Week 2 (Year 4, NL)

We pastors are not likely to encounter Jephthah. But we might encounter someone like the young man who sought me out after a stint in jail.

Some thoughts on preaching the binding of Isaac.

Could Abraham know that God is testing him?

The story of Jesus, at least the way John tells it, begins unspectacularly. “There was a man sent by God, and his name was John.” What does John do for a living? He is a preacher. We can’t get to Jesus without going through a witness, no epiphany without preaching.

Perhaps we should not be too hard on the people who ate their fill on the mountain and chased Jesus down on the other side.

Violence. Danger. Fear. Trust. Betrayal. Salvation. Ethics. They're all invoked in the story of the binding of Isaac. Here are a couple different points of entry into this difficult passage.

Obedience to God must be rooted in ethics.

I am among those called to lead people in confessing sin and announcing God's forgiveness in the Sunday liturgy, an essential action never altogether free from the threat of routinized going-through-the-motions. This action is anything but routine, however, when it occurs in the setting I described in my lectionary column for the Century on this week's Gospel lesson.

Gothic cathedral. A gay couple approaches holding hands. “Step aside, please,” say the muscle-bound guards. They speak similar words to an African-American girl, a Hispanic man, a young man in a wheelchair. Then, just as we realize that the two large men are “church bouncers,” the scene fades to black and the tag line reads: “Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we.”

In my youth I thought: God asked what of Abraham? Is this the God who I am supposed to worship?