Readings: Psalm 13, Jeremiah 28:5-9, Matthew10:37-42, Genesis 22:1-14
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, July 2, 2023
I want to begin today with some words of Jesus, from Matthew 10:39, “To find your life, you must lose your life—and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Or as it appears in the Message Bible, “If your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you'll find both yourself and me.”
This passage, about Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, is a tough one. It is not a comfortable passage, but one that suggests to us that God is more “unknowable” and “unpredictable” and a lot less “safe” than the Deity we sometimes seek to define and imprison within our carefully worded theologies and doctrines.
The core of this story is that it’s about sacrifice. It suggests that to fulfill our destiny as the people of God, requires surrendering our dreams to God. Applying this bible passage to the story of our own lives, it suggests to us that if our dreams are ever to be fulfilled then we need to be prepared to let go of them. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom which tells us that if we are going to achieve anything great in life, we have to hold on to our dreams with all that we are!
Why this back-to-front teaching? Last week, in our patriarchal ponderings, we were considering some of the mistakes that Abraham had made. We compared his life to a soap opera. The time he passed his wife Sarah off as his sister, because he was afraid that if Pharaoh thought that she was his wife he would kill him. The time Abraham and Sarah couldn’t wait for God to fulfill the promise of a son to be born to them, so Abraham went and fathered a child through Sarah’s slave girl, Hagar.
Abraham, though possessed by a dream – a dream that he was to be the father of a great nation – a dream that through his son Isaac such things were to be fulfilled – Abraham was not to put his faith in the dream, but in the God who gave the dream. Abraham had to take a ‘hands off’ approach if ever that dream was to become a reality. This was not something that Abraham, or any of us, are good at.
Our reading from Matthew gave us some hard teaching. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
There is a spiritual principle at work in this teaching that is hard to see. We so easily confuse our own desires as being what God desires for us. The commitment Jesus asks of us is a deep and all-encompassing call. God asks us to make God’s love our deepest love. And that doesn’t just happen.
Sometimes God may put us in a situation where that love is tested beyond what we think is reasonable. That seems to be what was happening with Abraham and Isaac. It’s a spiritual principle, that often, before God can truly use a gift God has given us, particularly if it is something we are particularly harnessed to, we must be prepared to give it up.
In my own life the thing that comes to mind is writing and performing rock and contemporary music. I was weaned on the music of the Beatles and in my teens my life was all about going to concerts and learning how to play guitars and keyboards and writing songs. I spent every moment I could find playing in bands and dreaming of maybe one day making a living out of it. Even today I meet old friends and they express surprise my life didn’t go down that road. They could see in me back then, that was my passion, that was what I was all about.
Back in April last year a band with the rather unusual name of “Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark” were playing their 40th Anniversary tour in Brooklyn. I had grown up in my homelands playing music around their two main protagonists, a lovely couple of guys, Andy and Paul. They, over the years, have made quite a career for themselves. In Europe and around the world they have sold over 40 million records, and back in the eighties had songs in movies such as “Pretty in Pink.” Although they never really cracked the US market, they are still today selling out shows in London's Royal Albert Hall and all around the world.
By a rather random set of circumstances, I had an opportunity to spend a little time with them before their Brooklyn concert, having not had contact with them for over four decades. They were very generous and gave Yvonne and I the V.I.P. treatment for the show. We were though, totally surprised when right before their last song, they announced to the audience, “We met somebody tonight we hadn't seen for over 40 years. He allowed us to borrow his synthesizer for our very first gigs. Thank you, Adrian, thank you, you started this.” A lovely and a rather surprising moment!
You see it was over 45 years ago, I became involved in the church and committed my life to being Christian. That didn’t mean all my musical desires went away. I pondered how to use my skills for God’s glory. Where I lived the idea of Christian Contemporary music hadn’t been dreamed up. So, I started to unravel myself from secular band mates and forming Christian rock bands. For a while everything was going well, recording opportunities, possibility of being on mainstream TV, a wonderful platform for proclaiming the gospel, and I thanked God for giving me my “amazing ministry of rock music.” It was where my gifts were, I could do it, I loved doing it, it excited me and, as a bonus, it did seem to be raising Christianity’s profile!
But no sooner had it all started, than the whole thing fell apart. I felt strongly God telling me to lay off the music, and that I was being calling me to a ministry of the Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church, to a ministry of preaching and teaching and service. I didn’t see how the two could work together. Particularly as I kept feeling God was saying, “No music. No more.” And I was mad and angry and confused about it. This had been what I lived for up till then. The band. The rock music. I really loved it and was building my life out of it.
I reached a point where I got on my knees and said to God, “O.K. Lord. I don’t see the sense in this. I don’t understand why you would gift me with something and then take it away... but O.K… I’m going to rip up every song I’ve ever written, I’ll sell the guitars and the instruments, I’ll never play a note again.”
I loved to play, but, as I prayerfully tried to work through it, I understood I was called to love God more. To paraphrase Matthew 10:39 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; Whover loves their songwriting and music making more than me is not worthy of me,” I sensed that spiritually, at that moment, if I didn’t sacrifice what I felt was one of the most beautiful gifts God had given to me, if I did not let that dream go, then I could no longer be of use to God or anybody else.
Having reached that point where I was prepared to give the whole thing up, literally as I was figuring out how to sell my musical gear, it was as though God smiled and said, “Just testing. Just wanted to see what was important in your life. Your music or me! Now that we’ve set that straight, you can keep the guitars and the gear... O.K?”
The crazy thing is to look back over my years of ministry I see how music has played a part. There have been recordings, songs on TV and radio, musicals, theme songs for retreats and songwriting itself has opened doors of communication and opportunities for ministry with others that otherwise would have remained firmly closed. I even get to play guitar now again in worship here in Bridgehampton.
Once I’d abandoned the dream of rock music being “My amazing ministry” God seemed able to use my musical abilities in a way God wanted to. If my hands were on the wheel, it was an idol, a sacred cow, a passion not under God’s complete control. I needed to let it go!
Now obviously my experience pales in comparison to that which Abraham was traveling through. His “Mount Moriah,’ his place of sacrificing the son, who was heir and future, is at an altogether different level. By degree of comparison, my struggles seem almost insignificant. But there is one point of intersection. Abraham had to let go of the dream before it could ever be fulfilled. Nothing could be allowed to take the place in his heart that God was meant to occupy. Abraham needed to see that. We need to see that too.
For this account is also about “Seeing God.” Through his willingness to sacrifice what was closest to his heart Abraham broke through to a deeper revelation of God and to a heightened sense of God’s presence around him and within him.
In Hebrew Moriah translates as ‘The Lord Provides’ or ‘The Lord Sees.” On a number of different occasions in the passage the idea of ‘seeing’ is mentioned. This ‘seeing’ is both on the part of God and the part of Abraham.
It is God who sees the place and the content of Abraham’s sacrifice. It is God who directs Abraham towards that place. It is God who looks deep into the heart of Abraham and sees that this test of faith that he is being subjected to will result in Abraham having a deeper fellowship with God than he had yet experienced.
Abraham’s seeing comes by the way of obedience to what he believes God is showing to him. Abraham goes to the place God has shown him. Abraham recognizes the importance of sacrifice in this meeting he has with God. At the story’s conclusion, Abraham clearly sees that God did not require the sacrifice of Isaac, and it cements his trust in the God whom he had now encountered in a deeper and more powerful way than ever before.
In the context of what I was saying earlier about my musical dreams, I feel my musical dreams were my ‘Isaac.’ I had to be bought to a hard place, a place where I was prepared to sacrifice them before God could really use me.
As you think about your life, do you have an “Isaac”? Is there a dream that is in your heart that takes precedence over doing the will of God? Where’s your passion? What has God gifted you with? And … what if God wants something more for you? Are you prepared to lay your heart on the altar and do with your life whatever God wants? These passages raise some deep questions.
Or are you setting the conditions? Is your commitment to God along the lines of “God, I’ll do whatever you want me to, I’ll go wherever you want me to, I’ll be whatever you want me to… just as long as I get to set the terms and specify the game-plan!” Whose hand is on the driving wheel of your life? Who’s steering your course? Who’s the Lord? Who’s the Master? These scriptures challenge us all to ask difficult questions.
Thankfully, we live in different times than Abraham. I do not believe that God would ever, in our day, call us to do anything as diabolical as sacrificing one of our children. That was then, this is now. And there were underlying historical and theological reasons to it all that woiuld make for a totally differnt sermon.
Yet I do believe that God calls us to sacrifice our dreams on the altar of God’s love, in order that our whole lives are under God’s care and guidance. Jesus told His disciples “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
Mount Moriah was the place of sacrifice. It was the place where Abraham drew nearer to God than he had ever done in his life. May there be “Mount Moriah Moments” in our spiritual journey; moments when we realize that God sees and knows what is best for us and we, correspondingly, are prepared to give our best to God.
As an inspiration consider these elements of bread and wine. Jesus sacrificed all that He was in order that we may know God's salvation. Never was such love as this! We taste and see right here the mystery and awesome commitment of God towards us. Yes... God will stretch us and challenge us and convict us as to the importance of putting His love first in our lives.
But here around this table we find strength for the journey and seek to move one more step along the road God has in store for us.
The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.
No comments:
Post a Comment