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Sunday June 26, 2005 - Proper 8, Year A

“Abraham!” God said. “Abraham, are you listening?
Take your son Isaac, the one you love,
take him
and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.”

It has to be
the most abhorrent thing
in the Bible. God commanding a father
to take his son,
and to sacrifice him.
There is no explaining it, no excusing it. Just those words of God
that make us want
to turn our backs
and get our fast.

It’s one of those stories
that we wish weren’t here,
that we’d prefer to ignore, or even better
have someone prove
didn’t belong here in the first place,
an extra bit added by some sadistic person who should have been locked up
long before they had a chance to write these words
that have been burned in our brains.

“Abraham, go sacrifice
your son.”

It doesn’t matter
that it all ends well,
it doesn’t matter
that a ram appears from nowhere
to replace Isaac as sacrifice.
What matters
is that Abraham
heard these words
and took his son up a mountain
bound him
and raised a knife to kill him,
and the fact that a replacement was nearby
can not
remove the horror
of a man
willing to kill his own son
and a God
who would demand it.

So why not just ignore it? Why not just write it off
as the product of a sick mind in a primitive time,
and get on with the more straightforward readings that we heard from the letter to the Romans and the gospel according to Matthew.
Why even bother
to read it?

And I guess the simple answer is, We read it
because it’s in the bible. We read it
because it’s part of this thing that we call Holy Scripture,

But there are many things in Scripture
that we don’t get round to reading, or not in our regular cycle of Sunday readings, at any rate,
so why this one?

The reason is
that this story is important. It’s one of the key stories
in the book of Genesis, one that the people of Israel
regarded as foundational to their faith. And it’s a story
that is foundational to Christian faith as well, one that both the book of Hebrews and the book of James in the New Testament
offer as an example
of what faith looks like.
And so it’s important for us to know it, it’s important for us to struggle with it
and see if we can make any sense of it.

When the story begins
Abraham is an old man, and Isaac still a boy. You remember Isaac, the dearly beloved son, promised to Abraham and Sarah in their old age
and given a name that means laughter, because his mother laughed
when she heard the news.
Isaac
is all that his parents had dreamed for,
the child that had brought them
joy that they had given up hoping for,
and more than that, the child through whom
the rest of God’s promises
would be fulfilled.
Isaac, child of laughter.

And then Abraham
gets another message from God.
Nothing particularly unusual about that — we don’t expect to ehar god speaking to us on a regular basis, but Abraham, he’s had quite a few messages from God in his time, and all of them, in the end, had been good. There was nothing unexpected here, nothing to fear.
And then come the fateful words.
“Abraham, take your son Isaac, the one you love,
take him
and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.”

The words themselves are horrendous, unbelievable.
But even more unbelievable
is Abraham’s response.
There’s no shock, no anger, no disbelief, none of what we would expect a parent to feel
in this situation. Abraham hears God’s words, gets his servants organized, packs up a couple of donkeys,
and heads off on a three day journey
with Isaac in tow
the unknowing sacrifice.

We want to know
how he felt, what he was thinking, how he could even imagine anything like this
but the text doesn’t tell us. It gives us bare facts, no emotions, no interpretations.
They get to the mountain. Abraham and Isaac go up. Abraham gets the fire ready, binds Isaac, and gets ready to sacrifice him. And at the last minute, an angel calls out to him, and tells him not to kill his son.
And Abraham finds a ram caught nearby,
and offers it up instead of his son.

The only explanation we get
is from the angel: what Abraham has done
is proof
that he fears God,
it is proof
that he is truly
a man of faith.

And you know what?
If that’s what faith in our God is about
then I’d personally rather
not have that sort of faith.
I’d rather not have
a God like this.

Because who knows where
a God like this could take you?

But maybe, just maybe
that’s the point
of this story,
maybe that’s why the people who wrote down the stories that make up the Book of Genesis
chose to include it.
Because here, up front, early on in t he story of God’s dealings with human beings
we needed to know
that this is serious stuff.
Following this God
isn’t just a matter
of joining a club that meets once a week and makes you feel good,
following this God
is dangerous. It’s a matter
of life
and death.

Maybe we need this story
to remind us
of what sin, and grace, and God
are all about.

Because it’s actually pretty easy
to be a Christian.
You sign up for baptism, answer some questions, have a little bit of water poured over you,
and you’re done. Baptized, initiated, a full member
of the people of God
called Christians.
It’s the kind of thing you can almost do
without thinking about it.

But that’s not how God sees it. Because the way God sees it
is that this world of ours
is in a mess. For all the beauty around us, all the goodness that we discover unexpectedly
there is a deep vein of ugliness, of badness, of what can only be described
as evil. That force that lurks deep in our world, in our culture, and even in our own lives,
that pushes us towards destruction.
It’s what the bible describes as sin. Not just sins with an ‘s’, the things that we do that are wrong, most of them pretty small in scale, that we confess and ask for forgiveness for,
but sin, the overarching force that drives us to do those sinful things,
but even more, can suck us in so that they become habits and lifestyles.

Grace
is the opposite of sin, but more than just the opposite. It makes more sense if you think about darkness and light. Darkness and light are not simply opposites. If something is dark, and someone turns on light, no matter how faint, the darkness retreats. Where as if something is light, darkness can shadow it, but it will never truly be dark until there is a total absence of light. Darkness
is less powerful
than light.
And it’s the same with sin and grace.
Grace, it brings light into sin, it forces evil to retreat, it is overwhelmingly more powerful.

But that’s only
because God is behind it. God
is where grace comes from.

But it costs. It costs God.
Grace comes
with blood on it.

We know it. Not just the blood of the ram
that took the place of Isaac,
but the blood of Christ
the only son of God,
dearly beloved just like Isaac, who gave himself up for our sake,
willingly allowing himself
to be crucified on the cross
a sacrifice
for the sins of the world.
And there was no ram
caught in a thicket for him,
no last minute reprieve
as he went out that day to die.
Just hard wood,
a cold tomb,
and salvation, grace
for the world.

In the end, there are no answers to our questions about this story of Abraham and his son Isaac. No matter how much the scholars examine it,
no matter how much we think and pray over it, it stays as horrifying as ever.
It ends well. Isaac lives
to be the source of laughter once again
to his parents,
to be source of blessing
to the many people
who count themselves as his descendants.
But it’s laughter, it’s blessing, it’s grace
that has come at a price.

We look forward to the laughter, the blessing, the grace
of resurrection.
But the way
to that resurrection
was the cross.
It is no light thing, this love of God for us,
it is no light thing. It cost God, it cost him
the life of his dearly beloved Son.

At the end of the story
Abraham names the place of sacrifice
“God has provided.”
What a statement of faith, faith won the hard way
with gut wrenching, personal commitment,
a willingness to risk everything
for this God.

“God has provided.” God has provided
for us as well. And invites us to trust him, to risk everything, to count the cost
of being a disciple of Christ
and to give thanks
because the grace of God in Jesus Christ
has overcome the power of evil and sin
and we can look forward to laughter
and life
everlasting.

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005