Stories from the Vigil: Abraham & Isaac
8:00 AMPart of what we do during the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday is to re-tell the old stories of faith that assure us of God's ongoing faithfulness from creation all the way through resurrection. For the rest of this week, we will focus on six of those stories told at the Vigil as a reminder that the empty tomb is the ultimate expression of promise and salvation from a God who has yet been promising and saving throughout all of history.
Our third story was the story of Abraham & Isaac.
A famous story, and one that parallels the crucifixion of Jesus. Both Abraham and God are fathers impelled to sacrifice their sons for the sake of faith. The Abraham and Isaac story asks us to face mortality, both our own and that of those we love. And the good news is that God provides us salvation, and life, and hope even beyond death.
by Nan Cohen
He took him outside and said, "Look toward heaven
and count the stars, if you are able to count them."
And He added, "So shall your offspring be."
I have lived in tents and know how faint a trace
we leave behind us on the earth;
how, when the body fails, the soul folds
its light clothes and steals away
But now a child sleeps in my tent;
I would raise a tower of stone to shield his head,
and yet the thought that any common stone
must outlast him provokes such rage in me
I wake all night, alarmed and furious,
seeing nothing in the dark but dark.
by Nan Cohen
And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son
I have lived in tents and often, at midday,
have I parted the tent-clothes and gone inside
with the light of day so blinding my eyes
that my wife spoke to me out of darkness,
saying, Take this dish, and eat
I have walked among the flocks on starless nights
with the blackness so filling my eyes
I put forth my hand,
as if the night were a tent,
as if some shape might glimmer in my sight
before the cloths of night fell across it.
Eyes full of light or dark,
night or day, I cannot tell.
I grope forward to lift the cloth
of this moment, and the next.
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| "Sacrifice of Abraham" by He Qi, 2005. |
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