Genesis Chapter 22:1-14

[1] Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.

[2] Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

[3] Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.

[4] On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.

[5] He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

[6] Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together,

[7] Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

[8] Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.

[9] When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.

[10] Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

[11] But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.

[12] "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

[13] Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.

[14] So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."

Let us pray, Lord, may the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you as we seek to understand your word. Amen.

Our scripture lesson this morning, The Binding of Isaac, is a very odd story. I remember taking a counseling seminar that was taught from a pastoral perspective. The seminar had in attendance many secular students who had very little religious training. They were attending the seminar for continuing education credit but were suspicious of the institution because so many of their clients had deviant religious belief systems. I think these students, all counselors by profession, were trying to sort out which parts of their client’s narratives were orthodox religious beliefs and which parts were deviant beliefs evident of a psychiatric problem. The instructor shocks the class by introducing this story about a father that ties up his son, places him on fire wood, and raises his knife to kill the son! Several members of the class were shocked by the story. They were noticeably upset; their jaws dropped and their faces lost all color. Several verbally objected that rational institutions should never even repeat this story. I grew up with this story, so unfortunately I have more trouble remembering that this is a shocking story rather than finding the shocking story troubling.

Nine years ago today, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bath tub on June 20, 2001. The children four boys and an infant daughter ranged in age from six months to seven years old. The news story still shocks our society. In researching the story, as writers sought to find explanations to this horrifying tale, evidence drew from the disciplines of law, psychology, medicine and religion. Some blamed the husband for going against medical advice by leaving the mother unsupervised for one hour each day to go to work. Some blamed the psychiatrist in the treatment and release of the mother. And some suggest the family pastor should bear some of the responsibility due to his peculiar religious teaching.

Religion can sometimes turn dark. In the story of Abraham we find a man who was tight with God. Abraham walked with God and they talked together. And yet something goes wrong. Abraham believes he must sacrifice his son Isaac. Again we have lots of theories. The traditional explanation for telling this story is to explain why Israel’s religious practices did away with child sacrifice when some archeological evidence suggests that other Middle Eastern cultures in that period may have still had the barbaric practice.

One of the students in the seminar asked, “How old was Isaac?” From the story we know he was clearly old enough to know the contemporary religious practices of his day. He knew you needed an animal to sacrifice and he was old enough to carry the wood. The location in the overall narrative indicates he was still a young man, not yet old enough to have married. Abraham arranges for a wife for Isaac later in the story. Does the story make a difference if Isaac was child or young man? Perhaps those of us who are parents raising teenagers can relate to Abraham and understand that the thought of killing our children sometimes may not sound that far-fetched. The point is Isaac’s father went to the extreme. Abraham went so far as to tie him up and raised the knife to kill him. Unless the son is so traumatized by the incident that the psychology of the brain masks the painful memory, a son does not forget something like that. Besides the memory of the incident, the servants were left behind. Who else but the son was left there to tell the story? A family story of tragedy, handed down by children and grandchildren.

So what does the twenty-first century do with this story four thousand years later? As a rational human being, I want to analyze this narrative. We have a widely acknowledge hero of the faith, Father Abraham, trying to kill his son. I suppose context is important for this story. Someone worshipping here this morning may not be familiar with the biography of Abraham. Let me briefly summarize the stories we find in the Book of Genesis about Abraham.

Abraham lived approximately four thousand years ago. He was an immigrant or foreigner who moved his family from the main river valley in modern Iraq to the region we now call Israel. According to scripture Abraham had a very personal relationship with God. The hymn “In the Garden” comes to mind because of the refrain “and he walks with me and he talks with me and tells me I am his own.” That is the kind of relationship the Book of Genesis describes between Abraham and God. God & Abraham walk together and talk together and God makes some important promises. We use the religious term “covenant” to describe these special promises. God tells Abraham to uproot his family and move to an unknown place God will show him. Today we know that place as Israel but Abraham had no prior knowledge and only went with God on faith. Abraham and his first wife Sarah had no children at this point, so Abraham appears to have adopted his nephew Lot. The land was too dry to support both herds, so the men parted company. Lot took the fertile land in the Jordan River valley and settled in the region Sodom. Abraham took the high country and settled in Hebron. At this point God makes a several promises to Abraham which establishes a covenant. God promises Abraham, who is now in his eighties with no children, many descendants, “as many descendents as stars in the sky.” God promises Abraham that his descendents will control the land we know as modern Israel. And God promises to be their God. The practice of circumcision is introduced as a physical sign of the covenant.

This brings us to Chapter 18 in the Book of Genesis. We have a curious tale there, which I believe shapes the context for the later story we heard in our scripture lesson about the Binding of Isaac. Abraham is sitting in his tent, when God shows up with two angels. Abraham models exemplary hospitality for his guests. Keep in mind that hospitality becomes a core value in the Middle Eastern culture. Or perhaps this story was told to underscore the cultural value of hospitality. In the story the four gentlemen sit down to dinner together. After dinner, Abraham & God take a stroll together. God shares with Abraham concerns God has over accusations God had heard against the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham raises the question what if fifty innocent people lived in Sodom? Would God punish the innocent with the guilty? God admits, no, for fifty innocent people the city would be spared. So Abraham pushes the argument, what about forty-five, then forty, then thirty, then twenty and finally ten. And God agrees for ten innocent people Sodom would be saved. The two angels are sent to investigate or dare I say, the two angels are sent to test Sodom. Our God is God who tests us. Remember the story of Job and how God put Job’s faithfulness to the test? Or even in the Lord’s Prayer we said earlier this morning, “Lead us not into temptation.” In other words, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to keep us from hard testing. We ask God, please do not test us but deliver us instead from evil. Needless to say the city of Sodom failed the test. In contrast to Abraham’s extraordinary model of hospitality, we find Sodom described as a place without limits and prone to violence. Instead of hospitality the strangers find hostility. Only Lot and his family welcome and protect the angels as best as one can in an inhospitable and dangerous environment. In return for their hospitality, God protects only Lot and his two daughters who survive the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Finally, when Abraham is one hundred years old, the son God promised, Isaac is born. This brings us to our scripture lesson this morning. As you can see in our bulletin, the passage begins, “Sometime later God tested Abraham.” The passage is clearly a trial of some kind for our hero. Rabbi David Greenspoon pointed out to me that tests can be passed or failed.

Most preachers I have heard assume that since Abraham is clearly a heroic figure in the Bible that somehow Abraham heroically passed this temptation. I do not think so. I have come to the conclusion Abraham failed the test.

I believe Abraham failed the test because following this incident, the mother Sara and the son Isaac leave the father Abraham. They move to another tent and start a new life. Maybe in that culture it was not called a divorce but she sets up her own house in Hebron and apparently never speaks to her husband again. Abraham settles in Beersheba perhaps because even in his culture his odd behavior was considered abuse. Perhaps we are reading too much into gaps but we only have a story in scripture where Abraham later goes to Sarah’s village after her death to make her funeral arrangements.

In scripture, God no longer appears to him, Abraham’s wife no longer speaks to him, and Abraham’s son no longer lives with him. To me, it sounds like Abraham failed the test and his life fell apart. Here was man that spoke up to God in behalf of a bunch of sinners like the people of Sodom. Abraham intercedes in behalf of strangers in Gomorrah, arguing against God about killing the innocent but does not even question God about killing his own son. This does not make sense. Something in Abraham has gone terribly wrong. Even in a hero of the faith, with intimate knowledge of God, his religion can turn to the dark side.

And yet God is faithful. Even though Abraham failed the test, God is still blessing Abraham’s descendent. This is where we find the Good News. God keeps God’s promises even when we fail God’s tests. Perhaps this is the best illustration of God’s grace. When we fail, not if we fail, because we do fail; and if we are honest we have to admit we have failed, God still loves us. God still loves us. I do not know why God tests us. Perhaps God tests us because our God is a jealous God and wants us to have no other God in our life. I know God tests us and I wish God would not. However, I believe God wants to be in relationship with us. God wants fidelity in that relationship. Because we have failed, God sent God’s only son, Jesus to restore our relationship. From a Christian perspective, God did go through with the sacrifice that Abraham did not. God sacrificed God’s only begotten son on the cross. And as Christians we believe that this Jesus rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to walk with us and talk with us and tell us we are his own. Like Abraham, we can also have that same kind of intimate relationship with Jesus. Sometimes that is scary because when we walk with Jesus, we walk the edge. In any given moment we can pass or fail. As parent we can feel like we failed in raising our children properly. As children we can let our parents down in not accomplishing our dreams. As employers we can make decisions that jeopardize our promises made through pension plans. As employees we can fail to anticipate catastrophic explosions that pour millions of gallons of oil into a gulf. And we have to live with the consequences of our actions. However, we can get up in the morning and face another day because we have a friend in Jesus. Jesus reminds us we are loved and forgiven. And if we trust and listen, sometimes we can hear that still small voice opening for us new possibilities. The power of prayer is not so much in our ability to articulate the needs of others and our own needs so much as the power of prayer is the opportunity to hear God speak to us, to our very soul. But be careful, sometimes we are given a dream that makes this life worth the living as we may hear “you will have abundant blessing – as many as stars in the sky” and sometimes we are given a nightmare and are told we are “to kill our beloved son” that tests our faith.

We have hope and the cross is our symbol of hope. The cross has two dimensions: a vertical dimension and a horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension points to our relationship with God. The up and down line reminds us of the relationship between creator and all creation. The horizontal dimension points to our relationship with each other. The left and right bar reminds us of our church, Christ’s community of believers. The horizontal dimension can be an important check on the vertical relationship. The faith community confirms a call from Jesus into ministry or provides a correction when we misunderstand something we thought may have come from God. When God called Abraham to go to a promised land, the community embraced that calling and followed. When God told Abraham to kill his son, Abraham acted alone and misunderstood the test.

Our salvation is in Jesus Christ and our hope is in the community of believers. God has called us who are gathered here this morning to this faith community. Faith United Methodist Church is on the brink of a new journey into an unknown future, an undiscovered country under the leadership of a new pastor. We will receive all that he has to offer. We will embrace him and his family. We will seek that future together or we will splinter and die. Pastor Tom Parkinson will NOT be our savior. Our hope is in Christ holding this faith community of believers together. The pastor as a job to do but so does every member of this congregation. If we do not do our part and pull our own weight, then we have no hope. In The United Methodist Church, we itinerate our pastors to keep the real power in the hands of the local church. If we are going to make disciples for Jesus Christ in Fox Chapel, our power must cooperate with the pastor, the denomination and the Holy Spirit.

At Annual Conference I saw hope in the Zimbabwe Partnership Covenant Agreement. Bishop Nhiwatiwa put the covenant relationship between the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference and the Zimbabwe Annual Conferences in the context of the African concept of Chabadza. The symbol of Chabadza is a hoe. In the African community a farmer takes several hoes out to the field and begins to dig. When a stranger comes along and asks for directions, all the stranger gets is directions. But when a neighbor from the community comes along, the neighbor picks up the extra hoe and begins to dig. The neighbor begins digging beside the farmer and they build a relationship. They share Chabadza. They share community until the neighbor must move on down the road. The United Methodists in Zimbabwe are not looking for a handout. The Bishop promised us that his people will not be sitting on their hands waiting for us to bail them out. We will find the people of Zimbabwe plowing their fields and we are invited to join them in accomplishing their dreams. In helping Zimbabwe annual conference accomplish their dreams we will accomplish our hopes in Western Pennsylvania for making disciples for Jesus Christ.

So this morning, we looked at Father Abraham. And on this Father’s Day we may remember our own Fathers. Some of us admire the man that raised us. Others regret this day in the realization that our Father’s have sometimes fallen short. As a father, I know I have sometimes fallen short. However, I also know that God our Father still loves me and God continues to be faithful even when we fail. Just what God’s faithfulness means in the context of this community remains a mystery. We have not yet worked out that future. But in the meantime know that God the Father loves you. Amen and So be it.

Please stand and join me in the singing of “Hymn of Promise”

By Rev. John R. Wilson

Western PA Conference

The United Methodist Church