Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

The lesson from Hebrew scripture today says that God tested Abraham. God calls, “Abraham” and Abraham says, “Yes Lord, I'm here, I'm listenen Lord,” God says, “Abraham, take your son, Isaac, the miracle child born to you and Sarah when you were both in your nineties, the son who is the living seal of my promise. Take him to the land of Moriah, and offer him up as a burnt sacrifice.”

Now come on folks, this is nothing less than ghastly madness. The very idea of a father offering his son up as a sacrifice to God; it belongs in some Southern gothic novel. God commands Abraham to sacrifice, to kill his son.. And Abraham doesn't argue, he just packs the donkey and heads to Moriah. Is it blind obedience or is Abraham in total shock? David Buttrick reminds us that Isaac was even more than Abraham' s only son, “Isaac is hope, hope wrapped up in human flesh. All the promises of God were riding on Isaac. Remember the story? Remember how God dropped in to tell Sarah and Abraham that their offspring would be as many as the sands of the sea, that they would give birth to nations. Well, the old folks giggled, for, according to reliable medical advice, it's mighty tough to conceive when you're pushing ninety! Then, suddenly, Isaac was born, a miracle child: God did provide! Through Isaac, there would be many descendants, a multitude of nations.”[1] And yet now, apparently God wants to kill him off.

After three days they see a mountain, so they head up the mountain and instead of the typical “Dad, are we there yet?” Isaac is a little sharper, and he says “Father, we've got a knife and something to make a fire, but where's the sheep for the sacrifice?” Hmm, difficult question to answer. Here’s Isaac, the living symbol of all their hope. They've invested everything they have, all of their emotional energy like any good parent in this gift from God. And of course that is so often the case. We are all susceptible to shifting our attention to the gifts that God bestows to the point that we forget who gave us the gift in the first place.

Abraham responds to Isaac with what I've always thought maybe was as much a prayer as an answer, he says, “God will provide.” And behold, God did provide and they see a lamb caught in a thicket.

Again Dr. Buttrick says it well:

“On a high stone hill, God set Abraham free, free for faith. Blind obedience was transformed into faith. Oh, how easy it is to pin all our hopes on a means of grace, and forget God, the giver. Subtly we turn God's gifts into idols. God has given us the scriptures, but see how we flank the open page with candles and frame dogma to guarantee infallibility:"Everything we've got is wrapped up in you, Bible!" Or perhaps, God draws us into faith through a masculine church; before you know it we're protecting the pronouns and two-legged tailored vestments: "Everything we got’s wrapped up in you," ... Back in the sixties, a liberal Catholic journal announced gleefully, "God can get along without the Latin Mass." To which a reader replied: "Maybe God can, but we can't." Is there any idolatry like religious idolatry? No wonder God speaks and shatters our souls: "Kill it off!"

What Dr Buttrick is talking about is one of our most perverted skills as humans. We can take absolutely anything and fashion it into an idol. We can take a B-rated pop singer and turn him into an idol; we even call him an idol. We can take drugs and alcohol or overwork and turn them into idols that separate us from God. We can even take the most wonderful gifts that God gives us, people we love, our family, our church. Absolutely anything can become an idol that separates us from God. Like Abraham, God calls us up to the scary edge of the mountain, on the brink of sacrifice, where we too must struggle with what God may be calling us to do. But our promise is the same promise that Abraham clung too. God will provide.

Whether it is God’s call on our individual lives to carry out some specific ministry or God’s call on us as a congregation, that promise should give us hope and calm our anxiety. The promise that God will provide us with everything we need to respond obediently to God's call. God will give us what we need to do what God wants us to do. May God give us the Grace to step out and claim that promise so that we may respond faithfully and effectively to the Mission of God's Church and God’s will for our individual lives. AMEN.

[1] David Buttrick, sermon on Abraham and Isaac, Homiletic: Moves and Structure

The Rev. Dr. Dennis Campbell