Peter, thinking he understands the promises of God, Rebukes him,

Only to be rebuked in turn for missing the point.

Jesus turns to the crowd – “If any want to come after me, deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow…”

It is a stark call to be willing to walk in the shadow of death – Where obedience is more important than one’s own understanding.

The call of Christ to us is foreshadowed in the stark, chilling reading from Genesis, where Abraham follows the call of God to the point of being willing to sacrifice his beloved Son, In doing so, not only has he become the instrument of death for his own child,

But he also must let go of the promise that God gave him – The promise that Isaac would be the heir of God’s covenant, Who would establish Abraham’s line forever.

The binding of Isaac is called the Akedah in Hebrew. It is such an important passage that it has its own place in Jewish morning prayer, as the story of Abraham’s obedience is reread and prayed over daily. It holds an important place in the high holy day of Rosh Hashanah, in which it is read again, and in which this prayer is enjoined:

Remember unto us, O Lord our God, the covenant and the loving-kindness and the oath which Thou swore unto Abraham our father on Mount Moriah; and consider the binding with which Abraham our father bound his son Isaac on the altar, how he suppressed his compassion in order to perform Thy will with a perfect heart. So may Thy compassion overbear Thine anger against us; in Thy great goodness may Thy great wrath turn aside from Thy people, Thy city, and Thine inheritance.

The Binding of Isaac signifies many things.

First, it symbolizes the willingness of Israel to follow God with a perfect heart;

Second, it symbolizes the binding of the Jews to their faith.

It is a binding of oneself to the Holy name of God and being willing, like Abraham, to risk everything in order to be faithful to the covenant.

This is something that the Jewish people have had to do over and over again throughout history, as they have been misunderstood and persecuted for their beliefs.

For the binding of Isaac is the story of giving up what is most precious in order to follow God’s command. Historically, some theologians view the story as one that signifies the disavowal of human sacrifice, and the provision of God for another way of worship – hence the ram, which takes Isaac’s place on the altar. Some Jewish scholars believe that Isaac actually died on the table, when the knife touched his throat, and then came back to life, when the Angel spoke, “Now I see that you fear God….”

And while the story focuses on the actions of Abraham, it is the silent, enigmatic character of Isaac that grabs my attention. Who was this One who almost died?
Was he a child?
Was he a man?

Did he go with his father because he had no choice, a child-victim?
or is there more to the story?

Isaac is a quiet character throughout the Genesis chronicles. Some consider him a weak link in the DNA chain between Abraham, and the colorful character of Jacob and his 12 sons.

He rarely speaks, and he is mostly known for giving his blessing to the wrong son on his deathbed.

According to many sources, Isaac was not a small child when he took the trip up the mountain with his father.

It stands to reason, if one thinks about it – after all, He was at least strong enough to carry the wood for the altar, The instrument of his own death, upon his back.

The historian Josephus places his age at 25. Talmudic sources say he was 37. Others say he was a young adolescent.

In any case, Isaac was old enough, surely, to wrestle with a father who was at least 112 years old, take the knife away, and run for his life.

Yet, Isaac did not struggle. He carried the wood for the sacrifice, asking only one question of his father. I f he was truly a young man, he must have laid himself willingly on the hard wood of the altar, and in silent adherence with his father’s will, given up his life, carrying afterward the marks of the ropes on his hands and feet. The similarities between Isaac and Jesus whisper to us from the text, to be heard as a still, small voice for those who are listening.

Tertullian, one of the early church fathers, wrote:

Isaac, when led by his father as a victim, and himself bearing his own "wood," was even at that early period pointing to Christ's death; … carrying, as He did, the "wood" of His own passion.

With Isaac and with Jesus, we are called upon this week to be willing to pick up the cross, and follow Christ. This is not a call to some kind of self-induced suffering or denial which is taken on in the hope becoming a better person, but a willingness to follow Christ and do whatever it takes for the sake of the Gospel.

It is a call to let go of all that we tenaciously hold on to – ambitions, finances, even family….and allow ourselves to be fully present to Christ. We wrestle with these passages, as we would have expected Isaac to wrestle with his father, and Jesus to wrestle with his accusers – yet it appears that both went willingly – it is so unaccustomed for us to think that way –

But out of them we see a promise of God’s love and provision that goes beyond our own attempts at self-sacrifice. We have the promise that God sees – just as God saw that Abraham desired only to be obedient to his God, just as God saw Jesus’ obedience unto death on the cross, God sees us today, as we carry our own forms of suffering, and God’s promise to us, in the words of the apostle Paul, is that none of these sufferings can separate us from God’s love in Christ. The cross is the symbol of God’s desire to walk with humanity, and so does Christ walk with us in the valley of the shadow of death, up the mountain, through the cross, and into resurrection life.