The Binding of Isaac
Sermon — June 28, 2026
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings
“After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’
And he said, ‘Here I am.’” (Genesis 22:1)
This story of “The Binding of Isaac” is one of the most beautifully written stories in human history, about one of the most horrifying acts any of us could imagine. It raises some challenging questions for those of us who receive it as Holy Scripture. What kind of man would respond to a vision like this so immediately, with so few questions? Who is the God who would test someone in this way?
Part of the power of the story comes the contrast between the intensity of the emotions and the simplicity of the words. God “tests” Abraham, and he says to him, “Abraham!” and Abraham answers, simply, “Here I am.” There is no narrative context, no vivid dream, no complex symbolism; just the voice of God speaking his name. “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah,” God says—and then, with the same cadence and simplicity, and with no obvious change in tone— “and offer him there as a burnt offering.” (Gen. 22:1-2)
Abraham doesn’t bargain with God, as he did over Sodom and Gomorrah. He doesn’t recoil at the idea of offering his own child as a human sacrifice. He gets up, and gets his donkey ready; and he takes two lads with him; and Isaac, his son. He splits the wood for the sacrifice, and goes to the place that God had told him. When he sees the hill in the distance, Abraham leaves the two lads behind, and, as Isaac bears the wood, he carries the fire, and the knife.
And they walk along together. And Isaac says to his father Abraham, “Father!” and he says, “Here I am, my son.” And Isaac says, “Look, here’s the fire, and the wood—but where is the lamb for the offering?” And Abraham says, “God himself will provide the lamb for the offering, my son.” (Gen. 22:8) And the terrifying ambiguity is present in Hebrew just as it is in English. Does Abraham means “God himself will provide the lamb, O my son”? or is it, “God himself will provide the lamb: (colon) my son.”
Or maybe it’s both. Because when they come to the place that God had shown him, Abraham builds an altar there, and lays out the wood, and he binds his son Isaac and lays him on the altar. And as he stretches out the knife toward his son, he hears again the voice of God, “Abraham! Abraham!” (Gen. 22:11) And Abraham says, as simply as before, “Here I am.” And God points out a ram, caught by its horns, and tells Abraham to offer that instead.
“God tested Abraham,” we are told. And Abraham apparently passed the test.
Was this a test of Abraham’s faith, to see whether he would continue to trust in God’s promise to give him descendants as numerous as the stars above, even as God commanded him to sacrifice his son, his only son, whom he loved? Was it a test of whether Abraham would stop—whether his conscience or his love or his reflexes would be enough to turn him away from the path of destruction? Was it a test of blind obedience, of whether Abraham would hear the voice of God and simply do what God said, as he does? If it’s a test of blind obedience, well then, he certainly passed. But this last idea is perhaps the most disturbing one. Is this how you should respond if you think you hear the voice of God? No! It’s not!
This theme of obedience appears as well in the portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans that we read today. This passage is all about dichotomies: between body and soul, law and grace, sin and God. It’s a good rhetorical technique. Paul exhorts the Romans to transfer their obedience to God. Don’t let sin rule over your bodies, he says, forcing you to obey their passions. (Rom. 6:12) Don’t present your limbs to sin as instruments of wickedness; present them to God as instruments of righteousness. (6:13) You have been set free from the law to live under grace; but that doesn’t mean being set free to do whatever you want. No, you have been “freed from sin and enslaved to God.” (6:22)
For me, that’s an unsatisfying phrase. Is that really what God wants for us? To be enslaved to God? Is this really the outcome of Paul’s gospel of grace? An exhortation to obedience? Throughout his letters, Paul tries again and again to convince us that salvation is not a matter of obedience to divine law, but rather, as he says here, the “free gift of God.” And yet in this passage Paul seems to duplicate the same kind of religious legalism that he spends the rest of his work trying to oppose. In part, he’s trying to fight back against the criticism that his emphasis on the grace and mercy and forgiveness of God, encourages people to be as unethical as they want, because God will forgive them anyway. But in part, I think he’s trying to come to grips with the complex story of Abraham, whose story is both a symbol of the faith that justifies us, independent of our works; and a story of disturbing obedience to God.
How refreshing it is, this morning, to turn to the Gospel and hear Jesus’ own words. “Whoever welcome you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” (Matthew 10:40) Jesus has little to say about obedience or sin. Hospitality, welcome, and care are his demands. And the rewards that we receive are way out of proportion to our good deeds. You don’t have to be a prophet to “receive a prophet’s reward,” only to welcome one. You don’t have to be all that righteous to “receive the reward of the righteous,” only to welcome a righteous person in a righteous person’s name. In fact, the bar is even lower than that: “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”
So, congratulations to all the Coffee Hour hosts of St. John’s! Your salvation is assured.
Jesus offers a very different idea about what it means to listen to God. It’s not about obedience or fear of God or even a moral duty. It’s about the simple joy of human connection and care. It’s about responding, with gratitude, to the love of God that has been poured into our hearts. The prophet may be obedient to the word of God; the righteous may present themselves to God as instruments of righteousness. But Jesus wants the rest of us to know that even if our deeds of love are as small as they can be, we will not lose our reward.
Because Jesus has been obedient enough, and Jesus has been righteous enough, for us. And that brings us back to our first reading. For two thousand years, Christians have read the story of the Binding of Isaac as a foreshadowing of the story of the Cross. In other words, for Christians, this story isn’t about what we should do for God; it’s about what God has done for us.
God, too, has a Son, an only Son, a beloved Son. God knows what it is like to carry on his own back the wood for the sacrifice. God knows what it truly means to say that God himself will provide the lamb: my Son. When we hear Isaac ask, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb?” we should hear the words of John the Baptist echoing in our eyes, when he points Jesus out to his disciples, and says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29) The paradigm of obedience in Christian life is not Abraham bringing Isaac to the altar; it’s Jesus carrying his own Cross.
This is why the doctrine of the Trinity is so important, by the way. If Jesus is not truly the Son of God, if Jesus is not truly God, then to say that his death is a sacrifice, to say that Jesus is obedient, is to ascribe the horrifying role of Abraham to God. But if God the Son is God, just as God the Father is God, then the meaning of the story changes; the Cross is still awful, still tragic, but it turns an image of obedience to an arbitrary deity into an image of God’s own self-sacrificing love.
This is why Jesus sets the bar so low. He’s already done it all. This is what Paul means in his usual mode, talking about the “free gift” of the grace of God. We are not here to prove that we are good enough. We are not here to work hard to be loved. We are here to respond in gratitude to the love that God has already poured out into our hearts, and even if we barely lift a finger—even if the only thing we do in our whole lives is to give one cup of water to one little child in his name—we have already been given God’s greatest gift. Because what Abraham says is more true than he could’ve imagined: “God himself will provide the lamb: ‘my Son.’”
