The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8A
July 2, 2023
So… nothing like a biblical story about
potential child sacrifice to get your week started off right! As you might imagine, we had some spirited
discussion about our Old Testament reading from Genesis for today in our
Wednesday healing service conversation. Perhaps
you’ll be relieved to know that none of us sat easily with this reading for
this week, and we raised more questions than answers around it: What is God up to in this story? Does God show change or growth throughout the
stories of scripture? What might God ask
of us that we treasure? Others spoke knowingly
about what it is like to sacrifice something or someone that we love when we
feel that is what God is asking of us.
We spoke about relationships between children and parents and we talked
about what obedience to God looks like in our lives even now.
I closed our time with this reflection
from Unfolding Light by Steve Garnaas-Holmes, and our Wednesday congregation
instructed me to read it to you this morning.
Unbinding my Isaac
God tested Abraham.
and said to him, “Abraham!” And he
said, “Here I am.”
God said,
“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
on one of the mountains that I
shall show you.”
So Abraham went…
—Genesis 22.1-3
God, I confess
I ask others to be
my sacrifice.
What I have been
given to tend,
and those I have
been given to love,
I have used.
Without thought I
have ascribed it to you,
as if it is how
you have arranged the world.
I have abused my
power and privilege,
and neglected how
my benefit
has caused others
to suffer.
I have justified
it in your name.
I repent.
Hold my hand. Stay
my knife.
Open my eyes.
Give me grace to
unbind my Isaac,
to set free what I
have intended to use,
to renounce my
entitlement
to comfort that
costs others.
God, I myself am
Isaac,
bound by my own
self-serving.
May my selfishness
be my sacrifice.
Unbind me, and set
me free.[i]
What are the people, places, things, memories,
ideas that you hold more dearly than God? How might God be calling you to hold
those more loosely? How might God be inviting you to be unbound and set free?
Isaac is the physical embodiment and
fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah. He’s what Abraham has longed for and holds
most dearly in his life. God tests
Abraham’s faithfulness or obedience to God by asking Abraham to give up what
has the potential to be an idol for Abraham, an impediment in Abraham’s
relationship with God.
Can you think of a time when you have
been asked to relinquish something that you cherished? That relinquishing feels like a death, like a
willing leap off a spiritual cliff. And
yet, we experience, again and again, new life on the other side of that letting
go.
In the Romans reading for today, Paul points
out that the choice isn’t between slavery and freedom but the choice is to whom
one will be enslaved. Will we be
enslaved to that which separates us from God or will we know the freedom that
is found in obedience to God through Christ?
God offers to Abraham and us a call to
risk a change, an invitation to examine our relationships between what we hold
most dear, if we have made them into idols, an invitation to examine if what we
hold most dear has, in fact, become a stumbling block for us in our
relationships with God, an impediment in seeing how the Holy Spirit is calling
us into deeper life in God and in each other.
Sometimes it can be surprising what we uncover when we imagine how what
we hold most dear can be or has become a stumbling block between us and God.
Here’s an example. While I was on
vacation, I had a dream that I was trying to convince a Dutch billionaire to
invest in my new project where I use pickleball to draw people into community and
into the church. I’ve started playing pickleball
this summer with some local ladies once a week; it’s a group of novice
pickleballers who my friend Helen has pulled together, and I love it! I’ve enjoyed learning a new sport and playing
the game, and I’ve loved making new friends.
In my dream, I was presenting a convincing argument to this Dutch
billionaire about how we were using pickleball to create meaningful community and
change lives, and that it would be a good tool for the
Church
to use as well. I was telling the
billionaire how the (capital C) Church was struggling with creating authentic
and engaging community, and how I worried that the Church was broken. I texted my friend Helen about my dream. (Helen is also a priest.) And I realized in our text conversation that
perhaps my dream was pointing out to me how even the church can become an idol,
a stumbling block in our relationship with God.
How God might be inviting us to relinquish and risk to adopt new ways of
being together and carrying out God’s mission in the world. It’s a sobering
thought for me. I’ve spent 20 years of
my life working to build up God’s church.
What might it look like for me to hold it a bit more loosely?
God, I confess
I ask others to be
my sacrifice.
What I have been
given to tend,
and those I have
been given to love,
I have used.
Without thought I
have ascribed it to you,
as if it is how
you have arranged the world.
I have abused my
power and privilege,
and neglected how
my benefit
has caused others
to suffer.
I have justified
it in your name.
I repent.
Hold my hand. Stay
my knife.
Open my eyes.
Give me grace to
unbind my Isaac,
to set free what I
have intended to use,
to renounce my
entitlement
to comfort that
costs others.
God, I myself am
Isaac,
bound by my own
self-serving.
May my selfishness
be my sacrifice.
Unbind me, and set
me free.
What are the people, places, things, memories,
ideas that you hold more dearly than God? How might God be calling you to hold
those more loosely? How might God be inviting you to be unbound and set free?
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