Preached on July 27, 2008 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC, a day when we celebrated "Christmas in July”
John 1:1-14 Luke 2:8-20
Dedicated to this congregation; and always to the glory of God.
While John Shea was writing a book about the meaning of Christmas, and all of the cultural stories and legends that have grown up around it, he went one day to the library to look for the classic Dr. Seuss book about Christmas. It was July, and here is how he describes his experience:
The stacks in the children’s section have two shelves and are only three feet high. I am six feet, three inches high. The special Christmas shelf was the bottom shelf. As I was crawling around, a boy of about five, barely taller than the stacks, said, “What are you doing in here, Mister?”
“I’m looking for a book.”
“What book?”
“How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
“It’s not Christmas time.”
“I know that,” I said. Then I added defensively, “I’m writing a book.”[1]
There is almost a rule that you can’t do Christmas things at the wrong time. Doesn’t it feel odd to you to be singing Christmas carols today? It feels strange to me, but I think that there is value in the unfamiliar if it gets us to look at something important with new eyes, and to hear with new ears. Here’s how I have been thinking about this Christmas in July. Think about the moment in a wedding when the bride and groom share their vows. They come to that moment surrounded by family and friends, with their close friends or relatives standing here next to them, and all looking as good as ever. They come to this spot with beautiful music, flowers, and all the traditions behind them, and all of that adds to the meaning of those words: I promise to love you, to be faithful to you, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live.
That is a wonderful, holy moment. But how important it also is to think about the meaning of those words before the wedding day, and in the years after. That is our purpose in celebrating Christmas in July. The celebration of the birth of Jesus is central to our Christian faith. We proclaim Jesus as Lord and God, who was born in lowly circumstances to join our human condition and to share our common lot.
The Catholic theologian Ron Rolheiser suggests that “the central mystery within all Christianity, undergirding everything else, is the mystery of the incarnation. Unfortunately, it is also the mystery that is the most misunderstood or, more accurately, to coin a phrase, under-understood.”[2] And that is why we are centering this day on the birth of Jesus. We seek to move away from misunderstandings or under-understandings, and allow this mystery to give us life, because it is, as the angel said, “good news, which shall be for all people.”
Incarnation comes from the Latin word carnus, which means physical flesh, as in carnal or carnivore. Incarnation means that God took on human flesh. Rolheiser boils it down like this: “The mystery of the incarnation, simply stated, is the mystery of God taking on human flesh and dealing with human beings in a visible, tangible way.” Or as we heard in the gospel of John: the word, which is God, became flesh, and dwelt among us. Or, for a more direct translation of the Greek, “the word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.”
Incarnation is one of those churchy, theological words that gets used to describe a doctrine, or central concept of the church. I like the way that Rob Bell, a minister in Michigan, talks about doctrine.[3] He says that there are two ways to think about doctrine, one is helpful but the other is not. Sometimes we treat our doctrines like bricks. With bricks, we build a solid wall, brick by brick, of all the things one needs to believe in order to have a secure faith. Faith is seen as something vulnerable to protect, but the brick wall ends up trapping us.
Bell says that faith is more like a trampoline. The point of a trampoline is to jump, to play, to live! Doctrines are the springs in the trampoline that help us to jump. The point of religion is not our doctrines, not the springs themselves, but our doctrines do help us to live and to rise to new heights! If you are a child and you see another child jumping on a trampoline, it is almost impossible for you to not want to join in. That’s what Christian faith should look like. What an invitation!
The doctrine of the incarnation is not a test of how strong our belief is. It is a spring for our lives because it tells us that God is not distant and unconcerned; God has moved into the neighborhood. God draws close to us. That’s the God we worship. So great is God’s love for us that God comes to be with us, to live life as we live it, to be with us in even the most difficult, most painful moments of our lives. That’s what the incarnation means. Sometimes people get the idea that God sits way out there, absent from our lives except to look down and keep track of our balance of good and bad acts, to send on us reward or punishment accordingly. That’s what Job’s friends all said when his life fell apart. But Job knew better, and now we know better, because Jesus came as an answer for God’s bad reputation. We celebrate the birth of Jesus because it is in Jesus that we know God, in Jesus that we see God’s extravagant love, and in Jesus that we hear God’s passionate call for justice and mercy, for the lifting up of people who are down.
The birth of Jesus is good news, for all people, because Jesus shows us God. That is how the incarnation is mainly understood. But remember that I told you before that the incarnation is under-understood, and the part that we usually overlook is the human side of the incarnation. The mystery of the incarnation is that Jesus is both fully God and fully human. So we have in Jesus a clear way of seeing what God is like, but it also means that in Jesus we can clearly see what human beings are, or at least, what we can be. In human history we have always had the sense that we were not living up to our potential. In Jesus, we see what a fully realized human life can be, we see what the quality of our lives can be.
Wasn’t Jesus always inviting us to live as he did? He said take up your cross. He said abide in me; I am the vine and you are the branches. greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for a friend. He said I give you the keys to the kingdom: whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Jesus didn’t expect us just to see him as God and worship him. He expected us to see him as human and follow him.
Do I mean that anyone could be just like Jesus? No, I do believe that Jesus was the definitive revelation of God in human form. But we should not think that Jesus was so different from us, either. Sure, none of us will be Jesus, but none of us will be Mozart, either. We won’t think like Albert Einstein or write like Jane Austen, but we look to them to show us the human potential. Yes, Jesus shows us what God is, but he also shows us what human is. For us to live with the compassion of Jesus, with the strength and humility of Jesus would not mean that we were becoming God, but that we were becoming fully human, that we were living our lives at full force and greatest depth.
And so we come to the full mystery of the incarnation, and it is this: The incarnation is not over. The incarnation is not just a past event, lasting for the 33 years between the birth of Jesus and his ascension to heaven. The incarnation did not end; it just changed form. Jesus showed us how to be human and then he trusted us to be the incarnation of God to others. Remember how Rolheiser defined incarnation as “God taking on human flesh and dealing with human beings in a visible, tangible way.” Now that happens with us. When we listen and offer prayers, when we host a meal or take food to someone’s home, when we help a neighbor with a repair or work on a home in Kentucky, when we offer forgiveness for someone who has hurt us, and acceptance for someone who has been left out. When we do any of these things for a fellow person, we show God in our very lives. We are a part of the incarnation.
The word of God becomes flesh and dwells among us. This is good news, and it shall be for all people. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace. Amen.
[1] Shea, John, Starlight: Beholding the Christmas Miracle All Year Long, page
[2] Rolheiser, Ron. The Holy Longing. Page 75.
[3] Bell, Rob. Velvet Elvis.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
Sermon - Be humble and bold
Originally preached on July 20, 2008 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC.
Genesis 28:10-19 Matthew 13:24-30
Dedicated to Gavin Scott Davis and Finley June Getch, on the day of their baptisms; and always to the glory of God.
When Betsy and I moved into a new home a few years ago, we knew that the previous owners had been great gardeners, and that there was in particular one large bed of perennial flowers in the back yard. But we moved into the house in February, so we weren’t sure just what to expect. In addition, I admit that I don’t know my way around the identification of plants, and there are a lot of different flowers in this large bed. Some bloom early, some bloom late, some bloom for a long time and others come in short-lived bursts.
Perhaps you see the problem. It happens every year. Plants start to grow in that bed, and I don’t know the difference between the ones that will bloom with beautiful flowers that I should allow to grow and the weeds that I should take out. So I let them all grow until I’m sure, and that can take awhile.
There’s another, related problem. Sometimes you are certain about which ones are the weeds and need to be taken out. You have no question. Years ago I heard a minister who was a grandfather talk about the weeds that were growing all along the back fence line of his yard. He’d been meaning to tear them all out, but you know how these things go; something always gets in the way. Finally he was ready to pull them all up one morning but a visit from his young granddaughter took precedence. They talked and played for a while, and then she went to play in the yard while he fixed some lunch. A few minutes later, she came inside, proudly bearing a bouquet of flowers as a gift to her grandpa for the lunch table. He found that she had picked every single one from weeds he had been planning to pull, and he was so glad he’d let them stand. So even when you think you know what needs to go, maybe you don’t.
Religion gets dangerous when we think we know enough to pass final judgment on others, because just like the weeds in my backyard, or the things that we might assume are weeds but to someone else might be valuable, God knows we don’t know enough about anyone else to pass a final judgment on them. God knows we don’t know enough to proclaim anyone beyond God’s love, beyond being good, beyond hope of redemption. Whenever we think we do, we don’t.
The parable Jesus told concerns a wheat field planted by the farmer, which is then also planted with weeds, sometimes translated as tares or most literally as darnel, which was actually a type of weed that looked very similar to wheat, and so was probably a common problem for farmers in Jesus’ time. The impulse, of course, is to go take it out, but Jesus has the farmer tell them no, because in doing so, they will also take out some wheat. When we assume a judgmental attitude toward people, we might be partly right, but we risk passing judgment on the good that is within them.
When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned under the apartheid regime of South Africa, he began to try negotiating with his oppressors. His colleagues in the movement criticized him, saying that negotiations with the enemy were out of the question, and that it was fundamentally wrong to offer any dialogue while being held in prison. Mandela disagreed. He clearly saw the evil of his oppressors, but he knew that in passing complete judgment on them, he would never be able to appeal to them good. He would be digging up the wheat along with the weeds. Mandela led a peaceful resolution to a brutal rule because he saw that good and evil lived side by side.
The genius of his parable is that Jesus recognizes that there is evil in the world. He doesn’t ask us to pull the wool over our eyes and just pretend that everything is happy. Allowing the weeds to grow does not mean pretending that everything is wheat, that everything in the world is just fine. Jesus recognizes evil in the world. At that time, his audience probably interpreted the weeds to be the oppression of the Roman Empire in the midst of the Hebrew people. Indeed, there were many zealots in Palestine (even some of the disciples) who wanted to go to war to throw the Romans out of their land. Talk about weeding your field. In generations since, we have found different ways of interpreting the weeds that grow among us. Jesus does not pretend that there isn’t evil interfering with good. But he cautions us to be humble in our judgment, and to leave final judgment to God. It is sadly too common for attempts to rid the world of evil to do great damage to life in the process.
This is why Jesus did not go along with plans to take up arms against the Roman Empire. When a Roman soldier forced you to carry a load one mile, Jesus said to carry it a second mile, just to show him that love was more powerful than oppression. When someone slapped you on the cheek, Jesus said to turn the other one as well, to show that love is stronger than fear. The importance of love for our enemies in the new testament is not just a naïve ideal, it is actually the only way to avoid the escalation of violence.
Jesus tells us to let the whole field grow, wheat and weeds. When it comes to judgment, be humble. You never know which Roman centurion will join your cause.
Jacob’s nighttime dream teaches the same lesson. On a journey far from home Jacob goes to sleep one night and receives a message from God, a promise, in fact, that was given to Abraham and to Isaac, and now to Jacob himself. When he awakes, he says “God was in this place and I did not know.” What a remarkable statement. God was at work in a place that I did not know. So before we become judgmental about a person, about a nation, or about another religion, let us wonder if we could be like Jacob, not realizing that God is at work in places we don’t know. Think of that in terms of the middle east, or in terms of the person at work or in your neighborhood who has been the thorn in your side.
The title of this sermon is “be humble and bold,” but so far I’ve only given reasons for our humility. If we are to be humble in our judgment people, then when are we to be bold?
I want to tell you a story about the boldness of the early church. This is recorded in the book of Acts, which tells of the early apostles and the issues that they wrestled with in the first generation after Christ. One of the big issues in Acts, which also shows up in some of Paul’s letters, is what to do about all of the non-Jews who are becoming Christians. The very first followers of Jesus were practicing Jews. They observed the Jewish rituals, they ate kosher, and they had faith in Jesus. That’s what the early church looked like at the very first. But then all these non-Jews, called Gentiles, started to become Christian, and they had to decide whether all Christians should start to observe all the Jewish practices. There was nothing in the scripture to prepare them for this. In fact, there was nothing in the scripture to prepare them for the idea of sharing a common faith with gentiles. Their scripture was actually fairly opposed to including gentiles. So what should they do?
In the fifteenth chapter of Acts, it says that all the apostles discussed this matter greatly and prayed about it, and finally decided that gentile converts did not need to follow all the Jewish observances, but simply needed to refrain from meals sacrificed to other gods. And here is the message they sent out. They said “it seemed good to the holy spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following” (Acts 15:28). Did you catch that? It seemed good. That’s how they put it. They had enough humility to know that they might not always make the right judgments, but they also knew they had to decide something, so they were bold in their welcome for gentile Christians.
They didn’t prove their claim by quoting scripture, or act as if they alone were the ultimate authority. But they did boldly say that the outsider gentile were welcome just as they were. They didn’t need to be just the same. The apostles trusted that God’s holy spirit helping them to see something good, and to boldly call it good based on their judgment.
When it comes to the weeds, be humble; don’t pass judgment, because you may do more harm than good. And you may be wrong. But when it comes to the wheat, be bold! Celebrate goodness wherever you find it, because all goodness and all truth comes from God. Be bold in proclaiming God’s love that extends farther than we ever realized. Then perhaps we will one day look back and say, along with Jacob, God was in this place, and I did not know. And we will give thanks.
Genesis 28:10-19 Matthew 13:24-30
Dedicated to Gavin Scott Davis and Finley June Getch, on the day of their baptisms; and always to the glory of God.
When Betsy and I moved into a new home a few years ago, we knew that the previous owners had been great gardeners, and that there was in particular one large bed of perennial flowers in the back yard. But we moved into the house in February, so we weren’t sure just what to expect. In addition, I admit that I don’t know my way around the identification of plants, and there are a lot of different flowers in this large bed. Some bloom early, some bloom late, some bloom for a long time and others come in short-lived bursts.
Perhaps you see the problem. It happens every year. Plants start to grow in that bed, and I don’t know the difference between the ones that will bloom with beautiful flowers that I should allow to grow and the weeds that I should take out. So I let them all grow until I’m sure, and that can take awhile.
There’s another, related problem. Sometimes you are certain about which ones are the weeds and need to be taken out. You have no question. Years ago I heard a minister who was a grandfather talk about the weeds that were growing all along the back fence line of his yard. He’d been meaning to tear them all out, but you know how these things go; something always gets in the way. Finally he was ready to pull them all up one morning but a visit from his young granddaughter took precedence. They talked and played for a while, and then she went to play in the yard while he fixed some lunch. A few minutes later, she came inside, proudly bearing a bouquet of flowers as a gift to her grandpa for the lunch table. He found that she had picked every single one from weeds he had been planning to pull, and he was so glad he’d let them stand. So even when you think you know what needs to go, maybe you don’t.
Religion gets dangerous when we think we know enough to pass final judgment on others, because just like the weeds in my backyard, or the things that we might assume are weeds but to someone else might be valuable, God knows we don’t know enough about anyone else to pass a final judgment on them. God knows we don’t know enough to proclaim anyone beyond God’s love, beyond being good, beyond hope of redemption. Whenever we think we do, we don’t.
The parable Jesus told concerns a wheat field planted by the farmer, which is then also planted with weeds, sometimes translated as tares or most literally as darnel, which was actually a type of weed that looked very similar to wheat, and so was probably a common problem for farmers in Jesus’ time. The impulse, of course, is to go take it out, but Jesus has the farmer tell them no, because in doing so, they will also take out some wheat. When we assume a judgmental attitude toward people, we might be partly right, but we risk passing judgment on the good that is within them.
When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned under the apartheid regime of South Africa, he began to try negotiating with his oppressors. His colleagues in the movement criticized him, saying that negotiations with the enemy were out of the question, and that it was fundamentally wrong to offer any dialogue while being held in prison. Mandela disagreed. He clearly saw the evil of his oppressors, but he knew that in passing complete judgment on them, he would never be able to appeal to them good. He would be digging up the wheat along with the weeds. Mandela led a peaceful resolution to a brutal rule because he saw that good and evil lived side by side.
The genius of his parable is that Jesus recognizes that there is evil in the world. He doesn’t ask us to pull the wool over our eyes and just pretend that everything is happy. Allowing the weeds to grow does not mean pretending that everything is wheat, that everything in the world is just fine. Jesus recognizes evil in the world. At that time, his audience probably interpreted the weeds to be the oppression of the Roman Empire in the midst of the Hebrew people. Indeed, there were many zealots in Palestine (even some of the disciples) who wanted to go to war to throw the Romans out of their land. Talk about weeding your field. In generations since, we have found different ways of interpreting the weeds that grow among us. Jesus does not pretend that there isn’t evil interfering with good. But he cautions us to be humble in our judgment, and to leave final judgment to God. It is sadly too common for attempts to rid the world of evil to do great damage to life in the process.
This is why Jesus did not go along with plans to take up arms against the Roman Empire. When a Roman soldier forced you to carry a load one mile, Jesus said to carry it a second mile, just to show him that love was more powerful than oppression. When someone slapped you on the cheek, Jesus said to turn the other one as well, to show that love is stronger than fear. The importance of love for our enemies in the new testament is not just a naïve ideal, it is actually the only way to avoid the escalation of violence.
Jesus tells us to let the whole field grow, wheat and weeds. When it comes to judgment, be humble. You never know which Roman centurion will join your cause.
Jacob’s nighttime dream teaches the same lesson. On a journey far from home Jacob goes to sleep one night and receives a message from God, a promise, in fact, that was given to Abraham and to Isaac, and now to Jacob himself. When he awakes, he says “God was in this place and I did not know.” What a remarkable statement. God was at work in a place that I did not know. So before we become judgmental about a person, about a nation, or about another religion, let us wonder if we could be like Jacob, not realizing that God is at work in places we don’t know. Think of that in terms of the middle east, or in terms of the person at work or in your neighborhood who has been the thorn in your side.
The title of this sermon is “be humble and bold,” but so far I’ve only given reasons for our humility. If we are to be humble in our judgment people, then when are we to be bold?
I want to tell you a story about the boldness of the early church. This is recorded in the book of Acts, which tells of the early apostles and the issues that they wrestled with in the first generation after Christ. One of the big issues in Acts, which also shows up in some of Paul’s letters, is what to do about all of the non-Jews who are becoming Christians. The very first followers of Jesus were practicing Jews. They observed the Jewish rituals, they ate kosher, and they had faith in Jesus. That’s what the early church looked like at the very first. But then all these non-Jews, called Gentiles, started to become Christian, and they had to decide whether all Christians should start to observe all the Jewish practices. There was nothing in the scripture to prepare them for this. In fact, there was nothing in the scripture to prepare them for the idea of sharing a common faith with gentiles. Their scripture was actually fairly opposed to including gentiles. So what should they do?
In the fifteenth chapter of Acts, it says that all the apostles discussed this matter greatly and prayed about it, and finally decided that gentile converts did not need to follow all the Jewish observances, but simply needed to refrain from meals sacrificed to other gods. And here is the message they sent out. They said “it seemed good to the holy spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following” (Acts 15:28). Did you catch that? It seemed good. That’s how they put it. They had enough humility to know that they might not always make the right judgments, but they also knew they had to decide something, so they were bold in their welcome for gentile Christians.
They didn’t prove their claim by quoting scripture, or act as if they alone were the ultimate authority. But they did boldly say that the outsider gentile were welcome just as they were. They didn’t need to be just the same. The apostles trusted that God’s holy spirit helping them to see something good, and to boldly call it good based on their judgment.
When it comes to the weeds, be humble; don’t pass judgment, because you may do more harm than good. And you may be wrong. But when it comes to the wheat, be bold! Celebrate goodness wherever you find it, because all goodness and all truth comes from God. Be bold in proclaiming God’s love that extends farther than we ever realized. Then perhaps we will one day look back and say, along with Jacob, God was in this place, and I did not know. And we will give thanks.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Hoosiers
At the end of the movie Hoosiers, when the small farm-town Indiana high school team beats the big city school for the 1952 state championship, a chill runs up the back of my neck. It happens every time, and it feels wonderful. If you have never seen it, let me tell you why it’s so wonderful when the team from Hickory wins, and by the way, I don’t think it spoils the movie for you to know the ending. What makes the end so great is that by this point in the movie, you have come to care about this small town. You know how the coach was given a second chance after a career ruined by some awful choices. You know how the star player has overcome great losses in his life. You know the townspeople who have had their fights with each other and with the coach, but who are there at the big game together and cheering for all they’ve got.
And you know about one player’s father who can’t be there because he has finally checked himself into a hospital to treat his alcoholism, but who listens to the game on his little radio.
Frankly, the ending isn’t so moving unless you know all their stories. It’s much more than a basketball championship. It’s the celebration for a town full of broken people who thought they had no hope. When the game ends and the music swells, I feel like I’ve had a spiritual experience. And in a way, I have.
There are so many hints of the spirit of God in our lives. There’s a hint of the spirit in the feeling we get in a crowd cheering for our team. There’s a hint in the feeling we get at a concert (an orchestra or a rock band, depending on your preference) when the music envelopes us and makes us feel like we are a part of something bigger. There’s a hint of God’s spirit in a well told story, be it in a movie, novel, television show, or anything that reminds us that love is a powerful force in the world, and that we are connected to causes bigger than ourselves.
I think that all of these experiences should be celebrated, and they should tell us that there is something true about these wonderful, spiritual feelings. We are truly a part of something bigger than ourselves, and ultimately it is not a game, concert, or story. It is God. And just like the end of Hoosiers, God’s church is a celebration for broken people who thought they had no hope.
And you know about one player’s father who can’t be there because he has finally checked himself into a hospital to treat his alcoholism, but who listens to the game on his little radio.
Frankly, the ending isn’t so moving unless you know all their stories. It’s much more than a basketball championship. It’s the celebration for a town full of broken people who thought they had no hope. When the game ends and the music swells, I feel like I’ve had a spiritual experience. And in a way, I have.
There are so many hints of the spirit of God in our lives. There’s a hint of the spirit in the feeling we get in a crowd cheering for our team. There’s a hint in the feeling we get at a concert (an orchestra or a rock band, depending on your preference) when the music envelopes us and makes us feel like we are a part of something bigger. There’s a hint of God’s spirit in a well told story, be it in a movie, novel, television show, or anything that reminds us that love is a powerful force in the world, and that we are connected to causes bigger than ourselves.
I think that all of these experiences should be celebrated, and they should tell us that there is something true about these wonderful, spiritual feelings. We are truly a part of something bigger than ourselves, and ultimately it is not a game, concert, or story. It is God. And just like the end of Hoosiers, God’s church is a celebration for broken people who thought they had no hope.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Sermon - What was he thinking?
Preached on June 29 2008 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC
Genesis 22:1-18 Matthew 10:37-42
Dedicated to the members of the 2008 mission tour; and always to the glory of God.
Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac is a difficult story. We come to the Bible trusting that it contains a word for us about our God and God’s relationship to us, but we often come away from this story disturbed because we don’t understand what that message can possibly be. Or perhaps we are disturbed because we are worried that we do understand the message of the story and we want nothing to do with it because it seems totally at odds with the message of Jesus Christ, which is the lens by which we view all scripture.
This story has two main points that disturb us. The first is that God tells Abraham to take his son, his and Sarah’s only son, whom he loves, Isaac, up to a mountaintop and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. How could God demand such a violent and senseless act? This is not the God we see in Jesus Christ, who came to give life. The second disturbing point is that Abraham agrees to do it.
What was he thinking? How can he possibly obey this command to kill his son? After World War II we heard the Nazis talk about how they were just following orders and we did not accept that excuse. In the movie A Few Good Men, we contemplated the same idea in our own military in the story of two Marines who were ordered to give their fellow Marine a code red, a kind of hazing punishment. Weren’t they able to recognize an immoral order and refuse to obey? Are we supposed to do something that is wrong and harmful just because we are told to do it by a commanding officer? And now in our country we are wrestling with the question of soldiers who were told to treat prisoners cruelly in order to soften them up for interrogation.
But what if God is the one who orders violence? The religious community has some history of this idea: burning heretics, the Salem witch trials, gunning down doctors, and calling for war against Muslims in the crusades, or in modern times painting Islam broadly as a religion of violence and hate. These people tragically thought that they were doing the will of God, and we needed more people to question their claims. So don’t we need a better model than Abraham, who doesn’t even question God’s order to kill his son? This story has some real problems!
How could any parent agree to give up the life of a child, and how could anyone let God get away with making such a mean demand? When Abraham set out for the mountain with his son Isaac, we must ask what was he thinking?
James Kugel, a scholar of the Hebrew scriptures, reminds us to be aware of the context in which this story was first told.[1] In the ancient middle east, offering your child as a sacrifice to your god was well accepted among nations in t region. More than an animal sacrifice, the gift of a child was the ultimate sign of your devotion. In the book of 2nd Kings, we read of the Moabite king who sacrifices his child to their god Molech to restore his people to the god’s good favor (2 Kings 3:26-27). Here’s the point: the Hebrews who first heard this story would not have found it very unusual or shocking that Abraham planned to sacrifice his son as a sign of great faithfulness to their God Yahweh. Instead, the extraordinary aspect of this story is that Yahweh, unlike other gods, stops the sacrifice. This story may have been the one that was told when Hebrew children asked why their religion was different from the neighboring nations. “Why are we the only ones who do not sacrifice children?” they may have asked. And the answer would come: “let me tell you about Abraham, the father of our people.
Do you see the difference it makes to read the story in that context? We read it and think that God might ask for a person’s death. They told it to make the opposite point, that our God does not desire anyone to be killed. Let’s keep that in mind, but to be honest, if that’s the only good we can find here, then this story has outlived its use. No one ever asks why God doesn’t ask for child sacrifice, and the very idea of it in our scriptures is troubling. So why do people continue to claim this story as holy?
The Jewish tradition is filled with rabbis who have found this story disturbing and tried to make sense of if for their lives. In one line of interpretation, they figured that Isaac must have been in on the plan and been willing to give himself as a sacrifice to God. In this reading, Abraham is not the monster who almost kills his frightened boy, but the father who sadly shares this mournful journey with his faithful son. If this still seems strange and abhorrent, then think of Jesus willingly walking to the cross, followed by his mother Mary in tears. Perhaps Abraham and Isaac trusted that God’s plan might be bigger than death.
In a way, the willingness of Abraham and Isaac to sacrifice so greatly might stand as a challenge to us. How much are we willing to sacrifice in order to give our lives to God? I confess that I often hide from this question. I hide because there are many things that I do not want to give up. But at the same time many of the things I do give my time and energy to are not worth the sacrifice. We could name the obvious idols to whom we give our time and our efforts: anger, fear, addiction, ambition. We sacrifice much to these things, and although they are easy to name they are difficult to overcome. But even beyond those debilitating gods, we often sacrifice our lives to the trivial. We are always giving our time and attention to something, and if I could ever add up all my time and money and attention that I give to things that don’t really mean very much, I would be appalled. At certain times, we all sacrifice our lives, only to find that we have sacrificed them for not much at all.
The story of Abraham and Isaac might remind us that only when we give our lives to God are we giving ourselves to something that is really worth everything we have.
Now, let me give you a different take on our story. Pay attention to verse five. At the foot of the mountain, Abraham turns to the servants who have accompanied them on the journey and says “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Listen again: “We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Why does he say that both he and Isaac will come back if Isaac is going to die on the mountain? You might say that he is being deceptive, but I don’t think that fits his character or the way this story is told. I think that perhaps Abraham trusts that God will not allow the death of Isaac, who is, after all, the son that God promised to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. Abraham trusts God enough to follow the command to go and sacrifice his son, but also trusts in God to bring about a good conclusion in a way that he cannot yet see.
Down in Kentucky last week, there was little banner in the church at Henderson Settlement with these words “the sign that you are following God is that you will be led where you did not plan to go.” We are used to making our own plans, but this story of Abraham reminds us that sometimes we might follow the calling of God into a journey we did not plan, to which we don’t know the conclusion. What a freeing idea it is that we don’t have to know how God’s calling in our lives will work out in the end before we begin. Just get started. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t do the responsible work of planning and working toward a vision – we’ve got lots of people in this church who do that planning very well. What I mean is that we shouldn’t be paralyzed by waiting until we are certain that every outcome is accounted for and everything is safe.
The rabbis tell a story, called a midrash, about the crossing of the Red Sea. It’s a story that is not in the Bible, but offers insight on the Biblical story. You probably remember how the Hebrews reached the edge of the red sea and Moses lifted his rod to make the waters part. But in this midrash, Moses lifts his rod and nothing happens. And so, with the Egyptian army on its way, a Hebrew man named Naschon begins to walk into the sea. He wades in up to his ankles, then his knees, waist, and chest. Just before the water reaches his nostrils, the red sea parts. The point is that sometimes miracles only happen after we jump in.[2] To trust God is to commit yourself even when you don’t know exactly how things will turn out.
I hope that this story of Abraham and Isaac is working now on different levels. The story of Abraham and Isaac challenges us to give all that we have to God, and to carefully examine where we have sacrificed parts of our lives to things that don’t deserve it. This story also gives us confidence to answer God’s call and take action even when we don’t know how God is going to be at work. This is a story that tells us that the God who asks everything of us is also one who loves us and values our lives so deeply that God is the chief mourner over every child of this earth whose life is ever lost.
We are held close by God, and God calls us to give all that we are so that we can be who God created us to be.
[1] Kugel, James L. How To Read The Bible: A guide to scripture, then and now. 2007. I am grateful to this book for much of the background in this sermon.
[2] Jacobs, A.J. The Year of Living Biblically, page 13
Genesis 22:1-18 Matthew 10:37-42
Dedicated to the members of the 2008 mission tour; and always to the glory of God.
Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac is a difficult story. We come to the Bible trusting that it contains a word for us about our God and God’s relationship to us, but we often come away from this story disturbed because we don’t understand what that message can possibly be. Or perhaps we are disturbed because we are worried that we do understand the message of the story and we want nothing to do with it because it seems totally at odds with the message of Jesus Christ, which is the lens by which we view all scripture.
This story has two main points that disturb us. The first is that God tells Abraham to take his son, his and Sarah’s only son, whom he loves, Isaac, up to a mountaintop and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. How could God demand such a violent and senseless act? This is not the God we see in Jesus Christ, who came to give life. The second disturbing point is that Abraham agrees to do it.
What was he thinking? How can he possibly obey this command to kill his son? After World War II we heard the Nazis talk about how they were just following orders and we did not accept that excuse. In the movie A Few Good Men, we contemplated the same idea in our own military in the story of two Marines who were ordered to give their fellow Marine a code red, a kind of hazing punishment. Weren’t they able to recognize an immoral order and refuse to obey? Are we supposed to do something that is wrong and harmful just because we are told to do it by a commanding officer? And now in our country we are wrestling with the question of soldiers who were told to treat prisoners cruelly in order to soften them up for interrogation.
But what if God is the one who orders violence? The religious community has some history of this idea: burning heretics, the Salem witch trials, gunning down doctors, and calling for war against Muslims in the crusades, or in modern times painting Islam broadly as a religion of violence and hate. These people tragically thought that they were doing the will of God, and we needed more people to question their claims. So don’t we need a better model than Abraham, who doesn’t even question God’s order to kill his son? This story has some real problems!
How could any parent agree to give up the life of a child, and how could anyone let God get away with making such a mean demand? When Abraham set out for the mountain with his son Isaac, we must ask what was he thinking?
James Kugel, a scholar of the Hebrew scriptures, reminds us to be aware of the context in which this story was first told.[1] In the ancient middle east, offering your child as a sacrifice to your god was well accepted among nations in t region. More than an animal sacrifice, the gift of a child was the ultimate sign of your devotion. In the book of 2nd Kings, we read of the Moabite king who sacrifices his child to their god Molech to restore his people to the god’s good favor (2 Kings 3:26-27). Here’s the point: the Hebrews who first heard this story would not have found it very unusual or shocking that Abraham planned to sacrifice his son as a sign of great faithfulness to their God Yahweh. Instead, the extraordinary aspect of this story is that Yahweh, unlike other gods, stops the sacrifice. This story may have been the one that was told when Hebrew children asked why their religion was different from the neighboring nations. “Why are we the only ones who do not sacrifice children?” they may have asked. And the answer would come: “let me tell you about Abraham, the father of our people.
Do you see the difference it makes to read the story in that context? We read it and think that God might ask for a person’s death. They told it to make the opposite point, that our God does not desire anyone to be killed. Let’s keep that in mind, but to be honest, if that’s the only good we can find here, then this story has outlived its use. No one ever asks why God doesn’t ask for child sacrifice, and the very idea of it in our scriptures is troubling. So why do people continue to claim this story as holy?
The Jewish tradition is filled with rabbis who have found this story disturbing and tried to make sense of if for their lives. In one line of interpretation, they figured that Isaac must have been in on the plan and been willing to give himself as a sacrifice to God. In this reading, Abraham is not the monster who almost kills his frightened boy, but the father who sadly shares this mournful journey with his faithful son. If this still seems strange and abhorrent, then think of Jesus willingly walking to the cross, followed by his mother Mary in tears. Perhaps Abraham and Isaac trusted that God’s plan might be bigger than death.
In a way, the willingness of Abraham and Isaac to sacrifice so greatly might stand as a challenge to us. How much are we willing to sacrifice in order to give our lives to God? I confess that I often hide from this question. I hide because there are many things that I do not want to give up. But at the same time many of the things I do give my time and energy to are not worth the sacrifice. We could name the obvious idols to whom we give our time and our efforts: anger, fear, addiction, ambition. We sacrifice much to these things, and although they are easy to name they are difficult to overcome. But even beyond those debilitating gods, we often sacrifice our lives to the trivial. We are always giving our time and attention to something, and if I could ever add up all my time and money and attention that I give to things that don’t really mean very much, I would be appalled. At certain times, we all sacrifice our lives, only to find that we have sacrificed them for not much at all.
The story of Abraham and Isaac might remind us that only when we give our lives to God are we giving ourselves to something that is really worth everything we have.
Now, let me give you a different take on our story. Pay attention to verse five. At the foot of the mountain, Abraham turns to the servants who have accompanied them on the journey and says “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Listen again: “We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Why does he say that both he and Isaac will come back if Isaac is going to die on the mountain? You might say that he is being deceptive, but I don’t think that fits his character or the way this story is told. I think that perhaps Abraham trusts that God will not allow the death of Isaac, who is, after all, the son that God promised to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. Abraham trusts God enough to follow the command to go and sacrifice his son, but also trusts in God to bring about a good conclusion in a way that he cannot yet see.
Down in Kentucky last week, there was little banner in the church at Henderson Settlement with these words “the sign that you are following God is that you will be led where you did not plan to go.” We are used to making our own plans, but this story of Abraham reminds us that sometimes we might follow the calling of God into a journey we did not plan, to which we don’t know the conclusion. What a freeing idea it is that we don’t have to know how God’s calling in our lives will work out in the end before we begin. Just get started. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t do the responsible work of planning and working toward a vision – we’ve got lots of people in this church who do that planning very well. What I mean is that we shouldn’t be paralyzed by waiting until we are certain that every outcome is accounted for and everything is safe.
The rabbis tell a story, called a midrash, about the crossing of the Red Sea. It’s a story that is not in the Bible, but offers insight on the Biblical story. You probably remember how the Hebrews reached the edge of the red sea and Moses lifted his rod to make the waters part. But in this midrash, Moses lifts his rod and nothing happens. And so, with the Egyptian army on its way, a Hebrew man named Naschon begins to walk into the sea. He wades in up to his ankles, then his knees, waist, and chest. Just before the water reaches his nostrils, the red sea parts. The point is that sometimes miracles only happen after we jump in.[2] To trust God is to commit yourself even when you don’t know exactly how things will turn out.
I hope that this story of Abraham and Isaac is working now on different levels. The story of Abraham and Isaac challenges us to give all that we have to God, and to carefully examine where we have sacrificed parts of our lives to things that don’t deserve it. This story also gives us confidence to answer God’s call and take action even when we don’t know how God is going to be at work. This is a story that tells us that the God who asks everything of us is also one who loves us and values our lives so deeply that God is the chief mourner over every child of this earth whose life is ever lost.
We are held close by God, and God calls us to give all that we are so that we can be who God created us to be.
[1] Kugel, James L. How To Read The Bible: A guide to scripture, then and now. 2007. I am grateful to this book for much of the background in this sermon.
[2] Jacobs, A.J. The Year of Living Biblically, page 13
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