Lent 45

Dark. So, so dark.

Jesus has been up all night, anticipating the suffering that is to come, knowing exactly what is in the cup he must drink. He knows how his kingdom must come so that things can be on earth as they are in heaven: the Maker of All Things must let those jackasses believe they've won, believe they can keep their privilege and power safe, believe that power and strength look like Violence and Terror-making.

But our God knows that Power and Strength look like suffering, lowness, being thought less of than robbers and murderers, being mocked and scorned, and submitting to death, even death on a cross. Loving each other, even to death - that's what power looks like.

I like Good Friday, for the deep darkness of even Jesus wondering if God has forsaken him, wondering if God had finally failed to Be With Us. Because that suffering - the exquisite pain of believing that we have been forgotten and matter not at all to not a one - that suffering even Jesus knew.

In the words of one of my old bosses, It's Friday, but Sunday's coming.


Briefly, about this passage. It breaks my heart every time I read it. I imagine heart-broken, half-way crazy Abraham who had believed that this son had been provided by God now trying to make himself believe that God would make this sacrifice possible. Dragging his elderly self and his perfect, too-loved son up a mountain and daring God to keep on being faithful - God had promised that this son would come, had promised Abraham's children would outnumber the stars - somehow this request and God's promises must both be true, so make it be so God.  And at the very last minute, God makes it so. But not without leaving it imprinted on our hearts how expensive the sacrifice of a son will be, how much it will cost.

Genesis 22:1-14

New International Version (NIV)

Abraham Tested

22 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.
² Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
³ Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. ⁴ On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. ⁵ He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
⁶ Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, ⁷ Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
⁸ Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
⁹ When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. ¹⁰ Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. ¹¹ But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
¹² “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
¹³ Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram^[a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. ¹⁴ So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”