God Shed His Grace on Thee Genesis 22:1-14 Rev. Matt Nieman July 2, 2017 Today we come to one of the most difficult stories to accept in all of scripture. It s so difficult that many preachers have a tendency to not preach on it when it comes around on this Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary. When I considered whether to include it as a focus today, I decided because you re here on a summer Sunday when not a lot of other people are, you can handle this text from Genesis 22. It s a story that makes us cringe more than a little bit. It s a story that makes us wonder why God would choose to take the action God does: The call of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, only to call it off at the last possible moment. Here s how Methodist pastor and author Will Wilimon analyzes this story in his publication Pulpit Resource: Our story takes place in the dim, distant days of Israel s prehistory. Abraham and his wife Sarah, even though they are very old and childless, have been promised a child from which a great family would arise. This family (Israel) would bless all of the world s families. When that child is born, Isaac is a sure sign of God s blessing on Abraham. This child is Abraham s hope, his only hope. When little Isaac is a young boy, God (the same God who gave Abraham and Sarah the gift of Isaac) calls to Abraham, to which Abraham faithfully replies, I m here. Then the shocking assignment: Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him up as an entirely burned offering there on one of the mountains that I will show you. How can this be? Can it be that the God who has so miraculously loved Abraham by giving him a son can now demand that son s life? It s unthinkable. Maybe that s why Abraham seems to do so little thinking. Early the next morning he saddles his donkey, gathers wood for the offering s fire and sets out with Isaac and a couple others for the place God had told him to go. When they get to Mount Moriah, Abraham and Isaac
leave the others and, with the wood and a knife in hand, set off up the mountain to worship. Isaac said to his father, My father? and Abraham said, I m here, my son. Isaac said, Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the entirely burned offering? Abraham said, God will see to it, my son. There, on the mountain Abraham built an altar, laid the wood, bound his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Abraham raised the knife to kill his son, but the Lord s messenger called out to Abraham from heaven, Abraham? Abraham?... Don t stretch out your hand against the young man, and don t do anything to him. I now know that you revere God. There was a ram caught in a thicket. The ram was killed and offered on the fire instead of Isaac. Whew. What a story! It s a story that has always raised more questions in the mind of Israel and the church than we ve ever been able fully to answer. How could Abraham possibly have been so confused as to think that God wanted the sacrifice of his only son? What would lead him to imagine that the God who gave him the most precious gift would now turn and demand that gift be given back? Did the writer of Genesis believe that God puts people through terrible ordeals such as the one on Mount Moriah in order to see if they will do anything God tells them to do? In Hebrews, Abraham is made the great exemplar of the Christian faith, even though Abraham never met Christ. Maybe faith is unquestioning obedience. In the story, God commands and Abraham obeys without receiving an explanation or giving an argument. The text says, Take your son, your only son, as if to underscore the magnitude of what is being asked. In other words, take your future, relinquish control of the significance of your life, your hope for yourself and your family, and give it all back to God. Lest we be numb to the shock of this story, we must note how it ends. Abraham remembered Mount Moriah not as the place where he committed a terrible act in the name of God but where he dared to venture
forth, trust God, and meet God. He found that the Lord not only orders and commands but also provides. Maybe Abraham was confused about God, thinking that his God was like the gods of the people around him who actually practiced child sacrifice, offering up their children to their angry gods. Then Abraham met the true and living God, the one who is less into sacrifice and violence and more into providing and blessing. Or maybe Abraham discovered that if he would attempt, step by step, to obey God, to place himself at God s disposal, God would provide and give him what he needed to be faithful, to stay in relationship with the God who had commandeered his future. God would provide, that is, God would make a way when Abraham thought there was no way. (Willimon, Pulpit Resource, July 2, 2017) We learn through this story today that God is both ridiculously demanding and a ridiculously generous provider. Now, let s take this story and set it aside for a few moments. We ll come back to it. This is Independence Day weekend, a great time to appreciate the blessing of being Americans. My dad served in the army and instilled in me a love of country from an early age. I was taught explicitly as a kid how to act whenever the flag was raised during the playing of the National Anthem: with reverence and honor for what the flag stands for. There was to be no messing around when that flag was presented and that anthem was played. Too many people died for what that flag stands for. The last congregation I served in Nebraska was a stone s throw from Offutt Air Force Base and Strategic Command. That church was full of military veterans who served this country heroically. Of all the funerals I did for members of that church, I d say at least a third were conducted with full military honors the folding of the flag, the three-gun salute, and the playing of taps by an honor guard. There was the funeral for Buck Eidenmiller who landed on Omaha Beach in 1941. He fought courageously and ended up supporting the effort as a mess hall cook. In fact, he cooked so well, officers from other units
would often search his mess hall out. When he returned home from the war, his family often asked him why he didn t cook at home. He said, I only cook for hundreds at a time. There was also the funeral for a young man named Chuck Radosta, a Navy pilot who we buried at the National Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a very cold January afternoon. He left behind a young wife and two young girls who to this day miss him terribly but give thanks for his life as an American patriot. When you re around people like this, you can t help but be in awe for what this nation stands for a country so great that so many risked and sacrificed their lives for it. Last week, we went sightseeing in Washington, D.C. While Jacob had been there before on a school trip, the rest of us had never been there. It was fabulous in many ways: We saw the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, we saw the Nationals play the Cubs at Nationals Park, we went to some of the many, many incredible museums that are there. But by far, the best part of the trip for me was our visits to Arlington National Cemetery and the many memorials. While we re certainly not a perfect country with progress left to make, we re a very good and noble people who have been called to reach greater heights of freedom and justice. The Lincoln Memorial reminds you of that, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial reminds you of that. And then you walk to the memorials that honor those who fought for the freedoms we enjoy like the Vietnam Memorial and the World War II Memorial and you are overcome with gratitude for these people who fought and died to ensure the freedoms we enjoy. With all of the rancor and division we have in our country today, a visit to the nation s capital enhances and bolsters your confidence in how great America still is. My patriotism is soaring after last week. On this Independence Day weekend, it s good to give thanks to God for all that s good about America. I know you all join me in giving thanks for this country. We regularly give thanks during worship for the blessings we enjoy as a free people in America.
We love our country; many of you have served in the military as a response to that love, some of your children and grandchildren have served. We recognize our veterans every year, we sing patriotic songs in worship occasionally (we re closing today by singing the Navy hymn). And yet, when we gather in this space on Sunday mornings and other occasions, we do so not to worship America (as much as we love America) but to worship God. We worship the God of Abraham who, we discovered today, demands so much of us (like he strangely demanded the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham) and who gives so much to us (God s sacrifice of his only Son, Jesus, for all humanity is the ultimate proof). It is God who has intervened in the world and helped create this nation we all love and every other nation that promotes peace, freedom, and justice for all. It is God who shed his grace on us in abundance. When we walk into this worship space, there should be no doubt as to who we worship. It is the triune God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As Americans, we should always give thanks for the freedoms we enjoy even the freedom to behave in ways we adamantly disagree with. But when we worship on Sundays in this space, we only worship one entity the God who calls us to extreme obedience and the God who loves us outlandishly. All of us are united as proud Americans; but more importantly, all of us are united as beloved children of God. Amen.