What’s ours to give

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (July 2, 2023) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. A video of the entire worship service is available here.

What are we talking about? View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Proper 8, Year A

Sacrifice of Isaac, from a 15th-century Armenian Gospel book, via Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

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God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 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.” Genesis 22:1-2

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.

One of the ways that we can look at scripture is to look at the Bible we have as a collection of testimonies about how people have encountered and understood God over time in many places and in contexts that are in some ways the same as our own and in some ways different. It's also helpful to understand that our own understanding of who God is changes over time. The Bible doesn't always agree with itself about who God is and what it is that God requires or expects of us.

It's especially helpful when we read a story like this story, about Abraham and his son, to remember that this is one story. It was chosen and selected when the stories of Genesis were woven together. There were people who understood and believed—as we still do—that this story was somehow worth including, as hard as it is and as difficult as it may be to reconcile it with other testimonies about who God is.

What are we to do with this story about a God who demands a sacrifice like this: "Take your son, your only son, whom you love," and kill that son. What are we to do with that story?

We read this story today alongside St. Paul's testimony in the letter to the Romans, where he talks about presenting ourselves, presenting our members, the parts of our bodies, to do the work of God, to do the work of righteousness. So when Abraham stretched out his hand to take the knife, what work was he doing? That hand: was that the hand presented to God? Was it a hand presented for righteousness, or not? What are we to make of this?

We know that our God is a God of love, first and foremost. So when we read this story, one way we might understand it is to understand it as a story about somebody who believed with all his heart that God was calling him to do this. I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference that in the end, at the very moment that his hand is stretched out to take that knife that he hears a voice say, "Stop. That's enough!" Because by then his son is already bound and his son already knows what was about to happen. And as someone said to me after the eight o'clock service said, even after all these years, Isaac is still in therapy.

The damage was already done. The damage was done to that relationship. I wonder not only what damage was done to the relationship between Abraham and his son, between Abraham and his wife Sarah, but also between Abraham and God. What had happened when Abraham believed that this was what God wanted him to do, even though he was stopped at the very last moment. How did the rest of his life with his family, with his son, with his God, go? What are we to make of all of this?

We know that our God is a God of love. And when it comes down to it, when we ask ourselves what it is that God requires of us, we, because we are followers of Jesus, we need to look at the ultimate testimony of who God is and what God requires of us. And that ultimate testimony is the person, the incarnation, the ministry, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. There are many testimonies in the Bible, in our own lives about who God is and what God requires of us, but for Christians, as followers of Jesus, when it comes down to it, when in doubt, we look to Jesus: his incarnation, his life and ministry, his teaching, his death, and his resurrection.

One of the things that Jesus teaches us is that when it came right down to it, when it was time for the redemption of the world, time for reconciliation, time for God to show humanity what a relationship with God really looks like, there was only one thing that God laid down for that relationship: and that was God. God laid down only God.

In all the anguish about Abraham: YOUR son, YOUR only son who YOU love—Abraham's sacrifice isn't just about Abraham! And it's easy to forget that there's someone who he is sacrificing; someone who he is willing to sacrifice for the sake of his relationship with God.

And I don't know if this is true for any of us, but there's a growing number of people who are deconstructing or stepping away from Christianity because of their experience that it was them or ones they loved who were laid down on the altar for the sake of somebody else's relationship with God. For instance, people who are part of the queer community. When the Church sought to be righteous, the Church was willing to sacrifice certain lives in the Church for the sake of a relationship with God.

The testimony of this story of Abraham is that ultimately this is not what God requires of us. Part of what I think we can take away is that if we find ourselves tempted, for the sake of our relationship with God, to lay down somebody else's life, then we are not following the example of Jesus. Because again, no matter how much it hurts us, that life is not ours to give.

When it came down to it, when it was time for God to show us what love looks like and what God requires; when God modeled to us what God expects, it was God that laid down God's life that it might be taken up again. Greater love has no man or person than this: that they laid down their own life for their friends. So Abraham's sacrifice—which was the willingness to sacrifice what he loved—but in the end we find it did not belong to him, so he couldn't give it to God.

God will give God's self to us, and what we have to offer in return is to offer ourselves, present our members, all the parts of our bodies. In the Rite One Eucharist, we say, "Here, O God, we offer and present unto thee ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be unto thee a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice."

There is a test, a test of our faith, not are we willing to sacrifice somebody else's life, but are we willing to give over our life for the love of God and for the sake of the healing of the world. Amen.