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VOL. 6, NO. 41
WOULD YOU
HAVE PASSED THE “ABRAHAM TEST?”
Why did God make life so awfully hard?
for Abraham’s family?
(and every family since)
May you have the hindsight to know where you have been;
And the foresight to know where you are going;
And insight to know when you
have gone too far.
– An Irish Blessing
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Scripture: Genesis 12
Go the
place that I will show you
1. The
LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s
household and go to the land I will show you.
2. I
will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name
great, and you will be a blessing.
3. I
will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all
peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
4. So
Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with
him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran.
5. He
took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the
possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they
arrived there.
6. Abram
traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time
the Canaanites were in the land.
7. The
LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an
altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
Genesis 22
“The
Abraham Test”
1. Some time later God tested Abraham. He said
to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he
replied.
2. Then God said, “Take your son, your only
son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah.
Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you
about.”
3. Early the next morning Abraham got up and
saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac.
When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place
God had told him about.
4. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw
the place in the distance.
5. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the
donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come
back to you.”
6. Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering
and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife.
As the two of them went on together,
7. Isaac spoke up and said to his father
Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?”
Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are
here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8. Abraham answered, “God himself will provide
the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
9. When they reached the place God had told him
about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his
son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.
10. Then
he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
11. But
the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I
am,” he replied.
12. “Do
not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know
that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
13. Abraham
looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over
and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.
14. So
Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On
the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
W
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TO TRAIN UP A CHILD
IN THE LOVE OF THE LORD
·
Train
up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from
it.
Proverbs
22:6 KJV
·
Teach
a child to choose the right path, and when he is older he will remain upon it.
Proverbs
22: 6 (Living Bible)
On the surface it would seem that we have
a rather simple task today. We recognize the families with babes and children,
and support them in the challenges of raising their families. We welcome newly
baptized children into our community today, and we wrap our arms around the
parents.
May you train up your child(ren) in the love of the Lord, so that he/she will not
depart from it when he/she needs it later in life. You have not only a task of
helping your child gather facts from teachers, but also providing a moral and
spiritual context in which to give facts their interpretation.
OTHER CHURCH FAMILIES
From the families that are here today, it
is only a short jump to our own families and their efforts and struggles – with
children, grandchildren, and beyond. There have never been more opportunities,
and more pitfalls for emerging families existing side by side in the history of
civilization.
Young married couples search for their own
spirits and identifies, while the definition of family is continually changing.
To the teachings and traditions of
families, add the growing influence of peers who may have more effect on
children than their parents.
Add to that something new: the internet
(for better and for worse), and with that the publicity machines that
sensationalize not only the best but also the worst of our culture.
So we wonder, by whose standards is
greatness
judged, and
we know that our answer will be judged by the government, the school district,
the family of origin, the culture of origin, the military, the sports teams.
Each would expect us to define greatness by their own
standards.
Is it not fair that we also ask our
children to understand and honor the life of Jesus Christ, whose rules for life
were very different?
Dare we add the church to the list of
those who raise our children? I hope so. May the maturity of our faith provide
a stabilizing spiritual influence of balance, not blame, and guidance, not guilt.
When we see that the church and its
representatives have let a family down, we feel doubly discouraged.
As a church, we look for the day in which
our society can be truly multicultural. May it please the Lord, that our church
does not exist to increase prejudice by selecting just one small pool of
chromosomes, while rejecting all those that are not in that pool.
The struggle to be
truly multicultural
is as great a challenge for the church
as it is for schools, countries, and the families of whom they are composed.
Today we honor the families in our church.
Today we recognize all families connected
to our church.
But this week the Board of Education will
make a presentation to the Church of the Roses for our work with children whose
families we don’t even know. All we know about them is that they have one thing
in common – they don’t get a breakfast at home, and so they get one here.
Will the
volunteers who help with the Montgomery breakfast
please stand - that is anyone who is currently on our volunteer crew and anyone
who has served at some other point over the seven year history of this program.
The Board of Education of Santa Rosa
instructs
you to be in
attendance at the Board of Education meeting at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday at their
regular meeting room in the Santa Rosa City Hall Council Chambers, 100 Santa
Rosa Avenue, pursuant to agenda item #C-6. Our breakfast program, and a program
at the St. Luke Lutheran Church that was modeled after our program, will receive
special recognition by the entire School Board for a seven year commitment to
young people that has grown to seventy or more kids every morning who come to
our church for breakfast. The Rev. Tom Nolen had a vision for us to be an
active part of the nurture of families in our community. Initially, there were
more volunteers than students. But that is not the way it is today, and the
whole community is finding out about what we are doing. Roses, don’t let me
stand in front of the Board of Education alone – the last time that happened …
well let’s not go there. I don’t want to
do this without you.
Join me, not only for our church, but to
validate the kids that we feed. Wednesday, 6:00 p.m., in the City Council Chambers downtown.
THE
BEGINNING OF THE BIBLE
The Bible begins with eleven chapters
about the creation of earth from waters, the storms upon the waters, the great
flood, and the second creation of civilization through Noah. People and places
are “idealized.” But then the narrative changes and follows one family and one
people. The story of Abraham’s family begins the narrative of our faith,
followed by the record of their son, Isaac, his son, Jacob, and his son,
Joseph, and their families.
Our scripture lesson is the story of
Abraham and his son. But when we look to this lesson for guidance about raising the next generation, we find a disturbing truth that
is as true today as it was in the time of Abraham.
Does our religion
call us to sacrifice our children for the faith of their elders? Sounds preposterous,
doesn’t it!
There is an effigy – an image – on a midwestern university campus of a man standing over his
kneeling son, whose hands are bound with rope. They are bronze statues, but it
is clear that the older man is wearing modern clothing with Levis and a short
sleeved shirt. His son is in shorts and no shirt at all, which means that he is
nearly naked. The father has a knife in his right hand that is pointed in
the direction of his son, and the posture of the father is very threatening
to the young boy. It is a modern depiction of our scripture lesson today.
But you need to know which university and
when it was dedicated to understand how this story of Abraham and Isaac
transcend time: The statue is in the courtyard of Kent State University in Ohio, dedicated
in the early 1970’s.
So when we match the location – Kent State – with the
characters that the statues depict, Abraham and his son Isaac, this statue
sends a strong message. This is a statement about fathers who
are ready to
sacrifice their sons for the sake of the father’s religious and political
ideas.
It was May of 1970. Some called
it the Kent State shootings while others called it the Kent State massacre.
Four Kent State students protesting the American invasion of Cambodia, and the
War in Vietnam, were killed on campus by the Ohio National Guard. Nine more were wounded by rifle fire. The
shootings were the culmination of four days of increasingly agitated demonstrations
by members of the student body following the televised announcement of the
invasion by President Richard Nixon.
There were significant national
consequences to the shootings; hundreds of universities,
colleges,
high schools,
and even elementary schools closed throughout the United States due to a
student strike of eight million students, and the event further divided the
country along political lines.
This point was clearly
illustrated when President Nixon attempted to justify the shootings with the
statement, “This should serve as a grave reminder that when dissent turns to
violence, it invites tragedy.”
I remember it as if it were yesterday. But
we should remember it as if it were today. A bronze statue
depicting a father’s readiness to sacrifice his son for the sake of the
father’s religious and political ideas.
CAN WE LEARN ANYTHING
FROM THIS HERO OF LONG AGO?
God said to Abraham, “I will make you into
a great nation and I will bless you. I will bless those who bless you and curse
those who curse you.” Are we still the heirs to that blessing – the leader in
moral values, multiculturalism, and a light unto the world?
Abraham is the story of a transition in
the life of a man, and it is also a story of a transition in human
understanding of God. From God of many, to the God of one.
From the man who was a nomad, to the man who founded cities, agriculture,
communities, and brought his people to Biblical Israel, our story begins.
Abraham was the first. Once you have been first, it cannot be done for the
first time again.
There is a Hebrew prayer of “first times”
that is one of my favorites. Arriving for the first time at the Mount of
Olives we recite the words of a Hebrew blessing for
“first times.”
“Blessed art thou,
O Lord, our God,
King of the Universe,
who has brought
us to this time and to this place.”
I hope once in a while you will give
thanks for some of the “first times” in your life, and feel this way. The first
person to know God, and build a family upon this faith, was Abraham.
THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC
At the climax of the Abraham story,
Abraham was convinced by God to take this only son, this son whom he loved –
the Bible spells it out twice with the same words so that we won’t miss it –
and led him to a hill where there was once a threshing
floor. It was a flat rock terrace at the top of a hill
where the wind would have helped separate the grain and the husks. The aged
father is shown getting up in the morning and cutting wood, as he would for an
animal sacrifice. Following God’s instruction, he saddled a donkey and rode with
Isaac for three days until he reached the threshing floor.
Leaving his servants to guard the donkey,
father and son walked up the hill to the place of the sacrifice. Isaac carried
the wood; Abraham brought the fire and a knife. Then his son asked aloud why
they had not also brought a lamb with them. Abraham’s answer is memorable and
heartbreaking, “God will provide the lamb, my son.”
Still without revealing his intentions,
Abraham constructed an altar and piled the wood on it. Then he tied Isaac’s limbs
together, as he would have those of any other sacrificial animal and laid him
on the pyre. Not until Abraham had grasped the knife and prepared to slay his
own son, did God intervene. “Do not lay your hand upon the lad, or do anything
with him,” the Lord called out, “for now I know that you fear God, seeing that
you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. (Genesis 22:12)
Nearby was a ram caught by the horns in a thicket. Abraham offered the ram as an acceptable sacrifice.
And then God affirmed his promise that this chosen servant would be blessed,
and would become the ancestor of children beyond number.
This
story stands by itself as an act of obedience and deliverance. We are relieved
that it turned out the way it did, and Christians see in this story the
foreshadowing of the sacrifice of God’s only son, the son whom God loved, on
the cross, as the fulfillment of all obedience. It is a connection that is just
too difficult for Christians to overlook.
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ISAAC:
But, what happens if we tell this story
from the point of view of Isaac? This story becomes terrifying. How is it that I was born to a family that
would be willing to kill me if they felt that they had a religious or political
impulse to do so? (child sacrifice)
Thirty years ago people
were asking what kind of fathers and mothers would permit their sons to be
killed in a war in Southeast Asia.
Today Isaac still lives among us, and so do his fears that sons and daughters
might be sacrificed for the religion and the political ambitions of their
parents.
SARAH:
And, what if we tell this story from the
point of view of his mother, Sarah? She was witness to it all, and for her,
Isaac was the son of her old age. What if it had been her religion, instead of
her husband’s? How would female leadership be different than male, and how
would our history have been rewritten from the viewpoint of Sarah?
The Father; the mother;
the child whom the father was ready to sacrifice: As you read the newspapers in the weeks to
come, remember the first family of the Bible and consider each viewpoint when
you read about Iraq,
the Middle East, Asia,
and multiculturalism in our own country. Consider these people when you hear
the uncompromising voices of politicized Christian groups using the symbols of
our own faith to promote a narrow agenda that defines faith according to three
hot button issues (abortion, gender, and prayer in school).
THE BUTTERFLY
Why was Abraham’s life so hard? Why does
each of us struggle so hard? Why is it hard for families to find enough money,
to find the right friends, to honor their traditions while being meaningfully
engaged in the present? Because struggle prepares us for life.
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and
watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body
through that little hole. Then it seemed
to stop making any progress. It appeared
as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further. So the man decided to help the
butterfly. He took a pair of scissors
and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon.
The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small,
shriveled wings. The man continued to
watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would
enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in
time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its
life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.
What the man, in his kindness and haste,
did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required
for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God’s way of forcing
fluid from
the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for
flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we
need in our lives. If God allowed us to
go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not
be as strong as we could have been. We could never fly!
I asked for Strength…
And God gave me Difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for Wisdom…
And God gave me Problems to solve.
I asked for Prosperity…
And God gave me Brain and Brawn to work.
I asked for Courage…
And God gave me Danger to overcome.
I asked for Love…
And God gave me troubled people to help.
I asked for Favors…
And God gave me Opportunities.
Often we find that courage to fly in the
stories that describe the best moments of our past.
Does Abraham have anything still to say to
us? So long as men and women look to the
skies and look inside themselves for the answers to the questions of “Who am
I?” and “Where am I going?” we will continue to find the words we need in the
pages of scripture; and we will find spiritual companions in those who have
responded to God’s call across the boundaries of time and space.
Dr. John H. Cushman
Presbyterian Church of the Roses
2500 Patio Court
Santa Rosa, CA 95405
October
8, 2006
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