An Outstretched Hand

Genesis 22:1-14

Matthew 10:40-42      

There are a few stories in the Bible that are sometimes referred to as “texts of terror.” This story from Genesis is one of them.

It is the climax of the long story of Abraham and Sarah. In a way, it resembles the climax of a big disaster movie, where a disaster comes – a tsunami, a fire, a nuclear attack, or zombies from outer space – tearing through our civilization and leaving a huge swath of wreckage in its wake.

Usually, in the disaster movie, we just focus on the survivors. When it’s over, the audience is washed in relief, so thankful that we made it! On the screen there are embraces and maybe a little wry humor, so we can leave the theatre feeling good.

We might try to do that with the Genesis story too. Look at the survivors – Abraham and Isaac come back down from the mountain alive. They go home to Sarah. Isaac lives to a ripe old age – he marries and has children. So all is well.

Yet, I just can’t do it. And it’s all because of one sentence. God calls, Abraham answers, then God says:

“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.”

I mean, what do you do with a text like this? You can rationalize it, usually our first instinct with something this hard. You can historically analyze the heck out of it – I have done that too. You can spiritualize it – try to remove it from the bodily realm and just think about the spiritual meaning.

And while all of these things – the historical context, the spiritual meaning – are worthy conversations, they don’t erase the plain sense of the words on the page, the flesh and blood impact of the story.

This is your worst fear; this is the darkest corner of humanity; the darkest shadow of every human heart.

I resist it the same way I resist the reality of evil in the world, in all its forms. and yet it is here.

Why is this story necessary, I often wonder? Something so difficult, so hurtful and frightening, so prone to misunderstanding? Was it really prudent to include it in the Bible?

I am reminded of a conversation recounted by the writer Sara Maitland, with an elderly woman she ran into on her way to the post office one day. A local church had been struck by lightning and it was on the older woman’s mind. She asked Sara, “Do you suppose it’s really true that God deliberately made this happen?” Sara replied, “No, I don’t think really think so. Do you?” The older woman said, “No I don’t think so either.” But then she added, “He should have been more careful, though. He should have known there would be talk.”

And that’s what I think about this story of Abraham and Isaac. God should have known there would be all kinds of talk. God should have known that people would be scandalized by a story like this one. They would distort it and misuse it and misinterpret it … and just have a really hard time understanding the how and the why of it. Really, God should have been more careful, so such a story as this wouldn’t even be necessary.

And that is fine to think, even to say, but God will do what God will do, not being subject to our conventions. God is too big for that. And so stories of God, like this story of Isaac and Abraham, take us right up to the edge without letting us fall.

But, man, that edge? I don’t really want to look over that edge.

I want to echo the feelings of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who said it was one tough calling being Abraham, God’s chosen one. It would have been so much easier to have been cast out, rejected by the Lord. Kierkegaard imagined that there were times when Abraham actually wished that God would turn away from him, releasing him from this impossible burden.

The calling is, indeed, a tough one, as Jesus told his disciples in a variety of ways. In this 10^th chapter of Matthew Jesus offered some hard teachings – words we listened to last week. That because of his presence, families would be divided and lives would be lost. That to be worthy of him, they each must take up their cross and follow him.

He took his disciples right up to the edge. But then he didn’t let them fall. Jesus pulls them back with the assurance that their relationship is for keeps.

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and welcomes the one who sent me, he says. We are so intertwined, you and I, that they can’t do anything to you without also doing it to me. I am always with you in a way that backs you up entirely and strengthens you completely. I am so much with you that our identities are inseparable. And even more, we are both intertwined with the Father, the one who sent me.

The Father – the one we identify as the God who said to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.”

It is still a tough calling, because this is what it is. Our God asks us to go right up to the edge and look over; to acknowledge the evil, to never close our eyes to the suffering in the world. Yes, our God is a scandalous God who won’t tidy things up or shove the skeletons in the closet for the sake of our sensibilities. But in it all, through it all, God will reach out a hand to come between us and the evil.

God stopped Abraham from the terrible act he was so near committing, and God provided a suitable sacrifice. In gratitude, Abraham named the mount, “The Lord Will Provide.”

The Lord will provide what we need. An outstretched hand holding –

a ram caught in the thicket – saving Isaac, rescuing Abraham from becoming a hollowed-out man for the rest of his life. An outstretched hand holding –

a cup of cold water for a thirsty traveler, the sustenance we need in a dry and weary land.

Remember this. No matter how ugly things get in this world, God will provide.

Photo: Team building at Camp Krislund

Promise Born of Pain

Genesis 21:8-21

Matthew10:24-39      

I am often surprised by how clearly the scriptures speak to our contemporary troubles. The texts we read each Sunday are thousands of years old, and yet sometimes the relevance of the words leap off the page. I think the author of the book of Ecclesiastes captures it for all time when he says there is nothing new under the sun, and there is a season for everything.

Our hopes are the hopes of people always and everywhere. and the troubles we face are the same kinds of troubles people have always faced.

The trouble in the text from Matthew’s gospel is this: Jesus knows that his followers will have plenty of conflict ahead. They will be persecuted and oppressed and misunderstood.

The disciple is not above the teacher, he says. Could he be any clearer? Why should the disciples expect to have an easy stroll through life when their teacher is executed?  It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, he adds. In other words, seek to emulate him in all ways – even the hard ways.

If they malign me, how much more will they malign you, my disciples. You can count on this – it won’t be easy.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to this earth, but a sword. A sword that will cut right through communities, beloved institutions, even families. There will be division, and it will be painful.

Christians hate these passages where Jesus talks about creating divisions in families. These words hurt our feelings, because we are all about family.

But Jesus didn’t make this up. It was an old trouble even then. He was quoting the prophet Micah, who spoke of a deep disorder in Israel, where the bonds of trust were broken. Jesus found relevance in these words that were several hundred years old then. Division was, and is, nothing new.

It’s something that happens when societies are under the stress of change – such as the kind of change that Micah was witnessing in ancient Judah – a time when the kingdom was experiencing radical economic changes that were resulting in greater suffering for the poor, while the rich grew richer.

Or like the kind of change that Jesus was talking about, when he talks about bringing good news to the poor and release to the captives and that the oppressed shall be freed. Here, too, he was quoting the ancient prophets of Israel.

The trouble in our world is the same. Even though Jesus told us in 99 different ways that following him would not be the easy way, Christians still want to believe that it is – or should be, anyway. We want to believe that Jesus did all the hard work of fixing the world so we can coast. Even though he told us different.

The disciple is not above the teacher, he said, and we follow a teacher who walked straight into troubles and called them out. He walked straight into hard situations and told stories of dissent, a different way of being in the world. He walked straight into ugliness and showed it he was not afraid of hate.

And he said, It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher. He wanted his disciples to do the same. Knowing that if they did, there would be trouble.

So, 2000 years later there are still plenty of troubles, and we have seen our share of them in the nation recently. Born out of some of these troubles, we find ourselves in a national conversation about racism once again. But it doesn’t feel the same as it did before. It feels like God’s people have decided they are ready to wade into the trouble.

That old line from Mission Impossible comes to mind. Your mission, should you choose to accept it – and there has to be that option, because the mission is never easy or risk-free. Disciples, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to wade into the trouble. To be, as some would say, God’s Troublemakers.

Last Friday our city held a ceremony to unveil a new street sign on Broad Street: Black Lives Matter Blvd. It is a ceremonial renaming, so you won’t have to change the address when you mail things to the church – although you certainly can. But, like all ceremonial events, it is significant for what it proclaims. Black lives do matter.

And it is important to say. Because in all too many situations it is clear that we have operated as though Black lives did not matter. As though Black bodies could be treated differently from White bodies. As though, somehow, the many injustices that have been piled on these Black lives for centuries in our nation are justified. Or insignificant.

When we first began hearing that phrase, almost seven years ago, after Trayvon Martin was killed and his killer was acquitted, it had a highly charged and polarizing effect. At that time, even though I spoke from the pulpit about the unjust killings of Black men and women at the hands of law enforcement, I still did not feel I could use that phrase – Black Lives Matter. It seemed to me that it would be like throwing a grenade into the sanctuary. Back then, it seemed like the church wasn’t really ready to have a conversation about it. But I hope we are ready now.

Because to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord is to proclaim that every life matters. Every one. And this means that there is a season in which we have to say that, specifically, Black lives matter, in order to counter the longstanding, inherent, and obvious belief that they don’t.

Our nation has a long sinful history that we are trying to come to terms with, in which black lives have been undervalued. In which black bodies have been objects to be used, misused, or destroyed. Racism is, as the Reverend Jim Wallis put it, America’s original sin. It is an offense against God’s extraordinary creativity and the profound love in which God created the world.

We can see this truth in the Genesis story about Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah got so jealous of Hagar and fearful of the boy Ishmael, she told Abraham they should be banished from the household. Even though Sarah had been the one who forced Hagar to have Abraham’s child because Sarah herself couldn’t get pregnant. Even though they were family, they had to go.

So Abraham sent them out. He gave them a little water and some bread to start them on their journey, although this was hardly the measure of hospitality he had shown to the three strangers who entered their camp a few years earlier. He pointed Hagar in the direction of “away” and then turned his back on her and his son, and that was that.

But even though Sarah and Abraham no longer had any use for Hagar and Ishmael, the story shows how much God valued them. Hagar and her son would not die of thirst in the wilderness, for God treasured them. They would not be assaulted and killed by bandits out there, because God had a vision for them.

The point of this story is that even when we misuse and cast off other human beings, treating them as less than human, God doesn’t regard them that way. God loves Hagar and Ishmael as much as God loves Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac. And don’t you imagine it is true, then, that God wants us to love them too?

Things have to change if we really and truly love them. This is the message of the gospel and it is a message that is just as meaningful for us today. Things do have to change – and change is not painless. This, also, has always been true. But Jesus says to his disciples, Do not fear.

Do not fear those who will surely criticize you when you make a stand. But what I say to you in the dark, tell it in the light; proclaim it from the housetops. Speak the truth even if it makes people angry. Because things have to change. And things will change.

It will create some discomfort, but it must change. It may even be painful, but it must change. Because the hope that Jesus came to proclaim, is a hope that is born of pain.

The Necessary No

Matthew 28:16-20       Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

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In 1934, a group of German Evangelical Church leaders met in the town of Barmen to write a confessional document for the church in their particular time and place. Amongst them were Lutherans, German Reformed, and representatives of the United Churches. Their purpose was simply to reiterate their common faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Some of the names associated with this effort might be familiar to us: Martin Niemoller. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Karl Barth. These men and others had been working together for some time to articulate a faithful interpretation of the gospel in Nazi Germany. Their work reached its apex in this meeting.

The document was drafted primarily by Karl Barth, a theologian of the Reformed Church. He worked, in his own words, “fortified by strong coffee and one or two Brazilian cigars,” while the Lutherans in the room took a nap.[1] (I don’t repeat that to disrespect the Lutherans. But the truth is I never met a Lutheran who didn’t like a Sunday afternoon nap.) The result of Barth’s efforts, with some help from the Lutherans, was The Theological Declaration of Barmen.

This Declaration is one of the confessions of faith in our Presbyterian Book of Confessions. It is premised on the belief that the church is united in obedience to the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. It declares certain affirmations about the nature of God and Christ’s church. And it asserts that every “‘yes’ of the gospel…always entails a necessary ‘no.’”[2]

It is the task of the church always to ascertain what is, for our particular time and place, the necessary no.

And, so, included in the Declaration are these words:

The Christian Church is the congregation of the brethren in which Jesus Christ acts presently as the Lord in Word and Sacrament through the Holy Spirit. As the Church of pardoned sinners, it has to testify in the midst of a sinful world, with its faith as with its obedience, with its message as with its order, that it is solely his property, and that it lives and wants to live solely from his comfort and from his direction in the expectation of his appearance.

And it goes on to say:

We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions. (The Theological Declaration of Barmen, 8.16-8.18)

That’s more than a mouthful. Ah, if only he had more help from the Lutherans, Barth might have found a clearer way to say it. In short, it means that the gospel will not be co-opted for the purposes of the state, or anyone else.

It is true that political figures have used the church for their own political ends far too often in our society – as they did in Nazi Germany. And often they have been abetted by church members. I once wrote a letter to the editor of my local newspaper arguing that one presidential candidate had a stronger grasp of the scriptures and a more authentic obedience to Christ than did the other candidate. It was a good letter, but even at the time I wrote it I felt a little uneasy about it. Now I look back at it with some shame about what I was attempting to do: to use Jesus Christ as a political tool.

To be faithful, to be obedient to everything he has commanded us, is to recognize Christ as our head, not as a tool we can use at our convenience and for our purposes. As the letter to the Ephesians says, and the Barmen Declaration quotes, “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body is joined and knit together” (Ephesians 4:15-16).

Thus, the community of the church is charged with bearing testimony to a sinful world, with calling the whole world to obedience to the reign of God. It is no small thing, no easy task, to speak the truth of the gospel to the powers of the world; nonetheless, this is our calling.

The apostle Paul urged in his letter to the Romans, that Christians must not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, renewed, so we might discern what is the will of God. What is good and acceptable and perfect. Or, as it says in The Message, the popular translation by Eugene Peterson:

Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Nothing will be gained by taking up sides and sniping at each other. Nobody will grow in maturity by tossing but-what-about-isms back and forth at each other. Only in keeping our eyes fixed on Christ, acknowledging that we belong to him in our entirety – body and soul, heart and mind – will God be glorified.

We can say, “it is wrong to burn up somebody’s property, wrong to loot businesses, wrong to smash windows” and “it is wrong to beat protesters or kill innocent people” – at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive. But our faith demands that we also say there is no equivalence between property and life. Even that beloved Old Testament verse, “an eye for an eye” does not pretend there is equivalence between property and life. And Jesus Christ, the one who gave up his life so that we might have life, the one who said “love your enemies,” condemns any such notions.

As the Declaration of Barmen affirms, every “yes” of the gospel entails a necessary “no.”

And it is in this spirit that I say to you, God is not glorified when our government assaults peaceful protestors to move them out of the way so a man may take a walk to stand in front of a church and hold up a Bible for a photo.

God is not glorified when our leaders order the removal of peaceful protestors by smoke, tear gas, rubber bullets – which are sometimes lethal – or brute force, and top it off with the word of God and the cross of Christ as symbols for domination. That’s a hard no. a necessary no.

The five verses of scripture we heard today are the closing words of Matthew’s gospel. They include Jesus’ departing words to his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

As the church, we are called to “go therefore,” on a mission to teach the law of love that Christ taught us. To be obedient to all his commandments, which are, to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. To bear testimony to a sinful world. To affirm the gospel’s “yes” as well as the necessary “no.”

And the good news assures us that we do not go alone. No talent of ours will bring about world peace. Nothing we bring to the table will usher in the reign of God. All the grace, all the love, all the power that is needed to do this is not dependent on us. What we bring to the game is simply this: because God loves us, we are empowered to love others – all the “others.”

So turn to God. Invite Jesus into your heart. Call upon the Holy Spirit to guide you and empower you to bear witness in a sinful world.

And remember, Jesus Christ is with you always, to the end of the age.

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[1] https://postbarthian.com/2018/05/21/karl-barth-and-the-barmen-declaration-1934/

[2] Book of Confessions: Study Edition, p. 304-305.