But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
Genesis 22:11&12
Dear members and friends,
The story in Genesis 22 could make it hard to believe in a God who is love itself. In it, God appears to command Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a burnt sacrifice. What is more puzzling is that Abraham appears to obey the command of God without hesitation or argument. How could this be?
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard reflected deeply on this story in his famous work Fear and Trembling. For Kierkegaard, Abraham becomes the “knight of faith” because he continues to trust God even when everything seems contradictory and incomprehensible. Abraham had received Isaac as the child of promise, the future through whom God’s promise would become real. Yet now he is asked to surrender the very gift that God had given him. Kierkegaard suggests that true faith is not mere certainty or simple religious confidence. Faith often emerges precisely when we cannot fully understand. Abraham walks up the mountain carrying both trust and anguish. He cannot see the outcome, yet he continues forward, trusting his God.
According to Swedenborg, Abraham and Isaac symbolize aspects of our spiritual growth, thus the entire story itself is a description of what happens in our spiritual journey. Fundamentally, Swedenborg argues that God would never ask for a human sacrifice, which God vividly prohibited the Israelites to make such an offering. The story itself reveals that God already prepared a ram for the sacrifice. Thus, Abraham named the place as “God has provided.” One way to understand the story in Genesis 22 is that in our spiritual journey, when we are very close to completion, the core of our values and priorities are tested. The reason is that the spiritual journey itself is about the transformation of our inner attitude from having the material world as its foundation to embracing spiritual reality. At this moment, we might be willing to give up what is most precious in the physical world in order to accept the spiritual reality.
My sisters and brothers in God, let us take a moment for a deep meditation this week. Let us look into our own hearts and see what is truly real: the body or the spirit within. May God be present in your meditation with the divine presence.
Blessings,
Rev. Junchol Lee