PUTTING FAITH TO WORK The Rev. Brian E. Backstrand June 29, 2014
All of us know places in our lives when we come to a decision point. Perhaps it is a tragedy, perhaps it is a time of disappointment or a time of failure. Perhaps it is after we have let others down. Somewhere and sometime, and not just once, mind you, we will come to a decision point. We will have to decide whether or not we will put our faith to work. We will have to decide whether we will actually use it or just pay lip service to it while it waits close by to be taken down from the shelf.
Two texts this morning deal with putting faith to work. One of our texts this morning (I am speaking of our brief reading from the Gospel of Matthew) is comforting; the other text (our reading from Genesis 22) is not. But both texts—comforting or challenging—speak of putting our faith to work.
Our Gospel text provides us with the image of putting our faith to work through one small action, the cup of cold water. Here we have an action that seem hardly worth mentioning in the context of following Jesus, but yet is very powerful. Small actions of compassion and concern net big results.
There is a famous story told by Loren Eisely entitled The Star Thrower that sums up small actions made in the face of great odds. The scholar David Lohse reminds us of this story. Star fish are stranded on the beach and one person begins throwing them back into the sea. Starfish after starfish are thrown back into the water and when asked why, the star thrower points out: if they don’t get back into the water soon, they’ll dry out and die. But there are thousands of star fish on the beach; the beach is strewn with them. Why are you doing this, one man asks? You can’t hope to make any difference. To this the star thrower stops, looks at the man and replies: To the ones I throw back, it makes all the difference in the world.
Cups of cold water. Hugs in the midst of suffering and grief. The capacity to listen, to create emotional and personal space within one’s own life for the struggles and questioning of others, tenderness, the capacity to forgive genuinely from the heart. Little things, cups of cold water, small actions of compassion and concern. Even in the midst of times when the big questions are powerful and persist in the face of answers that seem so puny—even in the times of struggle and misgiving and doubt, little things net big results.
Waiting for Jesus to arrive with the big things, coming in glory to perfect and purify and save this worn out world, let us understand that in our small corner of the world that we have work to do and that small cups of cold water can make a huge difference. So much so that there really are no little things when it comes to love and compassion..
But there is another text that challenges us every time we hear it read or read it ourselves—the text this day from Genesis 22: Abraham and his son Issac. We will never have a satisfactory explanation that will quiet our hearts and reply to our misgivings as we see the stolid figures of Abraham and Issac toiling their way up the mountain with Issac carrying the wood for a sacrifice.
There is a Yiddish folktale that speaks to our troubled hearts. It says, why did God not send an angel to tell Abraham to sacrifice Issac, his beloved and promised son? Because God knew that no angel would take on such a task. Instead the angels said If you want to command death, do it yourself. (See xxxxxx’s commentary on Genesis 22).
Christians know this troubling tale as the sacrifice of Issac; Jews speak of the same text as the binding of Issac. It might be easy to think of this story as a story of an abusive and vindictive God, but if we do, we should understand the other Biblical texts from Leviticus (18:21), Jeremiah (7: 30-34), and Ezekiel (20:31) that specifically forbid child sacrifice—even though the practice in the cultures surrounding Israel is known.
We should also consider the ram caught in the thicket that Abraham sees at the very end, having been stopped with his arm raised and the knife in his hand. Issac is unbound and the ram is sacrificed and in that moment we have a foundational text for the practice of animal sacrifices in the Temple that will follow.
And then there is that little matter of the wood on Issac’s shoulders as the two toil towards Mount Moriah. It reminds us of Jesus. Jesus carrying his own wood on his journey towards Golgotha. One first century Jewish rabbi, unaware of Jesus’ death on a cross, nevertheless understood the wood on Issac’s shoulders to be strangely like the wood of Roman crucifixion, so common was this practice. But we understand something further. Here in the agony of the patriarch, being asked to follow God into the dark place of suffering that seems unimaginable, we see what it takes for YHWH, the Eternal, to offer up his only Son for the misdeeds and pollution (spiritual and otherwise) of the world.
Sometimes our faith is tested. And when we put it to work, it is in the face of long and difficult odds. Starfish on the beach. Sometimes it is in the face of difficult decisions or in the face of illness or suffering. Sometimes we are asked to put faith to work when we feel powerless and when no action seems adequate.
Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, wrote in 1846 one whole book on this story entitled Fear and Trembling. One thought he presented was that Abraham was not blindly following a malefic God of evil, but rather was following a God of moral good who would provide, who would provide a way out of the great dilemma. It was this faith that God would provide rather than blind faith that led him up the mountain, perhaps a small consideration as we look at the two journeying together, but nevertheless something to consider. As they journey together, Abraham would be listening for God’s voice. In this primitive scene of a primitive time, he would be open and listening for God to call so that he could say, even at the very end, here I am. So that he could hear God’s final injunction: Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.
We are a long way from Mt Moriah. A long way from unimaginable situations of a father and his son. Yet there are times for us as well when the surface of our lives are stirred up by some sort of trouble. Illness, accidents, misdeeds and their consequences, intellectual questions that have no answers, and all those starfish on the beach can stir and challenge. And when we put our faith to work, let us recognize that through these narrow gates, these anxious places that stir us up inside, there nevertheless remains the Spirit of the God of Love to journey with us.
Let us recognize that there is no dark place that God does not know and that beyond them and past them God waits for us to comfort and strengthen and heal. Amen