Year A
 Genesis 22:1-14
 Psalm 13
 Romans 6:12-23
 Matthew 10:40-42

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

When we read the story about Abraham getting ready to sacrifice Isaac…  his beloved son…  we’re struck with horror…  because we know how much we love our own children…  and we can’t imagine doing that…  having to do that…  we can’t imagine a God who would ask this of us…  it’s not very welcoming…  and we may not be sure we want to be in relationship with a God who would ask this…  but I wonder if the kernel of wisdom in this story…  I wonder what matters most…  is the question it poses…  do we love and trust God enough… 

But this story may also serve as a corrective to the widespread practice of child sacrifice…  to which Leviticus 18:21…  Jeremiah 32:35…  and 2 Kings 23:10 all refer…  which was intended to calm a vengeful god…  and ensure bountiful harvests…   a corrective which condemns offering up one’s children to the Canaanite god Moloch…  who is mentioned in Leviticus 20:1-5…  when God tells Moses…  to let the Israelites know…  that God will not tolerate the worship of other deities…  or sacrifices to them…  no longer would sacrifices be made from killing children…  instead…  a lamb would suffice…

But long before this almost-sacrifice…  God made an audacious promise to Abram…  here was a ninety-nine year old man…  whose only heir was Ishmael… the son of his wife’s hand servant…  but God promised Abram that all the land of Canaan would be his…  and through his own son Isaac it would be passed on to his descendants who would out-number the stars in the sky… 

When God spoke this covenant…  Abram believed…  and it was reckoned to him as righteousness…   Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says…  this statement is a revolutionary moment in the history of faith…  believing came before a handshake…  before a fist-bump…  before any signed letter of agreement…  it was the willing and deliberate placement of oneself into the unknown…  trusting that God was trustworthy enough to be an ever-present companion and guide…  it was exactly the kind of response from a human being that the relationship between God and humanity was intended to evoke… ]  the writer is telling us that when one believes God in spite of any other message from the world…  it’s a function of righteousness…

But on a practical level…  if the land was to be passed on through Isaac…  if God had allowed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac…  there would be no lineage and no descendants to inherit the land…  ]  so the sin…  really…  would have been disbelief in God’s word…  and would have caused the death not of Isaac…  but of the promise that God had made…  so Abraham chose rightly… and chose life…   

And then we hear that…  the wages of sin is death…  those who have channel surfed…  may have heard this shouted from some pulpits…  and may have wondered whether those messages are focused not on the here and now…  but on the there and then…  it can be a message which asks whether or not we’re saved…  whether or not we’re getting into Heaven…  but this is not the Jewish framework out of which Jesus spoke when he proclaimed that the Kingdom of Heaven is here…  now…  and about how we can ease the suffering of others…  and enhance life…  about how we can treat others as we want them to treat us… 

And we need to remember that Paul wrote this letter to a group of people he never met in a church he never visited…  and by itself…  this phrase from Romans sounds harsh…  but we also need to remember that Paul was shaped by the Law which exerted a significant influence on his theology…  and he also wrote…  For sin will have no dominion over you…  since you are not under Law but under Grace…  and this was a major sea-change for Paul… because for observant Jews…  the Law was everything…  it had been written in Exile and was what set the Jewish people apart…  so for Paul to say that we’re not under the Law…  meant that he understood salvation as unearned…  and as gift… 

In one of the Gospel readings for Pentecost…  Jesus speaks about forgiving or retaining sins…  and I think he was directing those words to all of us…  to the whole community…  as we continue together the work that he started…  the verb that Paul uses to describe sin means…  missing the mark…  and it’s a way of saying that all people have fallen short of God’s standard…  in other words…  sin was not simply missing the right mark…  but could also mean hitting the wrong mark…

But when we’re more concerned about the afterlife…   than we are about our lives here and now…  our attention can shift too much from corporate behavior and on to individual behavior…  and of course individual behaviors have consequences…  but the Rev. Kay Sylvester reminds us that we are called to careful examination of our entire range of behaviors…  because there’s more than one way to do harm…  in our time…  one of the simplest ways to do harm is simply to fail to pay attention…  she asks questions like… how far did our food travel before it reached us…  where do our clothes and our water come from…  whose labor is involved…  how is the planet affected by our choices… 

Now some of you may remember Secretary of the Interior James Watts…  under President Ronald Reagan…  his attention wasn’t focused on the here and now…  but on what was to come…  like the early Christians…  he believed that Jesus would return very soon…  and this empowered him to overlook legislation that was designed to protect our national parks for future generations…  Why bother…  he thought…  the world is going to end soon anyway…  but that kind of thinking puts personal beliefs ahead of institutional responsibility…  and belittles the creation that God has given us to enjoy and preserve…  and it fails to take seriously the genuine humanity of Jesus…

And so I wonder if we’ve confused grace with judgement…  and  judgement with grace…  because grace is really more individual than corporate…  and judgment is really more corporate than individual…  but society tends to focus on individual sins and not on Jesus’ forgiveness…  and it fails to hold corporations accountable either because they’re our basic unit of commerce…  or because they’re simply too massive to hold accountable…  ]  scripture…  on the other hand…  is full of a lot of individual grace…  God’s life-changing love and acceptance…  and full of corporate judgment… most of what’s written about judgment in the Old Testament has to do with the people Israel…  and not with any one person…

For Matthew…  the conclusion of today’s discourse ties back to its opening in 10:5 which authorizes and empowers the disciples…  all disciples…  including you and me…  to serve as representatives of Christ…  and it includes the words of hope we heard last week…  So have no fear…  for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered…  and nothing is secret that will not become known…  and this assurance is echoed in our Collect for Purity when we pray: “Almighty God…  to you all hearts are open…  all desires known…  and from you no secrets are hid… Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit…  that we may perfectly love you…  and worthily magnify your holy Name.”

But even before the thoughts of our hearts are cleansed and we can perfectly love God; God still loves us…  perfectly…  but while grace has removed us from the Law…  that doesn’t mean anything goes…  that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences for what we do and say in the here and now…  but what it means is that as we are called to careful examination of our behaviors…  and as we continue to learn and discern…  as we forgive and seek forgiveness…  we pray that we too may be reckoned as righteous…  and that the gift of Grace will ensure that nothing can separate us from the love of God…  for the free gift of God in Christ Jesus…  is the welcome of eternal life…