The story we’ve got here today from our Old Testament lesson
is perhaps the most troubling and powerful of all biblical stories. Scholars,
preachers, novelists, Bible study groups, students of human nature have struggled
with this text for centuries, indeed millennia. So if you believe that I can
this morning, explicate, enlighten or entertain you with my great wisdom that
explains it away you are indeed mistaken. But that is not to say that I can
be silent about it, for I believe that in our wrangling and confrontation with
the text we come to know something about our God. So rather than bringing answers,
let me just offer up some questions and provide some observations.
As I have wrestled with this text it seems to
me that three truths present themselves.
One, Sometimes God calls us to bold, daring, frightening activities.
Two, Answering God in faith causes us to grow in faith.
And three God keeps the promises that God makes.
“God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said,
“here I am.” God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom
you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering
on one of the mountains that I will show you.” So Abraham rose early in
the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his servants with him and his son
Isaac…’
Clearly it’s hard for our modern minds to
get around this concept—a God who would even conceive or consider asking
for this kind of devotion. It is bizarre, it is barbaric, it is unthinkable.
When we in our wildest imaginations think of the ultimate sacrifice it is not
our own lives that we would consider first but the lives of our children. Indeed
perhaps it is the idea of sacrifice at all that we have trouble with. In our
skeptical, sanitized society we wonder if the concept of sacrifice, the giving
up of one thing for another is even a question. Can’t we have it all, we
wonder? With a little negotiation, a little give and take, a bit of finessing
here and there is sacrifice even necessary? Is it possible, for example, to
have a war in which young men and women, our children will not have to sacrifice
their lives to protect freedom?
Will Willimon writes a sermon where he tells a
story about an intergenerational Bible study he and his wife led. The basis
of the study was a film of this Bible story. His wife took the children to talk
about the story while he met with the adults. “Boys and girls, who knows
what sacrifice means? asked his wife Patsy. A few hands went up, a definition
was attempted here and there. “But what does sacrifice mean to you?”
she continued. That’s when the trouble started. “My daddy and mommy
are doctors at Duke,” said one third grader. “And they help sick people
to be better. Every day they do operations to help people.”
And how is that a sacrifice?” Patsy asked.
The little girl was not finished. “And I go to Day Care Center after school.
Sometimes on Saturdays too. Mommy and Daddy want to take me home, but they are
busy helping sick people so lots of times I stay at the center. Sometimes on
Sunday mornings we have pancakes, though.” Everyone from six to eleven
nodded in agreement. They knew.
Sacrifice is real but let’s admit it, we are just uncomfortable with a
God who asks us to sacrifice anything. We really want a soft, sentimental God
who doesn’t require or expect anything of us, don’t we. But when we
dig deep I think we realize that choices have to made and in our heart of hearts
we admire those who are strong enough to make them.
Every year, after the Sunday School year is ended
I gather up all the Bibles in the church. It’s a personal picadillo of
mine that we say the word of God is important and then we give kids Bibles that
are beat up with the covers falling off and pages coming out. So I gather up
all the Bibles to inspect them and make sure we order enough new ones for the
next year. I was going through them and found one that was a little older. I
opened it and read the dedication, “To my daughter Nan Rebecca on her confirmation
day. May this book always be your strength and your guide.” From your loving
Father. I don’t know quite how we got that Bible…some few of you may
remember a former pastor here at Holy Spirit, George Hall. The Bible was a gift
from him to his daughter, the daughter who, I understand, contracted an illness
while he and Lorena were on the mission field in Africa and South America and
the daughter who subsequently died from that illness. Sacrifice is real, even
in our day and age. Perhaps we need to come to know better a God who asks from
us bold, challenging, uncomfortable commitments. Perhaps we need to open our
eyes and ears to hear God’s call.
Now see there’s the thing that leads to my
next observation. “That when we answer in faith we grow in faith.”
See the thing is, God doesn’t demand sacrifice, God invites response. Let’s
take a little flight of fancy. Imagine God calls Abraham and Abraham like us,
is a little taken aback. He decides to sleep on it…well we know he sleeps
on it because even our story says he got up early the next morning. What if,
on that horrible dark night of the soul he says, “I’m not going to
do it, This whole thing from God is just too weird, it’s just too absurd
and it’s too much to ask. I’m not going to do it.” Maybe he further
rationalizes to himself, “No that just can’t be what God means, because
after all he’s promised to make me a great nation and if I sacrifice Isaac
I won’t have any possibility of future heirs. Obviously this is not what
God wants.”
What if Abraham did that—Well first of all
it’s clear we wouldn’t have much of a Bible Story. We don’t hear
much about people who don’t respond. I suspect that God does a lot of calling
that doesn’t get much of a response—we don’t hear about that
do we. But beyond that , What do you imagine that God would do? Do you think,
with what we know about our God, that God would have zapped Isaac himself. Would
God have struck down Abraham with a thunderbolt? I don’t think so. See
I don’t think God is asking this for some kind of self-glorification—I
think the whole point of this incident is so that Abraham will learn something.
What after all does God get out of it if Abraham follows through—Does God
get all puffed up with the knowledge that God can make people do anything God
wants them to. Do we ever in all of our Hebrew Chrisitan scripture see a God
who needs to get puffed up? I don’t think so. God is setting this up so
that Abraham will learn something. God already knows what God will do—that
there will be a reprieve. It’s a test in the best educational sense of
the word It’s a test so Abraham will learn something. By stepping out in
faith Abraham comes to trust and to know something more about God.
In recent times Fowler has talked about this as
stages of faith, moving from one level of understanding to another, from one
degree of commitment to another. His work has identified a progressive developmental
movement in our lives of faith. Faith begets more faith. Lest we think that
only true back in Abraham’s time, I was talking to a friend just this past
week who told me how she had met and gotten talking to someone in a doctors
waiting room. This new acquaintance mentioned some volunteer work they were
doing and wouldn’t this friend like to come along. Now years later she
sees that chance encounter as God’s call and the work she now does strengthens
and expands her faith daily.
Just so, Abraham grows in his knowledge and trust
of God. And what does he now know about God that he didn’t know before.
Probably most obviously that God does not require the sacrifice of children
for God’s own edification. Indeed a lot of scholarship believes that that
is the point of this whole story, Anthopologically speaking, to indicate a break
with religions that required human sacrifice to one that doesn’t .
In truth I think what Abraham learns is something
more relevant to our relationship with God. See it’s like this: God made
a promise to Abraham—that he would be the father of a great nation. That
promise was a long time in being fulfilled, but then Isaac was born. Now, it
seems God is going back on that promise, because it’s clear Isaac is the
path to becoming a great nation. Abraham has enough faith to say, Well God is
God, God can do that. He knows enough to know that between him and God God has
all the bargaining chips—he can’t be a whiny child saying, “But
you promised!” That’s the faith that has him rise early in the morning,
cut wood and set out to a place in the distance that God has shown him. What
he learns up on that Wild and windy hill when the angel stills his hand gripping
the knife poised above Isaac’s breast bone is that God keeps the promises
God makes. God keeps the promises God makes.
Somebody once gave me a box. The top of the box
said “The promises of God” in it rolled up were all these little slips
of paper and on each one of them is a Bible verse,
God will wipe away tears from all faces…
When you pass through the waters I will be with you…
Fear not, for I am with you…
Seek and you will find..
Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest…
Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall inherit the earth…
They that believe and are baptized will be saved…
The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ
Jesus our Lord…
The promises of God. Perhaps we with Abraham can learn God keeps God’s
promises. Amen
Amen.