March 4, 2012, at St Mark Church in Norman, OK
We pick up this wonderful reading today so rich in imagery so often told. We are going to hear again in just a few weeks in Holy Week. It has to be paired with last week and the ones to come in Lent, the first readings. Last week the first reading for a Sunday in Lent was the story of Noah, that powerful story of redemption and new life. So, today it is Abraham who speaks to us. Next week it is Moses. Then it is Cyrus of all people, and then, Jeremiah. Central to our celebration of Lent is the truth and reality of Covenant. This Holy Season begins with the first Covenant with Noah and ends with the final Covenant on Holy Thursday. As we make our way to that Holy Night when God makes his final covenant with us in the Body and Blood of Christ, his son. We should remember all the Covenants that have taken human kind deeper and deeper into the mystery of God’s love for us.
The story of Noah is the story of salvation and re-creation. It is the story of life’s triumph over death, the story of God’s promise. It is a promise that reveals the promise maker and the promise keeper. In that covenant, nothing is asked of Noah. There is no condition. It is a pure gift. It simply introduces God’s promise with rich and powerful images that speak to every Christian sensitive to the symbols with which we often speak: water. It covers the earth, it sweeps away all that is evil, and creation begins a new with God’s promise that death will never come again.
Today it is the story of a father and a son. I reveals to us a God who will provide. It is about way more than Isaac’s death, however. It is about the death of us all. Abraham is not the first nor the last to be put to test. He is not the first to be asked for a sacrifice, and neither is Isaac. Each of us is required to make Abraham’s sacrifice. We are all going to have to face letting go of our most beloved person, or most beloved task, possession, and sometimes joy. Everything dear to us, everything we love, everything given to us by God is subject to death. Its own and our own.
The essence of this story is simple, but profound. Is God good? Will God keep the promises? This is the question that rises up in our face every time we are separated from what we love: the death of a spouse, the death of a child, a parent, a brother or sister puts that question right in our face at the moment of the separation. Is God good? We lose our job. We lose our home. We lose our dignity to old age and sometimes that terrible illness that might rob us of our independence, freedom. In the midst of that, the question rises. Is God good. Is God going to keep the promise. A physician comes and says, there is no hope. There is nothing more to do. The question rises, is God good? How can this happen?
Abraham is our father in faith because Abraham embodies the final act of faith that all of us must make. We all make scarifies; we all stand in the face of the terrible separation from what we all hold most dear. We have to know the answer to that question. The point of remember this profound yet simple truth is that God does the same. This is my beloved Son God says from afar. He is the only one I have. God does not hold back. God does not ask what God has not done. God knows separation. God knows the sadness of losing a child. God knows what it means to lose everything you have. God asks us to be merciful because God has given mercy. God asks us to forgive. God forgives. God asks us to sacrifice and serve. God sacrifices and serves. God makes a promise. We make a promise. If God keeps God’s promise, then we keep our promises. Just about ten days ago, we marked our faces with ashes that remind us that we are going to die. Every single one of us. No one is going to get out of here without dying. But, we have marked ourselves with the sign of the cross because by that cross we know that we shall live. The simple message of the cross is: “Get worthy of it.” Ashes, you are going to die. The cross, get worthy. This is exactly what this season of Lent is about: getting ready to die, and getting worthy to live forever.