A little Jewish child, happy as can be goes skipping down the dirt road. A bundle of wood, his badge of honor, lays across his small untested shoulders. Finally, for the first time in his life he gets to be a grown up and help out his dad. The wood is heavy, but his child like pride doesn't let it show.A distance behind him, his father continues along, his head facing down, a knife in his hand. The closer he gets to the destination the slower he goes. Every giggle, whistle, and skip from his son is a lance in his heart. The father can't bear reaching their destination. He knows it means death.
But he gets there anyway. The sun is high and hot. Only the cicadas are out and buzzing. His son tosses the bundle of sticks on the slate slab propped up on the side of the hill. It has been a long time since the father had been here, but knowing what the he knows, it is still too soon a return.
And for the first time that day, the boy is confused. He grows quiet looking at the deserted hillside. He turns to his father who stands paralyzed by the decision facing him.
"Dad, why are you just standing there!?" The boy lets out a little laugh. "Aren't we making a sacrifice? And after all, Dad, where's the lamb to slaughter? Did you forget it?"
The father quickly turns around as if to look for the lamb they never brought, but as he turns he begins to weep. He can't believe what God is asking of him--that he slaughter his own son, that beautiful little boy of his, the one that he and his wife spent years praying for and trying to have. And now God wants him to kill this little innocent child!? Wiping the tears from his dusty face, he turns back around to his boy. He is broken, humiliated, empty. Nothing but sorrow and confusion fills his mind as he replies,
"God himself will provide the sheep for the burnt offering."
And God did provide, not that day, but hundreds of years later God's messenger came down from heaven and recanted God's request of the father, Abraham, to kill his son, Isaac. Instead, God made of Abraham's descendants a great nation as numerous as the stars in the sky.
And from that nation came a simple carpenter boy, born in the village of Nazareth, who was born at the will of the true Father, God. He called this child Jesus, and he was his only son. Christ became the sheep to be slaughtered, God's only son.
We are big here at The Rock and the Sword about God's love for the world. There are countless ways to talk about God's love alive in all of our lives. But the greatest way to talk of God's love for us is to talk about His son, Jesus, and what he did for us. "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13).
God the Father gave himself to us, He incarnated himself in the form of a living and breathing man, Jesus. His love is so great that He did not wait for us to come to him, but rather he came to us. And more than just coming to our house, he took the form of a servant, a slave, an innocent sacrifice. What God refused of Abraham and his son Isaac in today's first reading, He asked of Jesus, that all people would know that God is love, saving, free, disinterested love. He only asks that we accept his love, that we come to Him and trust Him. Nothing else will satisfy.
