giver” of life, does our approach to the question suggest that the life he gives is … a gift and not a “burden,” a “disruption,” or an “accident?”

The most classic artistic representation of this passage is Andrei Rublev’s icon, “Troitsa,” produced by the Russian somewhere in the first quarter of the 1400s. It is perhaps the best-known Russian icon.

The three Persons seated around the table, their heads inclined in such a way as to form a perfect circle, represent the Trinity. Above each is an aspect of the encounter account: Abraham’s home above the Father, the oak of Mamre above the Son, Mount Moriah (where Isaac is almost offered in sacrifice) above the Holy Spirit. One source claims they represent key things about that Person: the “home of the Father” (from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its name — Ephesians 3:15), the living tree of the Son (“vine and branches”), the mountain of spiritual progress ascended with the Holy Spirit’s help. The Father offers and the Son accepts a cup of sacrifice (which also alludes to the Eucharistic sacrifice, while connecting to the calf Abraham slew for his guests). The Son’s blue and brown robes connect heaven and earth in the Incarnation.

The icon had been kept by Russia’s State Tretyakov Gallery for decades but, in 2022, was handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church.