Reflections on Abraham's call to "take, go and offer"

  "Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you" [Gen22/2]. Three verbs here: take-go-offer.

1. Take the son you love, your son. That's Isaac, the son from the sterile Sarah. Isaac is a surprise; never quite expected. Abraham starts to consider Isaac as his son--emphasis on "his". Yes, he is a "promised" child. But he is the Lord God's promise, not Abraham's. So the Lord God tells Abraham to give him up--take him up the mountain. Abraham can refuse this order to "take" Isaac. He does not. His paternity is now placed in faith. 

2. Go to the land of Moriah. Abraham had done his going away from his own homeplace. "Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you" [Gen12/1]. . Now he has another going away, this time from his own son. He is to go away from his son to a future designed for Israel. [Remember that prior to the Abraham story we read about the stories of Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark and the tower of Babel, all descriptions of the conditions of the human being after the Adam and Eve story].  

Abraham is quite silent. He says nothing. He says nothing to Isaac. He says nothing to the servants. He is cloaked in silence. 

Well, he does say something to his servants, but it is no explanation of what is really going on. He also replies to Isaac's question. "The Lord God will provide" [22/8]. The Lord God will provide what is needed for the sacrifice. He does not however say that he will sacrifice his son. Abraham is completely absorbed in faith. 

3. Offer. Offer the son to the Lord God. The future is now outside the hands of Abraham; it does not rely on Abraham and his plans, goals, dreams. Offer the son because the paternity is now that of the Lord God. The future of Israel will have to be abandoned in the hands of the Lord God. 

We know the story, an angel comes and stops Abraham from killing Isaac. There are interesting commentaries on this and let us leave them to the expertise of Biblical scholars. There is just one point we can discern. Offer all hopes and dreams based on one's own expectations and lay them all in the hands of the Lord God.  The human, in the figure of Abraham, is called to overtake continuously what prohibits the human from what the Lord God has given. This includes overtaking dreams, plans, goals, desires that prohibit the human from living with the dignity that the Lord God has provided. This is our dignity as "image of God", our dignity as children of the Father, our dignity as brothers and sisters to each other. It is our dignity that has to be realized in the course of history--as represented by the history of Israel in the Bible. In a way Abraham is reminded that his faith in the Lord God is marked by a recognition of what it is to be truly human as the Lord God has designed the human.

It is tough and at times incomprehensible to be told to "take, go and offer". There are moments in life when this feels cruel. Life has its "comfort zones"that are shaken by the three verbs, "take, go, offer".  But as Charles de Foucauld prayed, "Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord.". Good luck to all of us.