Pastor Dismer’s sermon from June 29:

“Choosing God’s love as our way of life will not fail us in all the difficult trials of life.”

Matthew 10:40-42

If this sermon today were to have a title, I have three in mind. I might call it …

1. HOW MUCH DO WE LOVE GOD/HOW MUCH DOES GOD LOVE US?

2. WHAT DOES GOD REQUIRE OF US/WHAT DID GOD REQUIRE OF HIMSELF?

3. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE TESTED?

Today’s lessons are about love and testing and requirements.

Let’s look first at the story about Abraham and Isaac, and their walk up the mountain. At the beginning of this story in the Bible it says: “Sometime later God tested Abraham.”

It was certainly not the first time Abraham’s faith was tested. God directed him to leave his country, his people, his father’s household and go to a land that God would show him, and trusting God, he went.

When Abraham was an old man, God told Abraham that he, and his equally elderly wife, Sarah, would have a child, and surely this tested Abraham’s and Sarah’s faith!

But this story seems different. What Abraham considers a “test” of his faith seems nearly unthinkable. How can we understand it and find some meaning in it for our lives?

To begin with, we need to remember that all of Genesis, where the stories of Abraham are found about 1,000 years after the events would have taken place. The author of Genesis was sharing his understanding of the relationship between God and man.

We also need to remember that the way people understood the world 3,000 years ago is not the same way we understand it.

Ancient peoples had little of what we would call a scientific, factual understanding of cause and effect. The author of Genesis lived when there were religions that attributed everything that happened to the manipulation of their gods.

We also know that ancient peoples believed that living sacrifices pleased their gods.

In that context, Abraham could have believed that God might require a sacrifice.

Let me share an approach to this story about Abraham and his son that helps me ask meaningful questions about God. About how much I love God and how much God loves me, about what God requires of us, and what God has required of himself and about how we deal with those things that test us.

Lawrence Housman, a British playwright, wrote a play about Abraham and Isaac. In the play, Abraham, who has loved God throughout his long life, asks himself, “Have I loved God enough? Would I withhold anything from God?”

Abraham thinks about how, in his old age, God blessed him with a son, Isaac, and about how very much he loves this son. “Do I love him more than I love God?” he asks.

Abraham is afraid that he does love Isaac more than GOD, and convinces himself that to prove his love for God he must sacrifice his son.

Isaac, meanwhile, isn’t by any means stupid. He can see that Abraham has no lamb to use for a sacrifice. He guesses his father’s plan to use him, and questions his father: “Why are you doing this?”

When Abraham attempts to explain that he must prove to God that he loves God, Isaac says, “God knows what is in your heart. God knows you love him because you love me, the son he gave to you! “And then they find the ram in the thicket.

HOW MUCH DO WE LOVE GOD and HOW MUCH DOES GOD LOVE US? Because we know about Jesus, let’s ask first, HOW MUCH DOES GOD LOVE US?

In the Genesis story, when Isaac asks his father: Where is the sacrifice?” Abraham answers: GOD will provide.” We believe that too, and that leads me to my second sermon title: What does God require of us, and what does God require of himself?

We know that what God, in fact, did not require of Abraham – the sacrifice of his son – God did require of himself. Because of his love for us, he allowed his son, Jesus, to die in our place – for our sins: To make us “worthy” when we are not. To erase the sinfulness in us that separates us from our HOLY GOD.

HOW MUCH DOES GOD LOVE US? We know the answer. HOW MUCH DO WE LOVE GOD – IN RETURN, IN GRATITUDE?

The prophet Micah asked this question and also answered it: What does the Lord require of you but to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

What does God require of us? To show our love. This is the idea Houseman put into the mouth of Isaac in his play: God knows you love him, because you love me, God’s child. God knows we love God, when we love God’s children.

What does God require of us? If we accept God’s love, we must understand that this gift is not something to have, but something to use. This is what Jesus was pointing to in today’s gospel text:

Jesus said to his disciples – to his followers – to us: He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me – GIVES EVEN A CUP OF COLD WATER – receives the one who sent me.

Abraham, in Moses’ story, thought God required a sacrifice and so Abraham intended to offer his son. What Moses taught here was that the RITUAL WAS NOT THE SACRIFICE. LOVE is the sacrifice. LOVE IS WHAT IS REQUIRED.

God demonstrated that love is an action by providing the ram for Abraham and by providing Jesus for us all. What is required of us? Not ritual. LOVE is required of us, and love requires sacrifice. God expects us to love one another; to “give a cup of cold water” to everyone as if we were giving it to Jesus himself, because each person we encounter is God’s son or daughter.

IN LOVE, what do we sacrifice in order to “give a cup of cold water” – that is – make a difference, in issues of justice, or mercy, for example? What time, energy, or resources do we sacrifice for the sake of the people in Darfur, or Iraq, or the victims of the floods, hurricanes and tornados, or the 36 million people in the United States living in poverty?

From day to day a “cup of cold water” might mean sacrificing our time to teach Sunday school, lead Boy Scouts, serve meals at the Salvation Army, fill sandbags. It might mean spending money on good causes rather than on “goodies.”

Today, when Natalie is baptized, her parents, her sponsors, and all of us as the church, promise to help her learn about the love that God has for her, and the love God asks of her. She will learn it best by the way we love her, and by seeing the way we love all those we come in contact with. With our love as a foundation, she will understand God’s love. She will understand the lessons in the Bible we give her, and the creeds and prayers we teach her.

Will she ever be tested? Are we ever tested? As my third sermon title asks: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE TESTED? Like the ancient peoples, do we believe that God puts us in situations to “test” us? Perhaps this story about Abraham helps us see that our choices “test us.”

We are faced every day with the need to choose whether or not we will love sacrificially, with mercy and justice, and with humility in our relationships with God and God’s children. This story of Abraham may also help us see that sometimes other people’s choices end up putting us “to the test.” And, there are accidents, and natural disasters, illness and tragedy that will “test us” over and over again.

In hard times and hard situations, the “test” is this: to continue to trust the God of love, who gave his son for us. To continue to trust that choosing God’s love as our way of life will not fail us in all the difficult trials of life.

With Abraham, we are invited to see that God provides the way to live in every circumstance: with sacrificial love, with justice and mercy and humility. This I hope and pray we will teach, by example, to Natalie and to all our children. Amen