"Here I Am" - Sermon from June 26, 2011
The Second Sunday after PentecostJune 26, 2011
“Here I Am”
By Rev. Dr. Larry Bethune
University Baptist Church, Austin, Texas
Psalm 13Genesis 22:1-14Romans 6:12-23Matthew 10:40-42
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” – Psalm 19:14Three times in Genesis 22 Abraham’s name is called. Three times he responds, “Here I am.” He gives: attention- hearing - response. Abraham is a man ready to respond to God’s call, whatever it may mean. Absolute trust. Radical obedience. Comprehensive reliance on God.It is a many-layered story. As it stands now in the narrative flow of the book of Genesis, the Abraham’s test of faith in Genesis 22 is actually a test of God’s faithfulness. Isaac embodies the promise God has made to the once childless Abraham and Sara of descendants more numerous than the sands of the sea or the stars of the sky. As it stands, the real issue at stake in this story is “Will God keep a promise?” And the answer of course, is yes. God is faithful and true, whatever you and I may do.Another dimension the story highlights is the call of God to let go of the things we hold most dear because we trust God knows what is best and will provide what is even better than the things we hold dear. I think of the five churches engaged in our conversation on convergence. We each have our good history, our holy spaces, our own individual places within our congregation, and those are good and beautiful parts of who we are. But have they become our idols? If God asks, are we willing to lay them down for the sake of the gospel, for whatever best accomplishes Christ’s mission, if that’s what God calls us to do? Remains to be seen. Perhaps that is our test.But most scholars agree the earliest meaning of this text as a standalone story was an explanation of the Israelite’s prohibition of child sacrifice. The other peoples of that day made sacrifices designed to get the gods’ attention, prove their own devotion, and unleash a magical power against the deities to manipulate special favors. Amelia! Did you see her perk up when I called her name? Names have power at the very least to get someone’s attention, and the ancients thought if you knew the god’s name to use in your ritual, it forced the god to pay attention to your sacrifice. That’s why Moses asked for God’s name at the burning bush, which God dodged by giving him a verb instead of a noun: “I am what I am, I will be what I will be, I will do what I will do” and you don’t control me (Ex 3:13-15).Once they had the god’s attention, the ancients thought to impress the god with the significance of their sacrifice, even to unleash a magical life force against the god through the separation of that life force from the body of the victim, that is, by ritual slaughter. And for the most important crises, when they really needed the gods help, what greater sacrifice, what stronger magic could be unleashed than the death of their first born child? We cannot minimize the anguish they felt or the desperation that led to such sacrifices, but it was an occasional extreme occurrence among the ancients, to sacrifice their children in the name of God. The word “dedicate” means “to kill,” and derives from the literal sacrifice of children in the ancient world.But not among the Israelites! Early on they had this story about Abraham and Isaac which said God does not want you to kill your children in the name of God! In fact, that is a major example of “taking God’s name in vain!” God provided a substitute which signified offering not the death, but the full life of the child in God’s service, and that is the meaning of our child dedication rituals to this day.Sadly, religious people, and by this I mean Christians, too, continue to sacrifice their children in the name of their gods. They sacrifice their children to the gods of success by pressuring them beyond their gifts and stage of development into more activities than they can manage. They sacrifice their children to the gods of their own ego by living vicariously through them to work out their own needs. They offer up their children to the gods of nationhood when some politician says God wants a war. They sacrifice their children to the gods of freedom by refusing the fight to protect them as much as they can from the dangers of substance abuse. They sacrifice their children to the gods of popularity by refusing to give them a spiritual identity strong enough to engage the excesses of popular culture which kill the soul.Now I do not hold myself up as the model of the perfect parent. There is no such thing. Nor do I think parents are ever solely responsible for what their children become because there are too many other influences beyond their control, which is why we all need to consider our responsibility to model health and offer support to the children among us. But there is no stronger influence by word and example in a child’s life than his or her parents. And the first word parents need to hear is that God does not want us to sacrifice our children in the name of God!Tragically, that’s exactly what has happened in the shame and hatred that have been heaped upon gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning people in the name of Christ. When we ordained Hans Venable as a deacon in 1993 and were suddenly in the public eye. I received my share of hate mail. But that didn’t bother me nearly so much as the number of calls, letters, emails, and visits telling tragic tales. “My parent’s church told them to refuse to speak to me when I came out.” “I’m a Baptist pastor, and if the church knew my son is gay, they would fire me.” “Our church asked us to leave because we would not reject our daughter.” “We wish our son had known about your church before he took his own life.” Story after story after story of Christians sacrificing their children in the name of God! Hadn’t they read Genesis 22?My friends, this sacrifice is still happening. Parents and their gay children are exposed to the most hateful homophobic rhetoric in some churches as they come to worship God. The suicide rate among gay teens remains high, which the hate-mongers blame on the orientation rather than accepting responsibility themselves for shaming these children into self-hatred. As a caring church proclaiming God’s love to all persons we cannot sit by idly satisfied with our own comfortable place. We have a prophetic call to be aware, to be supportive, to proclaim an alternative understanding of the gospel that God does not hate and reject, and to help anyone, especially young people and their parents “work out their salvation with fear and trembling.” It belongs to us to create a safe space where they can mature to understand their orientation and God’s call to healthy relationship and spiritual wholeness as God created them. It belongs to us to help them grow in a context where they can know themselves beloved of God and special in God’s sight.That is why we called this day “Bring your gay teen to church Sunday.” But I hope the word will spread that every Sunday is “bring your gay teen to church” Sunday at UBC, along with “come as you are Sunday” for the indigent, and “we have a pew for you Sunday” for everybody else, to throw in an old Baptist slogan.In our gospel reading today Jesus takes up the ancient Hebrew rule of hospitality where he urges the disciples and the church reading this gospel to be a welcoming community. It is the same word he uses a chapter later when he places a child among them and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matt 18:5). This kind of welcome does not mean mere toleration, the absence of hostility, but hospitality, the accepting, affirming, nurturing encouragement for the guest to be fully their best selves. Is that the kind of welcome people feel when they walk through our doors? Are we welcoming them the way we would welcome Christ?Friends, as surely as God called Abraham, God calls you and me to a mission of healing in the church, to a work of hospitality that welcomes all souls and refuses to sacrifice our children in God’s name, to a gospel that changes lives and in doing so changes the world. Will you respond to God’s call with attention – audition – action? God is calling you by name today. Will you answer with Abraham: “Here I am”? Well? May we pray?God of us all, a thousand voices call out to us each day: be cool, be smart, be successful, buy our product, follow this trend, watch this show, give yourself to this path, give us your children…. In all the noise we have trouble hearing your voice if we are listening at all. Give us ears to hear you and hearts to follow. Give us faith to know that following you is the only way to be cool, smart, or successful. Teach us to trust our children to you. And by our own lives let us teach them when you call, to say “Here I am,” in the name of Christ. Amen.