But Where is the Lamb? by James Goodman

Author:James Goodman [Goodman, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4314-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

Abraham can’t stand it. Who could? But he doesn’t let on to Isaac. He turns away from him and up to the heavens and says, “Ah! Lord, that I should abide this day!”

“Who shall do what I used to do?” Isaac asks.

Abraham asks him to be quiet. But he can’t.

What have I done, father, what have I said?

Truly, no kind of ill to me.

And thus, guiltless, shall be arrayed?

Now, good son, let such words be!”

I love you.

So do I thee.

Father!

What, son?

Isaac cries out for his mother. Abraham tells him to stop. It won’t help in the way you imagine it would, he says. Then he turns away again, this time to the audience, his eyes filled with tears, which he doesn’t want Isaac to see. He wishes more than anything the boy were unkind. But he’s not. He’s perfect. He’d die for him if he could. “To slay him, thus, I think great sin.” He’ll never be out of my mind. What shall I say to his mother? he asks. He fears her reaction.

All the while Isaac lies, still as can be, on the altar.

Only after God tells the angel to stop him and the angel is on his way does Abraham try to pull himself together. The crying only makes it worse, he says. The angel rushes in, wrestles him to the ground, and tells him to stop. Who says? Abraham asks. But once persuaded that the angel speaks for God, Abraham thanks him, in a few words, and excuses himself: “To speak with thee have I no space.” He needs to talk to his son.

He tells Isaac that he’s been saved.

“Sir! Shall I live?” Isaac asks.

Yes, Abraham says. You’ve escaped “a full hard, grace—thou should have been both burnt and broken.”

“But, father, shall I not be slain?” Isaac asks.

“No,” Abraham says.

“Then am I glad! Good sir, put up your sword again.”

Abraham tells him not to be afraid.

“Is all forgiven?” Isaac asks.

Yes, Abraham says, for certain.

“For feard, sir, was I nearhand mad.”

The Towneley play ends there. The manuscript’s final pages are missing. We don’t know if a learned man took the stage to help clear up the confusion, answer some of Isaac’s questions, help dry Abraham’s tears. He might have noted that in keeping God’s command to himself, Abraham bore the full burden of his faith. Or that typology works by contrast as well as identity: the bewildered Isaac, lying still on the altar, reminds us of Jesus, not knowing why his father has forsaken him. But if Abraham, about to break under the pressure, seems somewhat less than God, it is because he still needed to be completed, perfected by him. The learned man might then have pointed out that God’s testing had increased Abraham’s love for Isaac. Or that God’s ways are not always comprehensible. There is often no explanation for suffering. Or that grace often moves in tandem with obedience, but not always in ways that we can see. He may, finally, have brought the play

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