I Don't Like It!

Genesis 22:1-14

After these things 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.”

So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together. When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

It’s horribly disturbing… this story from Genesis… and I don’t like it. I don’t. A “testing” God is not the sort of God I’d pick. A “go kill your son” God is not the sort of God I’d pick either! And while we’re on what I don’t like, I also don’t like that Abraham mindlessly responds to God’s insane request to kill his son, by saying, “Alright, sure.” I don’t like ANY of it. But, there it is… this horribly disturbing, awfully confusing, terrible story… just sitting there… demanding that we deal with it. Have I mentioned I don’t like it?

Well, I don’t! Because it just sits there.  It doesn’t suggest or even ask… it INSISTS that faith in THIS God will not be simple nor can it be casual. It will be deadly serious… “Go and sacrifice your son” serious… and God must be taken as God is. God is not a buffet from which we can pick and choose the parts we want and leave the rest behind. This story DEMANDS that somehow, we, like Abraham, hold all of God together in our faith. The God who makes impossible and deadly demands, AND ALSO the God who promises to provide not just life, but a life that is as abundant as the stars in the sky and as infinite as the grains of sand on the beach. Sound impossible? You’re in good company! I haven’t been able to do it! Even Martin Luther confessed he couldn’t do it, but still the story insists that is exactly what we must do to be faithful!

Because it’s SO VERY HARD we often try to cheat and just pick just the one part of God we want for the moment. Sometimes we pick the God of deadly demands, insisting that God hate exactly the same people we hate. In those moments we dismiss any idea that God is, at the very same moment, also a God of unlimited, unconditional love and grace. In those moments we imagine that we have the power to tie God’s hand of grace-filled providing behind God’s back and send God out to do some serious smiting! But this story insists, that’s not God!

In the next moment we attempt to lock up the God of deadly demands saying, “That’s the OLD Testament God, not my God.” My God is only a God of only unlimited love and grace, compassion and forgiveness, generosity and abundance. We don’t have a God who makes deadly demands or gives life or death tests!  But this story insists, that’s not God either!

In this story, as Abraham reaches the top of the mountain in Moriah, he also reaches the pinnacle... the goal of our faith. There, he does what Luther couldn’t do… certainly what I have never been able to do! There on the mountaintop he holds together these seemingly dispirit aspects of God, and accepts that God will always be God. Abraham says “yes” to the God of impossible tests and deadly demands and walks toward the mountain of sacrifice AND with every step he is also absolutely sure… completely convinced… totally certain… that God… and this God alone without any help from Abraham, will provide exactly the right thing… and will provide it with as much generosity as God used when God put stars in the sky and sand on the beach.

I don’t know about you, but my faith is not yet an “Abraham on the mountain top” level. I still try to “help” God out, give God advice, or try to strong arm God, insisting God should do things my way in the world. It doesn’t ever work. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still try! I still want God to change the people I want changed, the way I want them to change! (maybe even some selected smiting?) I still want God to be more grace than consequences, more gospel than law, more resurrection than death, more light than darkness. And all the time God just keeps being the God of ALL of it, ALL of it... TOGETHER… grace AND consequences, law AND gospel, death AND resurrection, light AND darkness, all at the same time.

I do think, however, there is Good News in this story which calls us to what seems like an impossible destination... this mountaintop level of faith. And that is that this God of ours… this God of both command and promise, is accepting of us even though we’ve not yet reached the mountaintop. This God of both command and promise is willing to work with us. To meet  us right where we are today. To help us and hold us, pulling us and pushing us with both command and promise to move us along the Way in this life of ours. God is accepting of where we are, but is also determined that where we are, is NOT where we will stay! After all, Abraham wasn’t ALWAYS at this mountain top level of faith either, you know! There are 11 chapters before this story describing a series of epic faith plants that Abraham made as he walked toward this mountaintop!

The path toward faithfulness is a journey. Growing deeper in relationship with God takes a lifetime. It takes a lifetime to grow toward a place where we can trust that God to use both deadly serious command and unfathomable providential promise in order to keep us moving along the Way. Getting moved along by God will not always feel good. It will sometimes, actually, look and feel and BE full-on horrible! But we walk this path, just like Abraham walked his path, pushed with commands and pulled with promise, ALL while living within the covenant which God has made with each of us.  That covenant that promises each of us has been created in Divine love. That God will be with us always as we walk, and as we fall… all along the path of this life. That God will meet us where we are, but never leave us where we were found. That God will push us and pull us, not for some Divine twisted pleasure, but so that we might experience the abundant life God created us to live!  And that no matter how long it takes, God will never leave us stuck along the way. Amen.   

You Are Entering Hope

Romans 5:1-8

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

We find ourselves on the road this morning. In the first lesson, Abraham and Sarah are camped out at the Oaks of Mamre. In the second lesson Paul shares with us his journey from suffering to endurance, from endurance to character and from character to hope. Then, in the Gospel, Jesus and the disciples are on the road as well, going from city, to town, to village, proclaiming the Good News and healing the harassed and helpless.

Paul’s road trip is especially interesting since it begins in the town of Suffering, which from my personal experience is a terrible little town. He continues on through the little villages of Endurance and Character, which are better than Suffering but not really places anyone would want to settle down forever. Then finally… finally he ends up in the town of Hope.

Hope is the place we’d all like to end up I think.  In fact, I think we’d all rather just race past the exits for Suffering, Endurance and Character, at well over the posted speed limit, and just go straight to Hope. The trouble with that particular travel plan is that life rarely allows that to happen. Paul wrote his little travel log out of his own personal experience. Sarah laughed in the face of God at the idea that Hope was even a place they could get to, in what little bit of time they had left in their advanced ages, and the disciples, told to travel with neither case nor cash, didn’t see how getting to Hope would ever be possible either.

But I think all of these lessons are here to remind us as we journey through this life, of something Rich Simpson, one of our Canons, wrote this week. He wrote as he reflected on the lesson from Genesis that “God is in the business of doing laughable things on God’s own timetable.” I see that truth in all of our lessons today and I think all of these lessons have been gathered here together on purpose to help remind us that our role in this life is to find our part in joining with God to accomplish God’s laughable agenda and learn to accept that God’s agenda WILL HAPPEN, but in God’s own time and not ours.

God’s agenda is, as Bishop Curry would say, “to change the world from the nightmare it is for so many, into the dream that God has for it.” That agenda is laughable because it seems utterly impossible. I mean, have you looked outside lately, God? You’ll need to completely dismantle the current culture of policing in our country and raise up a new one! Nice idea, but laughable. Then, completely undo 400 years of systemic racism! Noble and needed and also totally laughable in its enormity. And, oh yeah, lots of folks have forgotten it, but there’s still a pandemic raging out there as well!  So HOW? How are we… how CAN we… even BEGIN to join with God in trying to accomplish God’s completely wonderful but also completely laughable agenda? 

The answer this week, turns out to be the same as it was last week.  We begin by taking one, first, step. We Go! We Move On! We take that first step with what feels like nothing for the journey, just like the disciples did.  We take that first step with not nearly enough time, like Abraham and Sarah did. And we start, as Paul honestly tells us, by taking our very first shaky step into the terrible little town… called Suffering.

To begin the journey we must start, with neither the things, nor the time we think we need.  From there, with nothing, we just step right into the world of our neighbor’s nightmare. We begin by stepping into our neighbor’s suffering. As we do that we know we will never fully feel what they feel, but we are still called to sit and listen and eat with those who long for the nightmare to end. It’s what those three mysterious travelers modeled for us at the Oaks of Mamre… finding Abraham and Sarah right where they were, sitting with them in their childless suffering… THAT is where we begin. We begin by sitting down and listening… listening not to respond, but to understand. That is where this journey of doing God’s laughable agenda begins. Paul reminds us however, that starting here, in that terrible little town called Suffering, is not for nothing. By staying in Suffering and hearing all the disappointments and betrayals encrusted into our neighbor’s story… by listening… really listening to their experiences… that is the way… the only way… we will get through that terrible town and move down the road... on to Endurance and Character, and then, in God’s own timeline, we eventually enter into Hope.  And as we finally enter into the town of Hope, we’ll not be alone.  We will be arm in arm with our sisters and brothers, who we’ve picked up along the way, way back in that terrible town of Suffering.

God’s agenda ain’t easy. No money, no staff, no sandals or fashionably matching bag! But even without the usual things the world leans on, Jesus tells the disciples then, and tells us disciples now, that even without the world’s usual things, we don’t step onto that road with nothing. We won’t have the “usual” resources, but to be honest, the “usual” resources haven’t done much to change the world yet, have they?  But as we step onto that road, we step out with something different.  The different thing we have is the Holy Spirit blowing at our backs and Jesus’ permission to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves. 

Now, what does that mean? That stuff about serpents and doves. Well, the really smart people (who are not me!) can’t decide what it means!  But I think it’s Jesus way of telling us... if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got! I think it’s Jesus way of telling us... that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and still expecting different results. I think it is Jesus’ way of telling us... that we can’t use the same thinking to solve our problems that we used to create them. 

Jesus is telling us to put the Holy Spirit’s rushing wind at our backs and try new ideas ranging from those that are wise as serpents to those as innocent as doves in order to change the world from the nightmare it is for many into the dream that God has for it. I think Jesus is telling us to leave the old thinking, the old baggage, the old concepts of time at home and step out on the road with the Holy Spirit blowing at our backs.  Jesus is telling us to step out on the road and into our neighbor’s suffering... gather them up in our hearts and minds and arms and start walking from Suffering toward Endurance and then on toward Character and then all the way into Hope.  Because it is in Hope where we will find God’s promise that ALL of creation is meant to share in God’s beautiful dream. Amen.

Go!

Matthew 28:16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

A week ago I could not have imagined what could drive a global pandemic with over 100,000 dead Americans out of our minds and off the front page of every paper in the nation. Now we know. Over 400 years of the evils of white supremacy expressing itself in its latest evolution of horror, sin, and systemic racism. THAT is what.

Even in my extremely privileged position, sitting here in the Berkshires, away from the overflowing ICU units in Alabama... away from the tear gas that forced my fellow Episcopalians from the steps of their own church… even here… far away from all of it... it is hard to know how to process it… what to say… what to DO. So I understand the disciples in this reading, both worshiping, and doubting… after all, how do you KNOW what to do when you are face to face with something so overwhelming.  What do you say? What do we think? What do we do?

The answer, Jesus tells us…. is to start.  “Go!” he says.  Take a step. Even before we’ve begun to wrestle with our belief and doubt, let alone have it resolved… we are called by Jesus... to GO! Steven Sondheim, in his musical, Sunday in the Park with George, wrote it this way:  “Move on… Stop worrying where you’re going… Move on. If you can know where you’re going, you’ve already gone… Just keep moving on.”  

The truth that Jesus and Sondheim are teaching us is that we will only make the road ahead of us… the road through a global pandemic... the road through the horrific legacy of white supremacy in which we are all tangled… we will only make that road by walking it… by moving on… by going. By taking one first step toward doing justice, and then another step in loving kindness, always walking humbly toward the hope filled vision we have been given by Jesus.  The vision of a Promised Land, a New Jerusalem, a place where love is stronger than hate, healing is greater than infection, justice is stronger than oppression, peace is stronger than violence and life is stronger than death.

Part of the truth of taking each of those steps, is that we must take each one in both wonderful faith and terrible doubt.  We will never be completely sure before we go.  But GO we must! Taking one first trembling step toward making disciples by SHOWING people the Way Jesus taught us to live. SHOWING the world that disciples are not made in our minds but in our lifting up the lives of those who have been thrown down and thrown out.  Today we focus particularly on black lives which is right.  But as disciples we GO to lift up the lives of all who can not breathe.  Whether that is due to the crushing knee of Caesars or Presidents, occupying armies or combat troops, corrupt police or authorities, implicit bias or systemic racism.  Our calling is to Go!  To take a step toward those who have been thrown down and lift up the lives of those who have been labeled and treated as if they are the least or the lost or the last to matter.

Our call is to Go! To Move On!  To lift and heal, feed and comfort, confront... and yes, even turn over tables when that is the only thing left to get their attention!  Oh, I know. Raised voices and turned over tables... not very stoically Lutheran.  Not too properly Episcopalian. Does GOING and DOING ALL of what Jesus did… have to include the hard bits?  “Yes” Jesus tells us...  GO! Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. GO! Take a step! Move on!  That step might turn out to be right!  … Or wrong.  But it is our Baptisms that free us to GO! To step out right... or wrong but to KNOW either way that we remain forever intimately connected to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! So, Move on! As Sondheim says, the choice you make may turn out to be mistaken. The choosing is not. You have to move on. Look at what you want. Not as where you are, Not at what you’ll be.

To Go!  To Move On!  I know it is hard!  I am sure that you, like me, would rather KNOW what to do next, not just guess.  To figure it out BEFORE we commit to that first step. You, I am sure, like me want to do RIGHT by George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and David McAtee as well as the centuries old pile of broken black and brown bodies that this country has knelt on to death... the pile of black and brown bodies that are buried in the foundation of this “land of the free” and “home of the brave.”  All of those black and brown lives... They DESERVE our next step to be a RIGHT step. I… we… literally owe it to them to step RIGHT so I don’t want to make a WRONG step... but how CAN we know?

Jesus teaches us in this lesson that we can not know.  But we still must Go.  I know, we want to do justice RIGHT… to love kindness RIGHT… to walk humbly RIGHT… but Jesus commands us, his beloved Baptized disciples, not to wait until we are sure we will get it RIGHT because if we wait to be sure we are RIGHT we will simply never Go.  So Jesus says GO! Move On!  Take a step!  Go and do your best to bind the whole world to God’s promise that love is stronger than hate and life is stronger than death. GO! Do your best in each moment to teach the world the Jesus Way of Abundant life for all of creation by living as examples of that Way, that Truth, that Life.  And as you GO, loaded down with doubt and fear along with your genuine intention to do it RIGHT... REMEMBER... with every shaky, doubt laden step you take toward God’s promise... with ever fear filled step you take to lift the least, the lost, and the last...  Jesus is with you... ALWAYS... always... always, to the end of the age. Amen.