A Different Understanding of God

ONLINE REFLECTION, PROPER 8, YEAR A, ST. PAUL’S, FOLEY

JUNE 28, 2020

TEXT: Genesis 22:1-14

I would encourage you to read the first lesson, from Genesis 22, linked to this post a little further down.  It will help you understand my comments today.

This passage – Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac – has been called one of the most disturbing passages in all of scripture. Why would a loving God ask Abraham to sacrifice their heir of promises that God had made to him.

To make sense of this passage, one must understand the topography and history of Jerusalem. Let me share that with you.

There are three valleys in the ancient city of Jerusalem:  the Kidron Valley, which is between the Mount of Olives and the city’s walls;  the Tyropean Valley, also called the Cheesemaker’s Valley, and Gehenna, or Hinnom Valley.

The site to which Abraham brought Isaac for sacrifice is believed to be a massive rock outcropping, which ultimately became a central place of worship.  It was in the Ancient Temple at the time of Jesus and is now within the massive Islamic holy place known as the Dome of the Rock.  It was on that rock that Abraham meant to sacrifice Isaac.

But Jerusalem had a history even before the time of Abraham.  A pagan cult known as the Molechites – those who worshiped the God Molech – used to sacrifice children in the Hinnom Valley, also known as Gehenna.  Gehenna ultimately became a garbage dump, and a place where the bodies of criminals and unclean animals were burned.

So, there had been sacrifice of children nearby by the Molechites.

The story of Abraham gets across an important point to biblical-era listeners.  Yahweh – the God of Abraham, Isaac and his heirs – does not require or desire sacrifice of children.

That may seem obvious today.  But, in the biblical-era Mid East, that was Good News.  The God of Abraham was a loving God.

Hundreds of years later, Jesus would talk about hell.  The word he used for hell was Gehenna, the valley where human sacrifices – a tragic garbage dump – took place.

Today, thanks be to God, we are much more advanced.  We would not consider sacrificing our children.  But we have the truth: Our God is a loving God who has Jesus speak lovingly of children, referring to them as examples of those who will enter the Kingdom of God.