“Here I Am”

By Logan Pollock

Readings for February 27, 2024: Reflecting on the Second Sunday in Lent

Frederick Buechner once wrote of our ancestor Abraham, “If a schlemiel is a person who goes through life spilling soup on people and a schlemozzle is the one it keeps getting spilled on, then Abraham was a schlemozzle.”

In trying to make some sense of this text, it is helpful at the outset to acknowledge Buechner’s point, that this was not at all the first time Abraham was disappointed or challenged on his sojourn with God. Embarking on the journey that God had set before him, Abraham had seen strife with his cousin, Lot. He had seen strife with his neighbors on every side of him. He had seen strife even in his very home with his wife Sarah. Already a century old, a landless desert nomad, one might imagine that the Abraham we find in Gen 22 is worn down and haggard the likes of which we could not imagine. And yet, when God calls his name, without hesitation Abraham answers, Here I am.

As readers, we are not obliged to imagine that Abraham was cheerful in his response. We are not heretics if we assume that Abraham, a hundred plus and weather-worn, has lost some of his sparkle. Abraham’s response was not animated by a can-do attitude, but rather his utter devotion, in his assurance that God is working not for his comfort, but rather his deliverance. So, with a raspy voice and eyes bleary from years of sun and sand and tears, Abraham’s words are likely both a conscious choice and also a trained response, a reflex of his character. Here I am.

Abraham’s love for God is rivaled only by his love for his son. On their slow walk up to the faraway place, Isaac was heavy laden with the wood of his own sacrifice and Abraham was laden only with the knife and the fire and the knowledge of what he was about to do, and still Abraham must have fallen behind, for Isaac calls out to him, Father! And Abraham answers, Here I am, my son. Perhaps he lagged behind only so that he might be able to say those words one more time, to make himself available to the one he cherished. 

As we read this story in the context of Lent, we are not well served to try and answer all of the hard questions posed by this passage, to dissolve all the tensions in the text. On the journey to Christ’s own sacrifice, we see that Jesus does in fact have a very clear eyed knowledge of how and for what purpose his sacrifice will come to pass. And yet, this does nothing to quiet his anguish. In many ways the antithesis of Abraham’s character, Jesus of Nazareth, a young man with all the answers, is just as grief stricken as his ancestor in the face of his sacrifice. It was not Christ’s foreknowledge of the events that were to come in which he found comfort, but only in knowing that he was doing the will of his Father. Whether the Scriptures are dealing with a person and member of the Triune God, or an old man in the desert, Here I am is all that is required of God’s people, to make ourselves available to our God and to those whom God loves. It is my prayer in this Lenten season that I might find ever more ways, as simple and quiet and confusing as they may be, to say Here I am to my God and my neighbors.