| Genesis
22:1-14 |
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| Psalm
13 |
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| Romans 6:12-23 | ||
|
Matthew 10:40-42 |
Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
After years in
the discernment process for the priesthood, I had been made a postulant by the
Commission on Ministry, and I had been accepted to seminary. After running from
an insistent call to ministry for half my life, I had finally made my peace
with God and accepted that call. I thought that I finally knew God’s special
plan for my life. My teacher colleagues constantly told me how much they
admired me for giving up my teaching career and going back to school to follow
my “true calling.” I was giddily in love with God—and pretty proud of myself,
as well. I was finally getting an A+ in discipleship. Or so I thought.
One ordinary
afternoon I came home from school and flipped on the answering machine. “There
is a problem with your mammogram,” I heard my doctor say, with concern in his
voice. “We’re going to need to do some more tests.”
Four of my
teaching colleagues had just been diagnosed with breast cancer that year—a very
unusual statistic—and we used to joke, without laughing, that there must be
“something in the water” at school. So I was afraid. Very afraid. When all the
“more tests” still looked suspicious, they scheduled me for a biopsy, and I
became furious with God.
“Why should God pick on me now?” I
fumed. I had already given myself over to God and accepted his call. I had
prayed “thy will be done.” For goodness’ sake, I had offered up my comfortable
old life. I had upturned my children’s lives. I was willing to spend my savings
to go to seminary. I was willing to confront my fears and my shyness to do the
kinds of scary things that priests have to do. But, O God, I was NOT willing to
have you yank away your promise! How could you lead me on like this? How could
you give me hope that I could still answer my call, when you were just going to
slap me down with cancer at the last minute? They won’t ordain me if I’m sick! I
ranted, and I raved at God. I pouted. I despaired. I held up to God all of
those dreams of myself as a priest, and I smashed them one by one at God’s
feet.
We’ve all seen
it, if we haven’t experienced it ourselves yet: God giving with one hand and then taking away
with the other. It doesn’t make sense. It is, in fact, absurd. Our Loving God promising us life abundant and
then taking away the promise for reasons that we cannot know or understand:
the middle-aged bride who finally
finds her soul-mate, only to watch him fall ill and die;
the childless couple whose prayers
for a child are finally answered—until the mother dies in childbirth;
the faithful little parish who
finally finds just the right rector to make their church grow only to have God
snatch him away in a fatal car crash;
the faith-filled mother who is told
by God that her Son will save the world, yet must watch him suffer and die as a
criminal on a Roman cross;
the disciples who glimpse the dawning
of the Kingdom of God—until their leader is killed and they are left huddling
in a locked room, afraid for their lives;
an entire people who is chosen by God
to be a light to all the nations of the world and yet is instead scattered,
persecuted, and murdered by the millions in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany;
and yes, a father who is told that
his descendents will be as numerous as the grains of sand in the desert, and
then is told by God to take his only son and to slaughter him on top of a
mountain.
The story of
the Binding of Isaac is a terrible, frightening one. Its talk of child
sacrifice and of a God who seems to encourage 9/11-like terrorism makes us
recoil, holding the story away from our modern-day lives like a dangerous and
offensive relic. But the relevance of the story to our lives lies precisely in
the horror of it. Its horror pierces the heart of our own challenge as faithful
people in a world, and with a God, that sometimes makes no sense. Old Testament
scholar Ellen Davis says it best:
“This story of
Abraham and God and Isaac is the place you go when you are out beyond anything
you thought could or would happen, beyond anything you imagined God would ever
ask of you, when the most sensible thing to do might be to deny that God exists
at all, or deny that God cares at all, or to deny that God has any power at
all. That would be sensible, except you can’t do it, because you are so deep
into relationship with God that to deny all that would be to deny your own
heart and soul and mind.”[1]
Abraham’s
obedience in this story isn’t the blind, fanatical obedience of the suicide
bomber. It isn’t the rule-bound obedience of the soldier. It isn’t the servile
obedience of a dog trailing its owner for a treat. Abraham’s obedience in this
story is a result of a long and loving relationship. It is the trust that comes
after a life-time of knowing and following and wrestling with a God, who,
despite all of the ups and downs of Abraham’s 100-plus years, has always been
present. Ellen Davis quotes the twentieth-century rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, a
student of the Holocaust, in his understanding of Abraham. Berkovits imagines
Abraham walking with God to Moriah, meat cleaver in hand, and Isaac by his
side, and praying, “In this situation I do not understand you. Your behavior
violates our covenant; still, I trust you because it is you, because it is you
and me, because it is us.”[2]
Throughout his terrible ordeal, God
keeps calling to Abraham, and Abraham continues to answer with that Hebrew word
that we translate, “Here I am” but that really means, “I am yours: open,
listening, alert to you.” Abraham, in the darkness of his trial, trusts that his
God can see what he cannot. When Isaac asks his father where the sheep is for
the offering, Abraham answers, in the Hebrew, “God will see to the sheep for
the offering.” Somehow, God sees. Even though Abraham does not see until the
very last second, the second before he brings the cleaver down on his son, he
trusts that God sees. “On the mount of the Lord there is sight,” he later names
the place of his testing, his trust vindicated.[3]
There is a
woodcut by the artist Margaret Adams Parker that gives us an image of this
loving relationship hidden beneath the horror of our story. On a black
background, dark as night, you see Isaac, etched in white, a small child curled
up on his side and bound hands and feet upon an altar of sticks. He looks
peacefully asleep and totally vulnerable, totally trusting. Above him, you see
Abraham bending over his son, the sharp cleaver in one hand behind his back--yet
holding out the other hand in tender blessing over his child’s head like a
parent about to kiss his sleeping child goodnight. And above Abraham, hovering
just over the grieving father’s head, you see the Angel of the Lord, looking
down with loving concern, holding open arms protectively over Abraham—and
Isaac—on all sides.[4] In
the darkest of nights, God’s Love for Abraham never falters.
When our promises seem to disappear
before our eyes, do we, like Abraham, trust God to see, or do we claim to see
just fine on our own? In the midst of my
anger with God all those years ago, I had a dream. In my dream, the x-ray of my
chest revealed a tiny glowing cross, instead of the expected lump. When I woke
up from that dream, my chest felt warm, and my anger with God gone. It was
strange. Somehow, I knew that God had etched that cross on my breast—not to
cure a cancer—but to remind me that I belonged to Christ, whatever the outcome.
In that cross, I remembered God’s trusting love in sending his only Son to
earth to suffer and die. I remembered Jesus’ trusting love as he hung from the
Cross, forgiving us all. And I remembered that it is God’s trusting love that
the disciples watched rise from the tomb with Jesus on Easter morning. It is
the trusting love that binds us to God in Jesus Christ still today—the trusting
love that God asks from us in return in today’s Epistle. From that night on, as
I awaited the biopsy results, I was no longer afraid. It turns out that I
didn’t even have cancer. There was nothing to cure—no need for a miraculous ram
to appear in the bushes for me. For that, I am indeed thankful. But my scare and
temper-tantrum with God taught me a lesson in real trust. I learned what it
really means to pray a discipleship prayer that I had been praying for years, yet
without understanding:
“I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt; rank me with whom thou wilt … Let me be employed for
thee or laid aside for thee ... Let me be full, let me be empty … Thou art mine and I am thine. So be it.”[5]
Amen.
[1] Ellen F. Davis, “Radical Trust.” Faith and Leadership, July 26, 2011.
Found at: http://www.faithandleadership.com/sermons/ellen-f-davis-radical-trust.
My sermon is very indebted to Davis’ interpretation of this text and follows
much of her outline.
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Translation from Robert Alter, The Five
Books of Moses, (New York: WW Norton, 2004), 110f.
[4]
Davis, ibid.
[5]
“Watchnight Covenant Service for New Years’ Eve Day 2003,” given to me by the
Rev. Georgine Buckwalter.
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