Father Abraham

Scripture: Second Sunday in Lent, A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

What is the faith of Abraham?

This is no small question, given that more than half the world’s population—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—claims Abraham as the founder of our respective faiths. He is truly the father of many nations.

Abraham lived more than 4,000 years ago in Ur of the Chaldees. Like us, he lived in a broken world. Genesis teaches us that God made the world good, made all the world good, but that humankind, when given authority over Creation, royally screwed things up. Rather than be God’s partners, His stewards and sub-creators, we tried to be gods of our own—a flaw which from the beginning of history has caused untold suffering. But God still loved us, then as now, and refused to give up on His Creation.

Abraham was His secret weapon. By the time of Abraham, humanity was all a-shambles. We had, by and large, forgotten or ignored our Creator, and turned our natural instinct for religion towards worshipping creatures instead. Sun, moon, stars, money, sex, power, kings, that sort of thing. God waited until Abraham was 75 years old, an age at which, the Bible tells us, he was considered “as good as dead.” He had no children, no family to support him in his dotage. His fertile years were over, and his wife well past menopause. He was awfully spry for his age—as we shall see, God would go on to grant Abraham an unnaturally long and active life—but at 75 his days were considered done. He was, as it were, a dead end. No family, no progeny, no future.

All of a sudden God shows up, and He tells Abraham that He is not some random desert demon or local sandy spook, but indeed the Creator of all things. And God, the one true Almighty and Everlasting, gives to Abraham a mission. “I want you to leave behind your extended family and homeland, leave behind everything you’ve ever known besides your wife, and head down to the land of Canaan, crossroads of the world. And I make you this promise. You, Abraham, will become the father of many nations, and from your progeny I will raise up a priestly people, a special nation of My own possession. And through this nation, whom I will settle in the center of the world, I will bless all the nations of the earth!”

Leave everything behind at 75. Become not only old and childless but now homeless—and I will make of you many nations. And through one of them, I promise to bless all of humankind. As promises go, they don’t get much more ridiculous than that. Yet Abraham believed. Perhaps he figured he had nothing left to lose. But he heard the promise of God and had faith that God would keep His promises. So off he went.

On the one hand things went very well. Abraham indeed prospered. He gained wealth and servants and herds and, when necessary, victory in battle. Clearly God was blessing him. But the promised children did not come—indeed, not a single son. And the years rolled on. By the time Abraham hit 86, his wife Sarah grew desperate. There was no social security 4,000 years back. Without children, there would be no one to care for her or her husband when their bodies broke down. So Sarah did something surprisingly modern: she chose a surrogate mother. Sarah insisted that Abraham father a child by Sarah’s handmaid, Hagar. Thus would the child legally be considered Sarah’s, and at last she would have a son. But things did not work out quite the way she had planned. Yes, Hagar had a child, Ishmael. But Sarah found herself jealous rather than relieved, ashamed rather than honored.

God, for His part, brooked no cheating. “I’ll make Ishmael a great nation,” God granted, “but the promise will not be fulfilled by loopholes. Abraham and Sarah will have a child of their own; he will be a great nation; and that nation will bless the world.” And so the promise still stood, firm yet unfilled. And the years rolled on.

In our reading this morning, Abraham is 99 years old, and it’s been a quarter century since God made that famous promise. A quarter century of waiting and hoping and fretting that God’s chosen couple were at death’s door back when this all began. And God shows up to restate the same promise—the same thing He’s been saying for 24 years—when Abraham falls down on his face. I know this is probably a sign of reverence, but I always sort of take it as exasperation. Abraham falls down, maybe laughing and shaking his head. I’ve heard all this before, Lord. You’ve told me this story already, Lord. We’re still waiting, Lord.

But Abraham still believes. That’s the kicker. He still has faith! God has taken them this far, hasn’t He? He’s been faithful all this time to a homeless old man who was “as good as dead.” The promise will come. Someday. Somehow. He doesn’t understand God. He doesn’t get the timetable. But He trusts that God will act.

A year later, Isaac is born. Isaac, named for his mother’s laughter. Isaac, the fulfilment at long last of a hundred years of an old man’s hopes. And all is well. And all is joy.

Until the day comes when God tells Abraham to kill him.

This is the hard part. This might be the toughest story of the entire Old Testament. God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, the son he so loves. Now, child sacrifice, in and of itself, is sadly quite common in Abraham’s day, and for a long time thereafter. To deal with gods, you have to offer something of value—and what is of more value than our children? There were entire cults of death. Granted, Isaac is no longer a little boy. At this point he’s somewhere around 30. And Abraham tells his son that they must go to Moriah, the holy mountain of God, to offer a sacrifice. Isaac carries the wood. Abraham takes the knife and the fire. But Isaac asks why there is no lamb to offer up to God. Abraham replies only that “God Himself will provide the sacrifice.”

I hope you know from Sunday school that Isaac, of course, does not die. Abraham binds him and raises the knife, only to be stopped by the intervention of an angel. In centuries to come, this will be seen as the moment that God condemns human sacrifice. Other gods demand blood; the true God forbids it. The entire reason that this story bothers us is because, happily, it has worked.

But what can we say of Abraham? Not exactly father of the year, is he? You and I cannot imagine, I hope, ever killing a child, any child, in the Name of God. That is the tenure of fanatics and madmen. What was he thinking? He waited so long for this son, for this son he cherished and loved. How could he be willing to kill him? Is this the faith of Abraham, the faith which half the world seeks to emulate?

It cannot be. Christians have hemmed and hawed about this text. Unbelievers have been outraged at it. But the Jewish people, I think, best understand what is at stake. The Bible does not let us see into Abraham’s head, but the traditional Jewish interpretation is that Abraham had faith that God would raise Isaac from the dead. Had He not done so already? Had God not raised Isaac up from an old barren woman and an old barren man, “as good as dead”? Had He not proven His faithfulness in impossible situations? Had God not shown that He is master both of life and of death? Abraham doesn’t understand God. He doesn’t get the timetable. But He trusts that God will act. And that death will not have the final word over his son.

There is of course another only Son Who goes to Mt. Moriah about age 30, and carries upon His back the wood of His own sacrifice. It was through Isaac that God fulfilled the first part of His promise to Abraham, the promise to raise up a great nation. 2,000 years later it is through Jesus, the only begotten Son of the eternal Father, that God will fulfill the second half of the promise, and bless through Israel all the peoples of the world. When push came to shove, God would not accept such a sacrifice from Abraham, would not demand the death of Abraham’s only son. Alas, we had no such compunctions when we demanded the death of God’s only Son.

God Himself will provide the sacrifice. For God Himself is the sacrifice.

This is what Peter finds all too shocking in this morning’s Gospel reading. This is the horror he cannot possibly imagine, let alone condone—that God would come to earth to save all humankind, only to be shamefully executed upon a Cross. Yet such is the strangeness of our God, and such the limitless mercies of His grace, that He would take this heinous murder and transform it into the redemption of all humankind—dying to save the very people who so gleefully murdered Him.

This is the faith of Abraham: that God will raise the dead. That God will keep His promises, no matter what it takes, no matter what He must suffer either for us or by us. That God and only God can make all things right—even the death of a son.

This is the faith of Abraham. This is the faith that saves the world. That no matter what we throw at Him, God will always be faithful, always love us. He will love us all the way to the Cross, all the way to the tomb, all the way to hell and back.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.