SUNDAY SERMON
"EMBRACE SUFFERING"?
Second Sunday in Lent, Year B
March 16, 2003
Old Testament Reading: Gen
22.1-14
Gospel: Mk
8.31-38
Jesus asks us: What good would it do to get everything you want and lose
you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for? (from The
Message)
Lent is a time for tending our souls, not trading them.
Jesus tells us: Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead.
Lent is a journey. Is Jesus leading you?
Jesus says: You're not in the driver's seat; I am.
Is he?
Jesus adds: Don't run from suffering. Embrace it!
What? I must not have heard that right.
Sometimes I can try not to run from suffering, not to hide from the pain in my life or the life of my brother or partner or best friend. But embrace suffering? What is Jesus asking here? What if I just can't manage it? What if the story we heard about Abraham and Isaac makes your blood run cold?
What do you do when you read something in the Bible you just can't buy? You can't imagine God would say or do such a thing? (Thomas Jefferson's solution…scissors)
I submit that scissors are not an option if we believe this is the Word of God. Still, what do we do when we hear [READ Gen. 22.2 … and the words of Jesus, Mk. 8.34] ?
Here's what I do. Come back. Again and again. Take a fresh look; receive a fresh jolt. This is a high voltage book. It can shock you; jolt you from a Sunday routine, if you let it. My job is to persuade you to let it.
Today I want to invite you on a journey-a journey outward and a journey inward. This might be a way to talk about Lent as well as Abraham and Isaac's journey from the wilderness up to Mt. Moriah (Jerusalem).
First, God tells Abraham to "go." It is not the first time Abraham has heard that word on God's lips. [READ Gen 12.1]. But now he is an old man; an old man who finally has a son; finally a hope of seeing God's promise to make many descendants come true. This time the command to "go" is painfully linked with his pride and joy, his only son, Isaac.
I can't help but stop and linger here a moment. Linger and wonder about Abraham's mental state, his psyche. Was he in turmoil? Did he argue with God? Stay up all night pacing the floor? Did he wonder if his trust in God was misplaced after all? Did he play the cheerful patriarch as they set out early one morning so the boy and the servants wouldn't suspect what was up?
Yet when Abraham heard the word "go," he did not run from it; he went. Whether we can say he "embraced" the journey, this road toward suffering, is impossible to determine. We do know he went.
Now I want to turn to the word, which shed new light on this story for me. It is the verb "to see" which in the language of the OT (Hebrew), also means "to provide." Seeing may be what got Abraham through this ordeal. First we read (v.4) that on the third day (lots of important things happen on the third day), Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. It would have sent an unspeakable chill down my spine to see that the journey was about to be over and the time to give up my child was close at hand. How could I not run away now?
The word occurs next (v.8) as he and Isaac have their last conversation. With all the innocence of youth, Isaac says, Here is the fire and wood I have been carrying, but Papa, where is the lamb? Abraham's response, from a place so deep inside him it may even have surprised him, is: God will see to it (will provide himself the lamb).
Then at the incredible climax of the story comes our word again. Abraham raises his knife, his son bound to the altar, and in the nick of time, an angel cries out, "Stop!" And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked…and there it was, a ram caught by his horns in thicket. After sacrificing the ram in place of his son, Abraham names the site and we hear our word a fourth time (v.14): Abraham called the name of that place 'the LORD will see (provide); as it is said to this day, 'On the mount of the LORD he will be seen (it shall be provided).
Could it be that there is a connection between Abraham not running away from suffering and his seeing beyond his immediate circumstances? Circumstances which looked hopeless, God-forsaken even, to our modern reading of the story? I am not willing to call this embracing suffering. But Abraham was given the gift of sight; he looked up and saw that ram and it saved the day.
This word see reminds me how easily blinded I am by my immediate circumstances; by my preconceived notions and expectations. And how they can keep me from seeing what is most important; keep me from looking to God; from lifting up my eyes to see what provision might be in a nearby thicket. I am struck by the phrase, God himself will see to it. Far too often I operate on the assumption that Blair herself must see to it…whatever the "it" of the moment is.
I want to tell you a 20th century true story about a father and mother who didn't run away from suffering. I was drawn very close to this family as we lived through the birth and death of their daughter, Emma Grace. Both events of birth and death took place in the same week; both events were expected by the medical community. Tests early in the pregnancy revealed an extremely rare and irreversible genetic problem. Yet the parents, and indeed our whole parish, had been praying for a miracle. One of the ways this family did not run away and hide from suffering was to name the baby in utero. This enabled us to pray for Emma Grace by name for many months before she was born. It made her "real" for many people. Though I was one of a handful of people who had the joy of actually meeting her and baptizing her, the community of faith through their prayers, felt they knew her, too. As indeed they did.
Emma Grace's parents faced their suffering carried by the arms and prayers of a community of faith. They would tell you they weren't very brave and that they could never have gone it alone. They would never say they "embraced suffering." And yet, I would have to say, reflecting on it today and in light of these scriptures this morning, they did more than simply "not run away from suffering." They continue to teach me, like Abraham, what it must feel like as a parent to let go of a child and still not give up on God.
Lent is a time not to run away from things…be they outward things or inward journeys. Some of them are bound to involve suffering and sacrifice. Lent is both solitary and in community. Jesus is at the center of that community. Listen to him again (from The Message): Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. AMEN.