The knife is raised

(I preached this sermon at Christ Lutheran Church on 9/15/2025. It is in response to Genesis 21:1-3; 22:1-14)

There are weeks when the pastor looks at the reading and says: “You’ve got to be kidding me!”  This is one of those weeks. This story is brutal.
It raises more questions than answers.

God says to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and sacrifice him.”
And Abraham gets up early the next morning and goes.

If you’re like me, you want to scream at this text.
How could Abraham just go along?
Wouldn’t you fight God on this?
Wouldn’t you ask why?
Would you be willing to do something so unthinkable?

I don’t like this passage.
It’s disturbing.
It’s unsatisfying.
And it’s filled with silence.

What did Abraham and Isaac talk about on that three-day journey?
What was the ride home like after Abraham didn’t go through with it?
Did they tell Sarah what happened? Can you imagine that conversation?
The Bible leaves us with so many unanswered questions.
And maybe that’s the point.
Because so much of life feels just like this: full of unanswered questions. Brutal. Disturbing. Unsatisfying.

Who is really being tested?

Is it Abraham? Called to give up the son he loves, the future he was promised.
Is it Isaac? Dragged up a mountain carrying the wood for his own sacrifice.
Is it God? The one who made promises and now risks undoing them.

The test is not clean or neat. It’s messy.
And it leaves us uncomfortable, wondering if we even want to worship a God who would ask such a thing.

In Abraham’s world, child sacrifice was not unusual.
The gods of Molech and Chemosh and Baal demanded children on their altars.
The people believed these sacrifices kept the gods happy, kept the rains coming, kept the nation safe.
This was the air Abraham breathed.

The shocking part of the story is not that Abraham was willing to do it—everybody did it for their gods.
The shocking part is that God stopped it.
This God is not like the others.
This God provides life where others demand death.

And here the story bends forward in time.
“Take your son, your only son…”
We hear that again at the Jordan River, when Jesus comes up out of the water and a voice says, “This is my Son, my beloved.”
Abraham is spared from going through with the sacrifice. But God will not be spared.
On another hill, another Son carries wood on his back.
This time, the knife does fall.
But it falls into God’s own heart.
In Jesus, God absorbs the violence instead of demanding it from us.

But let’s not rush to the cross just yet.
Because the knife is still raised.

Abraham and Isaac climb the mountain. The wood is on the boy’s back. The knife is in the father’s hand.

The knife is raised.

And this week it feels like the knife is raised again.  We still have gods that demand sacrifice.  We just don’t call them gods anymore. 

Yet another school shooting—children’s lives sacrificed on the altar of fear. Their blood poured out to protect the so-called “rights” of others to kill.
The knife is raised.

A controversial political commentator gunned down—not because of truth or justice, but sacrificed on the altar of violence itself. Violence that consumes both the guilty and the innocent, the loved and the hated. Leaving behind a grieving spouse and two young children.  And a country bitterly divided.  
The knife is raised.

Russian drones violating Poland’s airspace—sacrifices waiting to be made on the altar of empire and domination.
The knife is raised.

Fights over political redistricting—sacrificing community and neighborliness on the altar of partisan power.
The knife is raised.

The Dauphin County board voting against being a Welcome County—sacrificing compassion and hospitality on the altar of fear of the stranger.
The knife is raised.

And the question is: will we let it fall?

Because here’s the hard truth:
We hold the knives.  This nation holds the knives. 

We hold the knife of legislation that cuts away healthcare, housing, and dignity from the poor.
We hold the knife of policy that keeps Black and brown bodies under the boot of white supremacy.
We hold the knife of nationalism and partisan loyalty that turns neighbor against neighbor.
We hold the knife of greed that values profit over people.
We hold the knife of cruelty, sharpened against the most vulnerable.
We hold the knife of violence, raised again and again.

The knife is raised.

But then—
God calls out.
God interrupts.
God says: stop. Put it down.

And the knife does not fall.

That’s the heart of the gospel here.
God provides another way.
On the mountain, a ram in the thicket.
On the cross, Christ himself.

The world will not stop being brutal.
It will keep doing what it knows best—harming people, damaging trust, making empty promises, offering simplistic answers that sound good on a meme but never hold up.

But even there—especially there—God breaks in.
God provides.

And so the question for us is: what do we need God to provide today?
Courage to put down our knives.
Imagination to build something new.
Compassion that goes beyond fear.
Hope when the world feels unsatisfying and disturbing and senseless.

We don’t get to explain away this story.
We don’t get to wrap it up neat and tidy.
We don’t get to make sense of everything happening in the world right now.

But we do get to hear God calling our names.
We do get to hear God say, “Stop. That’s not the way.”
We do get to see Christ carrying the wood up the hill—not so that we would have to die, but so that we might live.

The knife is raised… but it does not fall.
Because our God is not like the others.
Our God provides.
Our God saves.
Our God makes a way where there is no way.

Thanks be to God.