You might not expect a minister to dislike a Bible story — but I really am disturbed by the Old Testament story of Abraham being instructed by God to sacrifice his son Isaac.  So this is a sermon of protest, I guess …

 My Least Favorite Story

Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13:1-5

One of the curious gifts of coming to faith as an adult was seriously encountering many of the stories in the bible for the first time. Some stories turned out to be full of meaning and delight for me – the story of Esther, for example, whose courage saved her people, or of the Syrophoenician woman who challenged Jesus when he tried to brush her off. Other stories, however, turned out to be horrifying; what Biblical Scholar Phyllis Trible [1984] called Texts of Terror.

This tale of God testing Abraham by asking for the sacrifice of his son Isaac is one of these.

As if the story were not dreadful enough by itself, there are two events in my own life that made this story painful and quickly moved it to the top of my list of least favorite Bible stories.

The first happened at the church family camp we attended for several years with our members of our church in Seattle. One year the associate pastor worked with the youth during the week, and they rewrote several Bible stories into modern times. One, I think was the story of the Good Samaritan, and they transformed the Samaritan into a drug dealer driving an expensive car (back when that meant a Cadillac and not a Hummer). The one that I remember most starkly, however, was this story of Abraham and Isaac, which they retold in terms of Todd, the Associate Pastor, and his four-year-old daughter Nicole. In their version, Todd and Nicole were out canoeing on the lake – something they did nearly every day at camp. It was there that Todd heard God tell him to sacrifice his daughter by throwing her out of the canoe into the water. By now, I was having trouble even listening to this story. Anyway, they described him weeping, but picking her up in his arms and standing up, ready to obey – and just then God spoke again and relieved him of that unspeakable requirement. I am haunted to this day by the vision of my friend standing in that canoe. It contradicts my own experience of God’s presence in my life, and my own understanding of God’s call to us to be disciples of Jesus Christ. There is nothing in my faith that has anything to do with this dreadful scene.

The second event was my separation from my younger daughter Colleen when I went to Berkeley to go to seminary. Her father – my ex-husband – and I struggled mightily with where the girls should live when I moved to California, and finally agreed – I with great sadness and reluctance – that Colleen would remain in Seattle and continue at the school she was attending and Amanda would go to Berkeley with me. I missed her dreadfully, though we managed to see each other fairly frequently and to maintain a good, if long-distance, relationship. And most of the time I accepted this as the profoundly unfortunate result of our divorce – one that we managed as gracefully and lovingly as we could.

But sometimes, I felt very like Abraham – that my call to ministry had come with a terrible price. One of my good friends reminded me, when I returned to this lament, that the call to ministry had come from God, but the complications of divorce were human matters that ought not to be blamed on God. I believed that then, and I believe it now, but it didn’t keep me from feeling dreadful sometimes.

With all of this baggage weighing down Genesis 22 for me, it is not surprising that I cannot find in my files any sermons that I have actually preached on this text. But this spring when I was attending the conference on preaching (with the unlikely title, Festival of Homiletics!), I heard noted preacher Barbara Brown Taylor deliver a sermon on her least favorite text. It was not the most elegant or polished sermon that we heard, but it had a kind of raw and honest quality that caught my attention. So when this text appeared in the lectionary for June, I resolved to dig into it, even in the face of my discomfort.

The first thing I had to do was the remove myself and my friends from my understanding of the story. While it can be extraordinarily helpful to translate ancient stories into modern times, it can also be extraordinarily unhelpful – and it has become that way for me. This story did not happen to my friend Todd and his daughter, and it did not happen to me and my daughter; it happened – insofar as it is a factual report of events – in the culture of the ancient Middle East. We need to listen to this story with anthropological ears – understanding that it comes from a different time, a different place, and a different way of life.

Moreover, we hear this story in the book of Genesis, which is not a history textbook or a collection of newspaper stories, but a narrative of identity for God’s people. It tells where the world came from and where we came from, and like the creation stories of many peoples around the world, it tells us those things in narratives – of which this is one. We need to listen to this text, then, with literary ears – understanding that the voices that preserved this story for hundreds of years were not journalists, but people of faith describing what the world is like and how it came to be that way.

Having said all of that, I found myself asking what truths might be held within this story. That’s partly the question of getting beyond the resistance that comes from my own life and experience, and it is partly the question of whether there is some wisdom here that is deeper than the surface details for anyone who might be listening. In either sense, the answer is yes: God’s call to us sometimes challenges our deepest attachments and affections. [repeat]

That, my friends, is a deeply disorienting and disturbing idea to those of us who live in this culture where we value our families, our friends, and our way of life so highly. It is hard for us even to imagine that God does not share these loyalties, and hold them as strongly as we do. That’s especially true during those times in our lives when God’s love, care, and presence come to us primarily through our families and friends. If God is working through these relationships, then surely God thinks they are primary, too.

One of the painful lessons of the faith, I think, is that these treasured relationships of ours may not always be primary in God’s eyes. Recall how uncomfortable we are with the words of Jesus when he tells his followers that they must leave their homes and families, or even more strongly, that they must hate their mothers and fathers if they are to follow him. Even allowing for dramatic exaggeration in his words, it is clear that in Jesus’ eyes, there is a need to proclaim that our family ties – however strong, valuable, and precious they are – may not be the most important thing in our lives.

Not surprisingly, this uncomfortable proclamation is easier to see in others than it is in ourselves. I attended the Festival of Homiletics with an old friend who went to seminary the same time I did from the same congregation in Seattle. The challenge in her decision was about her finances – she worried about providing for her son while she was in school, and about how he would feel sharing a very frugal life for three years. When we were reminiscing last month, she reminded me that what I had told her at the time was that Colin would learn that he was not the only important thing in her life.

I still do not like this story of Abraham being told to sacrifice his son Isaac. I still hear it as barbaric and disturbing, and as misrepresenting the God of Shalom. But when I can silence the voices of outrage in my mind, I also recognize that it carries this important theological message – God’s call to us sometimes challenges our deepest attachments and affections. This is not an easy message to hear, nor to live by. But we would squander the wisdom of our ancestors in the faith if we did not listen to it, at least from time to time.

Amen.

Prayer for June 29, 2008

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

God of all of our days, this morning we bring to you our prayers of thanksgiving for the gifts of rest, play, and recreation, and our prayers for the wise and joyful use of those gifts.

God of creation, we remember that you rested after the great works of calling forth the earth and all its creatures. We remember your commandment to keep the Sabbath, and to keep it holy. Still, we confess that obeying this commandment – even partially – can be more difficult than other commandments that seem, on the face of it, to be more demanding.

And so we pray this morning that you will help us set aside our sense of urgency for tasks that really do not have to be done today, for obligations that could be met tomorrow, for responsibilities that can be postponed or reduced. Open our hearts and minds to clear discernment between what truly needs to be undertaken, and what we continue to do from habit or anxiety or self-indulgence. Help us to edit our calendars so that there will be spaces in which we can be renewed, restored, and refreshed.

And then we pray, God of our hearts, for the spiritual freedom to fully experience and express our joy – our joy at the wonders of your creation and our joy at the richness of our human relationships and connections. Let that joy be expressed through our bodies and our voices, through our creative activities and our delight in eating, sleeping, and entertaining one another.

We give you special thanks for the gifts of humor and laughter, for their power to heal us, to bring our concerns into perspective, to undermine arrogance and foolishness, and to interrupt our self-centeredness. Do not, we pray, let us fall into habits of using humor to humiliate or embarrass others, or as a substitute for difficult conversations about important matters.

And finally, we pray that the practice of Sabbath, whether undertaken on a particular day or scattered through the week, will remind us of the goodness of creation and of your unending and extravagant love for everything and everyone you have brought into being.

All these things we pray in the name of the one who came that we might have great joy, the one we name as Jesus the Christ, and in whose words we now pray together …