Isaac's Initiation

Today is Children’s Sabbath and so we have a father-son story: that of Abraham and Isaac.

I think that most of you know the story:

• Abraham prays for a son. 
• He finally gets a son (Isaac). 
• God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. 
• Then at the last second, God spares Isaac.

It is a bit of a difficult story to hear. It is brief, yet full of possibilities. I don’t suppose to tell you definitively how you should interpret the story, but I will offer you a way out: a way to hear the story and not hate Abraham.

When we hear the story of Abraham and Isaac we often pause to ask, “What was Abraham thinking?” Was he insane? What kind of religious fanatic would even consider killing his own son, let alone making preparations to do so?

But, since our focus is on children today, I propose to ask another question: What was Isaac feeling?

Fear, I am sure as he lay bound and Abraham raised the knife for the offering, but what beyond that: disillusionment?  Contrast this feeling of disillusionment with how Isaac would have felt about his father just days before.

Consider who his father is: Abraham. We know him as the father of three faiths (Judiasm, Christianity, and Islam)—the great patriarch. He wasn’t just any man, he was someone who talked to God. He made a covenant with God, and God was already making good on his end of this covenant. Isaac himself was the fulfillment of this promise that God made to Abraham. I wonder if Isaac knew this. Imagine if he did.  He would have idolized Abraham for his relationship to God, and he would likely have felt woefully inadequate as a gift from God.

But perhaps we are looking at the story with too much hindsight. What would it have been like to have been Isaac just before that trip to Mt. Mariah?

Abraham at this time is not yet a great patriarch. He is an old man with only two young children. He has no grandchildren. He has some wealth. He has slaves, property, and live stock.

So how does a man like this—well off, but not particularly special—become a patriarch? How does he raise his sons so that they will carry on his family name? He can’t simply spoil Isaac and baby him. We see this lesson retold in second and third generation industrialists. They often become playboys—men with no particular moral or leadership distinction, and adult children who squander the wealth of earlier generations. (We see this with girls too. Paris Hilton comes to mind.)  

Isaac had to be different. Abraham has to make Isaac tough—he has to turn a boy into a man, and a father, and not just any father, but the father of all the tribes of Israel. He has to make Isaac a patriarch too. Isaac has to be his own man. He can’t just be an imitation or a follower of his father—he has to come into his own.

Isaac, like all of us, knows his own flaws. He knows his own shadow side. He knows he has fears, and doubts, and fragilities. Indeed, in what we learn of Isaac from the Bible, things are often happening to Isaac. We see it in this story, and the other big story involving Isaac is how his youngest son and wife conspire to trick him.

But, for now, in Isaac’s eyes, his father, as seen in the eyes of a young child, is a little too perfect. Most fathers are for young children. Fathers are like gods. They are all powerful. Hopefully, they are powerful for good, sometimes for ill, but powerful and they speak with authority. Their presence brings deliverance (and sometimes fear), and their absence brings longing and lack.

How could Isaac ever hope to measure up to a father like Abraham—a father who speaks to God—and a father whom God makes a covenant with?

There is notion that is ingrained in the psyche of premodern people. Abraham knew it—perhaps he wouldn’t articulate it in these modern psychological terms, but he knew it (as did others of his time and as do the gangs, drill sergeants, fraternities, and secret societies of today). Their knowledge is evidenced by their respective initiation practices; each knows the dangers of an idealized father.

What better way to transform a childish boy into a man and eventually into a father than to show that boy that he can attain what the father is—indeed even to surpass the father in some way. The first step it to bring the father down to earth—down to reality. The father cannot continue to be a god to the son. The father cannot be an idol. In a coming-of-age initiation, it may appear that the son’s life is in danger—that Isaac’s life is in danger—but the reality is that it is the idealization of the father than ends up dying.

The son gets to live as his own man, only after the idealized father is killed and the son can see the father as a man (not a god): a man of faults, doubts, fears, and excesses.

Despite what the story implies at the beginning and as it unfolds, Isaac doesn’t die. Isaac gains his life. It is often said that in substituting the Ram, God gives Isaac to Abraham a second time. That is to look at the story from above, but from Isaac’s perspective, in his initiation on Mt. Mariah, Isaac is able to see his father clearly for the first time. (Compare this story to the Star Wars saga. It is like when Luke Skywaker first sees his father without the Darth Vader mask. You will recall that just before this scene, Darth Vader tries to kill Luke—that is, he tries to kill his own son. It sounds a little like the Abraham and Isaac story.)

 For Isaac and for Skywalker, each in this pivotal moment first sees both the dark side of his father, as well as the frailty and the light side, and, in seeing this juxtaposition in one all-too-human individual, the two of them share a bond and the torch is passed to a new generation.

Now that you have heard me talk about the story, let us now hear the enduring words of the story as found in the book of Genesis.