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A Sermon Delivered at First Christian
Church Stockton I
do not like it when the Bible challenges my views about God.
I hate it when the box in which I have placed God no longer can
contain God. We do not like
it when God contradicts God’s self, and our first inclination is to
dismiss the paradoxes and contradictions so that God appears to be wholly
rational. But if we are to
take this reading seriously, we must admit first our own lack of comfort
with it, and in the end, maybe come to the conclusion that the complexity
of God is beyond our ability to understand. You
will remember, of course Abraham, the elderly gentleman who was called by
God in Genesis 12 to leave his home and go off to a land that God would
show him. God promised that
through Abraham and his wife Sarah that the world would be blessed through
him, and that Abraham and Sarah would have more descendants than there are
stars in the heavens. Twenty
five years later, when Abraham was 99 and his wife was 90, God made a
promise to Abraham: “Your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name
him Isaac. I will establish
my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after
him.” So God fulfilled the
promise that he had made to Abraham, and Sarah bore him a son, and they
named him Isaac. In
today’s reading, something unexpected and critical happens. The God who had made the promise and had delivered life is
now putting Abraham to the test by demanding the life of Isaac, through
whom God’s promise was to come. Up
to this point God has been altogether gracious to Abraham, but it appears
to us that God has turned evil. Does
God have a darkside? We
quickly want to dismiss the text, or maybe explain it away, or possibly
just rush to the happy conclusion of the story.
Maybe the whole point of the story was to show the world that the
God of Abraham, the God of Israel, was not interested in human sacrifices
like the other religions surrounding Israel.
But this story seems to be much more than that.
We cannot fathom that God could both make such a wonderful promise
to Abraham, and that God could then put Abraham to the ultimate test. We want God to be all loving, rational, and consistent, but
the story seems to shatter our notions about God.
The story, however, will not allow us to choose the benevolent God
over the God who demands the death of Isaac.
To be faithful to the text, we are forced to decide whether we will
deny God, or whether we will embrace a God whom we cannot fully
understand. What
is God looking for? It
appears that God is still unsure of Abraham and the adequacy of his faith.
God does not seem to know yet whether Abraham is all that serious,
and whether Abraham has what it takes to be the father of all nations.
The story even calls into question the omnipotence of God, because
the story suggests that God does not know all things. Abraham
responds to God’s grueling request just as Abraham had responded to God
to move from his home to a land that God would lead him to. He saddles his
donkey, takes two young men and his son Isaac, and hits the road toward
the place in the distance that God has shown him.
We can only imagine the pain and the grief that was welling up
inside Abraham as he arrived at the place that God had shown him. He takes
the wood for the burnt offering and lays it on his son Isaac, and he
himself carries the fire and the knife. The two walk on together, and then
Isaac innocently asks, "Father! ... where is the lamb for a burnt
offering?" Can you imagine the ache in his chest and the lump in his
throat as he answers, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt
offering, my son?" Abraham is not conflicted with theological
questions we might have in this situation. After all, what kind of a god
would make such a request as this? Yet, for Abraham, God is God, and God
is a God who will provide a "lamb for a burnt offering." Abraham
is forced to make the most difficult decision that he would ever face:
To spare his only son whom he loved and whom God had promised him,
or to be faithful to God and offer Isaac as a human sacrifice on an alter
to God. Will Abraham spare
his son, or will he again put his faith in God, who to this point has
found a way to bring life out of nothing?
Abraham chooses to put his trust in God. Abraham
binds his son Isaac, lays him on the altar, on top of the wood, and
clutching the knife in his hand, reaches out to kill his son. But an angel
appears with a last-minute stay of execution, and announces that Abraham
has passed the Lord’s test of faithfulness. Abraham looks up to see a
ram, caught in a thicket by his horns, and he sacrifices this beast in
place of his son, discovering in a new and dramatic way that the LORD
will, in fact, provide. As
always, God proves in the end to be wholly gracious, for it is God that
supplies the way out by providing a ram.
Abraham proves to be a serious follower of God, and because of his
faith the world was blessed. While
today’s story raises some serious theological questions for us, it also
raises some serious questions about our faith in God.
God requires that we put no other gods before God-not our jobs, not
our spouse, not our children, nor material things.
We cannot place anything above God-not our sacred traditions, not
even this building. God
demands preeminence in our lives, and nothing less will pass the test. Whether
we like it or not, God is testing us to see if we are serious about being
trusting and faithful, or if we are just putting on a show.
God wants to know whether or not our faith is in God, or in
ourselves; whether or not our faith is in God, who comes to us in apparent
contradictions and paradoxes, or if our faith is only in our simplistic
understanding of God. There
is another story, this one in the New Testament, where God puts someone to
the test. In Gethsemane,
Jesus wrestles with being a human sacrifice for the sins of the world with
his own desire to be spared the pain, humiliation, and anguish of the
cross. This time, the stakes
are even higher, for the consequences will effect not just Israel, but all
of creation. And this time,
God does not offer a substitute ram at the last minute.
Jesus is our substitute, giving us life instead of the death we
deserve. In
the end, today’s story is not so much about Abraham and his trust in
God’s promise, but it is about God being found faithful in all times,
and in all places.
Michael Malone
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