Proper 8A
June 28, 2026
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
Years ago there was a spy movie called The Good Shepherd. It starred Matt Damon as Edward Wilson, a Yale student who was recruited to work in military intelligence during World War Two, and then was involved in establishing the CIA once the war was over.
Wilson is an excellent spy. He puts his duty to his country above all else, including his wife and son. He is surprised when the son he has largely neglected decides to follow in his father’s footsteps and joins the CIA.
The Russians catch the son in a compromising position, one that allows them to blackmail him, demanding that he betray his country. When another CIA spy learns what is happening he goes to Wilson, demanding that he handle it, meaning Wilson would have to take drastic action against his boy.
When Wilson hesitates, the CIA official asks a pointed question.
“Which do you love more, your country or your son?”
Joe and I looked at each other. Even in the darkness of the theater we knew what the other was thinking. The answer to that question was a no brainer. Forced to make a choice between our son or our country we’d choose our son every time.
In today’s reading from Genesis Abraham is forced to make a similar choice. Who does he love more, his son or his God?
This story, known as the sacrifice of Isaac, shows up in the lectionary every three years. And every time I see it I cringe and quickly look to see what other options for preaching there are.
But this is such a pivotal story that it cannot be ignored. No matter how many times I’ve read it, wrestled with it, read the musings of great Biblical scholars about it, I come to the same conclusion.
I don’t like Abraham in this story. And I’m going out on a limb here from the pulpit and admit that I don’t much like God in this story either.
I’ll start with Abraham. Remember that God has chosen him and Sarah to be the patriarch and matriarch of a great nation. God first makes that promise to them when they are old and childless. Don’t worry about that, God tells them. You will have a son.
But 25 years go by before that promise of a son comes to fruition. Sarah is 90 and Abraham 100 when Isaac is born. Decades of barrenness and longing are finally answered.
Now Abraham without question or hesitancy is ready to carry out an order from God to kill this beloved son.
Abraham, who two chapters earlier pleads with God to save the innocent people of Sodom, who dares say to God then, “Far be it from you to slay the righteous with the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth be just?” This same Abraham fails to offer one question or word of protest at the command to kill his own son.
Abraham, who professes love for his wife Sarah, fails to mention to her what God has demanded of him, or why he and her beloved Isaac are making this trek to the mountains.
What kind of father, what kind of husband, what kind of patriarch is this?
And what about God, the creator of the universe, the maker of covenants, the one who hungers for justice and righteousness?
What kind of God demands that a father kill his son? What kind of God plays cat and mouse games with those created in God’s image? What kind of God devises such cruel and sadistic tests of faith?
Why would any person of integrity want to be faithful to such a God?
Those are some of the questions that come to me as I struggle with this story. And as I studied the commentaries about this text, I was amazed at the lengths Biblical scholars would go to justify the actions of both Abraham and God.
Here are a few of their interpretations and explanations:
Abraham knew that God would come through at the last minute, that God wouldn’t really demand he kill his son.
Well, as attorney Alan Dershowitz points out in an excellent commentary on this story, if that is true, if Abraham knew the outcome ahead of time, then it really wasn’t a test.
Another argument in the Abraham defense camp is that obedience to God, even in such an horrific matter, is the ultimate value. Commentator after commentator hold Abraham up as a paragon of obedience and faithfulness.
Obedience to a superior power is the same argument Nazi soldiers used to defend their actions after World War Two. The Nuremburg trials made it clear that following the orders of a superior is not a defense against an immoral act.
Killing an innocent child is clearly immoral, even if it is ordered by a voice from heaven.
Another commentary claimed that Abraham never intended to kill Isaac, that he was testing God, and that if God had not stopped the order at the last minute, then Abraham would have stopped it himself.
Dershowitz notes that he once had a client who used this defense. The man was accused of attempted murder after the police found him on top of another man, holding a knife over the other man’s body.
Dershowitz’s client argued that he had never intended to hurt the man, he was just trying to scare him, that he would have stopped even if the police had not arrived.
The argument failed to work for Dershowitz’s client, and it fails to get Abraham off the hook, too. The text offers no indication that Abraham was anything but willing to carry out God’s command.
And what about God in this story? What justification can there be for such a cruel test of faith?
This test was necessary, one commentator wrote, because God had to know that Abraham was worthy of the covenant God had made with him; to be the father of an entire nation, the people of Israel, God’s chosen people.
But what makes a man who is willing to kill his own child worthy of being
founder of a nation? Is that the kind of moral character we want in a founding father?
Another commentator noted that God did not command Abraham to murder Isaac, but to sacrifice him. “Sacrifice is different from murder,” this Biblical scholar wrote. “You murder those you hate; you sacrifice what you love.”
Somehow I think that ridiculous distinction would be lost on Isaac.
Of course, in the end, God does rescind the order to kill Isaac. And if there is any redemption in this diabolical story, it is that.
Other gods worshipped in Abraham’s time did require the sacrifice of children. In the end, the God of Abraham does not.
If the story had gone the other way, if God had not stepped in at the last moment to stop the killing, then the God of Abraham could not be the God we worship today. There would be little or no difference between Abraham’s God and the Canaanite god or any number of lesser gods.
So although this story, in my eyes, does nothing to redeem Abraham, it does in the end offer at least some redemption for God. The cruelty of the test remains, questions are still there, but so is a glimmer of goodness.
But that glimmer does not redeem the whole story. Dershowitz agrees. At the end of his commentary, he says, “Whatever interpretation the reader ultimately finds meaningful, one conclusion is clear:
“No one can read this story literally and accept it as a clear guide for human action. It cries out for explication, for disagreement, for reflection, and for concern.
“It provides no answers, only eternally unanswerable questions, and in that respect it is the perfect tool for teaching the realities, limitations and imperfections of both divine and human justice.
“The story of Abraham and Isaac is real life writ large, with all of its tragic choices, ambiguities, and uncertainties.”
Your country or your son? The answer to that question is clear to me.
So is the answer to this one: Your son or your God?
Amen.