Sacrificing Human Dignity

No matter how many times we have read or heard it, the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac still has the capacity to shock us.  It is hard to imagine how a good and loving God could ask or command such a thing from a parent, even as a test of faith.  For people of the biblical world, however, it was not that unusual.  In fact, the sacrifice of children to appease an angry or demanding god was a too-common practice.

Even in our supposedly more enlightened time, there are still reported instances of child sacrifice in a few countries.  Beyond that, the United Nations estimates that one in three victims of human trafficking worldwide are children. Their human dignity is most commonly sacrificed for forced labor, sexual exploitation or conscription into armed rebel or terrorist groups.

According to some scripture scholars, the sacrifice of Isaac was the culmination of a series of ten tests or trials that Abraham endured, beginning with God calling him to set forth from his ancestral land toward one he did not know and could not see.  The primary focus of this story isn’t on the ethics of child sacrifice, though it is important to note that throughout the rest of the Bible and in the Law of Moses, the practice is condemned as an abomination and an act of idolatry (see, e.g., Leviticus 18:21, 20:1-5; 2 Kings 17:17-18; Jeremiah 7:31). 

What the author of Genesis wanted people to remember above all from this story was Abraham’s utter devotion to God—for in offering Isaac, his favored son and heir, he was in a real sense offering himself and his future.  Thus, in blessing Abraham, God promises to make his descendants “as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore.” 

In the end, what God really wants from us is…us!  During this season of Lent, we pray in order to turn from sin and toward God.  We fast to empty ourselves of all of the spiritual, emotional and mental clutter that stands in the way of our relationships with God and others and to become more open and able to receive and be transformed by God’s grace.  We undertake the works of mercy, charity and justice to more fully incarnate God’s love.  We sacrifice, that is, we do those things that will make us more holy (sacra/sacer + facere).

In Mark’s gospel, the Transfiguration happens right after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ (8:27-30). Jesus, in turn, makes the first prediction of his passion and death (8:31-33) and then lays out his conditions of discipleship:  “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (8:34).  The glory of the Transfiguration is a foreshadowing of the culmination of Jesus’ own sacrifice on the cross, which as St. Paul reflects in our second reading is the sign of God’s love for us:  “He would did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” (Romans 8:32).

God has already given us in love and mercy the best that God can give—God’s very self.  What return will we make for all of God’s goodness to us (Psalm 116:12)?