Village Shepherd

When Jane left school she became a nurse. She nursed all her life, so when her widowed mother became too old and too frail to live alone any longer, naturally the family turned to Jane. Jane was divorced, so it was sensible to suggest that their mother should move in with her. Besides, their mother had adamantly refused to consider a residential home and anyway, none of them could afford to send her to a good one.

After a brief struggle with herself, Jane capitulated. She herself was nearing retirement age anyway and she wanted her mother to have the best possible care in her remaining years. Jane knew she could offer that care. She felt that she was doing her duty and that God would approve, for surely God had called her to look after her mother.

But the reality was awful. Jane's mother was disapproving by nature and demanding in character. She came from the era which expected single daughters to look after elderly parents, so considered it Jane's duty to care for her, rather than regarding it as a heroic gift from Jane. This meant that Mother seldom showed much gratitude for all that Jane did for her, but instead complained and disapproved and moaned. And even though Jane was a professional nurse, her mother queried everything she did.

Jane stuck it as best she could, with a kind of grim determination. The rest of the family visited from time to time to give her a break for an hour or two, but at the end of the day they were all glad to go home and leave Mother to Jane. Jane found her stress levels rising to dangerous levels and a huge resentment began to build and fester inside her. She resented having to retire early, leaving much less pension for herself and her own old age. She resented carrying alone the whole burden of her mother's care. She resented having to work so hard and so thanklessly when she was old enough to be enjoying retirement herself, like all her friends. She resented her mother's attitude and she resented God. In the end, although she hated herself for it and carried a load of guilt over it, Jane longed for her mother to die.

Such is the nature of sacrifice. It so often carries with it anger and bitterness and a growing hatred, even when the sacrifice is entered into willingly. There's a feeling of being trapped into something which was not our wish but over which we had little or no real choice. And yet it so often seems like our Christian duty and something which is demanded of us by God.

Perhaps Abraham experienced some of these conflicting emotions when God demanded the sacrifice of Abraham's only son, Isaac. We can only guess at Sarah's feelings, if indeed, Abraham ever revealed to her what he was about to do. From Sarah's fiercely protective and violent reaction to her slave girl Hagar, when Hagar's son Ishmael interfered with Isaac, we can probably deduce that Sarah knew nothing of Abraham's intentions or she would surely have stopped him.

Why did God demand such an appalling sacrifice from Abraham? Was it simply to test Abraham's faith, to show the need for obedience to God? The story was probably written down during the period when the people were in exile, so that might have been the purpose. Or was the purpose to display God as so capricious and unpredictable that the people would automatically be terrified of God and would therefore obey God?

Whatever the purpose of the story, it doesn't show God as loving or gentle or supportive. At least, not until the end of the story when God suddenly stays Abraham's hand and miraculously provides a ram for the sacrifice.

But perhaps Abraham misinterpreted God's voice. If the norm for all the tribes in Canaan at that time was child sacrifice, especially sacrifice of the first-born son, perhaps Abraham was simply doing his duty as he saw it. Perhaps he was fulfilling the expectations of society by offering Isaac as a burnt sacrifice. Perhaps Abraham assumed that God, like all the many other gods in the prevailing culture, required child sacrifice. But when he came to make the sacrifice, Abraham felt trapped into it with little or no real choice. And perhaps it was at this point that God intervened, saying in effect that he was not like other gods, for he would never require any human sacrifice, much less the sacrifice of a child.

Sacrifice is not necessarily a bad thing, even though it ought to carry a health warning for the unwary. Some sacrifices are noble and healing and necessary, as was Jesus' sacrifice of himself on the cross. But not all sacrifices are noble or healing or even necessary, and we should not assume that God requires any particular sacrifice on our behalf. When a sacrifice produces anger and bitterness and resentment, perhaps it would be better to choose a different path.

Christians are called to be unselfish and to "take up their cross", but before all of that they're called to be close to God, to be so in touch with God that they can hear God's voice and discern God's will. If we know beyond any doubt that God is calling us to a particular sacrifice, then we have the choice of whether or not to accept God's demands. For if the call to sacrifice really comes from God, then it will have a clear element of free will. Any sacrifice which contains not free will but an element of feeling trapped, may well be a response to the demands of society, not the demands of God.

And if the call to sacrifice really comes from God, then he will give us the courage and the strength and the fortitude to cope with it and to grow through it, so that it produces not bitterness and resentment, but resurrection and a new joy in life.

For a sacrifice like that which is a true response to God, is well worth making.