Pentecost 7 - Year A

South Park, a very offensive show on television using animation and deep satirical comment, would have a field day with this story from Genesis.  Father with son: “Come on Larry, we are going for a BBQ picnic, to one of God’s beautiful spots in the world.”  “Well, dad, where’s the BBQ food?”  “No worries my son, you’re it today.  God always provides.”   And so on.  As I say, a field day…

I am sure I am not alone in my reaction as a parent to this story either.  It deeply troubles me to know that God would even contemplate, yet alone carry through, a test on someone he supposedly loves, using his own son.  Again, referring back to the South Bank scriptwriters you can just hear them delighting in God saying… “well Abraham, if it is good enough for me to give up my son, you can have a go too…”.  Outrageous.   Field day.

And, bottom line for me and indeed most other Christians – we don’t believe in a God who tests us.  It would seem to me that would mean God using God’s power in a way contrary to creative love which is my knowing, and our theological knowing, of our Creator God.  And, bottom line again, there is nothing to test – it’s the great thing Jesus did in his obedience to the cross.  He took on the testing for us all, and completed it perfectly so that we can live and be our lives in the assurance of love and forgiveness.  Not in a framework of  testing and manipulative love.

Therefore, what to do with Abraham and God and Isaac.  Because this story is there for the purpose of revelation, of revealing who God is and who we are to be with God.

It would seem to me we are connecting in through the obedience of Abraham and the words of Christ in Matthew to the actual heart of discipleship in Christ.  We left worship last Sunday with these words ringing in our ears… whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Jesus knows that his teaching seems to lead to destruction – the destruction of all we as humans value and admire.  He actually advocates destruction – in the destroying of what is deemed as important by promoting a complete reversal in those values - blessed are those who mourn, the meek, the peacemakers, the persecuted.  And he has come to bring conflict between family members, people who love each other – between a son and his father, between a daughter and her mother, etc.  We reach this point in Matthew’s Gospel completely in disarray as to what is really to be valued in life,  and to what God is really like – and what God wants from us.

Well, in that context then, perhaps the Abraham/Isaac story is not so wacko.  If Jesus is advocating that those who follow him are only those who in faith accept the threat of destruction, then the example of Abraham’s faith has truly paved the way.  Because Abraham was committed to that beyond threat; he had raised the knife to do the deed, to kill his only son.  He, Abraham, was prepared to destroy what he loved and held dear, his very life so to speak, in his obedience.

But there was much, much more than that at stake…. and Abraham would have known this, as did God.  What was at stake here, surely, was God’s own identity and promise.  God had promised Abraham and Sarah that their family and family’s family, would number, in all the future generations,  greater than the stars in the heavens.  It was a beautiful promise and a beautiful image.  And it all hinged on Isaac as the father of the nations because Isaac, the improbable child of old aged Abraham and Sarah, was also their only child.  It was through him, and only him, that God’s promise would be fulfilled.

So I wonder if this is actually all about Abraham testing God?? I wonder if Abraham is pulling off the greatest bluff in all of history….. I will take you to the edge God, I will see if you are who you are and who you said you are.  And he does….

Well, we don’t like that image either, do we?  A God who we can bluff and manipulate and do our own testing back on…. 

If as Jesus says it is faith, and faith alone, that is at the heart of being one with God then not only is this story about faith, it also must be seen through the eyes of faith.  And so there is no testing of God nor testing of Abraham.  The story is told to reveal that God keeps God’s promises through enormous adversity and challenge, even if we are viewing it as challenge God has brought upon Godself, as well as ourself.  At the heart of the Genesis story is faith and trust; Abraham had the faith to know God and believe the promise God had made.  Abraham, like all of us, had no idea how God would work that promise out, how it would actually happen.  But Abraham knew that it all hinged on he, Abraham, trusting whatever God asked of him.  If God wanted Isaac killed to make secure the future generations then somehow, in the great mad mystery of it, God would make it happen.  Perhaps this was the beginning of the saying… “blind faith”.

Blind faith means actually that; we cannot see the why of it. To trust in that circumstance is exactly what God demands – because we are not in charge of the “why” of life. However, we have an active, very active, part in the “how” of life…..

Let’s be honest here - we still can’t see in many ways the “why” of the Genesis story because we still don’t like it.  We are standing right back, and we are seeing the faith and trust called for; but we still wish God had given another story, another example. 

Well, he did, didn’t he.  And it was actually worse, because his own Son was killed.  And God knew from the beginning how it would be, that God Godself would suffer the most.  Because God had to do this not in blind faith but in and with love.  This is the great revelation we find in Jesus Christ; that in and through our frailty and humanity we are loved.  We are loved over and over, even in our faithlessness.  It is in our relationship with Christ that we accept faith as a gift of love.  Not an earning through obedience or even trust; faith itself is God in our lives no matter who we are or our circumstances.  In that simple acceptance, the gift of faith lives.

Therefore the very “why” of our life, our world identity, how the world sees us and knows us, becomes known to us as irrelevant to God and a faithful life. Whether we are priest or people, mother or childless, stockbroker or street cleaner…. is not seen by God.  God sees, as he did in Abraham, the intention of the heart and the “how” of our living.  Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me….. and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.

The “how” of life with Christ – to be welcoming, hospitable and whatever we do, to do in his name.  The latter is what makes the difference of course; that all actions of our lives are done in Christ’s name.  This does not mean we go through each day saying… I am driving you to school in the name of Christ; I am serving you bangers and mash because of Jesus; etc.  It is about the intention of the heart again, the foundational stuff. 

This discussion arose this week in a group I was part of as we looked at the question – what makes a Christian school a Christian school?  it actually could be a question of every Christian community – school, parish, social welfare group, etc.  As I reflect on the discussion, it now seems to be it is the reverse of what we have been saying, and yet part of the whole – the “how” of a Christian school must be because of the faith in the “why”.  As an appendix to the Archbishop’s Address to Synod, which is available for you to take today, is a draft paper from Bishop Geoff Smith about visioning for Anglican schools in this diocese.  I am part of a Hillbrook school group addressing this draft.  At the heart of our response is the reality that we must begin with the marks of mission of the Anglican communion – and these are all about the “how” of living out that Christian call.  But at the heart of those marks of mission is the deep faith that God is God, and Christ is God, and the Holy Spirit is God and that we have a relationship with God that enables us to be who we are created to be.  That is the faith, the “why”, in a sense, and it is essential to own because all the actions, the “how” of our life come from that faith in that relationship.

In other words, for any community, school or parish alike that names itself Christian, the “how” actions are irrelevant without the foundational “why”.  We worship God in that context, we live our life in that context -  the same context as Abraham – trusting beyond self so that our “why” and “how” become one.  It is the great challenge for schools in this diocese to reflect how that blend is being lived out, as indeed it is for us, this faith community.

An element of faith has to be blind, but it is a seeing blindness.  It sounds as though I want us to have our cake and eat it too – but, you know, God wants us to have that joy also.  God wants us to have all that is possible because God has already blessed us with everything we need.  In that faith, we indeed have eyes to glorify our God.  Amen.