Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42
There’s an ongoing debate in the Christian world, and it centers around the possibility that God purposely does things in our lives to test our faith. To me this is one of the scariest ideas about God I can think of: that God would cause suffering in my life to test my faith.
But before I wade into the idea of a God that tests my faith, I’m wondering how many of us feel as thou we have been or are being tested by God? Notice my hand is up too, even though I’m not sure I believe in a God who tests our faith?
I’ll set that aside for a moment because I want you to picture something with me. Or at least I WANTED you to picture something with me. I tried for quite a while to come up with something in our modern culture that compares to what happens in our reading from Genesis, what used to be called the “Sacrifice of Isaac”, but what’s better called the “near sacrifice of Isaac.” The problem I found is that there’s really nothing in our culture to compare with the disturbing story about Abraham and about what God calls him to do with his miraculous son Isaac.
I’ve used this example before and I’m going to use it again because I think it works well. Imagine you and your mate have found each other from among the 7.5 billion humans in the world. You’ve made a life together, you’ve negotiated the delicate balance of sharing your life with another person, and you become one in most every way. Now you’re to that point in your relationship where you decide to join fully with your mate and have a child, a new being that you will love and nurture together as he or she miraculously grows into a new human being, a new “little you” in the world.
Now imagine that you try and try, but for some reason you’re unable to conceive. The questions start, especially: whose fault is it? Of course you don’t ask that question out loud, but usually the woman is the first one to see her doctor to find out what’s not working as expected. If nothing major appears wrong the investigation turns to the man, who’s not used to being poked and prodded and looked at under a magnifying glass in that way.
Imagine now that everything is functioning for the man, but the woman can neither conceive nor carry a pregnancy to term. You as a couple will never have a biological child of your own. There is the option of a surrogate or of adoption, but you decide that’s not for you as a couple. There’s pain and there’s guilt and there’s pressure, and for now you decide as a couple that you’re going to move on with your lives and your relationship, and you make your peace with that.
Of course every time there’s a baby shower, or a sibling has their third child, or new acquaintances ask you where your children are, you relive some part of the heartache and the loss you feel about never having children. Somewhere in the back of your mind you wonder if this is a kind of punishment for something you or your mate has done in their life. You may even feel angry with God, or at the least you feel that God has totally let you down.
Days blur into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. Eventually you stop praying for a miracle. Now you and your mate have put the idea of a family far behind you and are planning for that early retirement you thought you’d never pull off. You’ve also traveled through the rocky seas of menopause, survived as a couple, and are making plans to enjoy your time together as much as possible as the clock winds down.
But for some reason you’re feeling extremely tired, more so than normal, and nauseous in the mornings. You joke to yourself that if you didn’t know better, you’d think you were pregnant. You finally relent and visit your doctor, and you and she both laugh as she orders a pregnancy test in addition to the other blood tests that are needed.
You laugh even harder when your doctor tells you straight-faced that you appear to be pregnant. You stop laughing after she insists that she’s not lying, and brings out an ultrasound machine to confirm the fact. You stare emotionless at the screen as the technician points out various parts of your unborn child, unable to wrap your head around what you’ve just seen as you head home to tell your mate the news you’ve forgotten how to dream about telling him.
On the way home you’re afraid to dare to believe what your body is telling you is true: you’re pregnant.
At home you share the shocking news with your spouse, who stares at the ultrasound pictures and wonders out loud why you would possibly try to pull off such a painful joke at his expense. You do your best to offer proof, even though you have no idea how this could have happened. As you continue to explain this miracle, you realize that you’ve begun to believe everything you’ve seen, and the joy that’s building up inside you is an emotion you’ve never experienced before in your life.
Fast forward several years now. You gave birth to your son, your only child, your miracle child that never should have been. You’ve established a new and stronger relationship with God, stronger and more meaningful than you ever could have imagined. Your faith has grown and woven itself into the daily fabric of your life, and your thankfulness has overflowed into that relationship. There’s nothing that you would not do in gratefulness to the God who has blessed you so unexpectedly and so completely.
And now as you sit in the chapel meditating, reveling in the few minutes of peace and communion with God in prayer, God actually speaks to you. God calls YOUR name, and in complete thanksgiving and faithfulness you respond, “Here I am.” And God says to you, “take your son, your only son, whom you love, and go to the Adirondacks, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”
Hopefully now you can relate to what Abraham is going through when God asks Abraham for the life of his son, his only son, his miracle son whom Abraham loves, on the mountain of Moriah. What kind of God would ask for the life of a son born to barren parents? What kind of God would promise to make you the father of a multitude, a great nation too numerous to count, and then take back the life of the heir that would make that possible? What kind of God would ask for the life of an innocent child at the hands of a faithful parent?
Of course what was happening to Abraham and to his son Isaac didn’t take place in a vacuum; it took place in a certain time and context. What God appeared to be asking of Abraham was actually nothing more than what many other pagan gods demanded of their subjects. As horrifying as it sounds to us today, many pagan religions required that the first born be sacrificed back to the gods in order to guarantee more offspring. In a culture where the larger your family the better your chance of surviving the tribal environment you lived in, fertility cults and the sacrifice of first-born sons were common practice.
So as Abraham starts out with purpose toward the mountain of Moriah with his son Isaac, this story could be that of any faithful person of that time. What makes this story different is the action by God as Abraham prepares to do what he has been asked, to sacrifice his son to the God he trusts. Although I’m HORRIFIED as Abraham raises the knife to complete the action that has been finished innumerable times before in the surrounding culture, God reveals himself to Abraham and to us. Abraham proves his faithfulness to God, and God proves that he is not like the pagan gods, not a primitive and blood-thirsty tyrant, but a God of life and not death.
So what’s the point that we are to take away from this almost brutal encounter of Abraham with God? I think one thing we learn is that God is not like any other god we could worship. The true God does not call on us to make meaningless sacrifices to appease him, or so that he will give us something in return.
The other thing I think we’re meant to learn about God is that nothing, not even our most beloved possessions and relationships, should come between us and our relationship with God. If you look at our reading from the Gospel of Matthew, which has been inexplicably truncated by the Revised Common Lectionary, the reading from Genesis and the reading from Matthew have a common thread. Here’s the beginning of Matthew that’s been removed by the RCL, verses 37 through 39. “37Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
I don’t know if God purposely does things to test our faith, but I do believe that God calls us to things that bring us to new life, things that we may see at the time as death and suffering, as separation and anxiety, as unacceptable sacrifice and loss. Those are the times in life when God reminds us of what is permanent, what is eternal, and what is priceless. Possessions, false idols, destructive relationships, selfishness, pride, wealth, and vain glory; all these things will one day pass away. But God’s eternal love for us, as of a parent’s love for their first-born child, these things will never pass away. Amen.