"The Cost of Obedience"
6-29-14 (13th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Proper 8A, Semi-Continuous)
Genesis 22:1-14; Matthew 10:40-42
The Cost of Obedience
As I’ve read and studied through the Scriptures, I don’t think that there’s any one passage that I’ve found perhaps more perplexing, challenging, and just generally hard to deal with as this passage we commonly know as “the binding of Isaac.” Everything in me wants to push back against this passage as I read it, especially when I hear the kinds of messages people take away from it - “Oh, we have to have unwavering faith. If God tells you to do something, don’t ask questions: just do it! Abraham was willing to give up his own son because God asked him to do so; where’s our faith and trust?”
But the more I hear things like that, the more I wonder to myself: is that really how we should act? If God told me this afternoon to take Caleb and tie him to the train tracks, I’m pretty sure that I’d be having a little back and forth on the matter - God… are you sure this is what you want me to do? Do you mean a literal sacrifice here, or are you saying I need to be willing to give up my son into your care and not worry about my own plans for him? Please tell me it’s the allegory and not the reality, Lord. Then each step down the road, each foot up the mountain, each inch closer to the tracks or the altar… I’d be looking up at God, waiting for some sign that this wasn't what God was doing to us.
And maybe we only assume that Abraham did all this without hesitation or question. Maybe the text doesn’t tell us about the lump in his throat as Isaac looked at him and asked, “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” or the choked way that Abraham answered his son that God would provide a lamb, then quickly walked three or four steps ahead of his son up the path so that no one but God would see the anguish on his face. There’s no clue in the manuscripts that shows us the way his hand must have trembled and shook as he reached out to take the knife that he would use to sacrifice his son, no imagery of the confusion and fear on Isaac’s face, the tears that may have rolled down his cheeks as he lay bound upon the altar, looking up at his father and sharing the same, un-communicated thought of why?
No matter how the scene truly played out, it’s a terrifying and troubling thing to consider - because the text doesn’t tell us that Abraham hesitated. It doesn’t have any kind of conversation between Abraham and God, asking “why” or “are you sure?” But only shows Abraham answering each successive call with “Here I am.” And this somehow gets lifted up in so many sermons - that Abraham didn’t question, just obeyed. And all I can think is: is this really something we want to be lifting up? In a time when we hear too many stories of religious zealots who do terrible things to other people, who commit murder in the name of God… is this kind of unquestioning obedience something we should really be pushing in our pulpits?
That kind of obedience is difficult to digest and challenging to imagine - it’d be hard to do, even if we thought we should. But the gospel reading today pits us up against a whole different kind of challenge: What if obedience isn’t as complicated as being able to sacrifice your own child on an altar? What if obedience, instead, looks as simple as giving someone a cup of cold water? As Jesus sends the disciples out into the world on their own missionary journey, we heard last week as he told them of the challenges they’d face, the kind of division and hardship they’d have to deal with. He told them to take up their crosses and follow. But here, as he comes to the conclusion of his commissioning speech to the first apostles, he gives them a last bit of encouragement - that the people who receive them, those who show hospitality and give even something as small as a cup of cold water to them - they will be given reward for their faithfulness.
Just a cup of cold water is all it takes to receive a reward, says Jesus. Rev. Russell Rathburn writes, “I love it. Could it be that simple? I think it could. The ethics of the Kingdom of God, concise, elegant, pure, freeing—and practical. It addresses our situation on the street. But it also has larger implications. It answers the great question “how then shall I live?” You should be nice.”’
But I can’t help but stop and wonder for a second as I think about this notion: is it really as simple as giving a cup of water? It’s easy to talk about it being that simple as we talk about it, but what happens when we put it into practice? What is the cost of our obedience? What kind of people might we find ourselves inviting into our homes, sharing our water with? What kind of conversations might come about from our hospitality, and how might those experiences change us? It may not seem like it at first thought… but being asked to give even a cup of cold water - it could change our very lives.
And so we find ourselves asking questions before we hand out our water sometimes. We wonder what a person’s motivations are as they come to our door, wonder what it is they really want, wonder how many times they’ll come to our door asking for water again once we give them their first cup. And we close ourselves off, not even being able to give a cup of water to people in an act of simple hospitality. And if we can’t give a cup of water to someone, if we can’t even offer the simplest kindness… then what hope do we have of being able to offer God our obedience and faith in more crucial circumstances?
So the question is - what is the cost of our obedience? And how do we live life faithfully, knowing that we’re too weak and full of doubts to sacrifice our own children, but also often too full of our own pride and self-concern to give a cup of cold water? We find ourselves asking once more: where do we go from here? And we find that the answer still hasn’t changed: we go, trusting God and knowing that God is with us, no matter what.
We don’t have a great deal of context for the kind of feelings and thoughts that transpired on the journey up the mountain. We don’t know what Abraham was going through as he faced the prospect of giving up his own son as a sacrifice. But perhaps we’re not entirely without context - perhaps there’s more in a simple response than we give credit. When Abraham tells his servants to stay behind so that he and Isaac can go on up the mountain to worship, he tells the servants, "We will come back to you." When Isaac asks his father, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham tells Isaac, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” Abraham doesn't tell the servants that he'll be coming back less one son. He doesn’t tell Isaac that he’s supposed to be the lamb. He doesn't tell Isaac that the lamb is already with them. He speaks a word of trust so profound that we tend to overlook it in our own consideration of how horrible a situation Abraham and Isaac are in. Abraham says “God himself will provide the lamb.” And in that statement, at the very least, I believe that Abraham wasn’t just expressing trust and obedience, but also hope. Abraham believed God’s promise that God would make a nation out of his descendants, and as Abraham told his son that God would provide the lamb, it wasn’t a veiled way of telling Isaac that he was to die; it was Abraham expressing his own prayer to God, his own hope that God wouldn’t really force Abraham to kill his own son. Abraham still obeyed, but he still acted in faith, trusting in the God that he hoped would be as faithful to him as he had been to God. And out of that faith, that obedience, that trust and hope, God acted in turn - God spared Isaac and provided the ram on the mountain for Abraham and Isaac to sacrifice together.
And then God went a step further - God gave God’s own son, God’s own self as a sacrifice to fulfill the hopes of the world - and now we’re asked to go out in trust, ourselves, knowing that God has given us everything we need to live an obedient and abundant life in Christ through the power of the Spirit. So, then… what is the cost of our obedience? Nothing that God hasn’t already paid on our behalf. May we remember that always and go out in faith and trust, knowing the power of our God to work in and through us. To God be the Glory. Amen.
Genesis 22:1-14; Matthew 10:40-42
The Cost of Obedience
As I’ve read and studied through the Scriptures, I don’t think that there’s any one passage that I’ve found perhaps more perplexing, challenging, and just generally hard to deal with as this passage we commonly know as “the binding of Isaac.” Everything in me wants to push back against this passage as I read it, especially when I hear the kinds of messages people take away from it - “Oh, we have to have unwavering faith. If God tells you to do something, don’t ask questions: just do it! Abraham was willing to give up his own son because God asked him to do so; where’s our faith and trust?”
But the more I hear things like that, the more I wonder to myself: is that really how we should act? If God told me this afternoon to take Caleb and tie him to the train tracks, I’m pretty sure that I’d be having a little back and forth on the matter - God… are you sure this is what you want me to do? Do you mean a literal sacrifice here, or are you saying I need to be willing to give up my son into your care and not worry about my own plans for him? Please tell me it’s the allegory and not the reality, Lord. Then each step down the road, each foot up the mountain, each inch closer to the tracks or the altar… I’d be looking up at God, waiting for some sign that this wasn't what God was doing to us.
And maybe we only assume that Abraham did all this without hesitation or question. Maybe the text doesn’t tell us about the lump in his throat as Isaac looked at him and asked, “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” or the choked way that Abraham answered his son that God would provide a lamb, then quickly walked three or four steps ahead of his son up the path so that no one but God would see the anguish on his face. There’s no clue in the manuscripts that shows us the way his hand must have trembled and shook as he reached out to take the knife that he would use to sacrifice his son, no imagery of the confusion and fear on Isaac’s face, the tears that may have rolled down his cheeks as he lay bound upon the altar, looking up at his father and sharing the same, un-communicated thought of why?
No matter how the scene truly played out, it’s a terrifying and troubling thing to consider - because the text doesn’t tell us that Abraham hesitated. It doesn’t have any kind of conversation between Abraham and God, asking “why” or “are you sure?” But only shows Abraham answering each successive call with “Here I am.” And this somehow gets lifted up in so many sermons - that Abraham didn’t question, just obeyed. And all I can think is: is this really something we want to be lifting up? In a time when we hear too many stories of religious zealots who do terrible things to other people, who commit murder in the name of God… is this kind of unquestioning obedience something we should really be pushing in our pulpits?
That kind of obedience is difficult to digest and challenging to imagine - it’d be hard to do, even if we thought we should. But the gospel reading today pits us up against a whole different kind of challenge: What if obedience isn’t as complicated as being able to sacrifice your own child on an altar? What if obedience, instead, looks as simple as giving someone a cup of cold water? As Jesus sends the disciples out into the world on their own missionary journey, we heard last week as he told them of the challenges they’d face, the kind of division and hardship they’d have to deal with. He told them to take up their crosses and follow. But here, as he comes to the conclusion of his commissioning speech to the first apostles, he gives them a last bit of encouragement - that the people who receive them, those who show hospitality and give even something as small as a cup of cold water to them - they will be given reward for their faithfulness.
Just a cup of cold water is all it takes to receive a reward, says Jesus. Rev. Russell Rathburn writes, “I love it. Could it be that simple? I think it could. The ethics of the Kingdom of God, concise, elegant, pure, freeing—and practical. It addresses our situation on the street. But it also has larger implications. It answers the great question “how then shall I live?” You should be nice.”’
But I can’t help but stop and wonder for a second as I think about this notion: is it really as simple as giving a cup of water? It’s easy to talk about it being that simple as we talk about it, but what happens when we put it into practice? What is the cost of our obedience? What kind of people might we find ourselves inviting into our homes, sharing our water with? What kind of conversations might come about from our hospitality, and how might those experiences change us? It may not seem like it at first thought… but being asked to give even a cup of cold water - it could change our very lives.
And so we find ourselves asking questions before we hand out our water sometimes. We wonder what a person’s motivations are as they come to our door, wonder what it is they really want, wonder how many times they’ll come to our door asking for water again once we give them their first cup. And we close ourselves off, not even being able to give a cup of water to people in an act of simple hospitality. And if we can’t give a cup of water to someone, if we can’t even offer the simplest kindness… then what hope do we have of being able to offer God our obedience and faith in more crucial circumstances?
So the question is - what is the cost of our obedience? And how do we live life faithfully, knowing that we’re too weak and full of doubts to sacrifice our own children, but also often too full of our own pride and self-concern to give a cup of cold water? We find ourselves asking once more: where do we go from here? And we find that the answer still hasn’t changed: we go, trusting God and knowing that God is with us, no matter what.
We don’t have a great deal of context for the kind of feelings and thoughts that transpired on the journey up the mountain. We don’t know what Abraham was going through as he faced the prospect of giving up his own son as a sacrifice. But perhaps we’re not entirely without context - perhaps there’s more in a simple response than we give credit. When Abraham tells his servants to stay behind so that he and Isaac can go on up the mountain to worship, he tells the servants, "We will come back to you." When Isaac asks his father, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham tells Isaac, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” Abraham doesn't tell the servants that he'll be coming back less one son. He doesn’t tell Isaac that he’s supposed to be the lamb. He doesn't tell Isaac that the lamb is already with them. He speaks a word of trust so profound that we tend to overlook it in our own consideration of how horrible a situation Abraham and Isaac are in. Abraham says “God himself will provide the lamb.” And in that statement, at the very least, I believe that Abraham wasn’t just expressing trust and obedience, but also hope. Abraham believed God’s promise that God would make a nation out of his descendants, and as Abraham told his son that God would provide the lamb, it wasn’t a veiled way of telling Isaac that he was to die; it was Abraham expressing his own prayer to God, his own hope that God wouldn’t really force Abraham to kill his own son. Abraham still obeyed, but he still acted in faith, trusting in the God that he hoped would be as faithful to him as he had been to God. And out of that faith, that obedience, that trust and hope, God acted in turn - God spared Isaac and provided the ram on the mountain for Abraham and Isaac to sacrifice together.
And then God went a step further - God gave God’s own son, God’s own self as a sacrifice to fulfill the hopes of the world - and now we’re asked to go out in trust, ourselves, knowing that God has given us everything we need to live an obedient and abundant life in Christ through the power of the Spirit. So, then… what is the cost of our obedience? Nothing that God hasn’t already paid on our behalf. May we remember that always and go out in faith and trust, knowing the power of our God to work in and through us. To God be the Glory. Amen.
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