Lent II by Dr Derek Sorensen
‘God at work’ Lent series, Sermon Two
Genesis 12.1-4
St Paul to the Romans 4.1-5,13-17
St John’s Gospel 3.1-17
Last week, Neil gave a wonderful sermon on making the right sacrifice for the right reason. I want to continue on that Lenten theme with a meditation on our readings—Abraham and Isaac.
Do you ever read that story and step back to think about it? The intensity of it? The prospect of losing your only child - because you sacrificed him on an altar? And from Abraham’s perspective—to follow through with it? The agony? The anguish? The confusion? The hope? The injustice of it all?
What did Abraham tell Sarah when they were heading out? Did she know? How would she have reacted? In the story, Abraham doesn’t really tell Isaac what’s going—how awkward must have been the walk home?
Abraham’s story is a story of great faith, I think something to be admired.
I want to focus here on the fact that what God asked Abraham to do was almost absurd—in the sense that it was .. kind of .. impossible. Just a few chapters earlier God promised Abraham endless posterity, and then gave him a son; and yet he was then asked to sacrifice that very son, the vehicle of his blessing, born when Sarah was already way too old?
The ask from God, while ultimately a test, must have made Abraham grapple with a mind-bending contradiction. Abraham had to, somehow, simultaneously be ready to submit entirely—lose everything and sink into despair and destitution at the hand and Will of God — this same God in whom he had faith as the Good and Faithful God of Creation who fulfills His promises!
The point I would like to meditate on here is that Abraham’s faith, in that moment, was a paradox. A contradiction! Unreasonable! Absurd (in some sense)! He must have believed in the terrible fate that awaited him—and he did because he followed through whole-heartedly—but also, in order to even follow through at all, he must have believed in the most wonderful blessing possible that would be his. Why else would he go through with any of it? Why would he worship a cruel and tortuous God?
I think that the reality and the life into which God calls us is so big, so wonderful, and so completely out-of-this-world that it does not compute for us; God brings us into it through this paradox and contradiction of faith. One that reminds us we really aren’t in charge and that we really don’t know anything. A genuine leap of faith.
Jesus in his sermons presents the Kingdom of God—a strange upside-down kingdom where the first are last and the last are first; where the master is actually the servant; where you must somehow be born anew; where to save your life you must lose it (sound familiar?).
For me, one of the most striking passages in this vein that both make all the sense in the world and no sense at all to me—that force me into an Abraham-like contradiction and leap of faith—is where Jesus says in Matthew:
“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink. Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
If that is how god clothes the grass of the field, […] will he not much more clothe you? […] therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
I read that and part of me jumps and says—Yes! Of course! How much more for me? Good is Good, He rules a Good world, and I am a participant in that!
But—flowers die. Animals suffer, brutally. Children endure horrendous circumstances. Wars rage, people end up on the streets. Disease spreads and destroys. And I, in my life, at times struggle deeply and suffer.
Where is that Good God clothing all of these lovely flowers and why has he forgotten all of this evil?
Jesus may be inviting us into a paradox but he was not naive when he said those words. He was not out of touch with the sick, the lame, the blind, the leprous, the grieving, the dying—the dead, even. He Himself would go on to suffer the most brutal and humiliating death imaginable, made worse because the victim was the most Innocent and Holy of us all!
And yet he still said those words. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus invites us to see and believe - to work and to live - with the kingdom of God at hand. Here. Now.
He invites us to see the world in all of its misery and gore—to be in tune with it—to see it and somehow accept it as the reality. The ground truth. Indeed, even more, to be involved and ever more painfully aware of the suffering of those around us as we offer help.
Yet—we must also believe and live, presently, in the knowledge that God. Is. Good. Heaven may be a future reality but it can also be a present reality! Eden can be cultivated, revived, and lived in here and now. In spite of—in the face of—all the suffering of life!
In this season of Lent I am drawn to consider that Jesus had life—the fullest and most abundant life—in the agony of his death on the cross. Interposed, simultaneous to the suffering and misery of this world Jesus invites us into life. Full, real, abundant, gushing life!