Genesis 22 – The Significance of Offering the Firstborn

Genesis 22 is a fairly well-known story of Abraham’s faith in God being confirmed by his willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Of course, God does not desire human sacrifice, so He provides a ram for Abraham to offer instead of his son. The moral of the story is obviously a willingness to be obedient to God, to put your trust in Him, even when it seems dangerous or absurd.

 

Many commentators correctly see a link between this story of Genesis 22 and the crucifixion of Jesus. God, like Abraham, was willing to offer up His Son for the salvation of the world. The legitimate question comes up: why would God do such a thing? Isn’t it cruel to sacrifice your son? And, by the way, isn’t it the son who suffers more than the father. The answer to these questions requires a contextual reading of the text.

 

In the ancient world, and perhaps most so in the Semitic world, the role of the firstborn son cannot be understated. Anyone who has spent time around people of Middle Eastern descent notices the great honor granted the firstborn son of the family. In the case of Isaac, although he was not what we Americans would classify as the firstborn to Abraham, for family purposes in the ancient Near East, Isaac was the firstborn, the only-begotten of Abraham from his wife, Sarah, and the heir to Abraham’s inheritance. Not only was the firstborn the heir, but the thinking in this time was that the firstborn especially (although, technically, not exclusively) continues the life of the parents. In other words, your life continues to exist through your progeny. To have no children, or for your children to die before re-producing, means your name and life is cut off for eternity (at this time, there was little or no idea like we have of life after death).

 

In this way of thinking, to allow your firstborn, only-begotten son to die means to essentially kill yourself. You are allowing your name, your inheritance, to die. You are being cut off the earth. You are making the sacrifice. So in Genesis 22, Abraham is himself making a great sacrifice. He spent 100 years childless, with no one to carry on the family name. Finally, God intervened and gave him a child, and now God asks Abraham to offer the child as a sacrifice. This would again put Abraham in the position of dying off with no inheritance, no name, no memory of him left on earth. Despite this, Abraham puts his trust in God, realizing the son he was given is not his own, but a gift from God. Abraham understands he is accountable to God for the child, and so obeys God’s seemingly outlandish command. Abraham is then rewarded and reinforced for his obedience and God reveals this scenario as a simple test of Abraham’s faith.

 

Incidentally, this way of thinking is also significant in the New Testament. That Jesus is underscored as God’s firstborn, only-begotten Son, dramatizes even more the crucifixion of Jesus. Before the victorious resurrection, it is as though God’s name, His inheritance, and the memory of Him is completely obliterated from the face of the earth.

Ascension: No More Mr. Nice Guy

For those of us who follow the Orthodox Christian calendar, tomorrow is the 40th day of Easter, which is also known as Ascension.  We celebrate this great feast in honor and remembrance of Jesus being taken into heaven on the 40th day after His resurrection from the dead. 

Unfortunately, many Christians overlook the significance of Ascension.  Even we Orthodox often do that, especially after we have been celebrating the greatest feast of all, Pascha/Easter, for 40 days.  Ascension is the time when all of the Easter decorations come down and is when the church begins to return to what we might call ‘normalcy’–i.e. the way it looks pretty much every other time during the year.  But the significance of the Ascension should not be overlooked.

The feast of the Ascension should make clear to us how Christ’s resurrection was fundamentally and functionally different than any other resurrection recorded in Scripture.  In the case of the others who were resurrected, they all eventually died again.  But the celebration of the Ascension shows that Jesus’ resurrection was unique.  It is different than all of the others.  What makes His unique?

Unlike any other accounts of someone being raised from the dead, only Jesus is said to have been taken into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God.  To be seated at the right hand of God indicates at least two things.  First, to be at the “right hand” of God indicates Jesus has been raised in power and glory, for the right hand is biblically the hand of blessing and power and glory.  Second, and closely related to the first point, to be “seated” indicates Jesus is enthroned as a judge.  Even in a modern American courtroom we can see how the judge is the one who is seated.  When the judge enters everyone stands until he is seated; and when the judgment is announced by the judge, the defendant rises while the judge remains seated to announce the judgment.  This focus of Jesus as the judge is confirmed by St Paul’s sermon to the Athenians (Acts 17:31: “[God] has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”). 

This second aspect of the coming judgment is often minimized today by Christians and non-Christians alike.  We prefer to view Jesus as a very nice, forgiving, meek man.  And certainly Jesus was nice and forgiving and meek when He walked the earth preaching.  But His promise, and the Scriptural promise, is that He will return in the same way in which He was taken (i.e. in power and glory); and when He returns this second time it will be “to judge the living and the dead,” as we proclaim in the Nicene Creed.  I jokingly refer to this scenario in baseball terminology.  It will be like when the closer enters the game from the bullpen to his music.  Jesus’ song would be something like, “No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

Without minimizing the severity of the judgment, I believe it is important to point out one thing.  The primary basis of the judgment, according to Jesus’ words, is not how ‘moral’ we are (which so often leads to self-righteousness, which Jesus strongly condemns).  It is not about how often we go to church or how many Bible verses we memorize.  When He returns, Jesus will check up to see if we have responded to His grace by acting graciously towards others.  In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus laid out His criteria for judging: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, housing strangers, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and imprisoned.

Seeing that Jesus said nothing about blogging, I better get busy doing some of these other things…

Miracles and Judgment

 

As some of you are aware, I spoke this past weekend at the annual Minnesota Bible Lecture Series (MNBLS) in Minneapolis(http://www.mnbls.org).  The topic this year was the Gospel of Mark.  Gwen and I had a wonderful visit and were able to see some old friends from our seminary days, and made some new friends as well.  I thank Fr Marc Boulos and his parents, Paul and Rose, for their hospitality during our stay.

During the course of my talks, one of the listeners had a question related to miracles.  This topic again came up in today’s Bible study at St Mary.  They were both good questions, and since they were raised I have thought quite a bit about the topic of miracles. 

It seems that when most people think about Jesus or the Bible, or even religion in general, they think about miracles.  And certainly there are miracle stories throughout the Bible.  Even down to our own day we hear about various miracles throughout the world.  I must admit, nonetheless, that speaking about miracles makes me a little uncomfortable.  What makes me uncomfortable is not the miracles themselves, or the idea of miracles, but the fact that so many people misunderstand or overemphasize miracles.  I made a couple of points related to this topic at the MNBLS and during Bible study.  Since the people who asked the questions seemed to benefit from what I said, I will share my thoughts with you as well.

First, miracles are miracles because they are extraordinary.  Miracles are miracles because they defy the natural order.  They operate in a way that makes no logical sense.  In other words, they are not everyday occurrences in our lives.  If everyone–or even most people–who have a terminal disease are healed, it would not be miraculous when someone is cured of an otherwise incurable disease.  It would simply be the natural order of the universe.  If every time a car spun out of control on the interstate it was put back on its course before hitting another car or causing an accident, then it would cease to be miraculous when that does happen to people.  But these exceptions are not the norm, and thus they may fall into the ‘miracle’ category when they do happen.

My point in bringing this discussion up is certainly not to discourage people from hoping in a miracle.  Nor would I tell people not to believe in miracles.  Again, I have heard (and perhaps even seen) miracles happen.  My wife has seen them happen as well in her work as a nurse.  As a pastor, what concerns me about people’s hopes in a miracle is that the hope is often misplaced.  The hope is often in a miracle because we idolize this life.  The hope is because we are scared to die.  The hope is that we will not have to face our Maker–or at least that we could delay it a little while longer in order to have some more fun on earth.

This misplaced hope for a miracle is related to the second point I made.  Even in the Bible when a miracle happens (except in the case of the Resurrection of Christ), the person on whom the miracle was performed still dies later.  St Lazaraus, who was raised after being dead for four days, is no longer with us–he died again.  Tabitha/Dorcas, who was raised by Peter, once again died.  The blind, the deaf/dumb, the people with the unclean spirits, they are all dead and gone.

Again, this post is not meant to depress people, but is an effort to encourage us to focus on one of the main aspects of the Bible: our judgment after death.  Even when God allows a miracle to happen, the people on whom the miracle was performed die eventually.  Sooner or later we all are faced with the grave.  And if we believe the Bible, we all will be faced with the Day of Judgment, at which time all things hidden will be manifest; every deed will be revealed. 

To sum up my (hopefully coherent) rambling: whether we are the beneficiary of a miracle or not, we all will face the dread judgment seat.  One of the main purposes of Scripture is to prepare us for that day.  It gives us the answer key to the final test, before the final test is given.  If God allows us to benefit from a miracle, we thank Him; but we always need to remember the end is eventually coming.  We thank God for giving us more time to repent and we make every effort to correct our behavior before we are called to give an account before Him—because we know miracle or not, that is the final destiny for all of us.