Second Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
It’s a warm day in the neighborhood
Well, today maybe, but yesterday in Illinois there was a heavy frost. I was still wearing my Austin shorts, and my knees started knocking.
I came early to watch part of Jack’s scholastic bowl tournament at Centennial HS in Champaign. Schools from Chicago and the rest of Illinois sent their finest scholars. Jack won an individual prize as an up-and-comer (he’s a freshman) and his Pleasant Plains High School took home the top small school prize. This was a big deal. There were 12 different matches. The meet lasted all day. Jack Sandel and family were super excited.
And besides, yesterday was Jack’s 15th birthday. He’ll get his permit early this week. What a good day for him!
Take your son Isaac, your only son, whom you love, and offer him up as a holocaust on a mountain I will point out to you.
I’ve been trying to imagine sacrificing one of our grandkids if God tells me too. I’ve been trying to imagine sacrificing one of our own kids if God told me too. Abraham stood up to Sarah and took Isaac off on a donkey, along with all the things he needed to make a sacrifice. Isaac was refreshingly obedient and curious, but not suspicious or afraid. Abraham tied him to the wood and took up his knife.
Isaac’s eyes were wide. But he did not cry out.
Do not lay your hand on the boy, said the Lord. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.
So the story ends well. God promises to make Abraham’s …
Descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore. And in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing – all this because you obeyed my command.
But my imagination has no business in this story. God didn’t tell me to make the sacrifice. What God told Abraham happened once, and never again. Those of us who imagine God commanding us to kill belong in a strait jacket. The sacrifice God desires is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.
The only killing I do is of my own ego, and not a son or grand daughter, not anything or anyone outside myself, but only what is in me that rebels against God.
And it must not escape my notice that although God spared Isaac and his father Abraham from that imposing tragedy, he did not spare himself.
If God is for us, he who did not spare his own son but handed him over for us all, well then, who can be against us?
And yet … and yet …
Forfeit
God, you pour out Life in a radiant stream,
flowing through my days, through this world,
at the heart of all things.
I confess I abandon it.
I turn from the You of life to the Me of my mind;
I slip out of the We of human family,
away from the Us of Creation, and forfeit real life.
Earnestly making, proving and defending myself,
I cut myself off from you, my only source of life.
I don’t even show up.
Here in my hands I have everything the world sells.
And it’s junk.
I repent.
Give me a spirit of gratitude and trust,
to receive your grace.
Give me a heart of love, to love boldly,
and so find in my hands life, true life. – Steve Garnaas-Holmes
(Genesis 22, Psalm 116, Romans 8, Matthew 17, Mark 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
