Defined by choices
Commentary
Object:
Robert Maynard once told how he became a writer. The journey, he said, began when he was a young boy walking to school one morning. He came to a fresh patch of concrete in the sidewalk. Somebody had just finished troweling it smooth, and it was just waiting for him!
He bent over to write his name in the cement, when suddenly there was a hulking shadow engulfing him. Looking up in terror he saw the biggest construction mason he had ever seen in his life! The guy was holding a garbage can lid, ready to smash the first little kid who dared mess up his new sidewalk!
Maynard says he tried to run, but the guy caught him around the waist and shouted, "What do you think you're doing?! Why are you trying to spoil my work?!"
Maynard remembers babbling something about only wanting to write his name there for everyone to see. The man's eyes softened. He set young Maynard on the ground and said, "Look at me, son! What do you want to be when you grow up?!"
Maynard squeaked it out: "A writer, I think."
The man sat there with him for a moment, and then pointed to the school across the street. He said, "If you want to write your name where it really matters, then go to that school, and learn what it takes, and become a real writer. And then, someday, write your name on the cover of a book, and let the whole world see it!"
That, says Robert Maynard, was the day he became a writer. The first decision was made that day, and every choice he had to make along the way has been easier because someone helped him to know who he really was. Someone showed him how to make an early choice, taking his hand at a critical moment in his life, and leading him to the right door.
So it is in today's lectionary passages. Abraham is called to make a choice none of us should ever face, yet finds the One who asks it of him providing more grace than he ever imagined. Paul tells of the struggles we make in the choices of life, and the One who chose us first so that we might never fall too deeply in the mire of broken hopes. Jesus declares that our daily choices are essentially choices about him. Choose well and wisely!
Genesis 22:1-14
Abraham was a great old man, probably 125 or so! God had come to him in the past in strange and wonderful ways. When he wore a younger man's clothes, the Voice had called him on a journey with no fixed destination. But the beckoning was always one of blessing: "I'll give you land beyond measure! I'll make sure you have a child, old as you are! Your descendants will populate these hills and valleys like rain!"
Well, the land sort of took him in. Moreover, after some fits and starts he and Sarai did get a child. And even though his pension plan was still not entirely clear, life in these later years was peaceful and prosperous. After all, there was Isaac. His boy's name meant "Laughter!" and that's certainly what he brought Abraham these days. Life had turned out okay.
Now the Voice came to him again. But was it really the same Voice? "Sacrifice your son Isaac on the altar to me!" it said. What kind of God was this? Or was it perhaps a demon's mocking mimic? "Kill your boy! Choke out the Laughter!" God forbid! Please, God, let it not be so!
There would be no sleep this night. Abraham's mind whirls while his old bones crawl in pain. Get the servants... get the transportation... get provisions... get wood... get the son....
Three days travel they go, with every step harder than the last. Isaac chatters his usual banter, laughter echoing in Abraham's cold heart. Reluctantly Abraham spies the high place, finally. The mountain of doom. The plateau of death.
Strangely gruff, Abraham orders the servants to stay. "The boy and I will go it alone from here." Two on a murderous mission. Only one will return. The father-son hike soured even more when Isaac's laughter lilted a deadly chilly question: "Where's the lamb, father?"
What could Abraham say? Does he tell Isaac the truth: "Son, the God who said he loved me enough to give you to your mother and I now says he wants you back, and I've got to do the dirty work!"? How do you lie with a straight face when heaven is ripped apart by hell? Is it a spiteful retort, spat out in unholy jest that finally clears his throat: "My son, God will provide..."?
So here they are, clearing, building, and preparing. And now the end creeps with horror into Isaac's eyes. His father binds him. His father thrusts him on the wood. His father stands over him with a glinting knife. And the Laughter dies....
But not yet. In a miraculous moment, time stops and grace points to another sacrifice. The son is free, and faith is affirmed. And he calls the place Moriah.
Moriah is one of those delightfully ambiguous names that can mean several things at once. It probably has to do with seeing at this point, or knowing. Where God sees, he will be seen. Something like that.
But what is it that God sees on a mountain called Moriah? For one thing, he sees a man. A weak man. A stumbler on the earth. A businessman who got ahead in life. A husband who cheated on his wife. A father who knew the joy of bringing new life into being.
Even more than that God sees a man who was willing to put it all on the line. Here was someone who counted his relationship with the God of the Voice to be the one thing that mattered, the one thing that put everything else together, the one thing that could raise even heaven out of this stench of hell.
Probably the most important thing about the moment of seeing is not only that God sees Abraham there on Mount Moriah. In some mysterious way God is also seen by Abraham.
A geography lesson tells the rest of the story. On this same barren spot of ground, centuries later, David would urge Solomon to build the Temple of God. It would stand as a doorway between earth and eternity. Then, in the mysterious design of the ages, one day another Father would walk these slopes with another Son. That Son, too, would raise his voice to his Father, and the Father, for a time, would be silent. The wood of the offering would be prepared, and the Son would be lifted as a sacrifice. On what the world would later call "Good Friday," this other Father would shed tears of pain as his Child died, this time with no escape.
Somehow history would repeat itself and more with a vengeance. Yet this Lamb would also be chosen by God for the altar. And Laughter would be silenced for three days while all the world looked on in wonder.
Romans 6:12-23
Good intentions aren't enough in life, according to Paul. I think of that sometimes when I am officiating at a marriage ceremony. What exciting times! Everyone smiles! Everybody is dressed up for a celebration! Everything is so beautiful, so radiant, so full of hope and promise!
I stand at the front of the church with the bride and groom, and in their eyes I see the best of intentions: theirs will be the perfect marriage! Theirs will be the strongest home! Theirs will be the deepest vows, the truest commitments, the richest promises, the surest future! Yet within me there is often this nagging uncertainty. Why for so many who think they are headed for heaven does the journey of marriage lead them to hell?
Good intentions aren't enough. Hector Berlioz, the great composer, was living in Paris in 1830. He loved a young woman named Camille, and they were engaged to be married.
But then Hector was awarded the Prix de Roma, the Prize of Rome. He could study and compose and perform his music in Italy for a year or two, and all of his financial needs would be covered!
Camille agreed with him that this was an opportunity he needed to take. Off he went, with a kiss and a promise that they would soon be married. His intentions never changed.
But life in Rome swallowed him up. And for Camille, life in Paris went on. Other suitors came. When Berlioz next heard from her, she was on her way to marriage with another! Hector, of course, caught the next coach to Paris. Only he got on the wrong one and ended up in Genoa. There he tried again. He booked passage to France once more, but his anxiety must have blinded him because he took the wrong coach again and ended up in Nice.
By this time Camille was married, and Hector quit his journey. That's what happens sometimes when you catch the wrong bus!
The world is full of good intentions. Nobody wants war! Everybody wants prosperity! There is a hope and a wish and a desire for love in every human breast! But read the morning newspaper or watch the evening news, and another picture emerges. The best of intentions isn't enough to heal racial scars. The highest ambitions can't lift the slums out of hell. The purest desires won't by themselves chart a course to peace, prosperity, and democracy among the countries in turmoil.
Having an ideal, or catching a vision, or knowing to city to which you want to go doesn't get you there! You know the old saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions!" That's what Paul speaks of here.
Do you think that those who sit in AA meetings dreamed, in their younger years, asked Harry Emerson Fosdick that they would find themselves there some day? Of course not! And when they come to that point, when they find themselves in a city they didn't intend to visit, when they know that they took the wrong bus somewhere, what do they do? Do they wish for another city and imagine it into being? The City of Sobriety? The Metropolis of Second Chances?
If you have ever gone to an AA meeting you know it isn't so. The right bus comes for them only through hard work, and mutual support, and through watching every step of the journey. Late at night they call each other and say, "Get on the right bus! Stay on the wagon! Don't let your thirst take your feet where your heart knows it shouldn't go!"
Do you remember the story of the Minotaur in ancient Greek legends? The Minotaur was a terrible monster that lived deep underground in a labyrinth of caves and passages. Every year the Minotaur devoured young children. Ate them up!
Someone had to put a stop to it, so young Theseus did the work. He went down into the realms of darkness, took his sword, braved the beast, and slew it dead. But how would he get out of the labyrinth? How would he take the right turns and pass through the right gates in this maze? Everyone who saw him enter the deadly chasm was sure that he would never return to the surface, even though the Minotaur had stopped its fierce bellowing.
There was one person, however, who never stopped hoping. She loved Theseus, and knew that he would return. She knew it because she had handed Theseus a ball of string before he left on his mission. And there, in the land where he was loved, in the place where he belonged, he tied one end of that string.
When he destroyed the cruel beast in the maze all he had to do was follow the string of his love. It opened for him the right doors, and took him on the right paths. It marked for him the right gates, and led him to the place he knew he had to reach.
And that's the gospel for us. All our education, all our training, all our decision-making is, in some way, following the string that was handed to us by others. And one time, long ago, when the labyrinth of life around us was roaring with the rough meanness of the Minotaur, a young man came into our caves and our dark passages. He found the beast and slew it. Then he did one more thing. He handed us a golden string: the way out; the way of life; the ticket on the right bus.
Listen to the words of William Blake. They are really the words of Jesus. He says to us:
I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem's wall.
Matthew 10:40-42
Jesus sends his disciples out as ambassadors of grace. While blessing them in these verses, he actually announces the impact of the choices people make. C.S. Lewis described our lives so well in Mere Christianity. In his chapter on "Christian Behavior" he talked about people who think that Christianity is a kind of one-time bargain with God: "You do this for me and I'll do that for you!" We bargain our way into heaven based on a one-time negotiation.
Not so, says Lewis. That's not the way of the Bible. We aren't people who have managed to bargain our way into heaven. Rather, we are people who make choices. We all start out at a similar point when we enter this world as babies. But then we begin to choose. We choose this way instead of that; we choose these friends instead of those; we pick this career rather than the other.
Little by little along the way, says Lewis, we begin to turn ourselves toward God or toward something else, something ultimately demonic. Each choice in life is a new gate. Which way will you go? Or perhaps more accurately, who are you becoming?
Says Lewis, "... every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before." He says that when you look at your life as a whole, with all of those innumerable choices you make from day to day, "all your life long you are slowly turning either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature."
Application
Robert Frost summarized this well in his famous poem. He talks about finding himself in a forest of trees on a glorious autumn afternoon. He's walking down a path, and there's a fork in the way. Which direction should he go?
When he makes his choice and picks his direction, he says to himself:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
That's the way it is in life. George Mueller was one of the finest persons who ever walked this earth. In the nineteenth century he set up orphanages around the world to care for the little ones who had no one else to look after them. He provided for the poor. He preached the love of Jesus, and he lived it every day.
Someone once called him a success. He said no, he wasn't a success; only a servant, a servant of his master who had loved him to life.
Well, asked a reporter, how did you manage to do all you've done during the course of your life?
"I don't really know," replied Mueller. "As I look back on my life, I see that I was constantly brought to a crossroads which demanded a choice of which way I should go." He said that once he had started to follow in the steps of Jesus all the rest of the decisions that came after seemed easier. He caught the right bus. When he had done that the first time it became the start of a habit. The second time he knew which bus to take, and by the third and the fourth and the fifth choices the way was much more clear. Earlier decisions made his later decisions easier.
Alternative Application
Genesis 22:1-14. This incident is identified as a test of Abraham's faith. In light of his response to earlier Royal Grant promises (12 -- given land, he leaves the land; 13 -- promised land, he tries to take the land by force; 15 -- declared a soon-to-be father, he connives to get a son), Abraham is now called to declare his loyalty to the God who has ratified a Suzerain Vassal covenant with him (Genesis 17). While the test may seem overly demanding (kill your only son, the one given miraculously and the heir to your identity and promises), there are mitigating factors that help us understand it better.
First, it was not out of the ordinary for people at that time to believe that deities required human sacrifice. The unusual twist in this story is that Yahweh, by stopping the bloodshed of Isaac, chooses deliberately to distance himself from these other deities, and shows that he does not delight in human sacrifice.
Second, Yahweh provides an alternative offering, a ram divinely placed on the scene. Third, the place is named "Moriah," which can ambiguously mean either "Yahweh sees" or "Yahweh will be seen," both of which are correct (Yahweh sees the faith of Abraham; Yahweh is more clearly seen by Abraham) and thus illuminate the idea presented in the text that "Yahweh provides" the sacrifice.
Fourth, this idea is further confirmed by later references to the location of the site. In 2 Chronicles 3:1 this mountain is specified as the future location of Solomon's Temple. Such a designation would tie the animal sacrifice to the temple rituals of a later century. It would also put the events of Genesis 22 on the very spot where Jesus would be crucified some twenty centuries hence, in another intense Father/Son engagement.
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 13
Hide and Seek
Children scatter in the backyard, finding shadows and crevices in which to hide as the one who is "it" counts ever more quickly. "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10... Ready or not! Here I come!" It is an epic tale of childhood. Hiding, seeking, finding; all the elements of real life wrapped up in a game played at dusk on a humid night in June. Sometimes it seems that God plays such a game with us. In this game we're "it," and God is hiding.
In times of deepest distress, it can feel like God has taken a hike. The contemporary language may put it a little differently, but the words "How long will you hide your face from me?" say it pretty well.
For everyone there comes a time when all the language about God's abiding presence melts away in the face of suffering and pain. In the midst of a horrific divorce, the abandoned and betrayed spouse cries out for God. From the grim chaos of a battlefield a terrified boy shrieks for God's salvation from a fetid trench lined with the corpses of his buddies. The list is very, very long. And this is no child's game.
Where is it that God goes sometimes? Why is it that there are times when we feel not Holy presence, but an empty void instead? Has God truly taken a powder? Or is something else happening?
A wise rabbi once said that when we feel that God is far away it might be a good idea to check and see who it is that really moved. Have we stepped so far away from the practice of God's presence that when the moment of need arrives we have no idea what to do?
There is also the matter of our need over against a universe we simply do not understand. The person, for example, who cried for God in the midst of a soul-crushing divorce is now blissfully remarried with several children. Perhaps God was in the details, after all?
It seems that John Wesley had it right when he urged his followers who felt faith slipping away to pray until faith would come. Even if the lights are out and we're wandering around looking for a God who seems to be hiding, it turns out that God is indeed there. God is indeed with us. And so, even through our unknowing and our confusion; through our weary tears and our pain we never stop falling to our knees and giving thanks and praise to God... even if we think God is playing hide and seek.
He bent over to write his name in the cement, when suddenly there was a hulking shadow engulfing him. Looking up in terror he saw the biggest construction mason he had ever seen in his life! The guy was holding a garbage can lid, ready to smash the first little kid who dared mess up his new sidewalk!
Maynard says he tried to run, but the guy caught him around the waist and shouted, "What do you think you're doing?! Why are you trying to spoil my work?!"
Maynard remembers babbling something about only wanting to write his name there for everyone to see. The man's eyes softened. He set young Maynard on the ground and said, "Look at me, son! What do you want to be when you grow up?!"
Maynard squeaked it out: "A writer, I think."
The man sat there with him for a moment, and then pointed to the school across the street. He said, "If you want to write your name where it really matters, then go to that school, and learn what it takes, and become a real writer. And then, someday, write your name on the cover of a book, and let the whole world see it!"
That, says Robert Maynard, was the day he became a writer. The first decision was made that day, and every choice he had to make along the way has been easier because someone helped him to know who he really was. Someone showed him how to make an early choice, taking his hand at a critical moment in his life, and leading him to the right door.
So it is in today's lectionary passages. Abraham is called to make a choice none of us should ever face, yet finds the One who asks it of him providing more grace than he ever imagined. Paul tells of the struggles we make in the choices of life, and the One who chose us first so that we might never fall too deeply in the mire of broken hopes. Jesus declares that our daily choices are essentially choices about him. Choose well and wisely!
Genesis 22:1-14
Abraham was a great old man, probably 125 or so! God had come to him in the past in strange and wonderful ways. When he wore a younger man's clothes, the Voice had called him on a journey with no fixed destination. But the beckoning was always one of blessing: "I'll give you land beyond measure! I'll make sure you have a child, old as you are! Your descendants will populate these hills and valleys like rain!"
Well, the land sort of took him in. Moreover, after some fits and starts he and Sarai did get a child. And even though his pension plan was still not entirely clear, life in these later years was peaceful and prosperous. After all, there was Isaac. His boy's name meant "Laughter!" and that's certainly what he brought Abraham these days. Life had turned out okay.
Now the Voice came to him again. But was it really the same Voice? "Sacrifice your son Isaac on the altar to me!" it said. What kind of God was this? Or was it perhaps a demon's mocking mimic? "Kill your boy! Choke out the Laughter!" God forbid! Please, God, let it not be so!
There would be no sleep this night. Abraham's mind whirls while his old bones crawl in pain. Get the servants... get the transportation... get provisions... get wood... get the son....
Three days travel they go, with every step harder than the last. Isaac chatters his usual banter, laughter echoing in Abraham's cold heart. Reluctantly Abraham spies the high place, finally. The mountain of doom. The plateau of death.
Strangely gruff, Abraham orders the servants to stay. "The boy and I will go it alone from here." Two on a murderous mission. Only one will return. The father-son hike soured even more when Isaac's laughter lilted a deadly chilly question: "Where's the lamb, father?"
What could Abraham say? Does he tell Isaac the truth: "Son, the God who said he loved me enough to give you to your mother and I now says he wants you back, and I've got to do the dirty work!"? How do you lie with a straight face when heaven is ripped apart by hell? Is it a spiteful retort, spat out in unholy jest that finally clears his throat: "My son, God will provide..."?
So here they are, clearing, building, and preparing. And now the end creeps with horror into Isaac's eyes. His father binds him. His father thrusts him on the wood. His father stands over him with a glinting knife. And the Laughter dies....
But not yet. In a miraculous moment, time stops and grace points to another sacrifice. The son is free, and faith is affirmed. And he calls the place Moriah.
Moriah is one of those delightfully ambiguous names that can mean several things at once. It probably has to do with seeing at this point, or knowing. Where God sees, he will be seen. Something like that.
But what is it that God sees on a mountain called Moriah? For one thing, he sees a man. A weak man. A stumbler on the earth. A businessman who got ahead in life. A husband who cheated on his wife. A father who knew the joy of bringing new life into being.
Even more than that God sees a man who was willing to put it all on the line. Here was someone who counted his relationship with the God of the Voice to be the one thing that mattered, the one thing that put everything else together, the one thing that could raise even heaven out of this stench of hell.
Probably the most important thing about the moment of seeing is not only that God sees Abraham there on Mount Moriah. In some mysterious way God is also seen by Abraham.
A geography lesson tells the rest of the story. On this same barren spot of ground, centuries later, David would urge Solomon to build the Temple of God. It would stand as a doorway between earth and eternity. Then, in the mysterious design of the ages, one day another Father would walk these slopes with another Son. That Son, too, would raise his voice to his Father, and the Father, for a time, would be silent. The wood of the offering would be prepared, and the Son would be lifted as a sacrifice. On what the world would later call "Good Friday," this other Father would shed tears of pain as his Child died, this time with no escape.
Somehow history would repeat itself and more with a vengeance. Yet this Lamb would also be chosen by God for the altar. And Laughter would be silenced for three days while all the world looked on in wonder.
Romans 6:12-23
Good intentions aren't enough in life, according to Paul. I think of that sometimes when I am officiating at a marriage ceremony. What exciting times! Everyone smiles! Everybody is dressed up for a celebration! Everything is so beautiful, so radiant, so full of hope and promise!
I stand at the front of the church with the bride and groom, and in their eyes I see the best of intentions: theirs will be the perfect marriage! Theirs will be the strongest home! Theirs will be the deepest vows, the truest commitments, the richest promises, the surest future! Yet within me there is often this nagging uncertainty. Why for so many who think they are headed for heaven does the journey of marriage lead them to hell?
Good intentions aren't enough. Hector Berlioz, the great composer, was living in Paris in 1830. He loved a young woman named Camille, and they were engaged to be married.
But then Hector was awarded the Prix de Roma, the Prize of Rome. He could study and compose and perform his music in Italy for a year or two, and all of his financial needs would be covered!
Camille agreed with him that this was an opportunity he needed to take. Off he went, with a kiss and a promise that they would soon be married. His intentions never changed.
But life in Rome swallowed him up. And for Camille, life in Paris went on. Other suitors came. When Berlioz next heard from her, she was on her way to marriage with another! Hector, of course, caught the next coach to Paris. Only he got on the wrong one and ended up in Genoa. There he tried again. He booked passage to France once more, but his anxiety must have blinded him because he took the wrong coach again and ended up in Nice.
By this time Camille was married, and Hector quit his journey. That's what happens sometimes when you catch the wrong bus!
The world is full of good intentions. Nobody wants war! Everybody wants prosperity! There is a hope and a wish and a desire for love in every human breast! But read the morning newspaper or watch the evening news, and another picture emerges. The best of intentions isn't enough to heal racial scars. The highest ambitions can't lift the slums out of hell. The purest desires won't by themselves chart a course to peace, prosperity, and democracy among the countries in turmoil.
Having an ideal, or catching a vision, or knowing to city to which you want to go doesn't get you there! You know the old saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions!" That's what Paul speaks of here.
Do you think that those who sit in AA meetings dreamed, in their younger years, asked Harry Emerson Fosdick that they would find themselves there some day? Of course not! And when they come to that point, when they find themselves in a city they didn't intend to visit, when they know that they took the wrong bus somewhere, what do they do? Do they wish for another city and imagine it into being? The City of Sobriety? The Metropolis of Second Chances?
If you have ever gone to an AA meeting you know it isn't so. The right bus comes for them only through hard work, and mutual support, and through watching every step of the journey. Late at night they call each other and say, "Get on the right bus! Stay on the wagon! Don't let your thirst take your feet where your heart knows it shouldn't go!"
Do you remember the story of the Minotaur in ancient Greek legends? The Minotaur was a terrible monster that lived deep underground in a labyrinth of caves and passages. Every year the Minotaur devoured young children. Ate them up!
Someone had to put a stop to it, so young Theseus did the work. He went down into the realms of darkness, took his sword, braved the beast, and slew it dead. But how would he get out of the labyrinth? How would he take the right turns and pass through the right gates in this maze? Everyone who saw him enter the deadly chasm was sure that he would never return to the surface, even though the Minotaur had stopped its fierce bellowing.
There was one person, however, who never stopped hoping. She loved Theseus, and knew that he would return. She knew it because she had handed Theseus a ball of string before he left on his mission. And there, in the land where he was loved, in the place where he belonged, he tied one end of that string.
When he destroyed the cruel beast in the maze all he had to do was follow the string of his love. It opened for him the right doors, and took him on the right paths. It marked for him the right gates, and led him to the place he knew he had to reach.
And that's the gospel for us. All our education, all our training, all our decision-making is, in some way, following the string that was handed to us by others. And one time, long ago, when the labyrinth of life around us was roaring with the rough meanness of the Minotaur, a young man came into our caves and our dark passages. He found the beast and slew it. Then he did one more thing. He handed us a golden string: the way out; the way of life; the ticket on the right bus.
Listen to the words of William Blake. They are really the words of Jesus. He says to us:
I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem's wall.
Matthew 10:40-42
Jesus sends his disciples out as ambassadors of grace. While blessing them in these verses, he actually announces the impact of the choices people make. C.S. Lewis described our lives so well in Mere Christianity. In his chapter on "Christian Behavior" he talked about people who think that Christianity is a kind of one-time bargain with God: "You do this for me and I'll do that for you!" We bargain our way into heaven based on a one-time negotiation.
Not so, says Lewis. That's not the way of the Bible. We aren't people who have managed to bargain our way into heaven. Rather, we are people who make choices. We all start out at a similar point when we enter this world as babies. But then we begin to choose. We choose this way instead of that; we choose these friends instead of those; we pick this career rather than the other.
Little by little along the way, says Lewis, we begin to turn ourselves toward God or toward something else, something ultimately demonic. Each choice in life is a new gate. Which way will you go? Or perhaps more accurately, who are you becoming?
Says Lewis, "... every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before." He says that when you look at your life as a whole, with all of those innumerable choices you make from day to day, "all your life long you are slowly turning either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature."
Application
Robert Frost summarized this well in his famous poem. He talks about finding himself in a forest of trees on a glorious autumn afternoon. He's walking down a path, and there's a fork in the way. Which direction should he go?
When he makes his choice and picks his direction, he says to himself:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
That's the way it is in life. George Mueller was one of the finest persons who ever walked this earth. In the nineteenth century he set up orphanages around the world to care for the little ones who had no one else to look after them. He provided for the poor. He preached the love of Jesus, and he lived it every day.
Someone once called him a success. He said no, he wasn't a success; only a servant, a servant of his master who had loved him to life.
Well, asked a reporter, how did you manage to do all you've done during the course of your life?
"I don't really know," replied Mueller. "As I look back on my life, I see that I was constantly brought to a crossroads which demanded a choice of which way I should go." He said that once he had started to follow in the steps of Jesus all the rest of the decisions that came after seemed easier. He caught the right bus. When he had done that the first time it became the start of a habit. The second time he knew which bus to take, and by the third and the fourth and the fifth choices the way was much more clear. Earlier decisions made his later decisions easier.
Alternative Application
Genesis 22:1-14. This incident is identified as a test of Abraham's faith. In light of his response to earlier Royal Grant promises (12 -- given land, he leaves the land; 13 -- promised land, he tries to take the land by force; 15 -- declared a soon-to-be father, he connives to get a son), Abraham is now called to declare his loyalty to the God who has ratified a Suzerain Vassal covenant with him (Genesis 17). While the test may seem overly demanding (kill your only son, the one given miraculously and the heir to your identity and promises), there are mitigating factors that help us understand it better.
First, it was not out of the ordinary for people at that time to believe that deities required human sacrifice. The unusual twist in this story is that Yahweh, by stopping the bloodshed of Isaac, chooses deliberately to distance himself from these other deities, and shows that he does not delight in human sacrifice.
Second, Yahweh provides an alternative offering, a ram divinely placed on the scene. Third, the place is named "Moriah," which can ambiguously mean either "Yahweh sees" or "Yahweh will be seen," both of which are correct (Yahweh sees the faith of Abraham; Yahweh is more clearly seen by Abraham) and thus illuminate the idea presented in the text that "Yahweh provides" the sacrifice.
Fourth, this idea is further confirmed by later references to the location of the site. In 2 Chronicles 3:1 this mountain is specified as the future location of Solomon's Temple. Such a designation would tie the animal sacrifice to the temple rituals of a later century. It would also put the events of Genesis 22 on the very spot where Jesus would be crucified some twenty centuries hence, in another intense Father/Son engagement.
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 13
Hide and Seek
Children scatter in the backyard, finding shadows and crevices in which to hide as the one who is "it" counts ever more quickly. "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10... Ready or not! Here I come!" It is an epic tale of childhood. Hiding, seeking, finding; all the elements of real life wrapped up in a game played at dusk on a humid night in June. Sometimes it seems that God plays such a game with us. In this game we're "it," and God is hiding.
In times of deepest distress, it can feel like God has taken a hike. The contemporary language may put it a little differently, but the words "How long will you hide your face from me?" say it pretty well.
For everyone there comes a time when all the language about God's abiding presence melts away in the face of suffering and pain. In the midst of a horrific divorce, the abandoned and betrayed spouse cries out for God. From the grim chaos of a battlefield a terrified boy shrieks for God's salvation from a fetid trench lined with the corpses of his buddies. The list is very, very long. And this is no child's game.
Where is it that God goes sometimes? Why is it that there are times when we feel not Holy presence, but an empty void instead? Has God truly taken a powder? Or is something else happening?
A wise rabbi once said that when we feel that God is far away it might be a good idea to check and see who it is that really moved. Have we stepped so far away from the practice of God's presence that when the moment of need arrives we have no idea what to do?
There is also the matter of our need over against a universe we simply do not understand. The person, for example, who cried for God in the midst of a soul-crushing divorce is now blissfully remarried with several children. Perhaps God was in the details, after all?
It seems that John Wesley had it right when he urged his followers who felt faith slipping away to pray until faith would come. Even if the lights are out and we're wandering around looking for a God who seems to be hiding, it turns out that God is indeed there. God is indeed with us. And so, even through our unknowing and our confusion; through our weary tears and our pain we never stop falling to our knees and giving thanks and praise to God... even if we think God is playing hide and seek.
