The 5th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8A

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8A July 2, 2023 So… nothing like a biblical story about potential child sacrifice to get your week started off right! As you might imagine, we had some spirited discussion about our Old Testament reading from Genesis for today in our Wednesday healing service conversation. Perhaps you’ll be relieved to know that none of us sat easily with this reading for this week, and we raised more questions than answers around it: What is God up to in this story? Does God show change or growth throughout the stories of scripture? What might God ask of us that we treasure? Others spoke knowingly about what it is like to sacrifice something or someone that we love when we feel that is what God is asking of us. We spoke about relationships between children and parents and we talked about what obedience to God looks like in our lives even now. I closed our time with this reflection from Unfolding Light by Steve Garnaas-Holmes, and our Wednesday congregation instructed me to read it to you this morning. Unbinding my Isaac God tested Abraham. and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” So Abraham went… —Genesis 22.1-3 God, I confess I ask others to be my sacrifice. What I have been given to tend, and those I have been given to love, I have used. Without thought I have ascribed it to you, as if it is how you have arranged the world. I have abused my power and privilege, and neglected how my benefit has caused others to suffer. I have justified it in your name. I repent. Hold my hand. Stay my knife. Open my eyes. Give me grace to unbind my Isaac, to set free what I have intended to use, to renounce my entitlement to comfort that costs others. God, I myself am Isaac, bound by my own self-serving. May my selfishness be my sacrifice. Unbind me, and set me free.i. What are the people, places, things, memories, ideas that you hold more dearly than God? How might God be calling you to hold those more loosely? How might God be inviting you to be unbound and set free? Isaac is the physical embodiment and fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah. He’s what Abraham has longed for and holds most dearly in his life. God tests Abraham’s faithfulness or obedience to God by asking Abraham to give up what has the potential to be an idol for Abraham, an impediment in Abraham’s relationship with God. Can you think of a time when you have been asked to relinquish something that you cherished? That relinquishing feels like a death, like a willing leap off a spiritual cliff. And yet, we experience, again and again, new life on the other side of that letting go. In the Romans reading for today, Paul points out that the choice isn’t between slavery and freedom but the choice is to whom one will be enslaved. Will we be enslaved to that which separates us from God or will we know the freedom that is found in obedience to God through Christ? God offers to Abraham and us a call to risk a change, an invitation to examine our relationships between what we hold most dear, if we have made them into idols, an invitation to examine if what we hold most dear has, in fact, become a stumbling block for us in our relationships with God, an impediment in seeing how the Holy Spirit is calling us into deeper life in God and in each other. Sometimes it can be surprising what we uncover when we imagine how what we hold most dear can be or has become a stumbling block between us and God. Here’s an example. While I was on vacation, I had a dream that I was trying to convince a Dutch billionaire to invest in my new project where I use pickleball to draw people into community and into the church. I’ve started playing pickleball this summer with some local ladies once a week; it’s a group of novice pickleballers who my friend Helen has pulled together, and I love it! I’ve enjoyed learning a new sport and playing the game, and I’ve loved making new friends. In my dream, I was presenting a convincing argument to this Dutch billionaire about how we were using pickleball to create meaningful community and change lives, and that it would be a good tool for the Church to use as well. I was telling the billionaire how the (capital C) Church was struggling with creating authentic and engaging community, and how I worried that the Church was broken. I texted my friend Helen about my dream. (Helen is also a priest.) And I realized in our text conversation that perhaps my dream was pointing out to me how even the church can become an idol, a stumbling block in our relationship with God. How God might be inviting us to relinquish and risk to adopt new ways of being together and carrying out God’s mission in the world. It’s a sobering thought for me. I’ve spent 20 years of my life working to build up God’s church. What might it look like for me to hold it a bit more loosely? God, I confess I ask others to be my sacrifice. What I have been given to tend, and those I have been given to love, I have used. Without thought I have ascribed it to you, as if it is how you have arranged the world. I have abused my power and privilege, and neglected how my benefit has caused others to suffer. I have justified it in your name. I repent. Hold my hand. Stay my knife. Open my eyes. Give me grace to unbind my Isaac, to set free what I have intended to use, to renounce my entitlement to comfort that costs others. God, I myself am Isaac, bound by my own self-serving. May my selfishness be my sacrifice. Unbind me, and set me free.i. What are the people, places, things, memories, ideas that you hold more dearly than God? How might God be calling you to hold those more loosely? How might God be inviting you to be unbound and set free? i. https://unfoldinglight.net/2023/06/27/unbinding-my-isaac/