TESTS OF A CHRISTIAN (Genesis: 22:1-l4)

AFTER THESE THINGS GOD TESTED ABRAHAM (Genesis 22:l)

Sermon June 27, 1999

There are many tests in life which we welcome and, in fact, can’t live without: A long distance runner seeks the test of ever more strenuous runs. A financial advisor welcomes the test of making more money for his clients and himself. Scientists thrive on the challenge of pushing back the frontiers of discoveries. We are so made as to require and thrive on many tests.

There are other tests, which we must live with though they may not be welcomed. Millions of commuters must wind their tortuous ways to work daily in driving tests which only the crazy welcome. Hong Kong students must steel themselves, as seemingly must their parents, to face the academic tests, which shape school life and future career prospects. No one in a relationship of commitment can hope just to glide by effortlessly because sooner or later intimacy must be tested.

Some tests take on a dynamic of their own and within the very test itself the terms of what is happening may change. Yesterday’s epic five set contest between tennis veteran Jim Courier and the young Dutchman Schaken was at the outset a test of who would win; as it went on for over four and a half hours it began to test endurance and finally athletic heroism.

And then there are those tests which life imposes upon some and which no one in their right minds would welcome. No one welcomes a personal diagnosis that they have cancer. No one welcomes a tax audit by the government. And no one, in his or her right mind, welcomes a test of faith by God, especially not a test of the profoundity, which came to Abraham.

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After making a promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the sands of the sea, and after keeping Abraham and Sarah waiting a lifetime to receive the child, God then asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. And to the horror of every hearer of the story, Abraham replies, "OK. When and where?" "Take your son, your only son Isaac…" Instantly, as upon hearing any enormous and awful test, our lips move in silent petition: "God forbid such a thing should ever be asked of me."

Perhaps the words of Jesus come to us: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." And the bible’s qualification on that word: "One might be found on occasion to give his life for a just person, but not for an unjust person." Heroism and martyrdom inform us that human beings often do lay down their lives for others and often without any inquiry first into their state of moral grace. Soldiers, policemen, fireman are regularly asked to lay down their lives in theory, and often in fact, in helping or defending complete strangers.

But adult and voluntary tests of heroism are quite different from laying down the life of your own child as a burnt offering to God. Abraham passed his test, but most of us do not want to contemplate such a test for ourselves or for others. And the story always raises basic questions about what kind of God would impose that extreme test and what kind of believer in God, when a parent, would make the obedient response of Abraham. Not to mention the sympathies of animal lovers who at the end of the story grieve over the ram, whose sacrifice seemed to bring everything to a happy closure, except, of course, for the ram!

But the story at the least confirms what my catalogue of different kinds of tests at the beginning illustrated: to be human and to be alive means we are tested in varying ways. And the most profound tests of our lives come down to struggles between God and us.

…When the plate of forbidden fruit was placed before Adam and Eve, the hissing serpent taunted the couple with his observation: THIS IS A TEST from God. One bite was taken, the test was failed, and salvation history took off on an unforeseen course, which before it had run its fullness produced a test of God in sacrificing his own son.

…When God allowed Satan to bring a deluge of suffering on Job, there was no question that the man was being tested. Job just didn’t understand why, and neither did his friends who thought the test was so hard that he should just quit on God.

…When the disciple Peter offered his denial of any friendship with Jesus, "I don’t know that man" and as barnyard rooster crowed in the background, it occurred to Peter that Jesus said he couldn’t pass this test, and Jesus was right.

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It isn’t an excuse, but, if misery loves company, we who have failed many a faith-test can be encouraged by the low marks received by some of the brightest and best pupils who also failed their tests with God.

But it might also help us to recall that not everyone fails every test? Devout witnesses and courageous men and women and children of faith have passed tests they didn’t want to take. The persecution of the Jews is perhaps the sorriest testimony to us Christians, sorry because our Church has been a primary promoter of the testing of the Jews. But the Church celebrates its own tested and confirmed martyrs in Saint Stephen in Acts, Ignatius of Antioch, and the aged Polycarp, almost as old as Abraham, who in the second century calmly barred his 90 year old neck to the axe rather than renounce Jesus and the God of Jesus.

As we look around us now, it’s obvious that in some cultures the devout still line up to suffer martyrdom for a cause. There appear to be a significant number of Muslim fundamentalists who are eager to gives their lives, and cause the deaths of others, by blowing themselves up in crowds of bystanders. Many would-be martyrs are not so brave, or foolhardy, once they are caught. The Kurdish leader, Ocalan, who is accused of giving the orders which may have engineered 30,000 deaths in civil violence in Turkey is now in custody and pleading for his own life.

Christians have never been urged, not by Jesus and not by any church leaders, to court death, martyrdom and disaster. But sometimes laying down one’s life is an unavoidable test of faith in God. One of the poignant stories of the Second World War is of the four chaplains aboard the USS Dorchester, which in February l943 was torpedoed in the North Atlantic.

As soldiers on board the transport ship jumped into lifeboats, capsizing many, pandemonium ruled on deck. The single note of calm and hope came from the four chaplains accompanying the troops. The Revs. George L. Fox, Methodist; John P. Washington, Roman Catholic; Clark V. Poling, Dutch Reformed, and Rabbi Alexander D. Goode. They spoke words of faith and calm, offered prayers for the dying, encouraged others to hold to hope and life, and opened an extra storage locker with life jackets to distribute to soldiers in need. A soldier, who survived said, "I could hear the chaplains preaching courage over the bedlam. Their voices were the only thing that kept me going."

When all the life jackets were distributed, the chaplains gave theirs to four frightened young men. "It was the finest thing I have ever seen or hope to see this side of heaven," said survivor John Ladd. As the Dorchester sank into the dark ocean, 668 soldiers and sailors went to their deaths. The four chaplains were last seen, braced against the slanted deck, arms linked and heads bowed, having done all they could do, and about to give all they could offer. We note that among the four was a Jewish chaplain. Christians need to remember that ultimate tests of faith in God are often not respectful of sectarian differences. And the Jews among all people have been more tested by God. The paradigm of God’s test of Abraham turned out to be a recurring and actual test of Jewish fidelity even to the point of sacrificing their young.

AND GOD TESTED ABRAHAM.

Fortunately, most of us do not anticipate tests of such mythic and severe scale as God’s test of Abraham nor God’s test of the four chaplains. In our Gospel of today Jesus laid forth a type of more common test for his followers: the test of hospitality for those who, like prophets and disciples, speak for God. This is the eternal spiritual test to overcome our human unwillingness to hear instruction from spiritual authority which must, if it truly from God, lay naked and vulnerable our human pride and pretence.

Jesus summarised this test in a misunderstood quote: AND WHOEVER GIVES EVEN A CUP OF COLD WATER TO ONE OF THESE LITTLE ONES IN THE NAME OF A DISCIPLE - TRULY I TELL YOU, NONE OF THESE WILL LOSE THEIR REWARD.

On the face of the English translation, this teaching is usually interpreted as meaning: Be kind to little children. That is counsel, which Jesus gave, but elsewhere. In this context "little ones" is a code word for followers of Jesus and speakers for God who are prophets and righteous persons. The phrase LITTLE ONES IN this context of the Gospel of Matthew refers to disciples, or to early Christian missionaries, whom Jesus likened to children because children lacked social status in the hierarchy of society, as did followers of Jesus lack social standing. According to the standards of the world, of the old age, the messengers of the reign of God are unimpressive and unlikely candidates for hospitality and generosity. Jesus is urging his run of the mill followers to practice heightened support and hospitality for those who speak with authority in his name.

Jesus fully understood that his followers would be sorely tested and regularly rejected and so he encouraged them to be heroic and encouraged others to receive them as little ones. We may kid ourselves to think that the offering of water to the thirsty, be they adults and especially children, is quite natural but, alas, history instructs us that such is not the case. The fact that upwards to 50 million children die each year, and the majority through malnutrition and dirty water, puts the lie to the presumption that the human race is innately kind to the weak among the race.

Mac Overton sent me a story this week which is right on about the tests that disciples are more likely to have. A man remembered when he was a boy his parents rented out rooms to out patients at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore next to which their boarding house stood.

One summer’s evening a truly awful looking man came to the door seeking a place to stay that night. He was being treated for an unusual but horribly defacing infection, which made his face into a lopsided boil, all red and raw.

The boy remembered that his mother welcomed the man to a room, bed and supper. From that simple gesture there evolved a friendship over many years in which the out patient, who was a fisherman on the Chesapeake Bay, would regularly send fresh oysters to the family in appreciation for befriending him when no one else would take him in for fear of offending other boarders and losing business. In First Samuel we are reminded that the LORD does not look at things we look at. We look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart (l Samuel l6: 7b)

In a congregation of mostly professionals, like our own, God gives us considerable wisdom to make right judgements, but our professionalism and our high degree of education does not guarantee Christian love nor Christian courage. Alas, from time to time we practice intolerance instead of Christian welcome toward those who are simply too different from us.

As for our city, Hong Kong has been challenged the last six months to practice hospitality toward persons seeking right of abode and the community’s response, highly ambivalent at best, simply confirms how powerful are parochial and selfish interests when confronted with a clear choice of generosity versus fear.

It should appal us that now that the bombings have ceased, Serbs and Kosovars, invited to try reconciliation, prefer to continue in the death dealing prejudices which brought about the tragedy in the first place. Appal us but not surprise us.

Yesterday’s SCMP had on page 12 one of the most revealing confirmations of human sin we shall see; certainly we have a nominee for these four pictures which show an unarmed Columbian man leaving a protest scene, after having urged protesters to stop throwing rocks at a government builder. Then we see the man knocked to the ground and surrounded by a group of men who kicked him, beat him with sticks and stabbed him, all in full view of four indifferent police officers. Finally the man is carried from the mob by his cousin and he died in the hospital. The photographer has received death threats.

Contemporary followers of Jesus are not asked, except in the most extraordinary circumstances, to lay down their lives. But we are expected to do more than go through the outward motions of religious practice: attending worship, giving money, and saying personal prayers. Carlos Oyarbide reminded me in an e mail this week about ideas for our September retreat, that we should reflect at this retreat on how we can better respond to the commandment to love one another and especially to love the marginalized among whom are found the peace makers and justice seekers. To do that is to go against our ingrained selfish nature and sometimes it involves becoming partners in the risk and vulnerability of Kingdom builders. It is a test, which God gives us with no guarantee of victory in this life but with the assurance that in the ultimate scheme of God’s love those who are dutiful to the point of sacrificial effort shall receive their reward.

And in those instances when God places a more extreme test of endurance upon any among us, we are all challenged to rally to such persons in prayer support, in acts of sympathy and service, and in the knowledge that tests of God may come to some sooner than others but that ultimately we shall all stand before God, like Abraham, and like the four chaplains and like the peace maker in Bogota and like those who killed him, and be asked to reconcile our lives with the love and grace which God has given us.