June 26, 2011, "God of Contradictions"

Genesis 22:1-14
Matthew 10:40-42
“Whoever welcome you, welcome's me” is a statement about identity, as our personalities are constantly in flux. One moment you are the children of your parents, and by moving a tassel from one side of your cap to the other you go from being a High School student to a Graduate. You place a ring upon one another's finger and you are married. You bring a baby home from the hospital lay them on the bed and suddenly you are expected to be a mother or father.
Tom, I have heard describe, that you had no formal training in Choral Conducting, yet after 28 years, you have become our Conductor.
Mary has not chosen to join the Church, yet brought her sons for Confirmation, and has cared for and nurtured our gardens, replanting our roses. Knowing the blood, membership can cost and the thorns of those roses, you are claimed.
The PRAXIS of our lives defines who and what we are and what we truly believe.

I have a classmate on faculty at Yale Divinity School who has been researching a book on how Peace actually develops regardless of Governmental Peace Processes. She travelled through Northern Ireland, and entering a Presbyterian Church on Sunday morning was greeted by two women greeters. They began conversation with her, and every guest who entered, which while it came across as welcoming, quickly differentiated between whether the guests appeared by their name and the people they knew, to be Catholic or Protestant. The Protestants were welcomed and seated, the Catholics were encouraged to go to another Church down the lane. I contented myself that this was a story from decades ago, but she said no, it is the practice today. By fear, by experience of conflict, people find ways to test and to risk.

It is ironic that the Prayer which Jesus Taught, that Prayer we all recite whether Catholic or Protestant emphasizes the phrase “LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION”, when part of the nature of God is that God's Commands Test the Conditions of our Faith. Calvin and Luther agreed that what this well known story of Abraham and Isaac describes is that GOD's PROMISE & GOD's COMMAND contradict!
Further, Luther described that this is where Faith is superior to Human Reason and Philosophy, because logic and reason can only prove one thing or another, and faith wrestles with the contradictions. The only faithful response to God's Command could be “YES LORD”, yet sacrificing Isaac in addition to being abhorrent is a sacrifice of the realization of the promise, making it a only a promise.

Decades before, God had called Abram and his partner to leave home and everything they had known, to follow God's Command, with the promise that being faithful, they would be given a Great Name, a Great Land, and become the parents of new tribes of peoples. But for decades this older couple had been nomads, wanderers, they lived with only the UnFulfilled Promise. Eventually, by using others, Sarah is able to get a child for Abraham, by having her slave impregnated, who as a slave belonging to her as property, made the child Sarah's. Then Sarah conceived and bore Isaac, and being jealous that the other son was born first, had Ishmael and his mother Hagar banished.The test of this Passage is: now that Abraham possesses fulfillment of the promise, now that he has everything he ever wanted, will he follow God's Command even to sacrifice the fulfillment of the promise?

We said earlier that it was ironic the Lord's Prayer emphasizes “Lead Us Not Into Temptation” because part of the nature of God is to Test the conditions of our faith... But as much as God is Tempter and Tester, the Judge, the Commander; God is also the Provider, the Answer to our prayers, the Promise. Following God's Command, Abraham takes Isaac up the Mountain, and treats him as Sacrifice. It is important to realize that from this point forward, Abraham having taken their son, Sarah and Abraham never again speak. Having treated his son, not as a human being, not as Promise and gift of God, but as a thing, a Sacrifice to be slaughtered, Isaac and Abraham never again speak face to face. But up on the Mountain when Abraham follows God's command, when Abraham demonstrates that he so believes in God's Command that he is willing to give back the fulfillment as only a Promise again, suddenly it is revealed to them that there is a Ram caught in the thicket, a ram provided by God to be the Sacrifice.

The translation here, that God “provided” is unusual, as the literal word “ra-ah” means “to See”, but Karl Barth the great Theologian of the 1920s and our own Karlene Miller's Uncle, made the connection from Hebrew to Latin of “pro-video” meaning “TO SEE TO”, and thus from pro-video, we get the word provide. Barth uses this text as basis for his whole doctrine of “PROVIDENCE”, the Radical Affirmation that God knows all things good for us, and while there is fate, while there is evil, there is no other source of good in the world other than God.

We struggle, that God tests us, could lead us into temptations we do not want to face, but we take for granted that God does provide. This morning's Scriptures are not so much about the Testing of Abraham or even about our identity, as “Realization of Who God is”, and who God is in each of our lives. Because before we are ready to say the words, God is already part of our existence.

There is a tension in our lives, that as much as we try to consciously choose who we will be, where we go to school, what we will believe, as much control as we exercise over our lives, periodically God does does test us, with circumstance and with opportunities to choose the Good. The question is not only how we respond, but whether we acknowledge that God may be acting through us to one another? I was visiting with one of our members the other day, who said something to the effect of “I am not certain I am a Christian. I know Jesus to have been a real man, the best that ever lived, who as Lord and Savior brought me to God. But in my heart I worship God and him only.”
To which I can only affirm:
Jesus said “Whoever welcomes You, welcomes me, and welcomes the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward.
One who receives another, who is right with God because they are, shall receive righteousness.
And who ever is compassionate and charitable and caring in their lives, even giving a cup of cold water to one who is a child of God, truly I say, they shall not lose their reward.”