Genesis 22.1-14, Matthew 5.1-12
Remembrance Sunday, 13 November 2016, West Camel Methodist Church
You know, children often ask the most perceptive questions. Recently I came across a sermon which was given by a nine-year-old girl called Lucy. It was a short sermon but it asked a very good question which I wanted to share with you today.
Lucy had obviously been reading her bible, and one story which she noticed was the one about God being very angry with the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, so angry that he sent the angel of death to fly over all the houses in Egypt and kill every firstborn son - the eldest boy in each Egyptian family. [2]
It’s a terrible picture, all those young men in house after house lying, sacrificed, to satisfy an angry God. I don’t know about you but that picture reminded me of other pictures we’ve been seeing this week - pictures of rows and rows of young men in the trenches at the Somme, lines and lines of people’s eldest sons, brothers, fathers, lovers; and seeing them there and knowing what happened to so many when they went ‘over the top’, I imagined in the dark clouds above them the angel of death waiting to claim them - as sacrifices to satisfy the angry God of war. Many soldiers in the trenches wrote poems describing the same sort of vision and the effect it had on them.
But that’s just my thoughts. You’ll be more interested to know what Lucy’s question was. So this is what Lucy said:
When I think about God I think of a person who would never murder or kill anyone. But when you think about it you wonder, because wasn't it God who swept the angel of death over Egypt? It makes you think doesn't it? Is God against it or is he not? I mean, what had the boys done to die? It was the Pharaoh wasn't it? Now do you realise how little we know about God? [3]
Now it’s a hundred years since the Battle of the Somme where over a million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. [4] But people are still killing or being killed in wars and terrorist actions throughout our world. Thinking about Lucy’s question, does this mean that a wrathful God is still out there looking for boys - and girls, men and women, to sacrifice to satisfy his anger? There are many who will answer this question, ‘yes’, who will go to war or kill innocent civilians or even go so far as to kill themselves in the name of this God.
I am thinking of those who call their god Allah and spread terror and seek martyrdom in his cause; I’m contemplating Zionists whose search for a homeland for God’s children of Israel has required blood sacrifices of the Palestinian people; and I’m considering the Ku Klux Klan who for well over one hundred years have indulged in ritualistic acts of violence and murder against black Americans, which can be justly regarded as modern forms of human sacrifice - whilst devoutly singing the Klan’s anthem, the revivalist hymn, ‘The Old Rugged Cross’. [5]
But remember what Lucy said at the start of her talk. ‘When I think about God I think of a person who would never murder or kill anyone’. I think that Lucy has found another God in her bible reading.
As well as reading about the vengeful God of Israel, sacrificing Egypt’s sons, I think that Lucy must have come across that other old story, of God leading Abraham up the mountain and Abraham bringing with him his firstborn son Isaac, thinking that God would want him to sacrifice Isaac to him - because that’s what people thought God wanted them to do in those days. But when they got up there, God told Abraham, ‘Hold on, don’t kill your son. Sacrifice this wild goat instead.’
Maybe Lucy found this story, and that helped her realise that, way, way back in ancient times, God told Abraham, the father of Israel, that he does not want anyone murdered or killed in his name or for his sake.
Now let’s go deeper into the story of Abraham and Isaac because it’s strange to us but crucially important for the way we express our faith in the world today.
Most modern men and women would recoil from the idea of making a blood sacrifice of our child to our God, but in ancient times Abraham willingly led his son Isaac to the altar. He did it without question; because that in ancient society, child sacrifice was the norm.
The story of Abraham and Isaac is a crucial turn in our understanding of God and his ways in the world; and so it is crucial to understand it properly. Let’s imagine ourselves into their world for a moment.
Imagine that you and everyone you know believes that God is a severe and demanding deity who can bestow forgiveness and other blessings only after human blood has been shed. Imagine how that belief in human sacrifice will affect the way you live, the way you worship and the way you treat others. Now imagine how hard it would be, to be the first person in your society to question such a belief. Imagine how much courage it would take, especially because your blood might be the next to be sacrificed! [6]
This was the position Abraham found himself in when, in an unprecedented move, God refused the child sacrifice; God refused Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac - and provided the sacrifice himself in the form of a ram.
To the ancient people this was a shocking move. It completely overturned everyone’s understanding of God. This was God acting absolutely out of character. It was God saying, I don’t need human sacrifice. An animal will do instead, just now.
Now, Abraham was getting used to having his worldview turned upside-down by God, after that earlier episode when he and Sarah became parents at the grand old age of ninety-nine. And so he had the faith to follow God through this latest earth-shattering turn of events.
When Isaac asks his father, ‘The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ Abraham’s answer is extraordinary, and one of the most significant points in the whole of the Bible. ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering’, he said. [7]
Those who take significance from a close reading of theology note that in this passage, the word used for God at the start - the God who orders the human sacrifice - is a word used to describe the ancient gods, the bloodthirsty gods of old; but the word used for God at the end of the passage - the God who stops the human sacrifice and offers a sacrifice of his own - is Yahweh, the Lord, our God. ‘[It is as if this story is trying to] sort out the gods. Abraham begins the story tuned in to one of the common tribal gods of ancient polytheism who demand human sacrifices. On the mount of Yahweh, however, he begins to hear and envision the one true God who wants us to stop that nonsense.’ [8]
Yahweh is not like the angry old vengeful gods - he is an entirely different God. A God who demands no sacrifices from us. But who instead sacrifices for us.
Now, hold on, you might be thinking, if I were Lucy I’d probably want to know why God thought it was ok to say ‘no’ to sacrificing humans but that it was still ok for the goat to get it.
Well, maybe she had read Psalm 40, where it says, ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, ... burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.’
And maybe Lucy knew the prophets, who told the people how God really hoped they would behave. Like Micah, who quotes God’s message to the people saying,
"With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? [9]
Or perhaps Lucy came across Amos, through whom God tells the people, in the language of his day, ’I hate your glitzy telethons and fancy church services. Offer me your animals or grain for sacrifice, if you like, but I won’t accept them. I’m not listening to your noisy songs - or your lovely choirs. What I do want is to see justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ [10]
Maybe Lucy read the words of the great prophet Isaiah, who had a vision of a God who devoted himself to ‘settling disputes’ for the peoples of the earth. In this vision he saw them ‘beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks’. Their weapons of war into implements for farming and tending the land. As Isaiah saw it, in the future which God was planning, ‘Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.’ [11]
So, here’s some insight into the God who Lucy noticed, ‘a person who would never murder or kill anyone.’ A God whose mission is to help people learn the ways of peace, not war. And if Lucy got as far as the gospels and read about the life of Jesus she would have seen on every page Jesus giving examples of how this peaceful world might look.
We heard a quote of his just now, in what we call The Beatitudes, where he says that those who are suffering in life will be blessed, where people who show mercy will receive mercy, and the peacemakers will be called children of God. This Jesus turned over the tables of the money-changers selling birds for sacrifice in the temple, and this was God again saying, ‘no more sacrificing to me, let the doves and pigeons and all my creatures fly away, free.’ [12]
So with the help of a nine-year-old girl’s question we have been on a journey through scripture which demonstrates a whole new way of seeing God - as One who doesn’t need our sacrifices - human or animal or grain. This is a God who is saying, if there are any sacrifices to be made in the world, I will make them for you.
And in the the finding of the ram that will replace Isaac, Christians have always seen a prophetic allusion to Christ himself - Jesus, the Lamb of God. God, in this sense, gives himself away. Knowing the story of Jesus’ last days as we do, it’s clear that the religious people - still tuned in to their tribal God demanding human sacrifice to satisfy their anger - decided that Jesus should be sacrificed for the good of their people. The High Priest Caiaphas put it clearly, and chillingly: ‘It is better for us to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed,’ he said, as he sent Jesus to the cross. [13]
Jesus, the Lamb of God, allows his enemies to sacrifice him, in order to do away with all sacrificial violence. It is not ridiculous, it is marvellous. ... The Bible provides not merely a replacement of the object to be sacrificed, but the end of the sacrificial order in its entirety. [14]
Now I wonder if you have ever experienced a moment in which your perception of God changed, unalterably forever, like Abraham’s did, not once, but twice, in his long faithful life?
Those moments happen to you when you open your mind and heart to allow God to speak to you. And I think that it’s so important for each of us to listen and take note of a God who may surprise us, especially as we grapple of what it means to live faithfully today. It’s important that we bring this ancient story home.
For Abraham is central to three of the world’s great religions. To Jews he is the founding patriarch of the children of Israel; to Christians he is the spiritual forebear of Jesus; and to Muslims he is the great messenger of God who stands in the line from Adam to Muhammad.
And when these religions are at war with each other, as they increasingly are today, those of us who are longing for peace between us, might just find in this story at the heart of our common scriptures, a direction we can take so as to be able to begin to walk together towards healing.
And Isaac is a child, representative of all those children who today are sacrificed to the brutal desires and thoughtless ignorance of uncaring adults. And the story of Isaac’s salvation might just offer understanding to those who care to put the concerns of children in the centre of the adult world, just as Jesus put a child in the centre of the disciples when they were having a theological argument about greatness in the kingdom of God, and said, ‘Whoever welcomes a little child like this welcomes me.’ [15]
Nine-year-old Lucy has given us something to think about today. That God doesn’t need our sacrifices. That God could never need anything from us, since God provides everything for us. That God isn’t the one who is angry and hostile and needs appeasement. We humans are the angry ones! Our hostile, bloodthirsty hearts are the ones that need to be changed! We have been reminded that he only sacrifice that matters to God is the holy gift of humble hearts and lives dedicated to his Way of love. [16]
In the present predicament our world is in, it’s not inappropriate to say that we need to lose our grasp of the idol of sacrifice which we still hold onto, all Abraham’s descendants in our different ways, and to be open to recognising that our God - Abraham’s God - demands no sacrifices from us: no sacrifices from Zionist freedom-fighters, no sacrifices from Christian boy soldiers, no sacrifices from jihadist suicide-bombers. We need to open our eyes to the revelation that comes from the cross of Calvary: that the rhetoric of sacrifice is a form of abuse.
Now we realise that this doesn’t provide direct answers to the terrible - and increasingly hardening - conflicts between the three world faiths who each have roots in Abraham; but it does offer us a different direction in which, like Abraham and Isaac, we can choose to walk.
As he did with Abraham and Isaac, so God invites us to imagine a world where we, child and adult, walk hand in hand down the slopes of our Mount Moriah, turning our backs on the place of slaughter with our hostile, bloodthirsty hearts changed.
Committed together to doing justice, to loving kindness and to walking humbly with our God. [17] Being prepared to look deeper, with Lucy, for a merciful God whose deepest desire is for us to learn how to live in peace with each other.
Notes
[1] This sermon is a longer form of the all-age talk What kind of God? given on Remembrance Sunday at Queen Camel, 2016. It also borrows heavily from Passing the test - listening to the voice of the true God, preached in Devon in 2011 - my Anglicised and personalised version of Paul J. Nuechterlein's sermon of the same title, delivered at Atonement Lutheran, Muskego, WI, June 26, 2005; and from my sermon No sacrifice necessary - The Lord will provide, given at West Camel and Sparkford in 2014.
[2] Exodus 12.12.
[3] Brian D. McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World's Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian, p.120-121.
[4] Wikipedia: Battle of the Somme.
[5] Philip Jenkins, The Great and Holy War: How World War 1 Changed Religion for Ever, p.274-275, p.206
[6] Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking, p.34, my italics.
[7] Genesis 22.1-8 expressed by René Girard, Evolution and Conversion, pp. 203-04, quoted in Girardian Lectionary, PROPER 8, YEAR A.
[8] Paul Neuchterlein, Exegetical Note in Girardian Lectionary, PROPER 8, YEAR A.
[9] Micah 6.6-8.
[10] Amos 5.21-24.
[11] Isaiah 2.4.
[12] Matthew 21.12-13.
[13] John 11.50.
[14] René Girard, Evolution and Conversion, pp. 203-04, quoted in Girardian Lectionary, PROPER 8, YEAR A.
[15] Extremely grateful to Haddon Willmer and Keith J White for their exploration in Child Theology, Entry Point - towards Child Theology with Matthew 18. (the chapter quoted here). See also www.childtheology.org.
[16] Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking, p.36, my italics.
[17] Micah 6.8.
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