On the fourth day, when Abraham and Isaac are alone, Isaac asks the obvious question, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering.” The answer, “God will provide one.” Abraham builds the altar, and though we get no details of a struggle, Isaac ends up on the altar bound and Abraham is going to sacrifice his future, all the promises of greatness to come, children uncountable as stars in the galaxies, all gone in a downward draw of a knife. What does Abraham have yet to prove to the great I Am?
The lesson may be the same one that he failed to learn with Ishmael. You do not have to manipulate the future, in fact you have to turn it over to Yahweh if you truly want to live free and whole in the world. Sarah suggests that Abraham have the son of promise with Hagar and why not? Seems like a good alternative at this point when both of you have one foot in the grave. God rejects this outright. God is asking for control of the future and taking it out of our hands. The first fruits belong to God.
Earlier in the Genesis stories, when Abel sacrifices the best of his flock, something similar is at play. He is in fact at that point being rather foolish as a herdsman. The best of the flock should become the breeding pairs, not second best. However it is this offering that pleases God and not Cain’s. If you want to determine what the future herd will look like, you breed selectively, best with best. Not so in the economy of God. The first fruits belong to Him. Our future is not in our hands to manipulate. Is this what God is testing here with Abraham to the point of absurdity, at least from our perspective?
Later this practice becomes embedded in the Levitical laws as well. No blemished animal was to be brought as a sacrifice. But would that not make more sense if God wants his people to prosper? Take the lame animal, the runt of the litter, place my sin on his little head and send it away to its death. However, God is telling me to entrust my future to him, my best prospects, my best ideas, my first earnings, my most creative and imaginative self, all to him.
What am I to take away from this? Can I live this way in this kind of relationship with God. What are my first fruits, my best? How do I entrust the future to him beyond some glib statement that everything turns out for best in the end? And yet I believe it to be exactly that.
Thank you to Ed Gerber for some really good preaching on this.