Light Service Sermons for the Month
Abraham: Learning to Go Through It
DATE: January 2, 2000
TEXT: Genesis 22:1-12
Light Service Sermons for the Month
The Transformation of God's People
Abraham: Learning to Go Through It
DATE: January 2, 2000
TEXT: Genesis 22:1-12
Have you made those New Year's resolutions yet? You know; the ones about spending more time with the family, less worry about your career, learning to reduce your body fat, taking up that new hobby in preparation for retirement. We start the world with such good intentions but generally by about the middle the February we have resumed our 50 plus hour work weeks, have become consumed with ambition, stopped going to the health spa and can find no time for a new hobby. What does it take to change our lifestyle? Transform our behavior? Well, for most of us it usually takes some sort of crises. For Ken it was a near brush with death. For others it might be a transfer, or the loss of a job or retirement or the addition of a spouse or family member. I was picking up my dry cleaning recently and the lady behind the counter, knowing that I am a minister, asked what our church was doing for New Year's Eve. I told her about our Communion Service and she told me that at her church they start at 10 PM and go all the way to midnight. But then she added, "I used to party and all that," she said. "But I'm getting old and I need religion." We really don't know what it was for Abraham that changed him. Perhaps it too was the fear of getting old. After all he was 75 when God asked him to pick up and move from Haran to Canaan--present day Israel. Perhaps it was the fact he was his lack of children. But whatever it was we do know one thing--it made him open to God. And God spoke to him and said, "Abram (he was known as Abram back then). Abram; I want you to pick up everything and move to Canaan. I will bless you and make your descendants into a great nation. You will become famous and be a blessing to others." And Abram did just that--he moved! Paul would later call Abraham's faith the foundation for all that God had done in history to save us (culminating in Jesus Christ). Paul even called those who believe in Jesus, the descendants of Abraham. This in mind, you'd expect, in a review of Abraham's life story to find a trail of great incidents which reflect a champion of faith. But instead of a model life, we see a man living in broken patterns, whose weakness and unbelief brings distress on the people around him. He betrays his wife; instead of working things out with his nephew Lot, he takes the easy way out resulting in Lot's losing everything; he gives into Sarah's jealousy which results in a family feud that has lasted to this very day. Not a promising way to keep faith with God who promised he would be the father of a great nation. Instead of finding a spiritual hero, we find a marvel of God's grace and a transformation in Abraham's life, a transformation that comes to its climax in the story we read today. Over the years, people have asked me why did God put Abraham through such a horrible testing as to almost sacrificing his son, Isaac. Well, my answer is if you were to sit down and read Abraham's life story you would discover a certain behavioral pattern in this man that would often repeat itself. He was a big one for avoidance/non-confrontation. One of the earliest exhibits of this trait was when he and his beautiful wife Sarah moved to Egypt to beat a famine. (Turned out he was not a very good farmer either.) To avoid trouble with Pharaoh over Sarah's famous beauty, for all intents and purposes, Abraham lends his wife to Pharaoh in return for some sheep, oxen, some slaves, donkeys and camels, all of which made him quite wealthy. How is that for betrayal? But God does not abandon him. Later, to sidestep a confrontation with his nephew, Abraham and Lot go their separate ways. Abraham moves to Canaan and Lot moves to Sodom and Gomorrah--well you know what happened then, and if you don't, read Genesis chapters 18-19. In brief, this little compromise wipes out almost all of his nephew's family including his wife. But God does not abandon him. Next, Abraham gives into Sarah's demands that he find a surrogate wife resulting in the birth of Ishmael to him and Hagar which in turn causes jealousy in the family and Hagar and Ishmael to be banish from the tents of Abraham sowing the seed for centuries of enmity and anger between Arabs and Jews. But God does not abandon him. At 91, Abraham and Sarah still had no children. Abraham by this time had begun to doubt God's veracity. He even laughs at God. That is until Isaac came along--his one and only son with Sarah proving once again that But God did not abandon him. You might think that at this point, Abraham's transformation from a follower of God into a true disciple would have been complete. The Bible quotes Abraham as saying, "You have given me everything I wanted." So is that what faith is all about--The result of getting everything we want? For many people that is exactly what faith is all about--being successful, having everything, avoiding trouble, living the good life. Well, it finally came down to this: for Abraham to be "the father of faith", for him to gain inner peace and freedom, for him to be completely transformed into a disciple, it was necessary for him to choose finally what or who was his God, the bank book, the wealth, even his boy or the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Genesis 22 records the stark, brutal and mysterious command from God that Abraham sacrifice his son. "No avoiding this one Abraham. Either you put me first in your life and everything else second or you don't." And then, there on that hill, finally, God's transformation project went to Abraham's heart, exposed it, and changed it. It was Abraham's old fearful heart that was put to death on that mountaintop altar than day. The man who came down that mountain, with his son under his arms, is the first glimpse we get in the bible of the prototype of faith, someone with absolute total trust in God. And that is why Paul considered him to be more important than any other of his Jewish ancestors even Moses. By my friends, there is a twist to this story that may not be so terribly obvious and that twist is this: God's covenant to Abraham did not read in fine print (these things I will do Abraham, so long as you continue to demonstrate that you deserve it.) God's promise, His total and unconditional commitment to Abraham, is what brought the changes about in this man! Our transformation into His disciples began not when we finally, completely, irrevocably decide in God above all else but at the very moment we first drew breath. It began when God "knit us together in our mother's womb" (Psalm 139). One of the most beautiful movies of recent years was A River Runs Through It, based upon the novel by the same title. The movie told the story of the Maclean family, who lived in Montana early in the 20th century. The father of the family was a Presbyterian minister--stern but loving. His wife was supportive and nurturing. They had two sons: the oldest, first-born Norman, who tells the story, and a younger son Paul. The real protagonist in the story, however, is the river that runs through their part of Montana. That river becomes the focal point of their family life and the catalyst for everything significant that takes place in their individual lives. It was walking along the banks of that river on Sunday afternoons that the father forged a relationship with his two boys--turning over rocks, teaching them about the world, about life, and about the God who made it all. When it came time for these adolescent boys to prove their moxie, they took a death-defying ride down the rapids in a stolen boat. It was on the river that young Paul made a name for himself as the finest fly-fisherman in the territory. When Norman came back from college searching for himself and his roots, it was to the river that he went to fish, alongside his brother. The Maclean family knew failure and success and laughter and fighting and change and disappointment, but always the river was there. It was the defining force and the spiritual center of that family. Montana would have been just a wilderness; their home, four walls and a roof; their individual lives just sound and fury--if not for the river running through it all. I would like to suggest there has been a river that has run through the whole life of the Church since its beginning, a river that has flowed through every Christian since that first resurrection, a river called the transforming grace of God. Through all the centuries of failure and success and laughter and fighting and change and disappointment, the love of God has always been there giving sum and substance to our being. It has been the defining force and the spiritual center of our Christian community. The world would be just a wilderness, our lives without meaning, our actions mere futile gestures--if not for the river of God's love running through it. This is the power of God's grace in action: His total, persistent, undying love that keeps after us our whole life. Our God does not, will not, give up on trying to transform our lives.
AMEN