"Testing and Trusting"
Genesis 22:1-14
Rev. Laura J. Collins
June 30, 2002
Having been on vacation and retreat for the last two weeks, I had not stayed on top of the news, other than World Cup results. Stacks of papers greeted me when I arrived home. I hurried through headlines and glanced at editorial topics. The horror continues in the Middle East. The greed and arrogance of certain business leaders and investors threatens our economy. Major environmental policies are being dismantled. But what topic seemed to get more column space than any other last week?
The wording of the Pledge of Allegiance. Should we say "under God" or not? The issue, caused by a court decision that the wording is unconstitutional, descended into farce -- with senators showing up for work early to shout the words in front of a television audience. How dare they take God out of our national pledge, one side demanded! How dare they have added God to the original pledge just to show that we're on higher moral ground than the godless commies, retorts the other.
I think the most telling voice in the argument, however, comes from those who would defend the use of the language in court. The defense for the use of God's name in the pledge is not that we should, as a nation, acknowledge our reliance on our creator (that would be the one who endowed us with inalienable rights, I believe). The defense is basically that the words should be left alone because they are meaningless -- we aren't imposing religion by saying them, because the words have "lost through rote repitition any significant religious content," according to former justice William Brennan. They are simply "ceremonial deism."
It seems to me the third commandment has something to say about that: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. To invoke God's name in a ceremonial and meaningless way would be, it seems to me, rather vain. I think the defenders of language are correct in their assessment, that most people saying "one nation under God" have no real desire for our nation to be "under God." So I clearly find myself in the camp of those who think the words should be removed, but perhaps for a different reason. Not so much to appease the atheists as to appease the people of faith -- those of us for whom the words are full of meaning. Those of us who don't want God's name bandied about carelessly and who would, in fact, stake our lives on the need to put ourselves under God.
What does it mean to be a people under God? Well, today's lectionary text from Genesis gives us a pretty graphic picture of it. The story is the testing of Abraham. Abraham, you may remember, is the ancestor of the three major monotheistic religions, who followed God's call to go to a far country with his wife Sarah to establish themselves there and begin a new nation. They had to trust in God's absurd promise that Sarah would bear a child in her old age and when she finally did, they named him Laughter: Isaac. He was, of course, the apple of their eyes.
Now God tells Abraham to take Sarah's only child, this child of the promise, this child of their old age, and to go to a mountain and sacrifice him. To murder him, that is, as an offering to God. What kind of test is this?
This story demands the question, what kind of God would make such a horrible demand? And it demands of us, who would worship such a God?
In the past month I've been at two different clergy gatherings where this text came up -- knowing that it was in the lectionary and that some of us would be faced with preaching on it. Some chose not to include it in the day's readings and to preach on the gospel instead. One noted that even Fred Craddock, one of the great preachers of our century, has stated that this is the one Biblical text he will not preach.
One preacher said, "Well, God's call is hard! We have to preach that!" And another added, "And isn't the point that we have to put God before everything and everyone else?" I noted that the people making these comments did not have children.
Now I was not as old as Sarah when I had Luke, nor did I feel that the future of God's promise was hanging on my ability to bear a child. Nonetheless, at 35, I had been trying for several years to become pregnant and certain physical issues had made the possibility seem slim. So when Luke was born, he did indeed seem to us to be a child of God's promise.
When I read this story I find it simultaneously repulsive almost beyond bearing and far too close to home. I believe that God has called me to be a minister. I certainly wouldn't keep at this kooky institution if I didn't believe that with all my heart. And I believe that God has called me to be a mother. There have been more moments than I care to recall when I felt like following my call in the church did mean sacrificing my son. Not through murder, of course, but through neglect, unavailability, and the need to be with my "other family," the congregation.
Now, at the risk of being a bit overdramatic (and it wouldn't be the first time, I assure you), I confess that there have been days when I felt a bit like Abraham at the bottom of that hill. I have looked up the path I've been called to walk and I think, "How could God possibly demand this of me? What is he thinking?" And let me assure you, in those moments, God is always a "he!" There have been nights when I have screamed at God for pulling me in two seemingly opposing directions.
So my resistance to preaching this text is deep, wide and personal. But here we are: reading about Abraham receiving the call to immolate his son for God. And the next line reads, "So Abraham ... went ..." We don't hear the anger, the horror, the disbelief, the questions. God said go and Abraham set out. That's what we read. We don't know if Abraham got any sleep that night. Or whether he told Sarah -- though I doubt that he did. We don't hear about whatever spiritual struggle must have taken place inside of him. We don't know what he is thinking.
The only clue we get is when Isaac speaks in the text. They are traveling up the mountain together with the wood for a burnt offering when finally Isaac asks, "Father?" And Abraham replies to his son in the same words he used to rely to God, "Here I am." The boy asks, "Where is the lamb for the offering?"
What tumult must have choked Abraham's chest at that moment. How hard it must have been to get the words through his throat, swollen with grief and fear and incomprehension. But he responds, "God ... God will provide the lamb for the offering, my son." It is the only clue we get to what is keeping Abraham walking up that hill.
Somehow, in spite of what he believes he has heard -- that he must kill his beloved son -- Abraham trusts that God will provide a way out.
As it turns out, that is exactly what happens. An angel of God stops the execution and a ram is provided for the offering -- caught in the thicket near the altar. An offering provided just at the right place, just at the right time.
So what are we to learn from this horrible tale? Well, there is that message that God's call is hard. No getting around that. And that, yes, we must put our trust in God above all our other loves and hopes and dreams. That is there, too. And certainly the final message in the text is that God provides. That is what Abraham named the place. Just as God provided a child in Sarah's old age, God provided an offering.
But still, we are left with this terrible question: why would God do such a thing? Do I want to worship a God who would even suggest such a need?
I don't have an easy answer for those questions, nor a good one. But I do have one last question: Did Abraham hear God right? In our text, the message is very clear: take Isaac and offer him as a burnt offering. There is no wiggle room. And yet ...
And yet, in my own life, in my own most sincere moments of desiring to do God's will, in my own times of most clearly sensing God's call, I have not always gotten it right. I have known I needed to start up a certain mountain path, thinking I knew what would happen at the top only to find that God had changed the possibilities for me along the way. Maybe I feel like I'm sacrificing Luke, only to discover down the road that I was giving him life. I honestly don't know.
Here's what I do know: to live "under God" is a demanding call. It can even be a treacherous one. I'm not sure our nation is ready to walk that path, no matter how badly we may need to. And, our egos and emotions being what they are, we can't always be sure we're doing what God desires, even when we think we know.
But there is one thing we can be sure of: God provides. God provides. God provides.
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