This sermon was preached for the fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Sunday, July 2 at St. Mark's. The text for this sermon were: Genesis 22:1-14, Psalm 13, and Matthew 10:40-42.
You wouldn’t know it by looking at me now, but I used to be quite a serious athlete in high school. Three season varsity runner - and with running, it’s really four seasons - you’ve got to train and train hard all through the summer, too. One summer, I was pushing 35, 40, 45 miles a week, too fast and too hard, and gave myself shin splits - tiny tears in the connections between my leg muscles and bones. Now if you push through shin splints it can turn into what’s called a stress fracture - the strain and stress of the tears results in tiny fractures in the bones themselves. And that’s exactly what I did.
The doctors injected this dye and used x-rays to show that yup, my punishing training regimen was literally breaking my bones. As we reviewed the results, my doctor nonchalantly suggested that I should quit running, perhaps try a different sport? I remember that moment so clearly because my melodramatic teenage brain absolutely rebelled at the ridiculousness of his suggestion. Running was everything, my wins and school records were my tangible proof I was worth something. I didn’t know who I was without it.
Enough, the doctor was trying to say to a limping fifteen year old girl. Enough. You don’t have to do this to yourself any more.
Abraham, Abraham, the voice of God called out to the man with the knife in his hand. Enough.
The story of the binding of Isaac is deeply problematic, but I think that’s why it’s stuck around so long. It’s tough to puzzle out and unpack - what it is trying to say about God and faith. That puzzle is compelling. We aren’t going to solve it this morning - we aren’t supposed to - but it still has a message for us today.
There’s two things that are important for us to remember when approaching this story from our vantage point. Neither of them excuse Abraham’s - or even God’s - actions at all. The first is that all sorts of gods in Abraham’s time were demanding human and child sacrifice all the time. So it was actually not an unusual request from one’s god. The second is that scripture often treats a main character’s sons and daughters as an extension of oneself, rather than as individual people with individual human rights. Think of Job, for example, how his children were all killed and then all replaced in the happy ending as if they were interchangeable rewards for a righteous man. I really can’t imagine that’d be how parents actually felt at the time these stories were lived, but that’s the way the stories are often framed. The focus of this story is meant to be on Abraham’s experience - his anguish and his sacrifice - not Isaac’s.
The text directs us to commend and celebrate Abraham’s courageous willingness to sacrifice his son, who represents the supposed key and fruition of God’s promises to him. I find it difficult to celebrate Abraham’s willingness to kill an innocent person in the name of God. I also think the courage it took for Abraham’s second big decision to put down the knife deserves celebrating, too.
When you have so utterly convinced yourself that something so repugnant as harming your own child is what God wants from you, it takes courage to shift gears. When the world has taught you to accept that this is what gods demand of us all the time and that this is what faithful fathers do, it’s not necessarily easy to remake your sense of what God desires. When you have heard God’s command directly, when you have already shouldered the sacrificial bundle, have hiked for days to the high and holy mountain, when you have bound your own son’s hands and grasped the knife, it takes a brave and open heart to hear God’s voice calling to you, Enough, enough. Put down the knife. This is not what I want.
Thing is, God does this a lot through scripture - pulls back and relents at the last moment. It’s part of God’s reputation for mercy. So if you aren’t prepared to suddenly pivot along with God’s grace, if you aren’t open to drastic change in your calling from God, you might get left behind.
I believe there are many people who are longing to hear, “Enough already!” from God, even now. They are longing to hear: you don’t have to hurt yourself, change yourself, chain yourself in all the ways they have told you you must. Not anymore.
A video from Denver’s pride parade went viral this past weekend. It’s of a man sitting in a wheelchair on the sidelines of the parade holding a sign that says, “Reformed bigot/I am so sorry/free hugs.” In the video, dozens of young rainbow-clad marchers dart from the parade and into his arms. One says to him, “All is forgiven.” Another hangs on a bit longer than the rest.
I don’t know that man’s story. I don’t know whether he was told that God wanted him to disown his gay child or shun his lesbian neighbor. I don’t know what caused him to change his heart. But I do know this: his story is now more full of love than it had been before.
If the story of the binding of Isaac feels unfinished, it’s because it is, at least in our faith tradition. Although this story belongs to Judaism and Islam, too, in Christianity, we traditionally read this story of the binding of Isaac at the Easter Vigil as part of the retelling of the arc of the story of salvation. So our story today does not end with the provision of the ram, it ends at the cross. God provides his son, his only son, whom he loves, as the ultimate sacrifice, the final sacrifice to end all sacrifices. There is to be no more. God will never ask this of us again - this killing of ourselves and our children. Jesus has completed it once and for all.
Yes, this text begins “God tested Abraham.” Yes, the epistles talk about God testing us here and there. But if we are to take the cross seriously, meaningfully, to truly believe its promise, it means there are no more tests, not ever. Jesus took them for us. And because of him, we all pass.
What would it look like for you to truly believe your life is not a series of tests? What would your life look like if you really trusted that you have nothing to prove, not to God?
I believe it would look like no child ever being disowned in the name of God again. I believe it would look like being free to love more wholeheartedly than ever before.
I believe it would look something like what we saw in Glastonbury, England this past week, in another video that was shared again and again all over the world. If you don’t know about Lewis Capaldi, he’s a young artist, and I mean young, he’s 26 now, who had a meteoric rise to fame pre-COVID - I’m talking breaking all sorts of records in how quickly his singles rose to the top of every type of chart there is. But in the years since his first big hits, Capaldi has been remarkably open about how difficult the fame and pressure has been for him and his mental health. Performance anxiety was especially overwhelming - he was even diagnosed with a condition called Tourette’s that makes it extremely difficult to perform in front of large crowds.
This past Saturday, Capaldi attempted to perform his song “Someone You Loved” to a crowd of thousands in Glastonbury. In the video, you can hear his voice crack, you can see nervous tics start shaking his body, you can tell how much it distresses him that he can’t finish his lines. The crowd keeps singing along though. Then there’s a point in the video where you can hear the crowd realize they are no longer singing with him and they decide, all together as one, to sing for him. Thousands of voices swell and they sing his own words back to him, even as he tries and tries again at each line. Then there’s a moment, too, when he steps back, leans on his microphone stand, gazes out with teary eyes, and lets them do it, lets them sing for him, to him.
“And I tend to close my eyes when it hurts sometimes I fall into your arms I'll be safe in your sound 'til I come back around.” Those were some of the actual words they sang. But they were singing this, too: Enough. Enough, you have nothing left to prove. You have given enough of yourself, we’ve got it from here.
Sometimes the voice of God comes to us through the people who care for us. Our doctors, our fans, a stranger. Put down the knife. Stop running. Let us do this for you.
You have nothing left to prove. Amen.
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