I have before us a
couple of No. 2 pencils and when I lift these up perhaps they stir up some
feelings or memories, something inside of you, these No. 2 pencils, perhaps
they’re possibility. I love the idea of
a blank piece of paper and a pencil and whatever might happen there. Perhaps you’re thinking of scoring the game
of Yahtzee or something like that, maybe that’s what it does for you. But typically these are the tools of our
tests in our world today whether it’s the CRCT, for those going through school,
whether it’s boards or the bar, whether it’s the SATs, some types of certification
or ordination exams.
The tools of the test
are these No. 2 pencils or at least at one time they were before
computers. Usually along with these we
have a little bit of nerves, perhaps some anxiety, perhaps a feeling that as we
are set to take this test someone is going to find us out. We might be tested and found lacking or not
up to the standards, we might just fail.
For an Israelite, tools of the test were ones that showed dedication to
God. Abraham took the wood of the burnt
offering and laid it on his son Isaac and he himself carried the fire and the
knife. There is a moment of expectance
with the pencil as the clock starts and the flop sweat begins to perhaps drip a
little bit, and the nervous fingers lift the pencil and you can hardly get it
into those little circles, and there is a moment of expectance as the wood is
placed and the sweat of adrenaline pours and shaking hands raise the fire and
the knife.
Genesis 22 is one of
those passages that brings with it a lot in our minds, a lot of immediate I
think desire to psychologize this, to figure out what is going on in the head
of Abraham and maybe in the head of Isaac, and certainly what is going on with
God who would ask this guy that he’s called out of his own homeland to kill his
son. Some focus on the idea, we’ve talked
about this before, of Isaac perhaps being one who really had a difficult life
and perhaps suffered for it. One of the
only other stories we get of Isaac is the story of whenever his two sons come
to him, Jacob and Esau, and they trick him into giving the birthright to the
wrong son and it kind of paints Isaac as oblivious and some blame this occasion
of him. Well sure, his dad tried to kill
him so he has some issues. He’s trying
to figure things out but there is more than that, there is a difficulty that we
need to kind of move past the psychology of the situation.
The idea of God
testing is in its own way a difficult one, to think that God would throw
something before someone in order to figure out what that person might do in
order to determine their fate perhaps.
But one way that we might think about that is to really just examine how
life itself is test. Every moment for us
is a choice to vote one way or another.
It’s a decision on where we will go and what we will do. Life is a test.
Within the Bible there
are many different places where it talks about God testing the people. In Deuteronomy there are a couple of occasions
where God actually says that the wilderness experience was a test. Another, when other gods are put before the
people, it said that God was testing them who they would obey. The entire Book of Job in its own way is like
a test or a trial even one might see it like that. And when we come to the New Testament the
prayer that we’ve already prayed today, The Lord’s Prayer, says lead us not
into temptation which can be translated and sometimes is as lead us not
unto the time of testing.
Life is a test and the
purpose is to find out what we are doing with our lives each moment each and
every day. The purpose of the test is to
find out whether we mean what we say about our faith being grounded in the
gospel, and I think perhaps that The Lord’s Prayer means the fear that if we’re
tested we might not pass. Keep us. Keep us please God from temptation and
testing. I don’t know what I’ll do.
There’s a singer by
the name of Dan Bern who has a song and he says, “When I tell you that I love
you, accept my love. Don’t test my love
because maybe I don’t love you all that much.”
It’s like we’re answering “c” on the SAT or on our CRCT every time
hoping that maybe we’ll get it right one of those times. It might just work. Don’t test us, really. The test that comes once we begin to look at
it is to take Abraham’s only son and offer it as a burnt offering and you have
this moment where it actually calls this a test. But if we were to go back through and look at
Abraham’s life, and if we were to go ahead and look at Abraham’s life, we would
see that really hasn’t it all been a test?
He was told to leave
his homeland and just go, and he went.
He was told that he’d have a child, and he did – Ishmael. And he was told to get rid of that child and
to send that child and his mother, Hagar, out into the wilderness, and he
did. He was told to give a tenth to the
high priest Melchizedek, and he did. He
was told how to handle those around him.
He was told to give the sign of the covenant of circumcision, and he
did. Every moment was a choice whether
to follow or not with multiple answers.
So, take your only son and offer as a burnt offering was just one wave
of the examination ocean and then we look and wasn’t Jesus himself facing tests
every step of the way? At one point,
asking if it might even be possible that a cup could pass from him before he
says, “not my will but your will God” as if he were passing on a question.
We are constantly
filling out little circles with black lead or making decisions which way to go,
what products we may buy, how many, who we speak to, how we spend our leisure
time, how we care, how who we ignore, to whom we pledge our allegiance. Sometimes we’re filling it in for God. Hopefully, God’s way for just, for what is
kind, for what is humble, sometimes we’re filling it in for a way that is
always moving step my step to Canaan like Abraham or to Jerusalem like Christ
or to Rome and beyond like Paul. Filling
it in, going along but sometimes we forget to hold the tools of the test, the
fire and the knife. Sometimes we forget
that anything is at stake at all because of the comfort that is in our
lives. Lead us not into the time of
testing God.
Disney Pixar put out a
new movie this weekend about a robot called Wally and the humans in this story
have left earth 700 years previously and are living on a spaceship but the
humans are all sitting in these recliners basically with these screens in front
of them constantly cared for by robots, (I hope I didn’t ruin the movie for
some of you that will be going to see it.) and the humans have forgotten how to
walk, they’ve forgotten how to get along, they’ve forgotten that others are
around them, they’ve forgotten how to interact, they’ve forgotten that the fire
and the knife are in our hands whether we recognize them or not. Lead us not into the time of testing
God. I just want to stay here on my
chair.
The question can also
be asked then if God tests, why does God test?
We begin to answer that by saying that well it’s a good thing for us as
we go through trial by fire, tribulations as it’s put other places, and the
Epistles. It’s good for us. Why does God test? According to our text, it says God did not
know how Abraham would answer. Once
Abraham did what he was called to do the text said, “Now I know” and it
says, “Because you have done this I will
bless you.”
There is a movement in
history, an element of trust thus far God has called Abraham. God has given him or promised him a land, a
people actually given him a son that’s going to be the one that translates his
name down through the ages and gives blessings to all the nations, but here God
seems to be requiring something. Now I
know, but for a moment we may pan the camera from Abraham to Isaac.
Within our story there
are three sections where Abraham is called Abraham and he says, “Here I am”
three different times. The Old Testament writer Walter Brueggemann points out
that there is a difference in the time that Isaac calls on Abraham and he says
“Here I am” and we should pay attention to that difference as a hinge in the
story because it is at that point that Isaac says, you know the fire and the
water here but where’s the lamb for the burnt offering? There is an exchange here that holds up the
dilemma in the story and Abraham answered what I think it was David Carribean
answered just a few minutes ago in the children’s sermon – God will provide.
And so this story that
seems to be of tests of such drastic proportions of one who has called to
actually go and attempt to kill his son turns to one of hope and promise and
provision. It says later that Abraham
called that place the “Lord will provide.”
There has been a faith of Abraham.
He has listened to God. He has
gone where God has gone. He has even
challenged God when God was going to destroy
But Abraham has a
question before him in the midst of this test.
It’s a test of dynamic proportions and because he sees forward, he does
trust that God will provide and Abraham in the story chooses God. We were discussing this a little bit before
we came in because it’s such a difficult passage. Faith is a choice that believes in God’s
provision, but believing in God’s provision might not always mean that what we
think will be provided will be provided.
One might read the
story this way, I’m not offering some authoritative interpretation but one
might read the story that the provision just very well may have been
Isaac. Abraham comes to this story and
he says we’re going to go and we’re going to come back. There’s no amount of faith and hope that he
thinks he’ll bringing Isaac back, but he chooses God at this moment and thus
far he’s already had to get rid of one of his sons named Ishmael. At this point, he may be even willing to
choose God to that extent but Abraham knew the nature of God. He knew that without God he never would have
been in the place he was. He knew that he would never have a child or a wife or
a land or a people or a legacy or hope for anyone, and the same way we know
that without God we are naked, we are breathless, we are pulseless, we are
selfless, we are landless, we are finite and yet incomplete.
If the question is,
follow God or not in the moment of the test, it’s the comfort of provision,
it’s the comfort of the hope of knowing that God is the only thing that gives
us what we need that bathes us in possibility.
And as we hold the fire and the knife, we trust in a God and believe
that something will be provided.
Saying that life is a
test, though, does recognize that there is good and bad no matter how ruthless
one is. Good things just may happen to
them and no matter how faithful one is there will be struggle and hard choices. God doesn’t paint pink on the dusty realities
of our lives. Only a couple of the
characters in the Bible lived in comfort: Abraham didn’t, Joseph maybe did for
a little while and then there was a famine, Moses didn’t, Israel didn’t, Jesus
didn’t, the apostles didn’t. They never
had the luxury of “put your pencils down” or hands free of fire and knife. Every moment was enmeshed in the tests and
the trials of the life of the follower of Yahweh, the life of the follower of
Jesus the Christ.
Belief and provision
is an unwavering belief in the way of Christ.
It’s not a foolishness that says if I believe all the wealth of the
world would be given unto me and no problems will occur. It’s an unwavering belief in the way of
Christ which is humble and gracious and life saving, and it’s a belief that
pain will be part of a life that itself is a test, not because God has a bag of
tricks and tosses them out with fickleness or frivolity joking with the
heavenly courts about what we’re going to do in response, but it’s the pain
that is a part of life that chooses peace over violence. It’s pain over a part of life that chooses
humility over pompousness, and it’s a pain that is a part of life that chooses
the least, the lost and the last, and not the privilege for the big and the
brash and the bold.
Pain is part of
answering the questions right and removing that little bit of self-righteous
anger we like to get on our lips. Pain
is part of leaving our lands of comfort for the road of exile, for the road of
crucifixion that is the love of neighbor.
So Jesus sat with his cup in hand, will it pass by or shall I take it?
Abraham stood with the fire and the knife and so we rise with the pencils or
computers of presentations, not with those but with our very lives, our hearts
and our souls, and what we do with our hearts and our souls, our fire and our
knife, our tools of the test is our answer to the test. God will provide. In this story its because God sees that
Abraham will respond. God will provide
and this story of resurrection only comes after Jesus is willing to lay his
life down.
The fire and the knife
gave way to the tools of the test that were the bread, the wine, and the wood
of the cross. And so we rise and we walk
and we lift our arms with the tools of the test in our hand, but the grace of
God’s provision in our sight. Amen.