Sacrifices Part 3: Mountains

For an introduction to this series, read Ghosts Around the Manger.

Abraham set the last stone and looked up, praying for a heavenly stay. Emptiness filled his eyes. Silence rang in his ears. He pulled a long, thin strip of leather from his belt and turned toward Isaac. The boy asked no questions and offered no resistance as his father bound his wrists and ankles. Abraham’s heart bowed under the weight of his son’s trust.

He lifted Isaac tenderly as a father lifts his newborn son, and placed him on the altar. Abraham slid a blanket under the boy’s head to protect it from the rough surface of the stone. He ran his hand through Isaac’s hair. It was the same color and texture as Sarah’s had been when she was young. He bent over and kissed Isaac’s forehead, inhaling deeply, savoring the scent of his son. He placed a hand over Isaac’s eyes closing them so that he would not have to see the boy see the blade. He stepped back and drew the knife from its sheath.

Abraham wrapped his right hand tightly around the handle. He raise it high above his head. He placed his left hand on Isaac’s bare chest searching for the boy’s heart. He felt the rapid pulse beneath his palm.

The muscles in Abraham’s body tensed. He willed his eyes to remain focused on the target. One thrust. A prick of pain. A gasp. It is finished. Forever. He had prayed every prayer he knew, begging God through bitter tears. Everything in him raged against God’s torturous command. My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?The knife began its deadly downward arch.

“Abraham! Abraham!”

The voice caught the blade inches from Isaac’s heart.

“Here I am!” Abraham answered, flinging the knife as far from his son as he could.

“Do not lay a hand on the boy. 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.”

Abraham collapsed across his son and wept. He loosed the bindings and let him go. Then across the clearing Abraham saw a ram, caught by its horns in a thicket. He took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering to God. 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.”

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It is neither incidental nor accidental that the first name in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus is Abraham’s. The cross of Jesus casts a long shadow. Though he had no way of knowing that his story foreshadowed another sacrifice on another mountain, Abraham felt the chill of the cross at Moriah. Even there, even then, God knew he would require of himself what he ultimately did not require of Abraham. On Calvary, there was no heavenly stay. No angel voice to halt hammer, spear or thorns. No answer for the question, “Why have you forsaken me?”

Abraham’s story begins with a promise: “Through you, Abraham, all peoples on earth will be blessed.”

Matthew begins with a memory: “Abraham was the father of Isaac.”

The cross was no afterthought. It was no contingency. It was the eternal plan of a loving God to redeem an unworthy people from our sin. Long before the baby’s first cry in the manger, or the angel’s joyous announcement, or the Magi’s star-led journey, God knew. God has always known. He has been working to save us for a long, long time. He’d rather die, I suppose, than live without his family.