Father's Day sentiments

I do listen to the sermons on Sunday. That doesn't mean I always agree with them, and certainly today's sermon was a puzzler. The text was the story of Abraham taking his son Isaac up the mountain with the intention of killing him. The sermon meandered through several things related to fatherhood: jokes, masculinity under fire from feminism, the father-son relationship, ancient Jewish teachings on killing etc.

It's the story that interests me. Why was that story told? In the passage, it suggests the story is the source of a common saying: "On the mountain, God will provide."

Here's the story in a nutshell: God tells Abraham to take Isaac up the mountain and sacrifice him. Abraham doesn't tell Isaac what's going on. They trek up the mountain to make a sacrifice, and Isaac want to know wher the animal is. Abraham tells him not to worry - God will provide. so they get to the top, and Abraham builds an altar. Then the tricky part: he ties Isaac up, puts him on the altar and raises the knife to kill him. An angel appears and stops him. And they find a ram caught by his horns in a thicket, and it's the ram who has the dubious honour of being killed instead of Isaac.

The story is yet another example of the completely dysfunctional lineage that is the central line of Christianity. Isaac doesn't exactly have a great time with his own sons later either.

So...that saying, "On the mountain, God will provide", what does it mean exactly? That you can be as abusive as you like, say God told you to do it, and at the last minute God will stop you from going the whole way and killing your kid? That when you go out on a limb in faith, and risk your nearest and dearest, God will bail you out?

How about an Alberta update? Henry Albertan gets a message from God, who in Alberta is something like a morphing of the Premier with an oil baron and an economist. The message is: Henry, you're in trouble. You're poor - or if you aren't poor now, you will be. You need to appease us by sacrificing your elderly, your children, and the sick. So Henry agrees to support God's decree. He doesn't question the damage done by resource extraction. He allows seniors to suffer huge rent increases, allows cutbacks to the education of his children, allows the government to make a mess of the health care system. But Henry has faith that in the end, God will provide.

But just like the original story, it's a false crisis. It's God who tells Abraham/Henry there's a crisis. Totally manufactured. But you're not supposed to question God. And Isaac is shushed for questioning his father (I'd have some questions if my father tried to hogtie me and sling me on an altar). And the only ram stuck in the thicket is the oil, and Henry Albertan is going to do the same thing with the oil that Abraham did with the ram: burn it. And nothing will have been solved, except Isaac and everyone else will have been abused because of Abraham/Henry's stupidity. And the cycle will continue into the next generation.

That's the sermon I would have preached.