Sacrificing Identity, June 29, 2008

Genesis 22:1-15
Mathew 10:35-42
Who are you? Who are you?
We spend day after day greeting ourselves in the mirror.
Thousands of dollars in therapy, hundreds of thousands more at college and university.
We google search for ancestral links.
Al in quest of our identity, of trying to find and own who we are.

As infants and young believers, we presented you to God and the Community of Faith describing that you would be a believer, trusted, part of the Body of Christ, you might grow to be a husband, a wife, a parent and grandparent, a truck driver, a banker, a teacher, or engineer, doctor, lawyer, perhaps a minister.
For the first many years, you were the child of your parents, and little brother or sister, or elder brother or sister of someone else.

Today, as they move their tassel from one side to the other, we ascribe to each the identity of High School Graduate. For several this will immediately transfer into being a freshman at this college and that university, studying this, becoming that. We are perpetually searching for our identity, as if what we do, what we have accomplished, where we are, defines and determines who we are.
To which Jesus dictated “Whosoever finds their life will lose it. Who ever loses their life for my sake, and for the gospel, will find it.” The Savior's point is that our quest not be about finding and possessing who we are apart from the world, apart from God, but that we find Christ in ourselves which will define who we are.

Abraham knew who he was.
He had been CALLED, he had been PROMISED by God,
Abraham had been husband to Sarah, he had been Circumcised and set apart. Abraham had trusted God and been trusted, for decades together.
Suddenly, he wakes up one day to the realization that everything he has ever wanted in life, all he was promised, has been fulfilled.

Had the story ended there, the narrative of Abraham would be a story of Origins, of Beginnings, There had been Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel and Seth, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. But far more than a story of how Israel came to be, when the Covenant was established, this the story of commitment and sacrifice.

For long generations, this has been referred to as the Sacrifice of Isaac, and many were troubled to learn that the Koran of Islam tells the same story of their Ancestor Abraham who took his firstborn son Ishmael to sacrifice upon the Mountain. SO I would tell you, this is not the story of the SACRIFICE of ISAAC or of ISHMAEL, for they are not the ones who make the sacrifice, this is not about their faith in God at all. If this were the Sacrifice of Isaac or Ishmael, we would be left with a faith that by being bystanders we are going to be put to death, we are simply worthless pawns in God's little game, and maybe maybe God will provide a Goat or Ram to take our place. For some, perhaps that is what faith represents. But INSTEAD, this is the story of a different set of sacrifices.
Abraham banished Ishmael with the boy's mother Hagar. Then, after they were gone, God spoke to Abraham, saying take your son, your only son and do as I tell you.
Many have seen this as a story of child abuse, treating his child not as a human being but as an object, the “fulfilled promise” like taking possession of The Land. Isaac does represent the fulfillment of the Promise and so much more. If you had to choose between the future of all humanity and your own child, what would you choose? If you had to choose between your faith in God and your own child... Ultimately this is the Sacrifice Question of God, to offer God's own son for the future of all humanity.

We think of SACRIFICE as not using the Car because of Gas prices.
We think of SACRIFICE as Cleaning Supplies donated to the Food Pantry, or a Memorial in honor of a parent or grandparent.
SACRIFICE is freely and willingly giving what is most precious to you, out of love.
SACRIFICE is giving your very identity.

Last January in Sudan, a woman came to the Clinic, telling an amazing story,
While still a child of five, six or seven, she had been kidnapped by a neighboring tribe called the Merle. They had branded the skin of her face, her arms and legs, taught her to speak a different language and denied her speaking her language. She was bought and sold as a slave among the Merle, ultimately taken as a wife, repeatedly she was raped and beaten, made to conceive and give birth to children. As clearly as we could determine, she was a woman of 22 who had spent 16 years in this other world constantly dreaming of escape, escape and return to her family, though in her life among the Merle she had a husband and three children. One day, she saw her opportunity, she left behind everything and ran. She got back to her own tribe, her own people, her family. The first struggle she now had was to prove who she was. Her features were changed, her skin branded, her clothing different. She had not spoken her own language for 16 years, all she could remember from when she was 6 was a nursery rhyme. In the stories of King David there is a similar tale, and the refugees are asked to pronounce the word SHIBBOLETH to prove who they are, because their enemy could not pronounce SH or B consonants. How treasured that nursery rhyme sung to her by her mother. The people accepted her, she was home, she was free, but the cost of her freedom had been that she left her children behind. Forever.
Her children, being a mother...Her husband and his family... the people she had known for more than 2/3rd her life, all were sacrificed for her freedom, her return.

As Abraham takes up the knife to do as God has directed, this is his child, his only son that is left, and through him the future of generations and land and a name. These are extremely hard passages for us in a safe and secure world to try to imagine.

Twenty years ago, at the time of Glasnost, I travelled through what was then the Soviet Union, witnessing a people who had practiced their faith in secret, worshipping against the Law for over 70 years. When faith as described in the Bible, or in other parts of our world seems so different to us, that it is difficult to imagine having to choose between our FREEDOM and Our Child; when worshipping God would mean going to Jail; does SACRIFICE have any meaning to us? If these are the case, what has this done to our faith in God? WHO ARE YOU? Whoever receives you, receives God who sent you. Imagine, what if you are God's only instrument of peace, of faith, of making a difference in the world.