Genesis 22:1–18 (NRSV) • Matthew 9:9–13 (The Message)
Gen. 22:1 After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 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.” 3 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. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5 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.” 6 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. 7 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?” 8 Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
Gen. 22:9 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. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 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.” 13 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. 14 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.”
Gen. 22:15 The angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven, 16 and said, “By myself I have sworn, says the LORD: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, 18 and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.”
Matt. 9:9 Passing along, Jesus saw a man at his work collecting taxes. His name was Matthew. Jesus said, “Come along with me.” Matthew stood up and followed him.
Matt. 9:10 Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. 11 When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riff-raff?”
Matt. 9:12 Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? 13 Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”
After every flight, FEDEX pilots fill out a form, known as a ‘gripe sheet’ to tell mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics fix the problem, and then document their repairs on the form. Here are some actual maintenance problems submitted by the pilots (marked with a ‘P’) and the solutions recorded (marked by an ‘S’) by the maintenance engineers, who by the way have a sense of humour:
P: Left inside main tyre almost needs replacement.
S: Left inside main tyre almost replaced.P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back order.P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right and be serious.P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.[1]
I wonder if God sees conversations with us like these ‘gripe sheets.’ We write up all the problems we see, and we ask God to fix them. In our passages for today, we find two gripe sheets, and we see how God and Jesus handle them.
In the first story, the one about Abraham and Isaac, I confess that I have a bunch of problems that need solutions. First, I find it really disturbing that God even asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, and I find it disturbing that Abraham is willing to do it, and I find it disturbing that Isaac doesn’t say anything about it. I recognize that that is my 21st century self reading of this, but I just have a really hard time with the story. Second, God’s promise to Abraham is on the line. God has promised Abraham descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore, but how can that happen if Isaac is dead? So if I’m Abraham, I think my gripe sheet might be, “Have son. Need faith.”
The second story, the one about Matthew and Jesus is a lot funnier I think. The folks filling out the ‘gripe sheet’ on Jesus are definitely the Pharisees. “Have faith. Need cleaner image.” I can imagine Jesus solution: “Have faith. Need more love.” Jesus says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” quoting the prophet Hosea. When we follow that back to Hosea, though, we see the word, “mercy,” is not just a nice word—it’s the rich, powerful, Hebrew word, hesed. To translate hesed, the King James uses the word, lovingkindness, but I think I like the words, steadfast love, or sacrificial love. So Jesus was really saying, “I desire sacrificial love, not sacrifice.”
I think these two stories combine to really challenge us today. The first challenge is to see what we treasure as belonging to God, not us. The story is told that two moms of teen-age sons were chatting about what it was going to be like when they went off to college. The first mom was really struggling with her loneliness and her worry for how he would do. She asked the second mom, “Aren’t you worried for your son? What are you going to do?” The second mom piped up. “Oh no! The Bible is very clear about this. Jesus said, ‘Untie the ass and let him go.’” For sure, one of the hardest parts of being a parent is allowing our kids to take risks—whether it’s climbing a tree, or going to school, or moving away from home, or dating someone—especially if we think they will make choices we wouldn’t make. So how do we manage to let them go? Isn’t it a combination of loving them enough to want them to be able to grow and become beyond us, and a recognition that whatever choices they make, they have to be accountable before God for them? Abraham treasures Isaac, but recognizes that he was a gift from God, not really his. Whatever we treasure—a child, a car, a dream, our partner, our business—at the end of the day, they are all gifts from God, and they belong to God, not to us.
The second challenge is to sacrifice our agenda to secure someone else’s good. People before program. People before institutions. People before policy. We don’t know if Jesus wanted to hang out with the disreputable, but he seems to be enjoying the party. Doesn’t he know how disreputable they are? Of course, he knows! But Matthew and his disreputable friends’ need to know they are loved. Their need to celebrate what God is doing, far outweighs the Pharisees’ concern for holiness and purity. Before I was a pastor, I remember going church shopping. I remember going into one church, and I guess they were friendly enough—with each other. But it was like I was a ghost, only one person greeted me, and no one ever asked my name or introduced themselves. I never went back. The danger of our consumer-driven age is that many people think the church exists mostly to take care of its members. Of course, we care for each other. Of course, we are trying to create the kind of faith community where we are thoughtful of each other. Of course, we are trying to encourage each other in the faith. But we in this fellowship are always looking to show grace to folks who are not part of this fellowship, who are different from ourselves. We are looking to see the needs of our neighbors and even people we have never met, so that we can show our neighbors and strangers the kind of love we have experienced from God. I like to think that our fellowship is becoming the church with so much grace that it will draw in the people who aren’t here yet. In order to become the church that will go into our future, we will have to give up some of our comfort zone in order to create a zone where others can find comfort.
We live in a time when we like to fix things. We have a problem; we need a solution. Unfortunately, we don’t always know how to frame the problem. The problems surrounding George Floyd’s murder, for example, are so deep in our society and our culture, that we are tempted to either throw up our hands, or else to deny that the problems exist. Before we can solve the causes of deep problems like racism and bigotry, though, we have to fix something far more basic: we have to recognize that George Floyd, Ahmad Aubery and Brionna Taylor and all the protestors and all the police are made in the image of God. At times, some of our police have forgotten or ignored that, but if we are honest with ourselves and our God, sometimes we have forgotten or ignored people too. We need fixing on the inside as much as our society needs fixing on the outside. People first. People are the real treasure, not just as they are, but as they are becoming. Confronted by hatred, bigotry and injustice, we have to sacrifice our agendas, in order to attend to our wounded and oppressed neighbors. I don’t know where all this will lead—none of us do—but God is calling us to listen with open minds, to hear what will be hard to hear, to sacrifice our comfort bubbles in order for true compassion to enter in. At the end of the day, we want to live lives motivated by sacrificial love in the same way God has shown us. Jesus was willing to set aside heaven in order to come to earth, willing to sacrifice even His life in order to show us that the love of power will ultimately fall before the power of love. May our lives and this church stand as beacons of that hope through sacrifice. Amen.
[1]https://innerstrength.zone/funny/these-airline-pilots-learn-how-not-to-talk-to-engineers-the-hard way/?fbclid=IwAR2el7avhia4NCUhxXBWHqv9tfKpOFBJsQBPyg_
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