The Big Ideas

I've never really had any big ideas of my own. I was married for 20 years to a woman who felt her life. Everything she did she did on a level of interaction with the world far deeper than I did. You know what I mean? I mean we can do stuff every day virtually unconscious of our part in it and I lived that way much of the time. But she didn't. For her whatever she did was an opportunity to converse with meaning.

So it astonished and confounded me one Christmas Eve service at a small Episcopal parish in Manassas, Virginia, when my ex (not an ex at the time, it took me a few more years to mess that up) read the Old Testament reading for the congregation. I remember it well. All of us there at the time do. She read from Genesis 21 and 22, the birth and sacrifice of Isaac. That's a story we have all heard a zillion times, and it should have been a breeze to hear it again without having a clue what it is all about.

Not for her, though. She sobbed. The memory of it still overwhelms me. A joyful occasion, a familiar reading with an ending that makes us all feel good (Isaac gets to live in the end...fun stuff), friends and family, and the happiest holiday of the year--this was a beautiful service until the tears made us all realize the horror of what we had just listened to.

Here's the story in a rather large nutshell. If you want the condensed version, read the Bible.

Abraham was an old man, and his wife was old, too. He was pushing a century, and she was around 90. Hey, older than me, boys! Abe and Sarah had wanted kids for all their married lives, but it just didn't happen. I could relate to this at the time of the reading because I was around 37, as was my wife, and we had been childless as well, although no for lack of trying, for 14 years of our marriage until our eldest, Bryan, surprised us in our surrendered states. But for Abraham and Sarah it clearly wasn't happening. Even after someone special visited them and said "a kid's coming, just you wait," they were so cynical of ever being parents by that time that they were beyond belief and probably a little jaded about the whole idea.

They even tried to force the issue by having Abraham get it on with the handmaiden (a servant), who actually bore Abraham a son. Pretty good result on many levels (the servant was a smokin' hot babe), Abraham was thinking, but not what God had promised.

Then Isaac came along. Isaac was the promised son, born to Sarah by Abraham, and his arrival surprised the heck out of them even though they had been told he was coming. But you know what? Having been more mature when my boy was born I can relate just a little to what Abraham and Sarah must have thought: their new son brought not another mouth to feed into their existence, but a set of eyes through which to see the world afresh. With the birth of Isaac Abe got to see the world in technocolor (and technocolor wasn't even invented yet), and everything had new and deeper meaning, true purpose, and Love meant something more profound and selfless than ever before.

I can imagine that every day for the next several years Abraham would awaken and run to the baby's room to see first that he was still breathing, every hope and dream wrapped up in the anticipation of the life of his son. He would watch, perhaps even provoke with a gentle nudge, the opening of the kid's eyes so he could begin the day with him. Abe and Isaac would breakfast together, do the morning chores together, and as they walked, Abraham would tell Isaac little tidbits about the world, about plants and animals, ideas, everything he could think of to satisfy the sponge of a mind his son had. And at some point in every day, Abraham and Isaac would wrestle. That's what I like to do with my boys too, duke it out and end the fray with a kiss. Abraham was incredibly proud of Isaac, and was satisfied with life because everything that he had hoped for and wanted to accomplish was wrapped up in the person of his son. Abraham loved Isaac completely.

And then God said, "Kill him."

You must be joking, God, thought Abraham. But God insisted, "kill him."

Abraham went through all the rationalizations for why God must have said something He didn't mean. Perhaps, he thought, God was using the royal "him" when He said that, and didn't intend for him to kill his own son, his dear, dear son. Wasn't Isaac a gift from God? Wasn't he promised to him, Abraham? Wasn't Isaac a reward to him for being such a good (if somewhat weak, at times--read chapter 20 for more about that) man of God? Surely there must be some mistake. And yet the words were clear, "kill him." Truly God was capable of more cruelty than man ever was! He was Horrible, Terrible, Lewd and Disgusting if ever a being was!

And so Abraham took his son, the one he cherished more than he did God Himself, on a walk in the wilderness to a small knoll they called a "mountain" over there, and slowly, resisting every step, ambled up the mountain with his boy in tow. He finished assembling an altar out of rocks, and with tears streaming down his face he turned to his boy and gave him the longest, strongest hug he could muster in his old age. Isaac was frightened by the strength of his father's emotion, and was confused, but in his sweetness he played along and hugged his father back, soothing him with simple words, "it's ok, Papa." "I love you, Papa." And Abraham said to him, "I love you too, my boy...."

Then Abraham lifted his son and placed the confused young man on the altar and restrained him. Abraham drew his knife from the sheath, and held it with two hands high above his head, ready to plunge it into his son's chest. He thought better of it, though, and leaned over to put his forehead on Isaac's, his hair dangling and matted around both of their heads like a veil, and he snuck the knife to Isaacs throat to slit it cleanly--it wouldn't take but a little while for his son to bleed out his life....

Yeah, that's where she lost it in the reading. And so did the rest of us.

Actually, she lost it way back when God first told Abraham to "Kill him." But you get the point. It doesn't matter what happened next. You can read the rest of the story, but please don't until I'm finished with you here. We read on to salve our conscience and to remind ourselves that God doesn't really take our relationship with Him so seriously as it seems. But He certainly does.

See, the point of the story is that God is demanding of us. Not that he wants us to set aside tithes or offerings, or do good deeds, or be nice to people, or live particularly moral lives. He doesn't give a rip about all that (well, maybe a tiny rip). All He wants is all of us.

No, I don't mean that He wants every one of us. He probably does, but what He wants of each of us is every bit of us. He doesn't want us to hold out on Him in any way so that we can enjoy our house, or car, or Harley, or girlfriend, or job, or status, or any other possession, entitlement, or person in our lives that we value more than Him. He is God, for crying out loud. He wants us.

And that's what He wanted of Abraham. Yes, He had blessed Abraham with a son, but that son had crept into the middle of God's relationship with Abraham, and God told Abe to get rid of him. He wanted relationship untarnished by selfishness and things that would interfere in the least.

The story also tells us something about Sacrifice. Sacrifice is not the giving of something from our bounty, but is the giving up of something that is so much a part of us that we cannot bear to part with it...like Abraham parting with Isaac. God wants us to Sacrifice ourselves and our wants to Him in the same way, without reservation (there's that ugly phrase again), and entirely. He wants us to empty ourselves in Him so much that there is nothing of ourselves left to call our identity or ego. He wants to rip us apart until only he can heal us.

Amazing, huh? Amazingly demanding and overreaching, if you ask me, but it makes sense in the end. This is serious stuff.

I've gotta go teach Business Law now, so I can't wrap this up the way I want to, but I'll finish it off in the next post.