Becoming Whom God Knows Us to Be

Introduction & Prayer

Good morning on this 2nd Sunday of Lent as we continue our journey with Jesus to the cross.

And on this journey we are invited to renounce ourselves and follow our Lord.

Would you please pray with me?

The Trouble of Gen 22

I don’t know about you, but Genesis 22 troubles me for numerous reasons.

For one, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, exactly the kind of behavior that he prohibits elsewhere. Human sacrifice was not good.

Also, Abraham doesn’t even argue or question God.

The only thing he says to God in this entire chapter is, “here I am,” which indicates his surrendered and obedient posture.

Third, Isaac is at least a young man at this time and some suggest he was as old as 37!

He was clearly able to carry wood for the sacrifice and to perceive that something was amiss, when he asks, in Gen 22:7 (JPS),

“Here are the firestone and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”

Finally, God goes for Abraham’s heart, which is evident in the very way the request is worded.

God says, take

your son

your only one

whom you love

Isaac

The way Rashi, a famous medieval French rabbi, interprets this text suggests that it reflects a dialogue between God and Abraham.

[SLIDE]

When God said, “take your son,” Abraham responded, “I have two sons.”

God replied, “take your only one.” Abraham responded, “Isaac is ‘the only one’ of his mother, Sarah. And Ishmael is the ‘the only one’ of his mother, Hagar.”

God specified, “whom you love.” Abraham insisted, “I love both of them.”

God, directly now, “Isaac.”

I used to approach problems like these [list below] as something to be fixed, to make them intellectually consistent.

human sacrifice,

Abraham doesn’t protest,

Isaac just goes with it,

and God is out of line

But over the years I’ve come to learn that God is after our desires more than making sure that he fits into our human understanding.

Scriptural riddles are designed to engage us in the work he is doing in us.

It is one of his ways of penetrating our tidy way of understanding him.

While I badly want to answer the problems I’ve raised, I am instead going to allow them to help us probe our desires this Lenten season.

The Formation of Abraham’s Desires

You probably recall that Isaac was born as a miracle child after both Sarah and Abraham were beyond childbearing age.

Isaac was the impossible solution to the promise God made to him about Abraham’s myriad descendants.

Isaac’s very name, which means, “laughter,” was a constant reminder of how ridiculous that promise was.

And so, every time he called his son’s name, he said “Laughter,” and remembered the day he laughed at God’s promise (Gen 17:17).

And there is the more immediate irony that he bears “some of the instruments of his own destruction” in this story (Sarna, Genesis, 152).

Just as there was no logical sense in the promise, there is no logical sense to this request.

But you see, Abraham is not the same person as he once was.

He was different now.

He had been tested before and has become someone new.

God worked in him even through his failure and taking matters into his own hands.

Twice he gave up Sarah in fear, his wife, the one who would bear children with him, you know, to fulfill the promise. And twice God protected and returned her.

Later Sarah and Abraham decided to go the legal route and bear an heir through Hagar. The chapter right before this recounts Abraham’s agony in granting Hagar and Ishmael freedom so that Ishmael’s right to the inheritance would be legally forfeited. Even in this, God assures Abraham that he will care for Hagar and make Ishmael a great nation.

And let us not forget that the beginning of his walk with God started with agonizing surrender when God tells him to leave his father’s home.

Abraham’s journey was pocked with various trials.

I’m not so sure I’d want to walk with God if that’s how it’s gonna go.

Becoming Who We Are on the Journey

I want to offer an analogous insight into Abraham’s formation that comes from The Hobbit.

If you’ve not read the book or seen the movie, Gandalf, a wizard, appoints a hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, to join a company of dwarves set on recovering their treasure from the dragon, Smaug.

Bilbo is filled with self-doubt, and the dwarves have no confidence in him just the same.

But Gandalf sees something in Bilbo that no one else does.

So, he, speaks over the hobbit with great portent to the company of skeptical dwarves:

[SLIDE]

“Let’s have no more argument. I have chosen Mr. Baggins and that ought to be enough for all of you. If I say he is a Burglar, a Burglar he is, or will be when the time comes. There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself.”

It was only on the journey, or through the test, that he came to see reality, others, and himself through new eyes.

No one could intellectually explain to Mr. Baggins that this would be so. He had to know it himself.

And so, it was only on the journey that Bilbo became who he really was, whom Gandalf knew him to be.

Transformation was only available to him on the journey.

Similarly, Abraham’s compliant and obedient response to God in this uncalled for test is explained by the fact that

he knows God differently.

He sees reality differently.

He is different.

Everything in this text points to a man who trusts God in the impossible.

But why and how?

He can only do so because of what he has transformed little by little along the journey.

He now sees reality, others, God, and himself from a new vantage point.

The narrator of Genesis offers a clue in this direction at the outset.

[SLIDE]

When God first appears to Abraham, he says in Gen 12:1,

“Go forth from your land, your homeland, your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

Much of this wording is identical to the request God makes of him in Gen 22:2,

“Take your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will show you.”

While this may not strike you as significant, Nahum Sarna notes,

“The Hebrew phrase לֶךְ־לְךָ֔ lekh lekha, “go forth,” does not occur again in the Bible, a fact that underscores the deliberate and meaningful nature of its use in these two passages.”

See Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 150.

That is, the first act of trust that Abraham showed and that led to his transformation up this point, is being recalled in this new call of trust.

The Formation of Isaac

But we never walk in faith or formation alone; we cannot.

This was Isaac’s journey as well. He trusted both his father and God.

Twice, the narrator recounts the unity with which the two of them approach the place of sacrifice.

First, after placing the wood on his son, Gen 22:6 says,

“the two of them walked together as one.”

Then again, in Gen 22:8, after Isaac registers his concern about the sacrificial lamb and receives his father’s assurance that it was up to God to provide, it repeats verbatim,

“the two of them walked together as one.”

Isaac was becoming a person of faith as they traveled together.

Whether or not they were each up to it at that very moment, they would be when the time arrived.

The way the story ends is the same as if Abraham had done the deed.

Friends, you can’t intellectually learn trust like this.

You can’t reason your way to a posture of faith like this.

It is only by walking by faith with God that you become whom he knows you to be.

Abraham had many failures but these were the very places that God formed Abraham.

While we are enamored or puzzled as the case may be at the nature of this test or the reason for it, we see who Abraham has become.

This is exactly what Hebrews 11 highlights when interpreting this very text.

[SLIDE]

“By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He had received the promises, yet he was ready to offer up his only son. God had told him, ‘Through Isaac descendants will carry on your name,’ and he reasoned that God could even raise him from the dead, and in a sense he received him back from there.”

Becoming A Burglar

So, how am I becoming a burglar?

I have to use the Hobbit analogy because I don’t think Luke would probably cooperate now if I loaded him up with wood.

Many of you who know my story are aware that I did not have a lifelong dream to earn a PhD, let alone become ordained as an Anglican priest.

No, the Lord has formed me on the journey, this is the Lord’s doing.

Over the past 2 to 3 years I have applied to multiple schools, nonprofits, and churches.

Although I have been interviewed many times and almost hired, nothing has panned out.

It is frankly been a very puzzling and at times discouraging experience.

Of course, COVID has complicated everything, but still.

Recently, I have begun looking for employment outside of pastoral positions where I’d really like to serve.

It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Now, I don’t want to overdo autobiographical connections between me and Abraham, because I am light years apart from him, but this feels very much like an “offering of Isaac” moment for me.

This text has reminded me that I need

to listen for his voice,

to cling to his past faithfulness, and

to see these things from a perspective that I can only have through the experience of trusting him on this journey of faith.

Before we close, I want to jump ahead to Mark 8, because it is another journey passage.

Jesus is on the way to the cross with his disciples. When he tells them that he’s going to surrender himself to be killed, Peter gets in front of him, stops him in his tracks, and rebukes him. You all know the story and how he says to Peter,

“get behind me Satan.”

The word “satan” means “accuser” in Hebrew. It is used of the devil, but it is not an exclusive term for him.

Additionally, Jesus does not tell “Satan“ to go away, which is what we would expect. Rather, he tells his accuser, Peter, to return back behind him in a position of following him. Jesus knows that the only way the cross will make any sense to Peter is through the experience of trusting and following him to it. Jesus cannot intellectually help Peter “get it.”

Friends, the DNA of what God is doing in Abraham is present here in what Jesus is doing in Peter the disciples. Jesus, like Abraham, assures Peter that the father can be trusted and the only way to know that is to go on the journey.

As we close, I want to return to Gandalf and his explanation for why he chose Bilbo Baggins.

“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? I don't know. Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.”

Like Mr. Baggins, Abraham, Peter, you, and I, can only become whom God knows us to be through experience on the journey of faith.

Why? Because this experience forces us to see reality, God, ourselves, and others from a whole new perspective.

Transformation is only available to us as we walk with God.

In different ways, the authors of The Hobbit, Gen 22, and Mark 8 invite their audiences to change their viewpoint on God, themselves, and others by seeing reality afresh in a way that is only available through experience. Like Bilbo, Abraham and Peter could only become whom God foresaw them to be through experience. Why? Because this experience forced them to see God, themselves, and others from a whole new perspective. Transformation was only available to them on the journey, it was not something they could just claim or believe.

The Good news Wilmore Anglican, is that God knows we are all burglars. Which is another way of saying that

There is a lot more in you than anyone else can guess, and a great deal more than you have any idea of ourself.”

Will you join him on the journey of self-renunciation, self-examination, and formation this Lenten season?

I can’t wait to see what you become!