For the past couple of years, we have been
spending several of our summer Sundays focusing on stories from the Old
Testament. I’ve chosen to do this
because the Old Testament provides us with many important stories to help us
grow in our faith.
During my elementary school years, I would
get off the school bus and run up to my grandmother’s mobile home which was
just up the hill from my house. I always looked forward to my weekday
afternoons with Mom-Mom because she always had a large jar of freshly made iced
tea with way too much sugar and lemon juice waiting for me in her frig.
If that wasn’t enough sugar for me, she
also made a cake each week which always had way too much icing if that’s even
possible. You might be thinking that my grandmother was much too kind to do
this for me each day, but she actually had an ulterior motive in doing this.
As I guzzled down her overly sweet iced
tea and delighted in the buttercream icing, she would hand me my Old Testament
study book. She would have me read an Old Testament story like the one we heard
today. After I was done reading the story, I took a test on what I just read
and she would give me a grade.
This is how I became familiar with the
stories of the Old Testament. Whenever I read an Old Testament story today, I
feel the need to have a lot of sugar. I think it’s called behavioral
conditioning.
My grandmother gave me all of that sugar
even though a lot of these Old Testament stories are not very sweet. Some of
these stories are so sad and tragic that I want to sugarcoat their meaning. Today’s
Old Testament story really takes the cake. OK, that’s enough sweet talk. It’s
time to dig into the story.
If we were paying attention when today’s
Old Testament scripture was read to us this morning, most of that story was
hard to take. Your palms might have gotten a bit sweaty. This is not a story
for the faint of heart.
It’s a story that seems so primitive to us
and we’re more than surprised that it’s included in our bible. If you visit
Thomas Jefferson’s home in Monticello, Virginia, you might have noticed his
bible on display.
Our brilliant founding father, the
towering intellect who crafted the Declaration of Independence and established
the University of Virginia, literally cut out any part of the bible that he
found offensive, illogical, or uncomfortable. I don’t know this for sure, but
based on his criteria, I don’t think he wanted this story in the bible.
Who would want to include a story about a
father coming this close to sacrificing his own son? From the very beginning of
this story, we are told that this is exactly what God told Abraham to do. It’s
not an ambiguous command. Abraham is told to sacrifice his own son.
From there, this story feels like it will
never end because it slowly tells us how Abraham journeyed with his son to the
place where this was sacrifice was to be made. When they reach their
destination, we are even given the details of how Abraham prepared for the
sacrifice. This is such a disturbing story. How is it possible that a story
like this can be included in the bible?
It’s stories like this that remind me of
just how important it is for us to understand the context of when these stories
were originally told. Without any knowledge of the historical and social
context of this story, I would probably go find some scissors and cut this
story out from my bible.
So here’s the context of this story.
Abraham lived during a time when the people of the Ancient Near East offered up
their children as sacrifices to their various lifeless deities. When Abraham
was told to sacrifice his son, Isaac, he didn’t know what we have come to know,
that this God is not like any other deity of that time period. The God we know
and worship is a God of love and grace.
This is not a story about God arbitrarily
changing his mind at the last minute to spare Isaac’s life. This is a story to
help us understand that the God of Abraham is like no other God. This is not a
God of death. This is a God of life. This is a God who offers us a better way.
When you think about the story in this
way, it helps us to understand what the author of Genesis is trying to
communicate to us. Once we put this story in the proper context of the time
period in which it was originally written, we can then see a message of hope
and good news.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the many
ways that God offers us a better way. And like, Abraham, we are called to trust
in this God everyday of our lives.
What are the better ways that God is
offering to us in our journey of faith?
This story of Abraham and Isaac might
sound extreme to our modern day sensibilities, but I think that we can all
acknowledge that we don’t always choose the life that God is offering to us.
Children watch our every move and pick up
messages that we never intended to send. We can let work drive a knife into the
beating heart of a marriage. We can bind our families with cords of anger and
addiction that can feel like death. If we are not aware of or sensitive to
others, we will kill life’s most precious relationships.
We face these life and death situations
all the time. The question is if we are open to God’s better way of living.
In one of my previous churches, a middle age
woman with tears in her eyes told me how she had been bullied throughout her
early school years. She said that she had a facial skin condition during those
years in school and several of the other students including some that she
thought were her friends, had consistently made fun of her. Because of all of
this, she suffered from extremely low self-esteem during those early years.
She said how she still deals with low
self-esteem even though the bullying had ended a long time ago. But what’s
different is that she knows that God loves her unconditionally. She knows that
beauty is more than skin deep. She knows that her self-worth is not dependent
on how other people treat her. She has chosen the better way.
My hero in the faith is John Wesley, the
founder of Methodism. Anyone that knows me is aware of my fascination with
Wesley who was an Anglican Priest in England back in the 1700’s.
Whenever I meet with our confirmation
class, I’ll tell them the date when he was born. June 28, 1703. My family knows
that I am fixated on this great man of faith.
So when our daughter and her fiancé told
Penny and me the date of their wedding, I was thrilled. Out of all of the dates
they could have chosen, out of 365 choices, they chose June 28 which is John
Wesley’s birthday anniversary.
My daughter is afraid that when I give the
toast at her wedding reception this Saturday that instead of focusing on her, I
will say something about John Wesley. That’s how much I love John Wesley, but I
love my daughter more so I’ll behave.
In the early part of John Wesley’s
ministry, he experienced a time of deep darkness. In 1735, he traveled to
America to serve as a missionary to the Native Americans in the colony of
Georgia.
His hope was to convert them to
Christianity but they didn’t respond to his preaching. While in Georgia, he
fell in love with a young lady but the relationship didn’t end very well. To make a long
story short, her father forced him to go back to England.
On his journey back to England, he was
feeling really down and dejected. He felt empty inside. He was at a very low
point spiritually.
When he got back to England, he was really
struggling in his faith. On May 24th, 1738, Wesley reluctantly went
to a prayer meeting that was held on Aldersgate Street in London.
In his journal from that night, he writes
that he stood up during that meeting and said, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ
alone for my salvation and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my
sins, even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
This heart-warming experience was life
changing for John Wesley. From there, the Methodist movement grew rapidly as
people responded to the message of hope and new life through Jesus Christ.
Small groups were formed all over England welcoming people to embrace life over
death.
God showed John Wesley a better way.
The story of Abraham coming close to
sacrificing his son, Isaac, is a story about God offering a better way. God is
unlike the other deities that were worshipped during that time period. This God
is a God of life, not of death.
This story reminds us that God is always
reaching out to us with new life and new hope. Just when the knife seems like
it’s going to take away life, God intervenes and offers a better way.
Maybe you’re going through a time where it
feels like a time of dryness and no life. It’s especially during those times
when God reminds us that life is stronger than death. Hope is greater than any
despair.
We are told that because of what God had
done for him, that Abraham gave that place a name. It became known as “The Lord
will provide.” God does provide for all of our needs, especially during those
times when we feel we have run out of hope. There’s always a better way with
God by our side.
A while back, I attended a meeting where
the leader of the group invited each of us around the table to share how it was
with our souls. The leader looked across the table and said, “Steve, let’s start with you. How is it with
your soul?”
It’s not always easy to be the first
person to respond to such a deep question. I was just glad that this person
didn’t call on me first!
Steve went on to share with all of us that
he had been feeling kind of low in his spiritual life. He said that when he was
in church one day, he decided to go to the chapel and pray.
And as he was there in one of the pews
praying, he felt led to just go ahead and lie face down on the floor of that
chapel. He said that his church had been emphasizing the importance of prayer
and he thought to himself, “Why not?”
At first, he felt kind of silly stretched
out on the floor like that, but as he continued to spend time in prayer, he
felt the weight of his concerns and trouble being lifted from him. In place of
all of that weight, he felt a peace that he hadn’t experienced for a long time.
As he continued to share with us, he
counted off one by one, all of the ways that this time of prayer had changed him.
“Because of that time in prayer, I have
renewed hope and a more positive attitude
in what I do,” he said.
Because of that time in prayer, I feel
more energy, both physically and spiritually.
Because of that time in prayer, I’ve been
exercising more and eating better. I’ve lost some weight, which is a good
thing.
And when he pointed at his fourth finger,
he said that because of that time in prayer, he feels more balance in his life,
more meaning, more purpose.
As he shared with us, you could tell by
the look in his eyes, that he had chosen a better way.
These painful bible stories have a way of
surprising us. What starts out as a story of death ends up being a story of new
life.
Even the story of Good Friday becomes the
story of the empty tomb. Afterall, this God is like no other.
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