On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the
place afar off
The first reading this Sunday, the sacrifice of
Issac, has always troubled and disturbed Jews and Christians, not to mention
the critics of Judaism and Christianity. There have been many ‘solutions’ to
the apparent outrageous demand of God requiring Abraham to kill his Son. The most famous of these solutions was that of
Soren Kierkegaard, who refused to accept that there was any solution to the
story. The sacrifice of Isaac was meant
to shock and unsettle us, to make us see the visceral, brutal nature of the
ordeal undergone by both father and son which had been "cleaned up" and
downplayed by the religious community. To address the significance of this scriptural
story adequately, believed Kierkegaard, we must recognize its horror, the inexplicablity of the pain involved, the raw violence it does against the
human being itself.
I wonder about that: after the Nuremburg trials
and the trial of Adolf Eichmann we are no strangers to raw brutality and to the
plea “I was just following orders”. This is not to mention more recent events: Al-Queda
and ISIS claiming not to be following merely
human orders but divine ones.
Still I think as far as he goes Kierkegaard is
right: the sacrifice of Issac cannot be explained away in terms of the Old
Testament. From the perennial perspective of Christianity the Old Testament constantly
groans, longs for and struggles for realities, which it cannot itself provide.
The wandering in the wilderness in search of the promised land, the longing for
deliverance from exile, the messianic hope and expectation remain unrealized
within the bounds of the Old Testament alone.
The Dominican Fr. Geoffrey Preston viewed this
in terms of the Easter Vigil. The Old Testament readings all through the
Sundays of Lent are a preparation for the Easter Vigil. In that dark night but
in the light of the Paschal Candle, we hear ‘the record of God's saving deeds
in history, how he saved his people in ages past; and pray that our God will
bring each of us to the fullness of redemption’. What is happening, Fr. Preston
says, is the Old Testament dies and is resurrected with the Resurrection and
Death of Jesus Christ.
This is not so apparent to us because we do not
read the Old Testament as the Church has throughout most of her history. As St.
Augustine said: “the New Testament is hidden in the Old; the Old Testament is
revealed in the New.” The name for this is typology: the Old Testament consists
of types and shadows which point us forward to the Gospel and it is the Gospel
which explains the Old Testament.
So the sacrifice of Issac, which is one of the
readings at the Vigil, can only be a conundrum, an impossible puzzle, a
paradox, if we cannot seeing it foreshadowing, illuminating and fulfilled in
the sacrifice of Jesus Christ:
The mountain in the land of Moriah is Mount Calvary
outside the walls of Jerusalem.
On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and
saw the place afar off; the place where on another third day Jesus rises from
the tomb.
Issac is the beloved son of an earthly father;
Jesus is the beloved Son of the eternal Father.
Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and
laid it on Isaac his son just as the wood of the cross is laid on the shoulder
of Jesus.
“But where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” “God
will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son”, the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sins of the world.
Issac like Jesus the Lamb goes voluntarily to
the slaughter: as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his
mouth.
Issac trusts his father as Jesus trusts his
Father: “into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
Abraham does not have to sacrifice his son: but
the Father of Jesus gives his Son for the life of the world.
“God tested Abraham”. Not only to manifest
Abraham’s faith, but also to prepare the way for the perfect sacrifice which
would be effected when God the Father offered up his own beloved Son upon the
mountain of Calvary on the altar of the Cross, and yet received him back alive
through his glorious Resurrection from the dead. As Jesus said, “Abraham your father rejoiced that he
might see my day: he saw it, and was glad.” (John 8:56)
But to see this all this you have to be far-sighted
and Lent is intended to make this optical adjustment. On Ash Wednesday we were
told to observe a holy Lent by among other things ‘by reading and meditating
on God's holy Word’. One way of describing what it means to ‘meditate’ on Holy
Scripture is to connect the dots. To mediate is to see the links in the chain,
between the Old Testament and the New certainly but to see even farther and to
realize that we are also a links in the chain.
We experience the
world as a confusing, baffling violent place, where nothing makes much sense
and yet behind the chaos stands the effectual working of divine providence, the plan of salvation; things
which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are
being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by
him through whom all things were made. So we pray both on Good Friday and Holy
Saturday, in the shadow of the Cross and the new Light of the Resurrection.
On the third day Abraham
lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off
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