For more days than I could possibly number over the past twenty years, I have stood in the doorway between the chancel and sacristy on the Gospel side of the church before coming in for to celebrate Mass either at the High Altar and in the Lady Chapel, and have looked upon the stained glass window I was facing on the epistle side of the sanctuary – the dramatic story of the testing of Abraham’s faith when God directed him to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
In the richly colored artistry of the window, Abraham has a firm hold with one hand and arm on Isaac who has been bound, and is other arm is raised with knife in hand to kill his son. But with the knife raised to kill, he sees in the near distance the angel of the Lord who is calling to stop, and there in the thicket is a ram caught by his horns.
Clearly this biblical story tears at our hearts as we think of what went on in the hearts and minds of Abraham and Isaac. This was the son given to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. The son through whom was promised by God a great posterity. And there was Isaac. What he did think and do when his father bound him with ropes and placed him on the wood on the altar of sacrifice. He must have cried, and screamed, and frantically fought his father. It’s an awful scene. A scene that is hellish rather than bespeaking anything of heaven, except…. Except that the faith of Abraham in the God who had called him to his vocation to be a father of many nations, who had miraculously caused the conception of Isaac in the womb of his ninety year old wife, Sarah, who had been visited by God the holy Trinity in the form of three angels – this faith, knowledge, and relationship with the living God did not waver even when God asked Abraham to do the unthinkable.
For Abraham God was not a God of contradiction, not a schizophrenic God, but a God who was to be obeyed and trusted for the present and the future (again no matter what the cost or the pain to be faced) because of what couldn’t be slain in the heart of Abraham- that we love God because He first loved us.
We heard from the story that at the very moment Abraham “put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son, “the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And Abraham said, “Here am I.” The angel said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.” A ram was there caught by his horns in the thicket. Abraham offered it up as a sacrifice instead of his son, and named that place, “The Lord will provide.”
The Lord will provide and does provide when there is unshakable faith and trust in Him. His provisions are always adequate, but may not be (and are often not) our choice and desire. We do well to remember that He is the Potter and we are the clay.
Some of you may be familiar with the name, Father Alfred Delp. He was a Jesuit priest who was arrested in mid 1944 and executed on February 5, 1945 by the Nazis for his involvement in the Kreisau Circle, an anti-Nazi group of clergy and scholars in Germany.
Father Delp wrote the following in one of his prison meditations:
“The outcome of so many things, the occurrence of so many miracles depends on the wholeheartedness of our plea to God. He will not always provide sensational miracles – though they will occur now and again, witnessing to his divine power. But with truly regal bounty he will reveal himself in a thousand little everyday adjustments proving by innumerable aparantly casual events that his will prevails in the end. The man of real faith has no doubt about the outcome – he leaves the means to God. And when God repays, and more than repays, man’s trust, we can only stand speechless in amazement and awe.”
Incredibly powerful and riveting words by this holy man. “The man of real faith has no doubt about the outcome-he leaves the means to God.” But Father Delp was hanged. So was he delusional? Is he wrong in what he states?
No, not in the least. Father Delp’s desire, intent, and will was focused upon faith and trust in God with the mature spiritual knowledge that one does measure victory, success, and blessing by what happens in this world. If that were the case, how could the death of Jesus who was without sin, who always did what was pleasing to God, who experienced physical pain and emotional abandonment and isolation beyond our imagining be in any way regarded as worthy of honor and emulation?
The answer to that question is found in what Jesus said in this morning’s Gospel:
“For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life?”
The call of Christian religion is to follow Christ. He said, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
The call of the Christian religion is to live in and by faith and trust in God, walking by faith not by sight, cleaving to the truth that “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).
We have been called at this time in a way that we have never been called to live in and by faith and trust in God. We are to remember as Abraham did who God is and what He has done as we “lose” ourselves in a degree and depth of faith and trust that we have never had to before, as Abraham never had to before he was called to obey God’s command to sacrifice his son.
I have been praying much this week using the Collect for last Sunday (Lent I) that in this most challenging of times for the very life and witness of this parish those who are “assaulted by manifold temptations” to despair, to accuse, to compromise and to be anxious will be touched by God “who knowest their several infirmities,” so that “each one may find thee mighty to save.” God wills that there be no cracks in the foundation of strong faith and unity of mind and spirit that He has laid over a period of years.
I know of no one who wants to lose this church and its property, including Rita and me who have twenty years within the rectory. A very diverse and experienced group of attorneys are burning the midnight oil as they study the implications and the options for what is before us. But I know the truth of what Jesus taught, “Every one to whom much is given, of him much will be required.”
We have been given both the privilege of witnessing to the truth found in Jesus and the Apostles as this is dismantled and dismissed by those who should not be doing that, and the privilege of having to cleave to God as our shield and buckler, our hope and comfort, our confidence and our peace. And from this joint privilege we all have grown in our love and knowledge of God in Christ Jesus.
I believe that God must know from us that our willingness to lose everything for the sake of the Gospel is real, that we will walk the walk, not just talk the talk. I believe that that is what opens the door for God to work in unexpected ways for our good. If God knows that we will give up what is precious if we have to, He may well honor that willingness with the provision to keep what we have. He needs to see us living as “living stones” as St. Peter instructs in his first Epistle general, and as “God’s field, God’s building” as St. Paul instructs in his first letter to the Corinthians. The Angel Gabriel said to our Lady, and our Lord said to His disciples, “With God, all things are possible.”
For you today, I echo the words of the Apostle Paul, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (I Corinthians 15:58), and “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks to God in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (I Thessalonians 5:16-18).
+In the Name… |
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