Tag Archives: Abraham

Sermon – Genesis 15.1-6, Hebrews 11.1-3, 8-16, Luke 12.32-40, P14, YC, August 10, 2025

27 Wednesday Aug 2025

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We have been in a season of Vacation Bible School.  As I watched our kids learning songs at Vacation Bible School this week, I found myself reminiscing about all the songs I learned as a kid at VBS – Deep and Wide, Jesus Loves Me, and, probably the most fun and robust, Father Abraham, complete with full-body motions and increasing speed.  Watching the joy of our children, and experiencing my own nostalgia for that innocent time of my life left me so grateful for our continued ministry with the children of our community.

Unfortunately, thinking about Father Abraham and his many sons and the admonishment “Let’s just praise the Lord,” collided with our lectionary readings this week.  Though we talk about God’s abundance with our children, our adult selves know all too well the rest of the story – both for Abraham and for ourselves.  Our lesson from Genesis sets the stage.  Abraham is still Abram at this point, and Abram, faithful follower of God who has been promised bountiful descendants is sitting empty handed with Sarai – who is far too old to be bearing children anyway.  Abram laments with God about his hopelessness that the promised abundance will ever come. 

Later we hear from the letter to the Hebrews a recounting of Abraham’s story as an example of what faithfulness means.  We are reminded that not only do Abraham and Sarah face infertility into old age, Abraham has had to leave everything familiar to him, journey to a place he does not even know, living in tents in a foreign land.  In fact, the letter to the Hebrews describes Abraham as “one as good as dead” – as in, given Abraham’s age, and the length of infertility in his marriage, and the data-based expectation that he would have no children – Abraham is as good as dead because there will be no one to keep his name alive.  Barren was not just the state of Abraham and Sarah – barren would have been a reasonable state of their faith in God.

There are times these days that I relate much more to the barrenness of Abraham and Sarah than to the jubilant songs about praising the Lord.  As I talk to workers whose employment is insecure, being reduced, or eliminated altogether, I hear echoes of Abraham’s complaints about barrenness to God.  As I listen to people of color express their vulnerability in these volatile times, I feel a sense of barrenness in our country.  As I hear stories of anxiety from those needing medical coverage or our nonprofits whose funding cuts threaten the very lives of their clients, I hear the barrenness of those who seem like “one as good as dead.” 

So where do we find hope in the bleakness of the barrenness of life?  How do we join the songs of our children, reminding us to “just praise the Lord”?  Some of that hope comes from scripture today too.  In Luke’s gospel, right at the very beginning, and so fast we might miss his words, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom… Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  Of course, we know that truth – God promises Abraham abundance over and over again.  The community of the Hebrews celebrated the abundance of Abraham’s many sons when their own faith waivered.  And Jesus tells his followers the same, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” 

Now, I know words are easy to say, but sometimes hard to believe – even assurances from Jesus about God’s good pleasure of abundance for us.  So, today we are going to do something totally different and try a little exercise from pastor and theologian David Lose.  When you came in today you received a blank notecard.  I want you to take that out and write on one side these words:  God wants to give you all good things.  Got it? 

Now, I want you to turn the card over and write down one fear or worry or concern you would be willing to share – not aloud, and not with your name attached.  Just one fear, worry, or concern you are carrying right now.  As you are thinking about that and writing that fear, worry, or concern down, I will explain what we are going to do with your notecard:  when we get to the offering, the ushers will pass both the offering plates and a basket for your cards.  When you leave today, we will take those baskets, mix up the cards, and invite you to take out a random one.  Your homework for this “week ahead is simply to pray for whomever wrote down the concern on the card you [receive] on the way out.  You don’t need to know who it is, just that it’s a fellow member of the body of Christ who has this concern.  As you are praying for that person, you [will] also know that someone is praying for you.”

Do you have your fear, worry, or concern written down?  Hang on to your card until the offering.  [The hope today through this small exercise is that] you [will] realize that you are not alone.  We all have the promise that God wants to give us the kingdom; we all have trouble remembering and acting on that promise; [and] we all are praying for and supporting each other.”[i]  This is our tangible work this week – to be a community in prayer for one another, working through our resistance to God’s promise to give us the kingdom, and seeing the abundance that will allow us to “just praise the Lord.”  Amen.

[i] David Lose, “Dear Working Preacher:  The Heart of the Matter,” August 5, 2013, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/the-heart-of-the-matter on August 7, 2025.

Sermon – Genesis 18.1-1, 21-1-7, P6, YA, June 18, 2017

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

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Today we get one of my favorite stories in scripture – Sarah’s laughter at God’s promise.  The story is perfectly crafted.  The story with a flurry of activity.  Abraham is sitting in his tent in the heat of the day when three guests suddenly appear.  As soon as Abraham sees them, he runs to greet them, begging them to stay.  Then Abraham sends the entire household into a tizzy.  He barks orders about baking cakes, grabs a calf and commands the calf be prepared for the guests.  He gets curds and milk and rushes to plate the feast for the guests.  We can almost imagine Abraham panting as he finally delivers the meals to the guests.

But then the story comes to a screeching halt, with a question that tells us what is really important.  “Where is your wife, Sarah?”  And slowly, the promise of a child to a barren, post-menopausal woman unfolds.  Abraham and Sarah were promised long ago to be the parents of a great nation.  But Sarah had given up on that dream.  She had already asked Abraham to go to her slave-girl and have a child with Hagar as a representative child for her.  Her action with Hagar had been a desperate move, but what else could she have done?  So when this guest, or God, as the text later tells us, says that Sarah will conceive herself, after years of longing, hoping, feeling devastated and powerless, Sarah does what we all might do.  She laughs.  She laughs at the prospect of pleasure in her marriage when she and Abraham are so advanced in age.  She laughs at the impossibility that their pleasure might lead to progeny.  She laughs at the promise because believing the promise would mean opening herself up to unfilled dreams yet again.

Sarah’s laughter has long been used as a criticism for a lack of faith in God.  When God asks, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” and when Sarah quickly denies her laughter, countless readers have wagged their fingers at Sarah as if to say, “Oh ye of little faith.”  And I can see how we get there.  The exchange between Sarah and God – the laughter that bubbles out from years of hurt and disappointment, the scolding by God, the attempt to lie to cover up embarrassment, and the scolding yet again when God calls Sarah on her dishonesty – is all too familiar to us.  What the accusation of lacking faith forgets is how terribly vulnerable and resigned Sarah is.  I cannot tell you the number of people I have counseled who at the end of second marriage have begun to doubt God’s presence.  I cannot tell you the number of people I have sat with after receiving a bad diagnosis for themselves or their loved one who has begun to whether God has abandoned them.  I cannot tell you the number of people have received yet another rejection letter who have begun to question God’s call on their life.  When Sarah laughs, I do not feel justification for judgment against her level of faith.  When Sarah laughs, I hear the ache of countless believers who know how ludicrous God’s promises can be.

What gets me about the judgment of Sarah is the short memory of scripture readers.  In the chapter before what we heard today, Abraham is given the same promise that Sarah hears – a child by Sarah.  And his reaction?  He does not simply laugh quietly to himself as Sarah does in that tent.  He falls on his face and laughs full-bodied at God.  The only difference in laughter between Abraham and Sarah is that Abraham laughs in front of God where Sarah tries to hide her laughter.  Both are an acknowledgement of doubt about what God can do.  Both take all their disappointment, pain, and hurt, and dissolve into laughter because, quite frankly, sometimes God is laughable.  Sometimes God makes no sense at all, and laughing is the only release and protection from more hurt.  Humans questioning God is a natural part of a genuine God-human conversation, a conventional motif we see throughout the Old Testament.[i]

This week, I stumbled on an Old Testament scholar, Kathryn Shifferdecker, who suggests that God may not be a God of judgment in this passage.  In fact, she sees God as fully understanding the comedy of the situation.  She sees a God with a sense of humor, who when God says, “Oh yes you did laugh,” says so with a twinkle in his eye.[ii]  The theory totally shifted the reading for me.  Suddenly the pieces all fit together.  Instead of an angry or disappointed God, who judges disbelief, our God is a God who understands that God’s promises are sometimes laughable – even if they are true.  Why else would God tell Abraham to name his son Isaac, which means, “he laughs,” in Hebrew?[iii]  As Schifferdecker explains, “Abraham falls on his face in a fit of laughter.  Sarah laughs behind the tent door.  And the LORD (I believe) laughs with them at the divine, wonderful absurdity of it all.  Given the humor of the scene under the oaks of Mamre, and the comedy of a God who acts in unexpected ways to fulfill God’s promises, it is entirely appropriate that the child of the promise should be named ‘Laughter.’”[iv]

The image of the three of them laughing – Sarah, Abraham, and God, makes a lot of sense once we hear the final words of Sarah.  In chapter 21, Sarah, perhaps initially embarrassed or doubtful of God, now says, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”  This story is not a story of shame for those of us who struggle with doubt, anger, or frustration with God.  This is not a story of an unfaithful follower of God.  This is a story about a woman and a man who look at the absurdity of God’s promise with the fullness of their humanity and laugh – hard, belly-shaking, on-the-floor laughter that only comes when the divine finally breaks through our disappointment, shame, and anger, and brings us to laughter.

I love this story even more as I think about the trinity of Abraham, Sarah, and God laughing.  Their laughter affirms our own incredulous walks with God.  Their laughter takes those moments when we no long trust God’s promises, and transforms them.  No longer do we need to hide away our deepest doubts, but instead we honor them.  We share them.  And we create communities of laughter with them.  Amen.

[i] Leander E. Keck, ed., New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, vol. I (Abingdon Press, 1994), 465.

[ii] Kathryn M. Schifferdecker, “Commentary on Genesis 18:1-15 [21:1-7],” June 18, 2017, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3301 on June 14, 2017.

[iii] Tamara Cohn Eshkenazi, ed., The Torah:  A Women’s Commentary, (Women of Reform Judaism URJ Press, 2008), 97.

[iv] Schifferdecker.

Sermon – Genesis 22.1-14, P8, YA, June 29, 2014

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

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One of the great things about the lessons in the summer is that we often get these dramatic stories from the Old Testament.  Last week, we had Hagar and Ishmael’s story.  Today, we have the story of the binding of Isaac.  Both of these stories are the dramatic kind of stories that make us uncomfortable and certainly make many people say, “Well that’s the Old Testament God…not the God that I know.”  We cannot fathom who this God is that “tests” people, deliberately asking them to commit the most heinous of crimes – killing one’s own child.  We are perplexed by Abraham, who upon God’s instruction, simply goes to where God sends him, fully willing to commit this most horrible crime, all the while deceptively luring his child to death.  And poor Isaac – we question how God can expect this test of Abraham’s not to create lifelong psychological scars on Isaac.

The only way I could find my way out of this story this week was to reconsider each character in the text.  I started with God, whose test of Abraham feels more like torture.  I have never felt comfortable with the concept of a god who puts us through tests.  That kind of agency and intervention by God is counter to my understanding of who God is.  I do believe that Satan or the powers of evil regularly test us, and awful things simply happen at times.  But our God is a God who gives us free will – who allows us to make mistakes, but never actively manipulates us in a way that could be labeled as testing.  God does not send us cancer, or take our children, or leave us hungry.

So why does this story say that God “tests” Abraham.  Well, one clue is found in the first sentence.  The story begins with this sentence, “After these things God tested Abraham.”  “After these things,” is not just some transitional phrase like, “In other news…”  Those “things” the story refers to are not insignificant.  If you remember, Abraham has had a circuitous journey, and quite frankly, Abraham has not proved to be very trustworthy so far – constantly taking matters into his own hands, and making a mess of things.  Take, for example, those two times that Abraham’s wife Sarah ended up in a harem in Egypt and Canaan.  Both of those times Abraham lied about Sarah, saying she was his sister, simply to protect himself from being killed by a covetous king.  For a man who trusted God so much that he was willing to leave everything behind, Abraham clearly did not trust God fully enough to take care of Abraham and Sarah.  And so he concocted these horrible lies, forcing Sarah into an awful position – not once, but twice!  Then, of course, there was that time that Abraham did not believe that God would give him children.  So the untrusting Abraham and Sarah got impatient, and decided that Abraham should father a child with Sarah’s handmaid, Hagar.  That fiasco led Abraham’s beloved son being cast out into the wilderness, never to be seen again.  So “these things,” are not insignificant things.  Any of us in relationships with family, spouses, or intimate friends know that trusting someone who betrays your trust over and over again is difficult, if not impossible.

Meanwhile, God is making a pretty big leap of faith in the person of Abraham.  God has already witnessed failure after failure in God’s people – from Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel; from the cleansing of the earth with Noah to the return to sin at the tower of Babel.  And so God takes all that experience with broken covenants and this time attempts to enter into relationship with God’s people through the person of Abraham.  All will be blessed through this one person, the blessing passing through Abraham like a prism, “through which God’s blessing is to be diffused through the whole world.”[i]  So in taking on such a substantial risk, and in seeing Abraham falter many times, a time of testing does not sound so abhorrent after all.  In fact, we begin to see that God is making God’s self pretty vulnerable with Abraham.  And because God grants free will, God cannot know what choices Abraham will actually make.[ii]  The longing for assurance while in a vulnerable position is only natural – one we experience anytime we decide to put ourselves in vulnerable positions with others.

So after coming to some peace with God in this story, I began to pick apart Abraham.  Why does Abraham submit to this test?  He has taken matters into his own hands before, including arguing against killing all the Sodomites.  Why does he submit to God now?  In fact, when God commands Abraham to take Isaac up for sacrifice, Abraham does not protest at all.  The ancient rabbis tried to address this frustration by proposing a little embellishment.  Whenever the rabbis did not understand something in biblical text, they would create a little midrash, or imaginative expansion of the text, to help interpret the text.  So in their retelling of the Genesis story, they create a dialogue between God and Abraham.  In the original text we heard today, all we have are these words:  Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah…  The midrash changes the story to read like this:  “Take your son,” God says.  “I have two sons,” Abraham replies.  “Your only one,” God says.  “This one is the only son of his mother, and this (other) one is the only son of his mother.”  “The one you love,” God clarifies.  “I love them both,” Abraham argues.  “Isaac,” God finally asserts.[iii]

What the midrash tries to do is highlight what might have been going on inside Abraham – something the story never tells us.  Just because Abraham obeys does not mean that he likes obeying.  We can also surmise some of Abraham’s conflicted feelings in other parts of the story.  We hear how torn he is by the ways that he responds to both God and Isaac.  When God calls upon Abraham, he replies, “Here I am.”  That age-old response to God, hineni, is Abraham’s way of showing deference to God.  But Abraham says those same words to Isaac when Isaac calls to him.  “Here I am, my son.”  You can almost hear the devastation in his voice.  But you also hear a deep sense of respect and love for his son – the same deep respect and love Abraham has for God.  Ultimately, what we see in Abraham is a deep trust that things might work out for the best.  When Isaac asks where the lamb is for the sacrifice, Abraham says, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”  Some might read that as a white lie, told to placate an inquisitive son.  But I like to imagine that Abraham hoped against hope that God would in fact provide a lamb, instead of his son.  In fact, perhaps that is the only thing Abraham has left in this horrible story – a trust that God will act and save his son.

Finally, there is Isaac.  As I read this story this week, my immediate thought was, “Poor Isaac.  He has some serious therapy in his future!”  And perhaps that is true – that Isaac is the innocent lamb, deceived, and almost killed.  In fact, many scholars call this story, “The sacrifice of Isaac,” as opposed to “The binding of Isaac.”[iv]  But there is more to Isaac’s story than meets the eye.  In the story, two times the text says of Abraham and Isaac, “and the two of them walked together.”  We know enough about scripture to know that when something is repeated, that repetition is significant.  The text does not say, Abraham led Isaac or Abraham forced Isaac.  The text says the two walked together.  We do not know how much Isaac knows at this point, but the way that the two walk together suggests a certain equality – as if the two face this test together.  Though we imagine Isaac terrified under his father’s knife, perhaps Isaac allows himself to be bound, facing this test with is father, fully trusting as his father does that God will provide the lamb.

The artwork depicting this story varies widely.  There are frightened pictures of Isaac, anguished depictions of Abraham, and strong angels who forcefully grab Abraham’s raised arm before he can damage Isaac.  But my favorite depiction is one by Peggy Parker.[v]  Peggy’s woodcut shows a bound, but peaceful Isaac, curled up on the altar.  Abraham is lovingly and with grief looking over Isaac, a knife hidden behind his back.  And above them both is a large angel, wings spread widely, arms extended over them both, as if lovingly embracing the father and son.  What I like about Peggy’s rendering is that there is a sense that all three characters are vulnerable, all three characters are pained, and yet all three characters trust their vulnerability with one another.

This is our takeaway today.  This story is tough – I doubt that I will be using the story as a bedtime story anytime soon.  But this story also reveals how hard being in relationship with God is – not just for us and our loved ones, but for God too.  We are all trying to love and trust one another.  And just like in any other relationship, that love and trust is hard work.  But when we understand that each of us in this relationship, fully committing to being vulnerable and trusting each other, somehow we find the courage to take that first step.  And when we take those steps, we do not take them alone and we are not forced.  We take them together, equally sacrificing security in the trust of something much greater with our God.  Amen.

[i] Ellen F. Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 2001),60.

[ii] Ellen F. Davis, “Radical Trust,” July 26, 2011 as found at http://www.faithandleadership.com/sermons/ellen-f-davis-radical-trust on June 25, 2014.

[iii] Davis, Getting Involved, 55.

[iv] Kathryn Schifferdecker , “Commentary on Genesis 22.1-14,” as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/ preaching. aspx?commentary_id=2138 on June 26, 2014

[v] http://www.margaretadamsparker.com/biblical/biblical_abraham.aspx as found on June 27, 2014.