02 July 2023 - Proper 8, Year A

Theme

This week’s readings remind us of how our faith in God is closely linked to how we treat others. In Genesis, Abraham’s faith is tested after he exiled Hagar and Ishmael. In Romans, the author explains how we are no longer slaves to sin and true faith will result in righteous living. In Matthew, Jesus links himself to his disciples and to God, claiming that those who treat his disciples well will be rewarded. Jeremiah says that the truth of someone’s prophecy would be seen in the fruit that it produces.

Scripture Readings

  • Genesis 22:1-14 - God tells Abraham to take his son Isaac to the mountain and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. Abraham obeys and when Isaac asks where the sheep is, Abraham says that God will provide. After Abraham ties up Isaac and is about to kill him, an angel intervenes and tells him not to kill the boy because he has proven that he truly fears God. They find a ram nearby that they sacrifice instead.
  • Psalm 13 - A Psalm of lament, asking God how long He will forget the author in their pain and oppression.
  • Romans 6:12-23 - The author instructs the church in Rome to not give in to evil desires and to use their bodies as intstruments to do what is right for God. You become slaves to whatever you choose to obey. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ.
  • Matthew 10:40-42 - Anyone who receives Jesus’ disciples, receives Jesus. Anyone who receives Jesus, receives God. If you treat a prophet as a prophet, a righteous person as righteous and care for the least of Christ’s disciples, you will be rewarded.
  • Jeremiah 28:5-9 - Jeremiah hopes that Henaniah’s prophecies come true, but declares that anyone who predicts peace must show that they are right. Only when their predictions come true can we prove they are from the Lord.
  • Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18 - A Psalm of praise, declaring God’s love and faithfulness. Those who hear the joyful call to worship God will walk in the light of God’s presence.

Personal Application

In Matthew’s Gospel, as Jesus sends his disciples out to share the Gospel and minister to the Nations, he links himself to both his disciples and also to God the Father. He claims that however they are treated, so too God will be treated and they will be rewarded in kind.

It is helpful to acknowledge that humans have a natural inclination to put themselves in the shoes of the heroes of stories, even biblical ones. Therefore, we may naturally associate ourselves with the disciples in this story, claiming that people will get treated in kind for how they treat us. But what if perhaps this story is urging us to consider how we treat Jesus’ other children, regardless of whether we agree or disagree with how they choose to live their lives or follow Jesus.

Perhaps, before jumping to our own conclusions about someone’s authenticity in following christ, we should believe their words and wait to see the fruit of their actions, as Jeremiah himself seems to encourage us to do. Let us treat everyone as we we would want to be treated, because Jesus seems to say that we will reap what we sow. How we treat others is how we also treat God.

Communal Application

The harrowing story of Abraham and Isaac needs to be read together with the preceding story of Abraham and Sarah casting out Hagar and Ishmael that we reflected on last week. After God promised Abraham and Sarah numerous descendents that would make a Great Nation near the beginning of their story, their response was a mixture of faith and betrayal. They left their home and went to a faraway land as God commanded, but then thinking that they were too old to bear children, they turned to their Egyptian slave girl, Hagar, to give them a child. They then had a second child through Sarah, named Isaac, raising him in the ways of the LORD, but then condemned their first child, Ishmael, and his mother Hagar, to live (and probably die) in the wilderness because they did not want to share God’s promised blessings with them.

When we arrive at today’s story, it seems as though God is allowing Abraham one more chance to prove his faith. God’s command to offer Isaac as a burnt sacrifice is a harrowing echo of Abraham’s treatment of Hagar and Ishmael. It is almost as if God is saying, in a moment of poetic justice: “I saw what you did to your first-born and his mother; now let’s see how you like it.”

It’s as if God says to Abraham, “Just as you sent Hagar out into the wilderness on a death march with her only child — now you will taste your own medicine; now you will be sent out on a death march with your only child. Just as you attempted to cut off Hagar and Ishmael from inheriting the covenantal blessing — now you will taste your own medicine; now you will contemplate being cut off from the covenantal blessing, by your own hand. You attempted to exclude; now you will feel what it’s like to be excluded, by your own hand. You maneuvered for gain; now you will face losing everything, by your own hand. Now you must renounce and relinquish. Now you must be humbled. Now you must choose between arrogant faith and genuine faith, between faith-for-the-sake-of-gain and faith-for-the-sake-of-love — for love seeks to serve and to share, not arrogate blessings to itself!”

Although it was seemingly never God’s intention for Abraham to follow through with killing Isaac, God used this moment to test Abraham’s faith and bring Abraham back into communion with God as was always intended.

In light of this story, we are wise to be aware of temptations to practice faith as a strategy for gain, rather than as a humble form of love and generosity.

It’s also worth noting that these stories stand at the traditional headwaters of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with Isaac traditionally associated with Judaism and Christianity, and Ishmael with Islam (in fact, in the Muslim version of the story, it’s Ishmael who’s nearly sacrificed, an event commemorated in the religion’s most important festival, Eid al-Adha (“Feast of Sacrifice”), June 28th this year). With this in mind, the strikingly ecumenical tone of these stories in Genesis — the clear affirmation of both the descendants of Isaac and the descendants of Ishmael, and indeed “all the families of the earth” — presents an opportunity to underscore the profound kinship between these three religions, emphasizing the divine call to leave behind all attempts at arrogant exclusion in favor of respectful, neighborly love.

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