Hineini: Showing Up and Staying Human in the Age of AI

So many questions we have about this story.

Countless theologians and rabbis and philosophers have tried to make sense of it.

What is it teaching us? How could God ask this? Is it about faith? Is it about obedience? And in the end, did Abraham pass the test or did he fail the test? Set all of that aside for a moment and think about the theology that's in that word.

Hineni, the word that repeats three times in the story.

The first time, Abraham says Hineni to God.

The second time, Abraham says Hineni to his son.

And the third time comes at the most terrifying moment of the story.

Abraham has bound Isaac to the altar.

He reaches for the knife and an angel calls from heaven, Avraham, Avraham.

And again, Abraham answers, hineni, three times.

Hineni to God, hineni to his child, hineni when nothing makes sense and everything is about to change.

And notice what Abraham doesn't say.

He doesn't say, I understand.

He doesn't say, this makes sense.

He doesn't say, I think I know how this story ends.

He says, hineni.

I'm here.

I'm listening.

I am still reachable.

I am still with you.

And maybe that matters precisely because almost nothing about this story makes sense today.

There is so much Abraham cannot understand, certainly so much that Isaac doesn't understand, and Sarah isn't even there.

The akedah, the binding of Isaac, is mysterious, it's bewildering, it's troubling, and maybe that's part of why we read it every Rosh Hashanah, because life doesn't often make sense either.

a diagnosis we weren't expecting, a relationship that ends suddenly, a child who is suffering and we don't know how to help, a terrible loss, a phone call in the middle of the night, war with all of its brutality and destruction.

Sometimes all the facts are there, but they don't add up to anything that makes sense.