Discovering That It's Not About You
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle A
"It's not about you." Did anyone ever say that to you? Something is going on. Some conflict is being worked out or some decision is being made about something that is going to happen and you are feeling threatened or put upon or involved in some other way. Then someone who is more deeply involved says to you, "This is not about you." At first that may hurt your feelings because most of us operate on the assumption that almost everything is about us. But when the realization soaks in that it really is not about you, at least not primarily, and you discover a new way of looking at things and of relating to them, you may discover that "it's not about you" is one of the most liberating things that was ever said to you.
In a way, that is what God was saying to Abraham through the experience described in today's scripture lesson. God had given everything to Abraham. God had finally given him the son through whom all of his highest hopes would be realized. Then God required him to give it all back to God. God did that so that God could give everything to Abraham again. God did that so that Abraham could have everything in a new way, but Abraham didn't know that at the time. Through the whole experience, God was helping Abraham to get a vision of the bigger picture. God was trying to say to him, "Lots of important things have gone on between us and many more will happen in times to come, but you need to understand that it is really not primarily about you. It is about something much bigger than yourself."
When Abraham came to understand that, he found his way into a new relationship with all that God had given to him and to all that God was doing, a relationship in which there was both more freedom and more meaning than there was before.
God sometimes says something like that to us, too. Let's see how that worked out for Abraham and how it might work out for us.
Do you remember the story of Abraham and Sarah? The story began with Abraham and Sarah living the good life of affluent business people in a great city of one of the highest civilizations in the ancient world. Then Abraham heard the voice of some great invisible other coming from beyond everything he had known. The other called him to take his family and his servants and leave everything that was secure and dependable and to venture out into the unknown. He was to travel to a land that he would be shown. The invisible other promised that the descendants of Abraham and Sarah would become a great nation that would play an important role in human history and they would inherit the land through which he would travel.
Abraham and Sarah accepted the invitation. They ventured out trusting the promise of the unknown other. They lived many years and had many adventures trusting that promise. It was the promise that gave their lives purpose and meaning. But for most of the time, the one thing that would be necessary for the fulfillment of the promise had not happened. They had no children. Toward the end, they certainly began to feel that they had been foolish to trust that nebulous promise of an invisible other.
But finally, when both Abraham and Sarah were too old to have children, God gave them a son, Isaac, the son through whom all of the promises were to be fulfilled. They immediately hung all of their hopes upon him. They sent away the other son, Ishmael, whom Abraham had fathered through Sarah's handmaiden in a desperate effort to keep from dying without an heir. The fulfillment of their whole long life's adventure centered in their beloved son, Isaac.
We can imagine that Abraham had come to think that this whole story centered in himself. After all, he had been the central character in the story as he had experienced it. He must have thought that the story was primarily about his ambition, his faith, his descendants who would make his name great and the land that his descendants would inherit. All of this must have begun to sound to him like Abraham's success story - and it all centered in Isaac, the son that God had given him.
Then the day came when God required Abraham to take his son to the top of a distant mountain and to sacrifice him, to give him back to God. Now, there are lots of things about this story that can get us all churned up. If we thought we heard God calling us to kill one of our children as a sacrifice, we would certainly argue with God about that. We might very well refuse to do it. Of course, that is because we know something about God that Abraham didn't know yet, some things that Abraham's own experience has taught us. We know that God would never ask us to sacrifice our children. But the sacrifice of a child was not unknown in the religious practices of the pagan people among whom Abraham was living. He believed that it was really something God wanted him to do - and so he decided to do it. He had lived trusting God and obeying him all through his life. Now he would do it again this one more time.
Abraham took Isaac to the place of sacrifice to give him back to God. Our hearts hurt for Abraham and for Isaac as we read how Abraham made preparations for the sacrifice while his young son asked him trusting questions. Finally, just as Abraham was about to perform the fatal act, God intervened. God provided an animal for the sacrifice and gave Isaac back to Abraham. Abraham had proven that he would always trust God. God had proven that he would always provide.
But something very basic changed in the relationships between the actors as this drama unfolded. It became apparent to Abraham that this story was not primarily about him. This was not just Abraham's success story. It was about something much bigger, something that God was doing for all humankind. Abraham would play an important role in what was happening and the role he would play would validate his life. But it was not about him. It was about God and God's purpose.
As Abraham and Isaac left the mountain, something fundamental had changed in their relationship, too. Isaac no longer belonged to Abraham. He was no longer the one through whom Abraham's ambition would be realized. Instead, Isaac belonged to God, just as Abraham did. Abraham and Isaac were two separate persons, each of whom existed in a unique relationship with God, each of whom would play an important role in the working out of the purpose of God. Very important relationships existed between them, but they were separate persons, each of whom existed in relationship with God. The promise that Isaac represented was no longer just a promise made to Abraham. It was a promise made by God to all humankind.
That changed lots of things for Abraham. Now that he knew that the story was not really about him, he could let go of it. He could play his role in it faithfully without having to believe that it all depended on him. It was no longer about his son, his ambition, his descendants, his land, or about the promise made to him. But he also discovered that he was a part of something much greater than the story of one man could ever be. He had a new freedom and an even greater meaning in his life.
How do we fit into that picture? With just a little imagination, we can see.
God has indeed given us everything we have. Imagine yourself alone, naked, and empty--handed; a creature who, only a short time ago, did not exist and who, in a time much shorter than we like to imagine, will not exist again so far as this world is concerned. Our lives are only a minute in the history of the universe, and less than a second in eternity. Yet, there is a greater reality, who has no beginning and no end, who surrounds us and gives our lives meaning by loving us.
That great other who surrounds us also surrounds us with other things, skies and oceans and mountains and cities and houses and cars and things like that, including the things you call your house, your car, your things. The great other also surrounds us with other people, including the people you call your friends, your parents, your children, and there are happenings in the world with which you are surrounded, happenings that make a story and eventually a history. You are involved in some of the happenings. Since you experience all of the happenings as if you were the center of it all, it is easy for you to come to think of it as your story.
I suppose it is natural for us to begin to think of ourselves as the center of everything that we experience. We think of ourselves as the owners of part of the things around us and ownership becomes very important to us. We begin to evaluate ourselves and others in terms of how much we have or do not have. We begin to put life together around our own plans for ourselves, our ambitions. The only story that really interests us is our story. We begin to relate to other people in terms of the roles they play in our stories. We evaluate our friends in terms of what they do for us. We begin to think of our husbands and wives as extensions of ourselves. And we think of our children as our children whom we expect to fulfill our ambitions. If God is a part of the picture we draw of our lives, God is likely to be our God, a little God who, like our friends and family members, serves our purposes in life.
I suppose it is natural for us to slip into that way of thinking. We all do it to some extent. Put some faces on these characters now. Put your face on the person in the center. Which are your things? Who are your people? What is your story? Can you understand how Abraham must have come to think that everything that happened was about him?
But what happens to that picture of things if some bad thing happens that takes everything away from you - a recession or a business failure, a divorce, a child who refuses to fulfill your ambitions? What happens if you are suddenly required to reckon seriously with the fact that you must eventually die? In a sense, everything that you thought you had will have been taken away from you, or, at least it will have been shown not to be yours in the way that you thought it was.
What do you do then? You can do one of two things. You can decide that the story is all over and drop into despair. Or you can decide that the story is going to go on, and that you will have a role to play in it, but it is not primarily about you. And that decision - or discovery - can surprise you by giving you new freedom and meaning and hope.
Now, I am very frustrated because we are almost out of sermon time and I need to tell you lots of stories and show you lots of pictures that could help you visualize what life might look like in this new set of relationships. I can only make the briefest kind of suggestions and you will have to finish preaching this sermon by trying to see how this new kind of life might come together for you. When God requires you to give everything back, God gives life to you again, but in an entirely new set of relationships.
You will need to discover that there is indeed a story that keeps going on and that it is the story of God and of what God is doing to work out God's great purpose for the whole creation. It really is not quite true to say that the story is not about you. It is very much about you. It is about you in the same way that it is about everyone else in the world. But it doesn't center in you. It centers in God and in what God is doing in the world. It can be your story if you commit yourself to it. That would mean finding a new center for your life in something greater than yourself. And that will give your life a greater meaning and a freedom that you may not expect.
You will discover that the things you always thought were yours don't really belong to you. How could they? You are just here for a little while. Those things really belong to God who made them. You are just the tenant who occupies those things for a little while. It is your job to care for the world and to use it in the service of the purpose of God, the real owner. This purpose of God includes a commitment to your own well--being as well as the well--being of all other people. Since you will have learned that it is God who sustains you and gives you value and gives your life meaning and not your accumulation of possessions, you can gain a new freedom from your things. You can enjoy and care for and use the things you have with a freedom that you never knew before. Issues like the care of the environment and the use of resources to serve the greater good of all people will make sense in a new way, and you will discover that, if you don't have to own a thing to enjoy it, the whole world is yours to enjoy.
Finally, you will find your way into a new set of relationships with other people, especially those who are closest to you. Much more of our unhappiness than we suspect arises from our tendency to try to take possession of one another. Instead of thinking of those who are important to you as extensions of yourself, learn to think of them as separate persons like yourself, each of whom has a unique relationship with God and a story of her or his own. Yes, very important relationships will exist between you. You will do important things for each other. But the relationships will be based, not on ownership, but on the kind of respect that is an aspect of real love. That can make a big difference in your relationships. It can put an end to jealousy and manipulation and a lot of the hurt feelings and bad feelings that often exist between us. It can let you claim your freedom from others while respecting their freedom from you. It can let you make commitments to others that are parts of your commitment to God.
Can you visualize what that could mean in your most intimate relationships? Let's consider an example. If parents give their child back to God in the service of infant baptism or infant dedication, they are recognizing that their child is indeed a separate person and a child of God. Through the years of childhood, they will feel a responsibility to God to care for the child and to help it to grow up into a healthy, whole person. They will affirm the child for its own sake, not just so that the child can make the parents proud. (And they will not generate guilt feelings by mentioning their disappointments.) During the stormy years of adolescence, they will be committed to helping the child's own unique personhood emerge, and when it is all over, the parents and the child will be able to be good adult friends. Can parenthood work out that way? Can other difficult relationships work out in similar ways? If they can, it will be a great gift, won't it?
It can be a very liberating thing to learn that everything is not all about you. When we give back to God all that God has given to us, God gives it again so that we can have it all with new freedom and new purpose. What God was trying to show to Abraham on the mountain of sacrifice is the same thing that Jesus was trying to show us all when he said, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:24--25).
In a way, that is what God was saying to Abraham through the experience described in today's scripture lesson. God had given everything to Abraham. God had finally given him the son through whom all of his highest hopes would be realized. Then God required him to give it all back to God. God did that so that God could give everything to Abraham again. God did that so that Abraham could have everything in a new way, but Abraham didn't know that at the time. Through the whole experience, God was helping Abraham to get a vision of the bigger picture. God was trying to say to him, "Lots of important things have gone on between us and many more will happen in times to come, but you need to understand that it is really not primarily about you. It is about something much bigger than yourself."
When Abraham came to understand that, he found his way into a new relationship with all that God had given to him and to all that God was doing, a relationship in which there was both more freedom and more meaning than there was before.
God sometimes says something like that to us, too. Let's see how that worked out for Abraham and how it might work out for us.
Do you remember the story of Abraham and Sarah? The story began with Abraham and Sarah living the good life of affluent business people in a great city of one of the highest civilizations in the ancient world. Then Abraham heard the voice of some great invisible other coming from beyond everything he had known. The other called him to take his family and his servants and leave everything that was secure and dependable and to venture out into the unknown. He was to travel to a land that he would be shown. The invisible other promised that the descendants of Abraham and Sarah would become a great nation that would play an important role in human history and they would inherit the land through which he would travel.
Abraham and Sarah accepted the invitation. They ventured out trusting the promise of the unknown other. They lived many years and had many adventures trusting that promise. It was the promise that gave their lives purpose and meaning. But for most of the time, the one thing that would be necessary for the fulfillment of the promise had not happened. They had no children. Toward the end, they certainly began to feel that they had been foolish to trust that nebulous promise of an invisible other.
But finally, when both Abraham and Sarah were too old to have children, God gave them a son, Isaac, the son through whom all of the promises were to be fulfilled. They immediately hung all of their hopes upon him. They sent away the other son, Ishmael, whom Abraham had fathered through Sarah's handmaiden in a desperate effort to keep from dying without an heir. The fulfillment of their whole long life's adventure centered in their beloved son, Isaac.
We can imagine that Abraham had come to think that this whole story centered in himself. After all, he had been the central character in the story as he had experienced it. He must have thought that the story was primarily about his ambition, his faith, his descendants who would make his name great and the land that his descendants would inherit. All of this must have begun to sound to him like Abraham's success story - and it all centered in Isaac, the son that God had given him.
Then the day came when God required Abraham to take his son to the top of a distant mountain and to sacrifice him, to give him back to God. Now, there are lots of things about this story that can get us all churned up. If we thought we heard God calling us to kill one of our children as a sacrifice, we would certainly argue with God about that. We might very well refuse to do it. Of course, that is because we know something about God that Abraham didn't know yet, some things that Abraham's own experience has taught us. We know that God would never ask us to sacrifice our children. But the sacrifice of a child was not unknown in the religious practices of the pagan people among whom Abraham was living. He believed that it was really something God wanted him to do - and so he decided to do it. He had lived trusting God and obeying him all through his life. Now he would do it again this one more time.
Abraham took Isaac to the place of sacrifice to give him back to God. Our hearts hurt for Abraham and for Isaac as we read how Abraham made preparations for the sacrifice while his young son asked him trusting questions. Finally, just as Abraham was about to perform the fatal act, God intervened. God provided an animal for the sacrifice and gave Isaac back to Abraham. Abraham had proven that he would always trust God. God had proven that he would always provide.
But something very basic changed in the relationships between the actors as this drama unfolded. It became apparent to Abraham that this story was not primarily about him. This was not just Abraham's success story. It was about something much bigger, something that God was doing for all humankind. Abraham would play an important role in what was happening and the role he would play would validate his life. But it was not about him. It was about God and God's purpose.
As Abraham and Isaac left the mountain, something fundamental had changed in their relationship, too. Isaac no longer belonged to Abraham. He was no longer the one through whom Abraham's ambition would be realized. Instead, Isaac belonged to God, just as Abraham did. Abraham and Isaac were two separate persons, each of whom existed in a unique relationship with God, each of whom would play an important role in the working out of the purpose of God. Very important relationships existed between them, but they were separate persons, each of whom existed in relationship with God. The promise that Isaac represented was no longer just a promise made to Abraham. It was a promise made by God to all humankind.
That changed lots of things for Abraham. Now that he knew that the story was not really about him, he could let go of it. He could play his role in it faithfully without having to believe that it all depended on him. It was no longer about his son, his ambition, his descendants, his land, or about the promise made to him. But he also discovered that he was a part of something much greater than the story of one man could ever be. He had a new freedom and an even greater meaning in his life.
How do we fit into that picture? With just a little imagination, we can see.
God has indeed given us everything we have. Imagine yourself alone, naked, and empty--handed; a creature who, only a short time ago, did not exist and who, in a time much shorter than we like to imagine, will not exist again so far as this world is concerned. Our lives are only a minute in the history of the universe, and less than a second in eternity. Yet, there is a greater reality, who has no beginning and no end, who surrounds us and gives our lives meaning by loving us.
That great other who surrounds us also surrounds us with other things, skies and oceans and mountains and cities and houses and cars and things like that, including the things you call your house, your car, your things. The great other also surrounds us with other people, including the people you call your friends, your parents, your children, and there are happenings in the world with which you are surrounded, happenings that make a story and eventually a history. You are involved in some of the happenings. Since you experience all of the happenings as if you were the center of it all, it is easy for you to come to think of it as your story.
I suppose it is natural for us to begin to think of ourselves as the center of everything that we experience. We think of ourselves as the owners of part of the things around us and ownership becomes very important to us. We begin to evaluate ourselves and others in terms of how much we have or do not have. We begin to put life together around our own plans for ourselves, our ambitions. The only story that really interests us is our story. We begin to relate to other people in terms of the roles they play in our stories. We evaluate our friends in terms of what they do for us. We begin to think of our husbands and wives as extensions of ourselves. And we think of our children as our children whom we expect to fulfill our ambitions. If God is a part of the picture we draw of our lives, God is likely to be our God, a little God who, like our friends and family members, serves our purposes in life.
I suppose it is natural for us to slip into that way of thinking. We all do it to some extent. Put some faces on these characters now. Put your face on the person in the center. Which are your things? Who are your people? What is your story? Can you understand how Abraham must have come to think that everything that happened was about him?
But what happens to that picture of things if some bad thing happens that takes everything away from you - a recession or a business failure, a divorce, a child who refuses to fulfill your ambitions? What happens if you are suddenly required to reckon seriously with the fact that you must eventually die? In a sense, everything that you thought you had will have been taken away from you, or, at least it will have been shown not to be yours in the way that you thought it was.
What do you do then? You can do one of two things. You can decide that the story is all over and drop into despair. Or you can decide that the story is going to go on, and that you will have a role to play in it, but it is not primarily about you. And that decision - or discovery - can surprise you by giving you new freedom and meaning and hope.
Now, I am very frustrated because we are almost out of sermon time and I need to tell you lots of stories and show you lots of pictures that could help you visualize what life might look like in this new set of relationships. I can only make the briefest kind of suggestions and you will have to finish preaching this sermon by trying to see how this new kind of life might come together for you. When God requires you to give everything back, God gives life to you again, but in an entirely new set of relationships.
You will need to discover that there is indeed a story that keeps going on and that it is the story of God and of what God is doing to work out God's great purpose for the whole creation. It really is not quite true to say that the story is not about you. It is very much about you. It is about you in the same way that it is about everyone else in the world. But it doesn't center in you. It centers in God and in what God is doing in the world. It can be your story if you commit yourself to it. That would mean finding a new center for your life in something greater than yourself. And that will give your life a greater meaning and a freedom that you may not expect.
You will discover that the things you always thought were yours don't really belong to you. How could they? You are just here for a little while. Those things really belong to God who made them. You are just the tenant who occupies those things for a little while. It is your job to care for the world and to use it in the service of the purpose of God, the real owner. This purpose of God includes a commitment to your own well--being as well as the well--being of all other people. Since you will have learned that it is God who sustains you and gives you value and gives your life meaning and not your accumulation of possessions, you can gain a new freedom from your things. You can enjoy and care for and use the things you have with a freedom that you never knew before. Issues like the care of the environment and the use of resources to serve the greater good of all people will make sense in a new way, and you will discover that, if you don't have to own a thing to enjoy it, the whole world is yours to enjoy.
Finally, you will find your way into a new set of relationships with other people, especially those who are closest to you. Much more of our unhappiness than we suspect arises from our tendency to try to take possession of one another. Instead of thinking of those who are important to you as extensions of yourself, learn to think of them as separate persons like yourself, each of whom has a unique relationship with God and a story of her or his own. Yes, very important relationships will exist between you. You will do important things for each other. But the relationships will be based, not on ownership, but on the kind of respect that is an aspect of real love. That can make a big difference in your relationships. It can put an end to jealousy and manipulation and a lot of the hurt feelings and bad feelings that often exist between us. It can let you claim your freedom from others while respecting their freedom from you. It can let you make commitments to others that are parts of your commitment to God.
Can you visualize what that could mean in your most intimate relationships? Let's consider an example. If parents give their child back to God in the service of infant baptism or infant dedication, they are recognizing that their child is indeed a separate person and a child of God. Through the years of childhood, they will feel a responsibility to God to care for the child and to help it to grow up into a healthy, whole person. They will affirm the child for its own sake, not just so that the child can make the parents proud. (And they will not generate guilt feelings by mentioning their disappointments.) During the stormy years of adolescence, they will be committed to helping the child's own unique personhood emerge, and when it is all over, the parents and the child will be able to be good adult friends. Can parenthood work out that way? Can other difficult relationships work out in similar ways? If they can, it will be a great gift, won't it?
It can be a very liberating thing to learn that everything is not all about you. When we give back to God all that God has given to us, God gives it again so that we can have it all with new freedom and new purpose. What God was trying to show to Abraham on the mountain of sacrifice is the same thing that Jesus was trying to show us all when he said, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:24--25).
