“Altar Call”

Genesis 22:1-14

June 26, 2005

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

Sometimes, to help me with our sermon, I try to assume the role, or trade places with a biblical character. Here is how I imagine it. For a time, I am them and they are me. We switch places and then we switch back again. In my more humble moments, I imagine myself as God. There I am, perhaps on the fourth or fifth day of creating the world. Or maybe I am walking in the garden looking for Adam and Eve. Or perhaps I am on a mountain, with Elijah close by. In First Kings 19, we read the story that instructs Elijah to go to a mountain because the Lord is about to pass by there. You will remember that there was a great wind, so strong that it split mountains, but God wasn’t in the wind. And after the wind, there was an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake. After the earthquake was a fire, but God wasn’t in the fire and after the fire, there was the sound of sheer silence. God was in the silence. God asked Elijah, who was on the run, this: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Sometimes, again, in my more humble moments, I imagine myself as Jesus, walking in his sandals as he made his way across the water, on his way to the disciples who were on the Sea of Galilee, in their fishing boat. In this story, you will remember, Jesus didn’t need a boat. He walked on the water. Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like for Moses, up there on the mountain, minding his own business, tending the sheep of Jethro, his father-in-law, when a tree suddenly blazed and a voice called out to him through it. It is not recorded this way, but don’t you just know that Moses asked, “Are you talking to me? Talking bushes? No one is going to believe this!” I would like to be with Moses, too, with the Egyptians were in hot pursuit. You will remember that he led the people to the sea. He divided his hands and the sea split in two. Moses led his people across the sea’s floor, on dry ground. Now that would have been cool!

Or how about stepping into the story of the Day of Pentecost and being there, huddled in fear with the others. Everyone was still afraid of the religious authorities and tried to make sense out of the resurrection. Then and there a great wind blew through the house and fire touched each of them. For a while, no one understood what had happened. I would have liked to have been Peter, who stood up and preached his first sermon, a powerful one. I would have liked to have been a part of the first church.

Or how about being in young David’s shoes, err, I mean sandals. With the giant from Gath terrorizing everyone, I would have liked to have been David. First he asked one of the greatest questions in the Bible. It is this question, “Who is this guy that he would defy the army of the living God? Then, with a smooth stone and a slingshot, he fell the great giant. I would have liked to be the one to pull the stone back and to snap the slingshot, proving once and for all that God is stronger than giants and that we can fell them, too.

There is one biblical character, though, that I would rather steer clear of. Given the opportunity to switch places with Father Abraham, I am pretty sure that I would say, “Thanks, but no thanks!” I would rather stay as plain old me than to be him. You see, in him, I see too many hardships, too many headaches, too many troubles.

My last two sermons and now this one have been about Abraham and his story. The first sermon was about his call from God and how he followed it without reservations. You will remember that prior to the call, Abraham and Sarah were enjoying their retirement. God called them to leave the sprinkler system, the three car garage, the Tuesday morning golf games and the Thursday morning bridge clubs. God asked them to turn their back on the familiar and to journey towards the unknown. A preacher friend of mine wouldn’t want to be Abraham either. He said, “Abraham lived an ‘I don’t know’ kind of life for too many years for my liking.”

I agree.

That was sermon number one. Sermon number two came two weeks ago, the one where we thought about the things that were too wonderful for the Lord, the improbable things for God. Just the time when Abraham and Sarah should have been sitting in rocking chairs on the back deck, sipping tea with a leaf of mint in their glasses, God came to them and suggested that they move their rocking chairs inside, to the nursery. Can you imagine being one hundred years old and chasing a toddler? What was God thinking?

But the main reason that I would not want to switch places with Abraham is because of this sermon, based on the words of our lesson for this morning. Just when the old couple were getting used to the idea of their son and were beginning to think about their child care options, Abraham heard the voice of God. This time it told him to take his son Isaac up to a mountain and to sacrifice him there, as a burnt offering. So this is a hard story. It is also a horrible story. I come to it reluctantly. Believe it or not, it is the best option for the lectionary this morning.

You might say that only God knows the truth behind this terrible story. All I know is that God called and Abraham was prepared to go and do what was asked of him. This doesn’t sound like the God I love. You can see why I wouldn’t want to stand in Abraham’s sandals. After three miscarriages and a blessing in Annie Grace, the last thing that I would want to do is to give her up.

What would you do if this were you? Who would want to be tested in such a way? Not me! I can tell you that for sure! And what about old Abraham? His behavior seems so inconsistent to me. One moment he is trying to pass off his wife as his sister because he is fearful that God won’t protect them. And then in another, he trusts God so much as to take his son to the altar. One moment, he stands up to God, gets in His face, arguing for the righteous people of Sodom and Gomorrah, in hopes that God won’t destroy the entire city, but spare some of them. But when it comes time for him to take his son to the mountain, he doesn’t say a word. Not even a peep! I think that that is crazy! I wonder why he himself wouldn’t climb up on the altar, lay across the wood himself. After all, at this point, he is one hundred years old. The good years are behind him. His son’s life has noting in it but possibilities. Me being Abraham? No thanks!

But to be honest with you there is something in him that I admire. There is something in him that I wish I had a little more in me. You will remember that along the way, on the trek up the mountain, Isaac asks his dad the heartbreaking question, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Then and there Abraham replied, “God himself will provide a lamb for the offering, my son? So I wish that I had a hint, a touch of the trust that Abraham had that God would provide for him, that God would take care of them. There are hints of trust in this story. Let’s look at one of them. Two of Abraham’s servants are along for the journey. When they get to the point where they should be climbing the mountain, Abraham turns to them and says, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Sure he says that. What choice did he have? What was he going to say? He wasn’t about to say, “Gentlemen, I’ll be back after I knock off the kid. Just wait here.” So Abraham and Isaac went the rest of the way. Abraham raised his hand with a knife in it. The writer of Genesis tells us that an angel of the Lord called out to him. Abraham called back and said, “Thank God!” Well, the Bible does not say that, but that is what Abraham had to be thinking. When the adrenaline stopped pumping, when his hands stopped shaking, when the ram caught in the thicket was discovered and sacrificed, Abraham named the place, “The Lord will provide.”

God will provide. Put Abraham under extreme duress, more pressure than anyone could ever imagine and what comes out of his mouth. It’s not, “I can’t stand this any longer!” It’s not even, “God, why have you abandoned me.” His words are simply, “The Lord will provide.”

Abraham was doing this preposterous thing, not so much because he was a good man who always did the right thing, but rather because at his very core, he trusted that God would take care of the outcome. And that, my friends, is always hard! Oh, to have the kind of belief that God will provide. To live the kind of life that Saint Ignatius of Loyola once recommended when he said, “Work as if everything depends on you, and pray as if everything depends on God.”

As if everything depends upon God. Now, when we talk about God providing for our lives, we don’t have to limit it to dramatic rescues, like the ram in the thicket and the voice of the angels. When we say that God will provide, it doesn’t have to mean that God will make all of our wishes come true and that every part of our lives will be trouble free and in neat order. But rather, God provides a gift behind every thing that happens, in every person, in each circumstance. The struggle is in trusting that!

Do me a favor. Go with me to the altar. We won’t go to an Old Testament altar. On the altars of the Old Testament are things that don’t leave alive, things like pigeons and rams, things we have come to call burnt offerings. Go with me to another altar, maybe even this altar. In the Old Testament, there is no concept of a resurrection. Eternal life is but a dream. In the Old Testament, continued life came through children. So, in essence, putting a child on the altar was putting your future on the altar. And, after all, isn’t that we really do when we give our lives to God at an altar. When we baptized children, at the altar, we do that. When we pray at the altar, we do that. We give things to God at altars. Our tendency is to take them back again. That is too bad! The truth is that what Abraham really did was to say to God, “Here it is, Lord. If it is not safe with you, it is not safe with anyone.”

My mother pointed out a passage in the book Gilead, a novel written by Marilynne Robinson. Gilead is the story of Reverend James Ames. Near the end of his life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. He tells of preaching a sermon on our text. These are his words. I began my remarks by pointing out the similarities between the stories of Hagaar and Ishamael sent off into the wilderness and Abraham going off with Isaac. My point was that Abraham is, in effect, called on to sacrifice both of his sons, and that the Lord, in both instances sends angels to intervene at critical moments. Abraham’s old age is important, not only because he can hardly hope for more children, but because any father, particularly an older father, must finally give up his child to the wilderness and trust the providence of God. It seems almost a cruelty for one generation to generate another when parents can secure so very little for their children, so little safety, even in the best of circumstances. Great faith is required to give the child up, trusting God to honor the parents’ love for them by assuring that there will indeed by angels in that wilderness. That is a great quote.

Some of you know that wilderness, the one where you give up your children. Maybe it is the wilderness of high school, where there seem to be so many dangers. Or maybe it is the wilderness of college, where your sons and daughters are on their own for the first time. The parents of an eleven year old boy in Utah knew the wilderness of their son being missing and hoped that there were angels around. The parents of a girl from Alabama, missing in Aruba, also hope that their daughter is somewhere, protected by the angels. There is the wilderness of a new life, maybe even a new marriage. Will the angels be there? Will God take care of us? Can we trust that?

You don’t have to have children to know the ends and outs of the wilderness. You are someone’s child, you have to be, and that means that someone has trusted you to God. But still you trek the trails and the overgrowth in hopes that somehow you will find your way, or that there will be an angel close by to protect you. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to my mother for her knowing about the book Gilead and the passage inside of it. The quote can be found beginning on page 128. The author’s name, again, is Marilynne Robinson. The book is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York).