Proper 8, Year A 2026: Genesis 22:1-14

My husband plays a lot of video games. One of his favorites is actually called The Binding of Isaac. The game takes the raw, harrowing themes of the biblical narrative we read today from Genesis and uses them to construct a dark allegory about religious trauma, childhood isolation, and guilt. The game mirrors the structure of the biblical text perfectly in its opening, only to subvert its meaning entirely to reveal a tragic reality. It’s a game that you can play all the way through in about half an hour, once you know what you’re doing, so I have heard the opening line, “Isaac and his mother” about a million times. The game’s cinematic intro directly references Genesis 22, mapping the biblical figures onto a broken, modern household where Isaac and his mother live alone in a small house on a hill. Isaac draws pictures and plays with toys while Mom watches Christian broadcasts on television. A voice from above (implied to be God, mimicking the test of Abraham) speaks to Mom, demanding she save Isaac's soul - first, by removing his toys and clothes (depriving him of his innocence), and finally by demanding a sacrifice: "To prove your love and devotion, I require a sacrifice. Your son, Isaac, will be the sacrifice." Just like Abraham, Mom picks up a knife and moves toward Isaac’s room to carry out the command. In Genesis, an angel of the Lord steps in, the knife drops, a ram is provided, and Isaac is saved. In the video game, the angel never comes. Instead, Isaac escapes his mother by jumping through a trapdoor into the basement. The entire roguelike journey down into the basement, caves, depths, and eventually the womb is a descent into Isaac's psychological state. While the biblical story of Isaac ends with a celebration of survival and a promise of a bright future, the video game uses the story as a metaphor for a child completely consumed and destroyed by a weaponized version of faith. 

This metaphor clearly speaks to people. The Binding of Isaac is an extremely popular game. I was talking with some clergy friends about it this week and one of them said, “I swear that game is why my Binding of Isaac sermons and Tiktoks all have 10x the views.” I think part of why it speaks to people is because this story is a nightmare. But it is a recognizable nightmare. It is a literary work of horror that speaks to us because we have seen stories that parallel video game Isaac’s far more than the Isaac of Genesis. This is also a hermeneutic nightmare that scholars, Jewish and Christian alike, have always struggled to interpret.

It is tempting to interpret this story as an exchange of types of sacrifice. That child sacrifice was “normal” and through this story, animal sacrifices become the norm. But such an easy interpretation is not only lacking value, as this story addresses much more difficult issues,  it’s an interpretation with dubious historical grounding. The only other time this type of sacrifice is referred to in scripture is in 2 Kings, where a Moabite king sacrifices his son and that is how Moab’s army defeats Israel’s. I’m skeptical. That incident is referred back to two other times in 2 Kings, where it’s saying, “remember how bad that guy was? He sacrificed his son.” I’m more convinced it was ancient propaganda against the enemies of Israel than stating a norm of child sacrifice.

Modern people oftentimes try to convince themselves that ancient people were less attached to their children because of the high infant mortality rate at that time. How else could they emotionally make it through? How could they watch sometimes multiple small children die? For the answer to that question, I invite you to walk through an old cemetery. This last Memorial Day, I spent some time really walking through the cemetery in Waverly, where my grandfather’s parents are buried. The biggest monuments had the youngest people buried there. We have always loved our children. We have always mourned our children. To quote the Gospel of Matthew at the massacre of the innocents who is quoting the prophet Jeremiah, “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

There are bigger questions at play here. For instance, with this demand from God for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, was God’s promise to make a nation of Abraham through Isaac a lie? Because with the death of Isaac, it will be. What would God have done if Abraham had pushed back? If Abraham had said, “no, this child was a gift from you, Lord. No take backs.” There are numerous occasions of people convincing God to change God’s mind throughout the Old Testament. So why not here?

There is also some question as to how old Isaac is. Most of the artwork I’ve seen of the story places Isaac still in childhood. But much of the earliest midrash, that is, the ancient Jewish method of interpreting, expanding, and filling in narrative gaps within biblical texts, is about how Isaac is an adult and is in on it, presumably assuming God will provide a sacrifice and then later, wonders, “where’s the sacrifice?”. That's a take many Jewish scholars still have. Most of the midrash which makes Abraham truly about to kill a child dates later. Furthermore, the only person in the story who calls Isaac a boy is Abraham. When the angel does so later, it can quite easily be seen as language paralleling that which Abraham was already using to describe his grown child. In the same way as I sometimes call my kids “babies”, although they are not, Abraham could be calling his grown son a “boy”, even though he is no longer a boy. Plus Abraham’s like 120 at this point. Everyone’s a boy.

But no matter how old he is, Isaac notices they’re heading out to sacrifice but missing a sacrifice. So he asks Abraham where the lamb is for the sacrifice, and all Abraham gives him is a simple response: “God will provide.” It is a statement of utter trust and confidence, but one that is dodging the question, if Isaac knew what the reader knows. Abraham does not tell Isaac all he wants to know because Abraham himself doesn’t know. He does not know at this moment whether or not Isaac is God’s act of provision. It could be either way: Isaac or an alternative to Isaac. Abraham doesn’t know, but he trusts unreservedly. (188)

At the heart of this story begs this question: Does God really test in this way? The premise of the story is that he does. (190) The testing times for Israel and for all of us who are heirs of Abraham are those times when it is seductively attractive to find an easier, less demanding alternative to God.

In our modern, post-enlightenment sophistication, we might find this idea of ‘testing’ primitive. But as modern, post-enlightenment Christians one dimension of testing is the temptation to accommodate the world, to yield to the pressures which lead to a compromised confession of the Gospel. These testings make clear the deep conflict between the purposes of God and the purposes of ‘this age.’ Few of us respond as readily as Abraham. This story asserts that what is up to us is the decision about whether we rely solely on God. The testing is inescapable. (191)

To assert that God provides requires a faith as intense as does the conviction that God tests. It affirms that God, only God and no other, is the source of life. Faithful people will be tempted to want only half of it. Complacent religion will want a God who provides, not a God who tests. Some in bitterness will want a God who tests but then will refuse to accept God’s generous providence. Some in cynical modernity will regard both affirmations, God’s providence and God’s testing, as silly, presuming we must answer to none and rely upon none, for we are both free and competent. But Abraham confessed himself both not free and not competent. Both of which we are loath to do. (191-193)

Faith is nothing other than trust in the power of the resurrection against every deathly circumstance. Abraham knows beyond understanding that God will find a way to bring life even in this scenario of death. That is the faith of Abraham. A substitute is not brought by Abraham but given by God. (193) It is the same God who tests and provides. The connection is that God is faithful. In the end, our story is not about Abraham being found faithful. It is about God being found faithful. (194)

I read a commentary by prolific Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann this week. I took so many notes on all of the great things Brueggemann had to say, but at the end of the day I found that this is what mattered: Abraham is not the hero of this story. God is. We are called to look to the people of the Bible for examples, good and bad, but not for heroism. Because people will always let us down. Even Abraham makes several poor choices throughout his story in Genesis, including letting Sarah down several times through his cowardice. But God is faithful. We, humankind, are not the heroes of any of these stories. God is. Amen.