A sermon by Associate Minister Elsa A. Peters, June 29, 2008
Genesis 22:1-14
Too much religion. That was the unanimous opinion of my family last weekend. The memorial service for my grandfather was nice – but the minister was a little heavy on the religion. It was too much. Too much religion.
Maybe this was the same thought in the back of Abraham’s mind when he makes his way to Moriah to “offer [his son] as a burnt offering.” Even as he “rose early in the morning” to go to that mountain God would show him. Even though he was going to worship on top of that mountain, perhaps Abraham thought – somewhere in the back of his mind – this is just a little too much religion.
My family’s complaint was the long-winded preacher’s repeated emphasis on the passion of Jesus. They wanted to celebrate my grandfather’s 79 years of life – not focus on the sacrifice that Jesus may have offered with his life. My aunt said that the point was made, but he didn’t have to keep going on about it. My father protested that the death of Jesus was not the assurance he wanted, not at this moment, if ever. It was all just too much. Too much religion – as I suspect it must have been for Abraham – even if he doesn’t seem to bat an eye.
Our human response is to assume that Abraham is angry. We assume that he’s questioning the accepted Jewish ritual observance of offering a sacrifice to his God – but none of this appears in the Biblical account. It’s just not there. There’s “no anguish, no heated arguments with Sarah, no teetering on the edge of faith.” Abraham just goes to the top of that mountain with his son following at his heels asking, “where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Even with this question, Abraham doesn’t waiver. He assures his son that God will provide that lamb. God will provide, and they walk on together with the certain awareness that God never said this was going to be easy. The stuff of faith is not supposed to be easy. Abraham and Sarah can laugh all they want, but the God they have come to know has done some pretty amazing things – all the while promising that “God will bless those who bless [them], and the one that curses [them] God will curse.” So, really what could go wrong? Why would Abraham’s faith teeter as he raises that knife to kill his son?
This is a stark and frightening image. But, Abraham was just listening to the voice of God. He “thought it would be the right thing, in God’s eyes.” But, those were not Abraham’s words. He looks up. That’s all we know. He looks up. We don’t know if Abraham is looking up to see God’s eyes. We only know that when he looks up, he sees a ram.
It doesn’t say that this is the right thing in God’s eyes. Not in the Biblical account. Instead, it’s transcribed by a Methodist pastor named Pat who shares the story of Anola Dole Reed with her friend over cups of tea. Her friend Rebecca is also a pastor, and they often share cups of tea to talk about the loneliness that often accompanies ministry. Over one of these particular cups of tea, Pat confided to her friend about Anola,
“He killed her. With a kitchen knife. In front of three of their children. The baby was sleeping.”
Rebecca listened to her friend’s story and then dared to ask the question we all wonder when we hear these kinds of stories, “Why?”
That’s when Pat talked about how Anola thought that she was doing the right thing, in God’s eyes. This woman who had been murdered by her husband with a kitchen knife while her three children watched, thought she was doing the right thing in God’s eyes. Anola was keeping the family together. But, for this faith, Anola was killed with a kitchen knife. Pat was her pastor. And though she didn’t need to explain it, Pat described how hard this was:
“A good woman would be willing to accept personal pain, and think only of the good of the family. You know, ‘Your life is only valuable if it’s given away’ and ‘This is your cross to bear.’ She heard, just like you and I have, that Jesus didn’t turn away from the cup of suffering when God asked him to drink it. [Anola] was trying to be a good Christian, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.”
Too much religion. That’s what it sounds like to me. This is the kind of faith that ignores that Sarah or even Ishmael might have had something to say about Abraham’s actions. It is the kind of religion that focuses so tightly on the bindings – whether those are the bindings that held Issac to that wooden altar or the limitations that hold us back to a certain set of beliefs. This is too much religion. It’s too much when our stories and those on the news and those seated beside us fail to become part of how we hear the Biblical account.
Too much religion is what frustrates me about Paul’s faith. In the midst of his three missionary journeys, he wrote letters to the newly forming Christian communities about what it means to practice love. This practice to Paul was all about sacrifice. This is what Paul meant by following the footsteps of Jesus. It was all about Jesus on the cross – which I might remind you is exactly what my family complained about. It’s too much religion. But, Paul thought that the world was going to end. Any day now, Jesus would come back and so those early Christian communities didn’t need to worry about how to govern themselves or what to sing. None of that mattered. They didn’t celebrate life. There was nothing to celebrate because Jesus was coming back. Any day now, Jesus was coming back.
But, we have stories. We are not limited like those early Christian communities. We are not constrained by the same bindings. Like Abraham, we look up in search of answers – but when no ram appears – we turn toward each other and listen. This is what it means for us to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Like Anola, we are all trying to be good Christians.
We’re not counting the crosses we bear to evidence our devout faith. We are trying to be faithful – but that doesn’t mean that our lives are full of sacrifice. We want to do the right thing in God’s eyes, but we aren’t seeking tests. After all, it’s summer time. We would rather leave the tests and rules behind us, even if this is a story about Abraham being tested. But, this is too much religion. It’s too much to spend our whole lives searching for that mysterious ram. That would have no room for joy. There’s plenty of sacrifice, abuse and tough stories in this world, but it seems that there needs to be more room for joy – if only we are brave enough to seek it buried beneath all of the bindings of our shared faith.