Peace be with you.
Friends, we come now to the Second Sunday of Lent,
and we’re on I call it both
dangerous and very holy ground
because the Church is giving us
twenty-second chapter of Genesis.
The ancient Israelites referred to it as the
“Akedah,” which means the “binding.”
It’s the binding of Isaac.
So, he wasn’t sacrificed,
but Abraham was ready to sacrifice him.
It’s hard to imagine another text in the Old Testament
that’s more controversial,
that’s stirred up more puzzlement and opposition.
And I am with Søren Kierkegaard,
the great philosopher who writes a book called
“Fear and Trembling” based upon this text.
His point was, if you don’t experience
fear and trembling having read this text,
you have not been paying attention.
If you read this in a kind of simplistic,
moralizing way or you pass it over
because you’ve heard it a thousand times,
you’re not coming to grips with it.
So, I want to spend a little time because
it’s naming something of absolute centrality
in the spiritual life.
Now, I think you remember the story.
Listen:
“God put Abraham to the test.
He called to him, ‘Abraham!’
‘Here I am!’ he replied.
Then God said, ‘Take your son Isaac,
your only one, whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah,
and there you shall offer him up as a holocaust.”
Now, fear and trembling, why?
Abraham, chosen by the Lord, he hears the voice of the Lord,
follows him to the Promised Land,
makes covenant with him, all of that.
The Lord promises him, through a son of yours,
you’ll become the father of great nations
and the descendants will be greater than the stars in the sky.
All of that wonderful promise.
Abraham ages, ages, ages,
comes to the age of ninety-nine, and he said,
“Well, Lord, how’s this ever going to happen?”
And the Lord makes it happen.
And Abraham and Sarah have this son,
Isaac.
I mean, any father loving his son, of course,
but intensify it because here’s the son,
this impossible son of his ancient old age.
More to it, the son through whom
the great promise of God would be fulfilled.
I mean, could this child be any more important to Abraham?
And so the same God who called him,
the same God who made covenant with him,
the same God who allowed for the birth of Isaac,
says
—and notice, please, the language here,
as God speaks to Abraham—
“Take your son Isaac”
—well, as if that’s not enough,
what does he say—
“you’re only one, whom you love,”
rubbing it in, as it were,
of how enormously important this child is to you.
“And I want you to”
—What?
Can you imagine Abraham trying to take this in?
What?
“To offer him up as a holocaust,”
that means a burnt offering,
“on a height that I will point out to you.”
It’s hard to imagine,
just move into the psychological space of this scene,
what it was like for Abraham to hear those words.
So not only are we talking about an enormous personal crisis,
this shockingly difficult family personal crisis,
but it appears for all the world that God is at war with himself.
There’s a kind of metaphysical dimension
to Abraham’s suffering here.
Because, again, the same God
who said you’re my man, I make a promise to you,
I made a covenant with you,
and this is the son through whom,
and he’s your only one,
and now I want you to sacrifice that son to me.
At the psychological level,
undoubtedly at the physical level,
at the familial level,
even as I say at the metaphysical and religious level,
it’s hard to imagine someone going through more of a crisis.
So, here’s the question;
and it’s in the mind of everybody who’s ever read this story:
Why in the world would God do this?
Now, the story has, if you want, a happy ending,
because Abraham, all right,
he’s willing to obey the Lord
and he walks with his son.
And it’s heartbreaking, right?
Because the son, carrying the instruments of the sacrifice,
carrying the wood up the mountain.
And the son, imagine, you’re a father
of a young kid and well, here we are,
here’s the place and here’s the wood for the sacrifice.
“But father, where’s the offering?”
What was going through Abraham’s heart
and mind at that point?
And he says to him,
“God will provide.”
And then “Akedah,” the binding.
He binds Isaac to the altar,
raises the knife to kill him.
I mean, he’s completely willing to go through with it.
And only then does the angel stay his hand.
And the Lord says,
“Now I know that you love and obey me.”
Can you forgive people, everyone, up and down the ages,
from biblical times through Kierkegaard
to our time, wondering,
what are we dealing with here?
This sounds like something rather monstrous is going on.
Okay.
What we should not do is psychologize this reading.
What we should not do is see it in primarily
these sort of subjective psychological terms.
What we have here is something that you have
a lot of in the Bible.
And let me state it this way:
the test —and remember that’s how it begins:
“God put Abraham to the test.”
What’s the test?
Do you love God
or do you love the benefits of God?
Let me say that again.
That’s the test.
Do you love God
or do you love the benefits of God?
So God, I mean,
provides benefits for us all the time.
The fact that I exist, that I’m breathing,
that I’m alive, that’s all a gift of God.
Whatever success I’ve had
or whatever good things have happened to me,
those are benefits that have come to me from God.
And that’s wonderful.
But how do I love God?
Do I love God because of the good things he gives me?
Or do I love him for his own sake?
Do I love the benefits that come to me from God’s will
or do I love God’s will?
Now, there’s a link between this story,
a tight link I think,
and the story at the beginning of the book of Job.
Do you remember?
Similarly, Satan in the heavenly court,
God says to him, have you noticed my servant, Job?
I mean, I know most people are wicked,
but there’s Job.
He’s just upright. He’s great.
He’s a wonderful person.
And Satan says to him, well, yeah,
because you’ve given him every good thing.
Job is successful, has a big family,
he’s got nothing but riches, and he’s got fame,
and he’s well-loved.
Sure, Lord, you’ve given him all these benefits.
And so a test happens.
God gives Satan leave to take all of that away.
And at the heart of the book of
Job is Job saying,
“The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Does he complain?
Yeah. And suffer, yes.
And that’s all in the book of Job.
But at the end of the day,
Job witnesses to the fact that he loves,
not the benefits of God,
but God.
You see the same thing, everybody,
in the spiritual tradition.
Read someone like St.John of the Cross.
When he talks about the dark night of the senses
and the dark night of the spirit,
he’s not talking about depression.
He’s talking about the stripping away
of all those benefits that come to us,
to the body and to the soul.
If I strip all those away, what am I left with
but God in himself?
Do I love the benefits of God
or do I love God?
It’s in some ways the central question of the spiritual life.
In this world, is this a tough road to walk?
Yeah, it is, it is.
Because as Job said, and as Abraham experienced,
the Lord gives and sometimes the Lord takes away.
Now, is God’s ultimate purpose always a purpose of love?
Yes. Yes.
God is love.
Can we always see it clearly and on our terms?
No.
Does the love of God always correspond
to benefits that I can immediately appreciate?
No.
And that’s the test.
That’s the test.
Okay.
Abraham on Mount Moriah,
Job on the dung heap,
having been stripped of all these goods.
One more image: Jesus on the cross.
What’s he stripped of on the cross?
Every possible benefit.
Sensual pleasure?
No, he’s at the limit of suffering.
Friendship?
His friends have all abandoned him.
Honor?
No, they’re spitting at him.
Bodily well-being?
No, he’s dying.
He’s like Abraham on Mount Moriah.
He’s like Job on the dung heap.
Jesus nailed to the cross.
And what does he say?
“Father, forgive them”
and “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.”
What did he say in Gethsemane
when he entered into this time of suffering?
“Not my will, your will.”
Do you love the benefits
of God or do you love God?
Sometimes
—I’ll use this language now of the book of Genesis—
sometimes that’s the test.
When all’s going well,
and I’m just basking in benefits,
maybe it’s not clear in the depth of my own soul,
am I loving these
or am I loving God for his own sake?
Now, just one quick glance,
because the Church connects that awful story
—and I mean awful in that rich sense of the word;
it’s an awe-inspiring story as well as being awful
in the more conventional sense—
it links it to Mark’s account of the Transfiguration.
What happens now on Mount Tabor,
the Mount of Transfiguration?
Peter, James, and John,
in the midst of all the struggles of their ministry,
they see Jesus metamorphosed.
That’s what the Greek says, literally.
Transfigured, dazzlingly bright,
the glory of the Lord revealed.
See, that’s the will of God that we love,
even when we can’t see it.
What they’re given is a glimpse in this life
of that glory.
We’re meant to fall in love with God in himself,
even when we can’t see the glory,
even when the benefits are taken from us.
I know it’s hard stuff, everybody.
This is very high-octane spirituality.
But Lent is precisely the time
when we put ourselves to that test,
when we ask ourselves that question:
Do I love the benefits of God
or do I love God?
And God bless you.