Way Beyond the Mute Button
Genesis 22:1-18 (Pentecost 2a, June 26, 2011) with Matthew 10:40-42
Wrestling myself between Brueggemann and Girard... (inscrutability of God – and mimetic theory which God is leading us away from – is there any fear of God then?)
God still speaks. God continues to speak. Often there is new life, new hope as a result of God's speaking. That was the message I gave you last week as we contemplated the first creation account in Genesis 1 through chapter 2 verse 4a. A number of you even nodded your heads in affirmation. Good news, right? I believe so.
But the Bible doesn't stop there with a nice philosophical statement or even with the beginning of creation living together in harmony and goodness. Nor do our lives stop there. We fast forward ahead to today's first lesson. Here things have become much more complicated. are We see Abraham and Sarah. But Hagar and Ishmael are also in the background. God has made promises to Abraham and Sarah. They were commanded to leave their land for an unknown destination. They obeyed. They were eventually to have a child, thus becoming the ancestors of many descendants through whom somehow God would bless the world. BUT (and this is an enormous BUT) we are told that Sarah is barren. Sarah is incapable of having a child. So there isn't any child – even though they had hoped. Eventually Sarah is past child bearing age. Now the two of them do what we humans often decide to do – when we are tired of waiting or have given up hope. They decide to take matters into their own hands. So Hagar, Sarah's hand maiden, "goes into Abraham" (interesting euphemism). Eventually she bears a child to Abraham. This child is Ishmael. Now there is a child. But this child is not Abraham and Sarah's child. Will God keep God's initial promise to them? It doesn't seem so. If we are honest with ourselves we too sometimes wonder if God will keep God's promise to us.
And yet, sometime later, Sarah miraculously becomes pregnant. Sarah and Abraham name their son, Isaac, meaning laughter. Not only did they probably laugh with great joy when he was born, but they laughed in derision earlier when some "men" told them they would still have a child after they were far too old for such a reality.
So, things (in the promise department) seem OK, at least apart from the acrimony Sarah has towards Hagar and Ishmael. Yet, don't be too hasty. For God has not finished speaking. In today's lesson we are told that God will test Abraham. What a test it is! For this "test" flies directly in the face of God's promise! What are we to do with this? Or, what is it to do with us? If we take the Bible seriously, what are we to make of this encounter between God, Abraham and Isaac?. In this text God commands Abraham to go and sacrifice his son, Isaac, his only Son, the Son through whom the promise is to be carried out. What kind of capricious God is this? And how could Abraham obey such a command?
These are real questions people. Because there are people today who proclaim that they too are hearing God's voice. Some of these people do wonderful things in responding to God's voice. They build orphanages, houses of refuge, schools, hospitals for the poor, the desolate, the starving, the ill. There are others also who upon hearing God's voice work to change systems that oppress, that exclude, that maim and kill. Thanks be to God that many people hear and obey God's voice in such ways. And so, the world is blessed again. Thanks be to God.
But there are other people who also claim to hear the voice of God. But what they hear are admonitions to kill, to reign down terror – or even injure their own children by driving them into a lake – or placing them in an oven convinced that there is evil within them. And the world is far from blessed because of such actions. Then we may say or at least think – such people are lunatics. At best they need to be locked up undergoing a long psychiatric assessment. At worst, some states and countries will execute them.
God still speaks – audibly to some, in a still small but definitive voice to others. As we listen, we too may well hear God's voice speaking to us. But can we be sure that it is God speaking and not merely our imagination, or some cultural idiom or conviction that we have somehow taken into us, thinking that THIS is God's will? Ah, there's a question.
Abraham resided in a culture in which child sacrifice was not unknown. In fact sacrifice was seen as a way of appeasing God or the gods– not only for the ancient Hebrews but also for the nations around them. Sometimes that sacrifice made its way into the human realm. Blood was seen as being a reconciling force overcoming the sin and brokenness between God or the gods and humans.
Old Testament scholars point out that there are different names for God used in what we Christians calls the Old Testament. In our particular account, this binding of Isaac it is God who first calls Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. But then it is the LORD who stops the sacrifice just before it happens by telling Abraham to stop – and showing Abraham the ram caught in the bushes. Some scholars say that this is not only about a test for Abraham, of whether or not he will blindly obey God, but more than that, a directive away from violence and killing, showing us to no longer offer human sacrifices or perhaps ultimately even any sacrifices. As Christians we see Jesus' death being the climax of such a reality- away from violence and sacrifice.
Within the Old Testament itself the prophets rail against human sacrifice underlining that sacrifice is not really what God wants. Instead God desires humility and service coupled with justice mercy to our fellow human beings.
And yet – there is still this reality throughout Scripture that sometimes God tests people. Christians acknowledge this when we pray in the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation", into those places where we may disobey God, where we may well harm others and ourselves. We pray that we may not find ourselves in such situations because we could be found seriously lacking.
And there is also throughout Scripture the acknowledgment, indeed the proclamation that God's ways are often not our ways. We can't completely figure God out, draw a picture (logical, complex) that would say, "Here is God", as if that and that alone encompassed the totality of God. If we could carry out such an exercise then God would not be God. Instead we would be. But any and all such attempts to "nail down" are violations of the First Commandment.
Which draws us back to today. We stand under and before this account of Abraham and Isaac. God is speaking something that has the capacity to bring about a horrid act. The reason for the command may well be beyond human comprehension if in fact this command emanates from God. Abraham seeks to obey but then is deterred to a new obedience. This new obedience results in an act that is not horrible nor horrific.
However we need to remember that there wasn't a guarantee for Abraham, nor for Isaac in this process. Such are some of the parameters of faith.
Where does all this leave us? I say this openly and very honestly: dependent on the mercy of God in whom there is both demand and promise. When the demands that we hear are onerous or outlandish we do well to pray fervently, to discuss openly with trusted brothers and sisters in the faith. Still, our minds, our capacity to wrestle, to reason, to argue are not to be turned off. They too are gifts from God.
But sometimes God's workings, God's love in Jesus Christ exceed our comprehension. We are privileged to know, blessed to trust that this mercy of God is seen clearly for us in Jesus the Christ. He refuses to retaliate verbally or physically to those who abandon him, to those who succeed in executing him. He chooses a different way. He commands them to go out and love the world by telling his story in word and deed so that all may know the love and forgiveness of His Father.
Such living, such trusting is a mystery. Today's Gospel lesson spells this out further: when we welcome others (especially those in faith) we welcome Jesus. And when we welcome Jesus, we welcome the One who sent Him.
So it is, that sometimes even through us and among us, the Lord does provide. In the midst of the struggles and trials that come to all of us, the living, speaking God is with us. And eventually God will providing a way.
May God so help us to carefully hear and obey, for Christ's sake. Amen.