|
"Trust God But Stay
Vigilant" Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – June 26, 2011 Centenary United
Psalm 22:1-11; Genesis 22:1-14
This morning we are going to be discussing this remarkable story
of Abraham and how it was that he almost sacrificed his only son, Isaac,
to honor a request from God. Our lesson indicates that God was
testing Abraham to see if he
would remain obedient. When I was a
young boy in Sunday school, this story was among the most horrifying
ones that I was exposed to because of what God asked Abraham to do.
I thought to myself, “Why did God need to test Abraham,
particularly when God knew each time a sparrow falls and has the hairs
on our head numbered?” It was not until
I arrived at Seminary that I gained a far different perspective on how
to study the Old Testament.
I had the privilege to study under a seasoned, well-informed professor
of Old Testament, Dr. Lowell Hazzard.
When we encountered stories such as these, he used them to
illustrate why it is so important to understand the context in which
such accounts were written. He reminded us that while the Scriptures were inspired by God, the authors were confined by cultural and religious boundaries that had been established by centuries of storytelling. Today, because of the way we understand the nature of God, these authors appear quite primitive in their definitions of God. Equally important to our understanding
of the Old Testament, we must also learn that religious leaders often
assumed the authority to speak for God.
This
divine posturing
by leaders gave them the
authority to be the spokesperson on God’s activity.
However, this power often resulted in storytelling filled with
images of God that are very different from our points of view.
For example,
according to the author of Genesis, when God was irritated with people,
he simply killed them.
(Genesis 38:7 and 10) In Exodus
there is a verse telling readers that God tried to kill Moses. (Exodus
4:24) The Book of Numbers
depicts God as a murderous tyrant. The writer records how God purposely
spread a plague among the Israelites that killed 14,700 people. (Number
16:43f) In another account,
God is described as unleashing poisonous snakes to kill the Israelites.
(Numbers 21:6) This same
author wrote that God gave Moses the order to kill the leaders of It is reported in
I Samuel that soon after the prophet anointed Saul to be the first King
of Israel, he gave these instructions, “Now listen to what the Lord God
Almighty says. He is going
to punish the people of Amalek because their ancestors opposed the
Israelites when they were coming out of By understanding
the cultural context of the Jews during these tribal times and how
leaders frequently told their listeners, “Thus saith the Lord,” we might
better grasp what was happening during the Abraham story, an account
that described a challenging personal struggle. To illustrate the
primitive nature of religious customs, child sacrifice was a common
practice in the environment where Abraham lived.
Abraham was subject to this social pressure.
This pressure would have
sounded something like this, “As the leader of my people, who am I to
withhold from God my only son when others are deeply committed to
sacrificing their children.” Abraham was not
at all certain that this is what God had in mind.
We find this hint when
Isaac asked, “I see that you have the coals and the wood, but where is
the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham responded, “God himself will
provide one.” There can be
little doubt that Abraham was remaining vigilant for an alternative the
two might encounter as he and Isaac made their way to the It is interesting
that the writer of Genesis could not bring himself to write that God
showed up at the critical moment of testing.
It was an angel that called out, “Abraham, do not hurt the boy.
I now know that you honor and obey God because you have not kept
back your only son.” (Gen. 22:12)
Just then, Abraham saw a ram whose horns were entangled in a
thicket. He used this animal as his sacrifice.
Biblical scholars
have often speculated about the
damage this experience caused to the relationship of Abraham and
Isaac. Isaac had to be
profoundly traumatized by witnessing his father binding him, placing him
on top of the wood and then raising a knife to kill him.
Go back to this scene.
Put yourself on the pile of wood as you realize that your father
was going to sacrifice you to appease God.
After this event, the Scriptures feature very little interaction
between the two for the rest of Abraham’s life.
As we have noticed in our lifetime,
people have evolved in their understanding of God’s nature.
God is no longer looked upon as a being that desires to
direct traffic between
nations and people. In Abraham’s time, the Jews’ religious heritage
taught that everything was ordained by God.
Today, people no longer believe that God punishes communities for
their sins by creating
earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and fires.
Not all
believers, however, are of this persuasion.
Many Christians still cling to
the angry images of God because they are Scripture.
They are not interested in the context of these stories.
We see examples of this everywhere. Just over a month
ago we recall the people that came to Why is our
understanding of God so different today?
If God is the same yesterday, today and forever, what has
changed? The answer is the
message of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ ministry
was committed to helping his listeners discover how to live in
the Jesus never
preached on political issues. He never addressed the issues of taxes
except to say, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto
God, the things that are God’s.” He was never critical of the Roman
military’s presence. He never condemned Herod’s life-style as John the
Baptist had done. There is no
evidence that Jesus ever engaged in animal sacrifice. He never made any
reference that the Jews were “God’s chosen people.” His focus was on the
spirit by which his disciples lived.
Jesus completely changed the picture of God . Jesus’ preaching was about what would happen to his listeners when they changed the quality of their inner world. He stressed that God’s love for each of us cannot be earned. It is unconditional! The responsibility is ours to open ourselves to that love and once we experience it to share it with the world. These thoughts were revolutionary and went against everything that had been taught and practiced by the Jews for centuries. Abraham was
living in a very different time.
The writer of Genesis, however, captured Abraham’s struggle by
creating imagery that would make absolute sense to his readers. In the Book of
Job, the story of Job’s inner struggle features a wager God made with
Satan. Satan said, “Would
Job worship you if he got nothing out of it?
Suppose you let me take everything he has away from him.
He will curse you to your face.”
God gives Satan permission to test Job’s faithfulness to God by
destroying his possessions, his family and his health.
In the end, Job held on to his
faith and won his struggle. Clearly this is
another test of character that was every bit as powerful as the struggle
Abraham experienced. What
is different is the language and symbols used by the authors to describe
who was causing the struggle.
For Abraham it was God.
For Job it was Satan.
All of us still
struggle from time to time and become challenged in our decision making.
Today, we use different imagery to describe these troublesome moments.
In seeking solutions, a number of us seek God’s guidance.
What would we think if God spoke to us very clearly and said?
What I want for
you is to be happy and enthusiastic about your life.
Look within yourselves and use everything you find there to make
a healing different in the lives of those around you.
What matters to me is not
the nobility of what you do, but the spirit in which you do it.
Follow your passion to be of service and let me be your cheerleader. So often we find this too
simple an answer, but we did not incarnate into this world to have God
micro-manage every decision we make.
The challenging, difficult times are the ones that help us to
develop our character qualities and our skills of spirit.
Some times we pray and pray and pray and we are greeted by
silence from God. What is
the meaning of unanswered prayer?
Is it that God does not care when we
suffer?
Or is it that God interprets our
suffering very differently
and knows that what we are experiencing are
growing pains. Once, a young boy
brought to his grandfather a butterfly cocoon.
Soon the time came for the creature to hatch from its shell.
The little boy watched as the young Monarch exhausted itself,
trying to escape from its tightly woven shell.
Suddenly all activity in the
cocoon stopped. The boy
grew impatient and wanted to help the butterfly’s effort by cutting
several fibers of the cocoon with his pocket knife.
The grandfather said, “If you cut any of those fibers, Michael,
you will rob that Monarch of its ability to fly.
Its wings develop their strength from its struggle to free
itself. Patience, Michael,
patience.” Perhaps we can
better understand the Abraham and Isaac story when we understand what
was happening within Abraham’s own inner struggle with how best to honor
God. Just as the
authors of Genesis and Job used different images to describe the
struggles within Abraham and Job, so each of us could use different
ideas and symbols to describe our own personal struggles, particularly
if we feel abandoned by God as did the author of Psalm 22, the Psalm
Jesus was quoting from the Cross. In closing we are
going to look at one more illustration about human struggles.
As you listen to this story, note the different symbol used in
describing the struggles common to all of us.
One
day a wise Indian chief was teaching his grandson how to please
the Great Spirit with the
choices the young man would be making during the course of his life.
As the two walked along the shoreline of St. David’s
Within each of us every day there is a mighty struggle taking place
between two wolves.
The one wolf is filled with selfish desires, with a need to get even when it feels hurt, an appetite to use others for personal gratification, a hunger and thirst to have what other people have, to engage in deception and manipulation to become the alpha wolf of the entire pack.
The
other wolf is filled with contentment and peace.
It longs to help others in the pack to find food, water and
lodging. It seeks to bring
stability when others are troubled.
It strives to teach others by example, not with words that can be
misunderstood. This wolf
teaches others how to keep the land healthy so it will continue to
produce abundantly. The
grandson thought about this struggle for quite some time. Then he broke
his silence and asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win this mighty
struggle?” The chief answered,
“The one you choose to feed.” While our journey may take us to a number of unexpected places, like
Abraham, we must always keep vigilant for new opportunities that
resonate with what is going on inside of us.
Our faith invites us to
trust God implicitly, to be unafraid in our struggles, to be at peace as
our circumstances take us where they will, to remain vigilant for
opportunities to change how we think and to allow the outcome of our
lives to be up to our Creator.
|
|