Sermon for the 2nd of July - Fourth Sunday after Trinity

“After these things, God tested Abraham.”
This morning, I’ve decided to preach about Abraham and Isaac. Taking on this challenge, I wonder if God is testing me! How does this story link to our own experience? The tale of a father agreeing to sacrifice his son at one level, is so alien to us. And yet the echo of these words. And yet ….…. Did it really happen? Is this a case of us asking if the Bible is accurate history?

In response to the question about the Bible being accurate history, Rowan Williams puts it like this:
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, sometimes maybe. Where it’s a matter of the shape of Jesus’ life and death, it matters that the texts are close to the events and have first-generation testimony behind them.
With regard to Abraham and Isaac, we have a traditional ‘epic’ which may not be exact history but tells us what God wants us to know, that he is faithful to his promise.

Narratives that may not be exact history can still be exact theology because they represent a long-term deposit from reflection on how God has been encountered over many centuries.
It’s a very modern anxiety that everything in Scripture should be what we might now think of as ‘exact’ reporting.

Even though the Bible may not be always historically accurate, Rowan Williams suggests we should see the Bible as tracing God’s way into human history, a story culminating in the coming of Jesus.
If we try to deduce the whole picture God’s way into human history from one ‘frozen frame,’ we will have a very odd picture of God’s activity.

What I want us to do in the next few minutes is to follow the trajectory of experience of sacrifice as witnessed in the Hebrew Bible, into our own lives, leading us to a place that we are very familiar with.
The story of Abraham and Isaac is first reference to “burnt offerings” in the Bible.
Abraham was asked by God to “offer” his son. It doesn’t explicitly say why he was to offer Isaac as an atonement for something he had done.

You may remember Abraham’s wife Sarah, who had been barren, had given birth to Isaac.
This was after Abraham had fathered Ishmael, the boy’s mother being Sarah’s servant girl, Hagar.
After the birth of Isaac, Abraham had sent away Hagar and Ishmael.

So perhaps, there was something that needed to be acknowledged or put right. The thread of sacrifice is woven throughout the Hebrew Bible.

In Exodus, Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses makes a burnt offering and sacrifices to give thanks to the Lord for delivering the Israelites out of Egypt - what might be termed a “sacrifice of well-being.” Exodus also contains detailed instructions on how the tabernacle to house the Ten Commandments is to be constructed. As part of this movable complex is the Altar of Burnt Offerings. The altar was movable, five cubits square and three cubits high (that’s about 7 ft square by 4 ft high), made of acacia, hollow and overlaid with bronze.

The altar is an outward and visible sign of transcendent realities, pointing to God, the place where the Israelites could access God. Thus altar is a sacramental structure..

What was sacrificed on the altar? Sacrifices of doves, lambs, heifers, goats and young pigeons are all on the list. The book of Leviticus codifies the different types of sacrifices, the Burnt Offering, the Grain Offering (thanking the Lord for supplying their needs), The Sacrifice of Well Being (thanksgiving, or in fulfilment of a vow). Expiatory Offerings.

Who made the sacrifices? It was the priest who makes the “Sin Offering” on behalf of the layperson, sprinkling the altar with the sacrificed animal’s blood.
[Yet some of the Psalms strike a discordant note – a portent perhaps.
Here is Psalm 51:
For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I was to give a burnt offering, you will not be pleased.
The sacrifice to God is a broken spirit;
A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.]

I wonder if you can see where I’m going with this? The sprinkling of the blood on the altar, the sacrifice for the sins of the people. Leviticus also gives fine details about the preparations for a sacrifice which to a non-devout eye, could read like a recipe book. For the Sacrifice of Well Being, some parts of the sacrificed animal were eaten by the people in the form of a communal meal..
We ourselves will soon gather round the table to eat a communal meal. Our Eucharist meal.

The table of the Last Supper becomes an altar.

The altar in our church is the most holy part. It is here the Eucharist is prepared. The body and blood of Christ is offered- the one holy and sufficient sacrifice made for us and for the whole world.

God has provided us with the gift of his son Jesus Christ.

Abraham said to Isaac “God himself with provide the lamb.”

And we say: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes way the sins of the world.”

What makes everything so different for us, and this sounds like an understatement, is that we are beneficiaries of Jesus’s resurrection.

So we rejoice and celebrate at this communal meal. No longer is it a sombre recollection of a Last Supper
The Eucharist is a communal meal unlike any other.

What does the story of Abraham and Isaac mean to Christians today?

One answer might be that it is a reminder that God will provide and God has provided. When we come to our altar in church, we can be reminded that there are shared elements of the heritage of sacrifice in our faith and those of our Jewish brothers and sisters.