In this hardest of biblical stories, Abraham learns a deeper kind of faith that leads him beyond his carefully controlled loves to the kind of sacrifice that opens up the world to him.
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 22:1-14
Matthew 10:40-42
Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes God who sent me.” “Welcome” is a word I have already come to hear frequently from people at St. Paul’s describing their experience of this place. This congregation is friendly. Have you seen how long the exchange of peace takes? All of us are continually introducing ourselves to each other and that we continue to be welcomed again and again by more and more people who once were strangers to us. There are some remarkable stories here of what people have been for each other, and it is not saying too much to say that, time and again, this welcome, your welcome of each other, has been one way God has made Godself present in this world.
In fact, Jesus encouraged us to think of it this way and to talk about God meeting us in the eyes and hands of other human beings near us. In the Gospel reading we just read, Jesus explained, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes God who sent me…. and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple–truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” We can search for the ultimate thing that matters in a lot of places and want it to be present to us. Jesus draws our attention to how wondrous that power is that makes the stranger no longer strange to us, the power of welcome.
According to Jesus, his Gospel was nothing new, but was instead the unveiling or revealing of the truth of what we call the Old Testament. Did you just hear the reading from Genesis? You know the one where God “tests” Abraham, the father of faith, by telling him, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.” Wow! Isn’t this exactly the kind of story that critics of the Bible point to who suppose that religion has some role in promoting violence in our world? It is fair to ask, “How do we hear Jesus’ message of radical welcome in this most ancient and primitive text of terror?” Let’s welcome this strange and frightening text of the sacrifice of Isaac into our midst. It will, like our welcome of every other stranger, cause us to see that in welcoming it we are indeed discovering Christ in our midst.
The story of God’s command to Abraham to kill his son is probably the most dangerous story in the Bible and the most difficult to interpret well. After all, this is the same God who in the ten commandments instructed Moses, “That shalt not kill.” It is no simple thing to hold these two commands in one’s mind at that the same time. It is not often noticed that four chapters before this story, in Genesis 18, there is remarkable account of Abraham welcoming strangers. As you know, Abraham and his wife Sarah greatly desired children, but were unable to conceive and by now were passed the age when that was even possible. Amid this barrenness, we are told that Abraham saw three strangers passing through the arid land he inhabited. Abraham immediately ran to meet them, and offered them rest, a place to wash their feet, and then made them something of a feast, even serving them one of his animals to eat. During the generous meal, one of the strangers promised Abraham that before he would have a chance to welcome them again, his wife would have conceived a son. On hearing this promise from the stranger, Sarah laughed out loud. But somehow, out of Abraham’s generous welcoming of the strangers, Sarah did conceive in her old age and they named the boy, “laughter,” that is the meaning of the name, Isaac. In Abraham’s radical welcome and in his giving, there was a mysterious exchange, where Abraham the giver received the gift he most desired.
It is this happiness that is tested four chapters later, when God tells Abraham, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.” The obvious question is “why?” Abraham doesn’t seem to have asked this question at all. What more could there be for this expert welcomer to learn? What if when Abraham finally possessed his precious son of promise, Isaac, he actually had what he had always wanted? The future was no longer open and something to invite others into because he already had his Isaac and his task now was to defend and protect from him from the world. Couldn’t this have been the problem? What I mean is that once the gift becomes a possession, it is no longer a gift. Possessing Isaac, his only son, the son he loved, he had something to defend and a future to preserve. In Genesis chapter 21, the chapter preceding this one, we are told that Abraham and Sarah cast out of their household Hagar and her son Ishmael when Sarah saw Ishmael playing with her precious Isaac. If this is this case, are we to believe that Isaac’s father Abraham would once again welcome the three strangers into his house in the same open-handed way as he had before?
Oh it a wrenching, hard, story of infinite spiritual depth, when God asks Abraham to give Isaac back! How shattering that must have been! With just a few words, God once again empties Abraham’s future and unsettles all his plans. Through the crisis of God demanding his only son, the Son he loved, his only possession, however, Isaac is transformed back from possession to gift. Whatever Abraham felt compelled to defend was lost that day. I don’t see how he, after that day, ever held Isaac again with the same sort of ownership. Isaac was ever after a daily gift received from God over and over again. The future was once again an ambiguous but open place where there was room for fully welcoming the stranger and God.
I don’t know about you, but in my experience, it is not possible for me to be open to God and yet close the doors of my heart to people. The same defenses I construct to protect myself and my plans from people also insulate me from God’s intrusions into my life. The doors of my heart and mind are either open or closed. They are either open to the kind of welcome Jesus spoke of when he said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me” or they are not. In this hardest of biblical stories, Abraham learns a deeper kind of faith that leads him beyond his carefully controlled loves to the kind of sacrifice that opens up the world to him. It is such a difficult story because its intension is to push us past the safety that comes from relying on our own calculus to a welcome of the presence of a God who is larger than our narrowly drawn plans.
Later in the Gospel after Jesus’ initial saying about welcome, Jesus tells a story about the final judgment, that is, about the final verdict on our lives, about what ultimately matters most in the end. He imagines humanity being divided into two camps in the same way that a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He puts the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Those good people at his right hand, are told “Come, you that are blessed … for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous answer him, “[When was this? We didn’t know it was you!] … And the king answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Then he will say to those at his left hand, “…for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it because we didn’t know it was you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me” (Mt. 25:31-46).
I don’t think Jesus could have said in a stronger way that the radical welcome matters. That to discover God is to discover other people that we used to refer to as strangers and to learn to love strangers is, even when we don’t know it, a means of loving God. So St. Paul’s be ever-confident in your welcoming and know that as you welcome one another you are also welcoming God into our midst.
O infinite Lord, let us welcome each other as you have welcomed us; may your gifts to us never become our possessions, but rather become sources of gratitude and connection to one another as we discover you and your love again and again in one another. Amen.