God Provides Welcome: A Sermon for 5A Pentecost Proper 8

 After hearing from some last week that they were suprised that I spent the entire sermon on Hagar, I decided to make an effort to include the Gospel with the horrible story of the binding of Isaac. 

It also gave me the opportunity to assure everyone that the "mean" OT God is also the "nice" NT God. 

And even the "nice" NT God makes it clear that not all is "nice." And we still need to be welcoming.

See what you think.

Texts: Genesis 22:1-14; Matthew 10:42-44

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German was the foreign language I studied in high school.

And…as part of learning and practicing the language… my teacher had us read the fairy tale, “Cinderella” or “Aschenputtel” by the Brothers Grimm.

A good strategy to have us read something that the entire class had some familiarity with in English.

All was fine…until we got to the part of the story where the prince is taking the glass slipper around to find who was the beautiful girl who had lost her shoe.

This is where the story got grotesquely violent…more than anything any of us raised on the Disney-fied version of the story had come to know.

Our German was sophisticated enough that we understood eyes getting pecked out…and toes getting lopped off.

And this is when we learned the important lesson about the Brothers Grimm.

They used their stories to teach children that not everything in life was happy, cheery, and sweet.

The Bible… and the diviners of our lectionary… seem to have the same thing in mind this morning.

The story commonly known as the binding of Isaac is just flat out disturbing.

What type of God would demand that Abraham kill his son?

It’s this story that I think has given generations of Christians the false idea that somehow…the God of the Old Testament is a mean and vengeful God, and the God of the New Testament is the loving, tender, gentle God.

But the God of Abraham…Sarah…and Isaac… is no different than the God who sought out Mary and Joseph as Jesus became incarnate…and would give Peter the gift of the church…and inspire Paul and countless others to bring God’s message to the people.

In fact… the stories told in the Old Testament are deeply imprinted and understood by Jesus and all the disciples.

So how do we square the tale we heard from Genesis…with a Gospel in which Jesus says the word “Welcome” six times?

I think it really comes back to us paying close attention to God…and God’s faithfulness…and being willing to risk the idea that…part of having free will… means we will face moments when our love will stand at a crossroads.

And we will have to discern and make choices as to how we will act.

In the story of the binding of Isaac…we hear that God “tests” Abraham with his order to take his only son…the son that he loves…and give him as a burnt offering on Mount Moriah.

Just that line alone should give us great pause.

Jewish scholars wrestle with that one.

One noted that in the Hebrew text…the word used for God is “Elohim” which is a plural form. That has led some to wonder if Abraham was indeed hearing the God of Israel…or perhaps some other god of one of the surrounding cultures.

It would be such a relief if we could believe that Abraham was confused.

But it seems Abraham understands what the directive is…and as terrible as it is…he means to fulfill it.

But something interesting happens in this strange and awful tale that I had certainly never noticed before.

In the middle of their journey…Isaac…who by the way is not some young child but is likely a young man at this point in the story…says to his father,

“Dad, where’s the lamb for the sacrifice?”

Abraham’s answer: “God will provide the lamb.”

I’m not sure if Abraham quite comprehended in the moment what he was saying.

God did….ultimately…provide the lamb.

Just as Abraham held the knife in his shaking hand over his own son…the angel of the Lord stopped him…and Abraham’s attention fixed on a ram stuck in the thicket by its horns.

So God did provide the lamb.

Isaac’s life…and the promise made that he would be the son to continue Abraham’s legacy for Israel came to pass.

And Abraham was spared the horror of killing his son.

Thanks be to God he discerned a more sharpened call to stop and look to the thicket for the lamb!

The faith of Abraham in that statement “God will provide” leaves open the idea that even in the middle of this terrible situation…he still turned to God and believed that God would find a way…that life would come out of death.

The Christian Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann notes this is the idea of the resurrection…that “faith is nothing other than trust in the power of resurrection against every deathly circumstance.”

The promise of God is that even when we’re tested… even when we’re put through trials and tribulations… God will still provide.

This Old Testament God…heard Jesus in the New Testament plead in the Garden of Gethsemane… “please let this cup”…this impending execution on a Roman cross…”pass before me.” And yet Jesus placed his faith and trust in that same God…in the hope and promise that God would provide the way.

It also tells us something else about God… a part that might make us feel uneasy.

To love as God has loved us…and especially to love our neighbors as we are commanded to do… will come with a cost.

That’s what Jesus has been talking about these past three weeks that we’ve been working our way through the tenth chapter in Matthew’s Gospel.

We are to love…and to show “welcome” or “radical hospitality” to everyone…

no matter who they are…

what they look like or sound like…

how they dress…

what pronouns they use…

or whether they seem like a person you’d want to hang out with or not.

And we’re to do it without the expectation that we will get noticed or thanked.

Remember what Paul said to the Church at Corinth?...

“Love is patient…Love is kind…and Love is not boastful.” (1 Cor. 13)

If we’re expecting to get something back for our love… then we aren’t really acting out of love.

We’re acting out of that smaller ego self that desperately needs to be in the spotlight….and expects a tickertape parade every time we treat somebody right.

And the truth is…we’re going to find there are some we encounter who cannot or will not return the love.

There are some people who are just so toxic and actively opposed to this counter-cultural idea of love…that the best thing to do is to get away from them… and hope they will someday come around.

And we’re also going to encounter people who have been so injured by religion or religious people that they are highly suspicious of who we are…and have doubts about our intentions.

They still need to be shown that they’re welcomed and loved….and offered something as small as a cold cup of water on a hot summer day like today.

Such a thing happened just this past Friday night up in Louisville, Kentucky.

My friend and mentor…the Rev. Dr. Lee Shafer…is the rector of an Episcopal Church in the historic district.

Across the street is a restaurant which features a Sunday brunch with drag queens.

Instead of shunning her neighbors…Lee and her husband started going to brunch and befriending the performers.

This led to a conversation and an idea was hatched:

Why not host a performance at the church where the drag queens lip synced to Gospel tunes?

The queens agreed…but on the condition that it be a performance that gave something back to the community.

Lee’s church runs a food bank…so the price of admission was a donation of something to the food pantry.

This act of Love…of welcome…was not welcomed by everyone.

There were accusations made on social media that my friend was evil.

But the show went on. And more than 600 people filled the sanctuary of the church. Food was collected.

And the performers…some of the drag queens…were deeply touched to have been welcomed into a house of God…just as they are.

All of this takes trust. It takes the confidence that God will provide us with what we need…be it the right words… the best action… in whatever circumstances.

And it takes a faith not unlike that trembling faith of Abraham’s …that our willingness to take the first step toward showing welcome and love to someone who might reject us…is the way to build a community of love…even if at first it seems futile.

Because no action out of love…true love…is ever wasted.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.