Here I Am. These are the three words of hope I find in this very disturbing story from Genesis.
Let me get a couple of things said right off the bat—- if this reading is deeply troubling to you and you don’t feel you can bear to listen to me discuss it, log off now—- it’s really ok. Log back on in six minutes and I’ll be finished.
Secondly did God really ask Abraham to perform this sacrifice?. Or is this story a bridge that served to transition the Hebrew people from the horrific pagan act of child sacrifice to still disturbing but not so horrific to our sensibilities, animal sacrifice?
We don’t know which is true and that is uncomfortable and troubling…why in the world would God ask such a thing from anyone? We get this reading after a couple of weeks of hearing Jesus warn us of the cost of Following Him.
Jesus says we must be willing to undergo much stress and heartache as we do the work of the gospel. He’s told us that we must speak up for the voiceless, and stand against those doing the silencing. He says we must hold our love of Him above all else— even love for mother and father, brother and sister son and daughter.
Tough sentiment, a challenging way to live. And, in my opinion, the only way to live. It is what we are called to do—-
presenting ourselves to God each and every day. Raising our heads and opening our souls to say: ‘Here I Am.
Use me, make me an instrument of your peace, send me out to do the work that you need done.
Here. I. Am.”
It’s a statement of total trust, complete willingness.
Here I am.
It’s what Abraham said to God when God called him to move from his home in Ur to a new land—the land of Canaan where God promised him descendants more numerous than the stars in the sky; when God took a very old couple and gave them a son.
Here I Am.
And it’s what Abraham said on this day when God has seemingly gone mad by asking Abraham to sacrifice his only remaining son (because remember last week Abraham banished Hagar and Ishmael). Abraham replies, “Here I am”
How? How could Abraham agree?
But, if he truly loved God, how could he not?
I don’t know what Abraham was thinking, but what I do know is that he obeyed.
He obeyed a God who had uprooted him from the only home he knew, the God who gave he and Sarah a child long past the time they should have been able to conceive, and he obeyed the God who is asking the unthinkable, the horrific, the sickening.
Now, obedience can only be earned in two ways—-through trust or through fear. Abraham may have had a healthy fear of God but clearly, he also had a great deal of trust in God.
Here I Am.
Isaac says to Abraham: “ Father?” “Here I am” replies Abraham.
“Where’s the animal for the sacrifice?” “God will provide,” replies Abraham.
And just as it seems Abraham’s trust in God will go so far as murder and Isaac’s trust in Abraham will go as far as death, an angel calls out to Abraham and he replies: “Here I am.” And the whole nightmare ends.
Was God testing Abraham? Is God testing us? I don’t think that’s really the point. I think the point of this story is finding the balance between blind trust, blind faith and fully aware trust, fully aware faith. What Jesus has been preaching for weeks now and what we read in our lesson from Genesis is this: God loves us so much that God will do anything for us. The question is:
Will we do the same for God? Will we, knowing that the journey will be difficult that standing up and speaking out may cause irreparable rifts among family and friends, will we do the same for God. When God says to us, “Here I am,” how will we respond?
My friends we are called, each and every day, to present ourselves to God and say Here I am, Here I am. When we do that, we become full and complete instruments of God’s love for the world. I urge us all to pick up our crosses, and to follow him.
Here I am Lord, Here I am. Amen.
