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,
cant 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.
Yesterdays 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.
********
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 ones life for ones
friends." And the bibles 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 didnt 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 dont know that man" and as
barnyard rooster crowed in the background, it occurred to Peter
that Jesus said he couldnt pass this test, and Jesus was
right.
********
It isnt 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 didnt 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, its 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 ones 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 Gods 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 Gods test of Abraham nor
Gods 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 summers 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 communitys 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.
Yesterdays 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 Gods 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.