Some of you may have heard me mention something called the “lectionary.” The lectionary is a system developed by biblical scholars which assigns specific scripture lessons to each Sunday over a three-year cycle.

To each Sunday is assigned an Old Testament lesson, a Psalm or two, an Epistle, and a Gospel lesson. Generally in this church, on any given Sunday, you may get one or two of these lessons; sometimes the Psalm for a particular Sunday is adapted as a Call to Worship, as we have done this morning.

Many Protestant denominations, as well as the Roman Catholic church, follow the lectionary although the decision is really left up to the preacher. For the most part, I do choose to preach on one or more of the assigned lectionary lessons, and there are advantages to doing so. I believe there develops a deep sense of connection and community when we can sit in our particular congregations on any given Sunday and know we are hearing the same Scripture passages as other Christians throughout the world.

Following the lectionary also guarantees that congregations will get a diverse scriptural diet, and protects you from hearing me preach only on our favorite passages. Moreover, faithful use of the lectionary is good discipline for the preacher, because it means we must deal with difficult texts we would rather ignore. Such is the case today.

The binding of Isaac is a haunting story, one that we’d like to skip over, pretending it did not exist. And yet ... here it is, in the sacred canon, and the compilers of the lectionary consider it important enough to put on our liturgical plates every three years on the sixth Sunday after Pentecost.

The voice of God gives Abraham a most troubling command: to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Isaac is the child of Abraham’s and Sarah’s old age; the child of promise, the first star in a sky full of descendants. And Abraham's obedient response to God’s order confounds us. Abraham does not haggle with God. He does not remind God that this command is in conflict with the promise that God has made to him – that Abraham will be the ancestor of a multitude of nations, and that multitude is to begin with this miracle child, Isaac. Instead, without questioning or debating God, Abraham goes out silently to obey God’s drastic command, taking Isaac to the mountaintop.

Once there, the boy Isaac asks the obvious, yet heartbreaking, question: "Father, the fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" And Abraham responds with what seems to be an awful lie: "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son."

And just as Abraham draws out the knife to kill Isaac, God’s angel calls to him and – to everyone’s great relief, including ours -- tells him to spare his child, saying, “I now know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son…from me.” God speaks in the nick of time, staying Abraham's hand, and God does indeed provide; a ram caught in a thicket serves as the sacrifice in Isaac’s place.

This story has been called "the test of Abraham,” because it is not enough that Abraham believes in God. God wants to know: is Abraham willing to put his total trust in God? Can Abraham go up that mountain and truly believe that God will provide?

This is a test no one would want to undergo. We can barely conceive the thought of a parent sacrificing a child. It is abhorrent to us; abhorrent and threatening, for we know that, put in Abraham’s place, we would not, could not, do it. And contemplating a God who would test us in such a way and demand such an act unnerves us in that place deep in our hearts where faith takes root.

Like theologians through the centuries, we are haunted with questions. What kind of God is this? Why must God test us? Where is the God of justice and compassion? We live in a world in which we open the morning papers and see the story of yet another child abducted, molested, murdered. And we want to cry out -- why doesn’t God protect our precious children?

Some theologians suggest that in this story, God wanted to send a message to the pagan religions of the day, which practiced child sacrifice. Through this story, was God telling the Canaanites and Moabites that although such heinous acts may be required by their pagan gods, Abraham’s loving, gracious God would never require such barbarity?

Then there are scholars who believe the voice that told Abraham to slay his son was that of a false god – the same kind of voice that spoke to David Koresh in Waco and Jim Jones in Guyana.

And it is too easy to dismiss this story as another example of the Old Testament God who is angry, demanding, and judging in comparison to the loving and forgiving God of the New Testament, embodied in Jesus. This explanation is not only simplistic; it doesn’t stand up. David refers to that Old Testament God as “my shepherd”; Deuteronomy images that God as a mother eagle who lovingly hovers over her young; the prophets describe that God as a mother who teaches her toddler to walk and comforts a frightened or hurt child in her arms [Hosea 11:1-3, Isaiah 66:13]; that God delivers the oppressed people of Israel into the Promised Land and is called “Father” by Jesus.

No matter how theologians through the centuries, and we who sit here this morning, may try to explain away the horrific story of the binding of Isaac, it nevertheless reminds us that as people of faith, there will be moments in life when nothing makes sense, and all we have left is our trust in God. Moments when the very best medicine has to offer is no guarantee for our loved-one's future. Moments when a relationship upon which we have so depended, which has so identified and nurtured us, is suddenly dissolved. Moments when the career we have worked hard to build is pulled out from under us. Moments when all that we have dreamed about and prepared ourselves to do in life falls away, and we are left, despairing of the present and bereft of a future. In those moments, when nothing makes sense and everything seems lost, will we put our trust in God?

We do not know the anguish that wrenches Abraham's heart; we only know that in spite of it, he goes forth toward the mountain, trusting God even when it seems absurd, heartbreaking, senseless to do so. God tests Abraham and finds out that Abraham is willing to put his total trust in God.

There will be times when we, too, will have to walk our own road from Beer-sheba to Mt. Moriah, as Abraham walked; in those moments, how will we respond? When we are in the hard places and facing the hard choices in life, will we put our total trust in God? When we are in the midst of struggle and heartbreak and circumstances that test us to our very core, will we have faith that God will provide?

At the moment of truth, God is faithful... death is not the end of the story, tragedy does not triumph; our God gives life, not death. This is why the first Christians saw in this story of Abraham and Isaac a prefiguring of Jesus’ story: a son called to sacrifice his life, carrying the wood of his own destruction up the mount and spending three days on the deathly journey, only to be raised from death when all seemed lost. We are the inheritors of that story, descendants of Isaac who learns of the God that transforms darkness into light, and death into life.

And what about the lost, abducted children of the world? What of them and their families who await a reprieve that may not come? The questions remain unanswered, the story is open ... There is no neat ending for this sermon, just the promise found in the name that Abraham chooses for the spot on top of the mountain, where Isaac was spared and the ram was caught in the thicket. Abraham calls the spot Jehovah Jireh, meaning "The Lord will provide." Tradition says that Abraham saved one of the horns of that ram provided by God and with it made a ‘shofar’ ... a shofar that, like a church bell, calls people to worship, its sound a constant reminder to keep faith in the One who promises to provide. And does. Amen.

---