"Here I Am" - Sermon (Genesis 21 nd 22)

Our text today is a tough one.  Here we are, only our second week into the narrative lectionary, and we careen right into a puzzling, seemingly outrageous narrative, in which God tells his main guy, the man on whom he has staked everything, to sacrifice his son.  Yes, in direct contradistinction to everything we have learned about the God of creation, the God of abundant love and artistry in Genesis, it seems that we now have a God who insists upon death.

And not just any death.  The death, the sacrificial death of Isaac, the son upon whom Abraham thought God was counting for a new future.

Let’s go back a minute:  Abraham and Sarah, a couple repeatedly called by God into new lives.   They start out in Ur, in modern-day Iraq.  They make their way to Egypt.  They return north to Hebron, in today’s West Bank of Israel and Palestine.  In Hebron, Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, is born, to Hagar, his wife Sarah’s maidservant.  That birth is the product of an ill-advised plan of Sarah’s; she cannot have children and so she urges Abraham to father a child with Hagar – but then, when the child is born, she is resentful and angry and insists that Abraham send mother and child away.  That child, Ishmael, is generally understood to be the progenitor of the Muslim people, which is why Abraham is the called the father of the People of the Book: Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

But I digress.  God makes three promises to Abraham and Sarah: that they shall be the parents of a great nation, that they shall have a multitude of children, and that God shall establish a land for them.  When the promise of a son comes to them in their old age, Sarah, in particular, at the age of ninety, finds that promise laughable, which is why when the miracle child is born, he is named Isaac, which means laughter.  Isaac is born in Beersheba, which is also in present-day Israel.

Our first reading is from Genesis 21:1-3, and covers this portion of the story: 1 The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. 2 Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him.

Imagine the joy!  Imagine the delight!  This elderly, childless couple, promised to become parents, to become the ancestors of a great nation, to be established in a land of their own,  have spent their lives as childless nomads.[1]  The fulfillment of any of God’s promises seems highly unlikely and then – a son!  A wonderful  gurgling and giggling addition to their lives. A little boy who follows his mother around the tents , and who wanders the land with his father.  What could be better?

But now begins the story over which much ink has been spilt.  And I want you to listen for the repetition of the phrase “Here I am.” Our reading continues in Genesis 22:  1 After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." 2 He said, "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 on one of the mountains that I shall show you." 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5 Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you." 6 Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. 

How do you think Abraham felt when he uttered that first “Here I am”?  Confident?  Hopeful?  Perhaps -- life had been going well.  His family was settled; his son was growing.

Or was he apprehensive?  Jewish tradition tells us that Abraham suffered ten trials, ten tests, and withstood every one of them.[2]  There is some debate as to exactly what the ten were  -- some appear in Scripture and some in legend – but all accounts agree that this story depicts one of them.  A man who had undergone trial after trial at the hands of God might indeed have been apprehensive to hear God’s voice again.

We don’t know. We don’t know how Abraham felt. What we do know is that he  was immediately responsive.  Immediately present to God.  God called, and Abraham said, “Here I am.”

And then?  Then, as he heard God’s instructions – take your son and make of him a burnt offering – I think we can guess what feelings must have been swirling within Abraham’s heart and mind.  Horror?  Bewilderment?  This could not be the God of Genesis, could it?  The God who had created the heavens and the earth in all their beauty and fragility? The God who had promised him descendants?  What was he to do?  What was he to say?  Why don’t we hear him saying anything at all?  Abraham has been known to question God and to argue with God.  Rabbinical stories have him questioning God in this instance.  But Scripture itself is silent.

All we read and see is that Abraham was immediately present and responsive, courageous – or perhaps reckless? -- and willing.

There was a 20^th century theologian named Paul Tillich who described, defined, faith, as our “ultimate concern.”  He made the point that there are many, many things in which people have faith, which people view as their “ultimate concern.”  A sports team.  The nation, or a particular political party.  Money.  Success.  All you have to do is look at the magazines on display in the supermarket or listen to the radio for half an hour to know that people are ultimately concerned with many things.  Things to which they submit themselves and things which they expect to provide them with fulfillment – that’s how Tillich describes faith; that’s how he defines ultimate concern.

Abraham’s ultimate concern was God.  Abraham had heard a promise from God, and he expected its fulfillment.  If he could not rely upon the God in whom he had placed his confidence and his trust, all else was for naught. 

And so he trudged on his way, with his son, and he heard another voice.  Isaac’s voice.  Our reading continues:

7 Isaac said to his father Abraham, "Father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" 8 Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.  9 When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.  

Have you ever been required to be present to someone else in the midst of your own anguish? Have you ever had to be present to someone else in terrible circumstances as a way of being present to God?

That’s what I think was going on with Abraham here, here where he says “Here I am” to Isaac.  He did not stop being a father solely because God’s call took precedence.  In fact, it was precisely because of his call to fatherhood that he remained concerned, compassionate, and loving to his curious son.  Attentive and gentle.  I know that many of you, perhaps all of you, understand something the tension that Abraham felt.  I know that you have been in situations in which you have wanted to fall prostrate on the ground and scream your protests, but someone else has been in need.  A spouse,  a child, a parent.  And so even as you cry out within, you attend to them without.  It’s a way of being present to God,  of recognizing that sometimes love makes conflicting demands upon us.

And then, finally: 11 [T]he angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." 12 He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." 13 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place "The Lord will provide;” as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided."

A third “Here I am” – and how does Abraham feel now?  Tired?  Exasperated?  What more can you possibly have to say to me, God?  And then – Surprised?  Relieved?  Joyous?

What is going on in this story?

One prevalent tradition tells us that it is a story designed to instruct God’s people that their God will not tolerate child sacrifice.  God’s new people were surrounded by other, polytheistic, nations, some of whom did practice child sacrifice as a means of appeasing their gods.  Was God saying, “Not for my people?” Did Abraham misunderstand God’s voice at first?  Did he hear in the voice of God the voices of the cultures in which he had been immersed, those in which a child’s sacrifice might have been expected, and need God’s correction?[3]  Was God seeking to ensure that Abraham understood that the one God was indeed the Genesis God of creation and love, and not one of the many local gods who demanded sacrifice and death? 

Such an interpretation makes sense in the context of the Hebrew Bible as a whole.  Not only does the God of life and light not want child sacrifice; God will later tell the people of Israel, through the prophets, that God is not interested in their sacrifice of burst offerings at all, in their paltry attempts to appease him with altars on which plant and animal are laid and from which smoke rises to the sky.

No – what God wants is compassion and justice.  God wants their praise – our praise – not through burnt offerings, but through our care for others, our presence to others, our compassion for others through our perseverance for justice.

And how does one learn compassion and justice? One learns compassion and justice through suffering.  Perhaps Abraham was called to learn compassion through a silent and lonely walk up a mountain, through three days of anticipation that his dearest, most precious earthly companion, the source of all his hopes for fulfillment of God’s promises, was to be destroyed by his own hand.  Perhaps Abraham was called to learn God’s justice through the anguish of repeating the response, “Here I am” until he was certain, down to his own bones, that God alone is the source of all good; that God’s thoughts and ways, as the psalmist says, are not ours; and that, although God’s love and God’s ways are too great for us to comprehend, we are called to enact them in compassion for others.

How could Abraham have become the father to not one but two – no, three – nations without this understanding?  How could he – how could we – understand compassion and justice if we did not know the suffering that cries out for both?  How could we say “Here I am” with integrity if we did not understand the depth of suffering to which we are called to respond in love?

“Here I am” – words of hope, words of apprehension, words of courage, words of compassion, words of anguish, words of surprise, words of joy.  “Here I am.”  Amen.

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[1] Kathryn Schifferdecker, Working Preacher Podcast.  http://www.workingpreacher.org/narrative_podcast.aspx?podcast_id=422

[2] Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld, “Abraham's Simplicity.”  http://www.torah.org/learning/pirkei-avos/chapter5-4.html.

[3] Brent Cunningam. http://www.brentcunningham.org/?p=647.

Sermon Conundrum: Abraham and Isaac

This Sunday's text is a story known as The Binding of Isaac.  Google it if you don't know it.  It's a terrible story, and running though it once on Sunday is enough for me.

 

What was I thinking?  I switched to the Narrative Lectionary this month.  Had I stayed with the nice Common Lectionary, I could preach on the stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin from the Gospel of Luke. I would be much happier. But oh no -- I got this idea from our yearlong Bible study that it would really help my congregation to approach the Bible in order.  At least in the order which appears in the Table of Contents, which is only one sort of order. So last week we looked at the creation story and, this week, we come to one of the stories in those about Abraham and Sarah: the awful little story in which God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son.  To stab him and burn him up on an altar.  Yeah.

 

The first time I really paid attention to this narrative, I was with the group of adults destined to become my nearest and dearest friends.  We were all duly horrified -- parents of young children, every one of us -- and I'm sure that some of us began to doubt the advisability of our return to church in our thirties.  Perhaps church would not be a good place at all for our children.

 

The second time was when I took my summer of intensive Hebrew at seminary the summer after Josh died.  Apparently there is a lot in the way of useful vocabulary forms in these chapters.  I duly memorized all of said vocabulary, had at least one meltdown in the classroom, and concluded that both God and Abraham were ~ well, not entirely in their right minds.  When I noted in one commentary that one explanation for Sarah's subsequent silence was that she never spoke to Abraham again, I understood that to mean that at least one person had maintained some semblance of reason.

 

Now, this week: the third time.  The text no longer enrages me.  Other things do, but not a few more pages of violence in the Bible.  And I like one of the commentaries I read that suggests that Abraham had it wrong, completely misunderstood  God, was listening to some version of God other than the one he knew. I am confident now that God is solely the God of Life, and so I'm guessing that Abraham was completely out to lunch on this one.

 

So, what am I doing? I am focused on the words "Here I am."  Abraham says them three times -- to the God who is calling him; to the son who is curious about what they are up to, these men journeying for days with a load of firewood; and to the angel of the Lord, who reaches out to stop him.  "Here I am," he says each time, and I am wondering about his tone of voice, his frame of mind, with each response.  I wonder what it means that he keeps saying that. 

 

I don't actually have any idea.  Fortunately it's only Tuesday.

The Artist

The following is more or less what I plan to preach tomorrow, based on the first creation story in Genesis:

 

How many of you enjoy the process of creation?  I want you to begin our sermon time this morning by turning to a neighbor and telling one another what you’ve made recently that’s been a pleasure to you, either in the making of it or in the final product?  How have you in your own creativity reflected the artistry of the one in whose image you are made?

(I know you’ve done this!  Anyone plowed or harvested a field lately?  Baked a pie?  Knit a sweater or crocheted a scrubbie?  Painted a picture?  Taken a photograph?  Added a piece to a genealogical puzzle?  Sung a song?  Played an instrument?  Written a note or a letter to someone? You may not have thought of yourself as engaged in a creative process, but if you placed or added something where there was  nothing, or if you altered something that was already there – then you’ve been at work as a creator.)

Isn’t it interesting that the very first page of the Bible begins with a hymn of creation?  This past week I listened to a podcast[1]  as I prepared the sermon, and one of the points emphasized was that on the very first page of the story for Jews and Christians, there is a creator and a creation: there is an intentionality about the universe.  

The Bible doesn’t have to begin that way, does it?  There are all kinds of writings and all sorts of stories in the Bible.  We kind of take for granted that it begins with the story of creation, but there are other possibilities.  It might have begun  with a geography, or with a history of the first human beings, or with the prayer and music of the Psalms.  All of those things appear soon enough, but the Bible begins with a story of the beginning.

And, another interesting thing: The Bible begins with a hymn, with a form of music.  If you were in the Bible study class last fall, you may remember that we talked about all the different forms of writing in the Bible: stories and songs and laws and speeches and biographies and instructions for construction and letters and visions and announcements.  All kinds of writing.  And the very first kind is a hymn.  We just listened to this hymn, and perhaps you heard in the choral reading certain lines that reminded you of song: repetitions, or refrains,  such as “God saw that it was good,” and an organization into something like verses, “the first day” and “the second day.”  Take a few minutes sometime and highlight the various repetitions and organizational markers in this passage in different colors, and you will see a hymn emerge.

A grand and glorious hymn of a grand and glorious God.  This is a majestic God, a God who speaks and a universe comes into being.  A God who speaks and water flows and grass grows. A God who speaks and creatures populate a planet.  A God who speaks and human beings appear, creatures made in the image of God, whose image is both male and female; whose image is designed for partnership, for community; whose image is designed to create and to exercise care for all of creation.

We might take it for granted, that the beginning of the book sings joyously of the beginning of all things, or we might ask some questions about this beginning.  What’s it about?  Why is this the beginning, instead of one of the other possibilities?  What is the point of the Book of Genesis?  Why is there such a book?

One answer is that the Book of Genesis seeks to tell us who God is.  To communicate something about God’s identity to us. 

Some time ago, in response to a question posed by someone else, I began to ponder that question, “Who is God?”  And because we have this text, right at the beginning of the Bible, I started with its words.  And the first thing that came to mind, for me, anyway, on that particular day, was that “God is a painter.” 

Then I began to ponder the word "painter."  God as a designer.  God as abundantly and infinitely creative and creating.  I considered adding a few more nouns.  God as a painter, an architect, a builder, a potter, a designer, a musician, a dancer, a photographer.

Hmmm.  Was I responding to the "Who?" question with a litany of what God does rather than an affirmation of who God is?  I didn’t want to describe God as merely someone functional, someone doing utilitarian work.  No matter how beautiful the interlocking network of relationships and connections – relationships of chemical compounds, of atoms, of stardust, of cells, of thought, of emotion – God was more than a construction expert, or a framing specialist.

God, I realized, is an artist.  That's a what, and it's a "what God does," but most of all, to my way of thinking, anyway, it's a who.  An artist is a who.  An artist is someone who creates from the core of who he is.  An artist is someone whose very essence pours out of herself and into her creations.  An artist is someone who creates out of love – and God, by definition, cannot not love.  Cannot not be love and and give love.

God is an artist.  We know this from what we read in Genesis, and we know this from our own lives: almost every form of human work and human relationship is a work of art ~ an expression of the one in whose image we are created. 

What tells us that God is an artist?  To start with, the universe itself.   If you had asked me when I was a little girl how I knew about God, I would have pointed to the world around me: the brilliant beech trees on the autumn hillside, the glittering ice in the winter sunshine, the caterpillars turning themselves into butterflies, the lightning bugs filling the summer night spaces, the oriole nest hanging from the tree across my grandmother's driveway, the goldenrod growing alongside the country roads, even the snakes leaving their discarded skins across the gravel road to our own house.  Color, shape, size, form;  such dazzling ingenuity.  There is God, I would have said. 

And how does this God, this Creator, this artist, work?  Or play? – I often think that creation is more play than work for God.  As I’ve been attending to this text this past week, two things – no, three; three dimensions of God as Creator have sprung to my attention.

For one thing, God separates.  God makes distinctions; God pulls apart in order to create differences.  God separates the light from the darkness; God separates the waters above – which become the rain and the snow – from the waters below – which become the oceans and lakes and river; God separates the waters and the dry land; God separates the day from the night.  For us, made in God’s image, these distinctions make sense.  Distinctions create order.  Distinctions help us to understand.  Would we know what land is if we did not know what water is?  Could we grasp the concept of light in the absence of the concept of darkness?

But God does not merely separate and distinguish.  God designs and conceives and erects and builds and fashions in abundance.  Abundance!  Diversity!  Lots, and all kinds!  Vegetation and lights and living creatures.  God creates corn and orchids and banana trees and grass; God creates the woodlands we know and the savannah grasslands and jungles of Africa and Asia. 

God creates suns and stars; bodies in space that we hardly know anything about.  A few weeks ago I heard on the radio that there are countless stars out there like our sun, stars around which planets orbit.    Did you know that there are seven main types of stars?  I learned that this week on a website called “Enchanted Learning.”  What a great name for a site devoted to learning  -- it immediately made me imagine God, absolutely enchanted and delighted by creation.

God creates living creatures: elephants and birds and alligators and tigers and polar bears and dolphins and butterflies and human beings – God creates living creatures in abundance and diversity.  God creates which swim and those which walk, and fly, and think and talk. 

And what is it about God as artist that puts God’s mark on this vast creation of distinctiveness and abundance?  How is it that God’s creation reflects who God is?  How is that God’s creation is pure gift, pouring out of love?

Relationship.  Connectedness.  An interwoven network in which all are involved, all are related, all work – and play – together.   God is a Trinitarian relationship; God’s very being is always in relationship.  We see an expression of that in this first Genesis creation story:  As God begins to create, a wind from God – the Spirit of God – sweeps across the waters.  We see another expression of God in relationship in the creation story at the beginning of the Gospel of John:   

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

The Word: Jesus Christ.  He was there – here – in the beginning, from all time.  Life came into being through him, and that life was the light of all people.

Relationship and connectedness, within God, within God as Creator, Christ, and Wind, and extended to all of creation, to the abundance of all creation, to each of its distinct parts, woven together and dependent upon one another to express the love of God the artist.  God separates; God pulls apart in order to create: light and dark, land and sea, yellow and blue.  God fashions in abundance and variety: green plants and scaly fish and sleek foxes and conversational human beings.  And God designs for relationship: the sun to warm the earth, the rain to nourish the plants, the birds to sail the skies and sing in the trees, and the human beings to care for it all. 

Yes, God is the architect and the artist of all.  And it was all very good.  Amen.

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[1] Working Preacher’s Narrative Lectionary Podcast for 9/8/13. http://www.workingpreacher.org/narrative_podcast.aspx?podcast_id=421.