Proper 8A
June 28, 2020

O God of love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Our lesson from Genesis about Abraham’s binding of Isaac is such a troubling story to me – it is, as theologian Phyllis Trible says, a text of terror. And the interpretation of this story also horrifies me. It so often gets taught as a theological yardstick story that sizes up Abraham’s obedience to what he understands to be the voice of the Holy One telling him to sacrifice his son. It gets paired with the story of Jesus’ death on the cross. I haven’t heard nearly enough criticism in religious settings about the kind of father who would be willing to kill his own son; or the kind of god that would devise such a horrendous test of faith. I wonder why anyone would want to worship such a god. 

Maybe you know the theological glorification of the notion that God sacrificed God’s own son on the cross as a means to salvation developed in the early 4th century in the time of the Emperor Constantine who had ordered the execution of his own son.[1] Certainly that is not a coincidence. My rabbis have taught me that this binding of Isaac story (The Akedah) gets upheld as a story about the rejection of child-sacrifice in ancient Hebrew practice, and as a lesson about the challenges of devotion to God. There are traditions of critique within Judaism. The Zohar, for example, stresses the danger of obedience that overcame Abraham’s sense of compassion.[2] And there is a rabbinic tradition that Abraham’s wife Sarah collapsed in shock and died when she learned that her husband had taken their son to the binding in response to a divine instruction. In the Biblical record, Abraham and Isaac never spoke to one another again – indeed Isaac never saw his father again until he arrived to bury Abraham. In other words, in Judaism, this is not a story where everyone lives happily ever after, just because Abraham demonstrated some kind of obedience, or just because a messenger from God intervened to prevent the killing.

Perhaps God was testing Abraham – but if so, I doubt that Abraham understood the test. Abraham should have argued with God. Abraham didn’t see that. The Hebrew text actually bears that out in this story with its repetition of the verb ‘to see.’ To see is also to discern, to hear, and to understand, and to provide. Every time Abraham says, “Here I am,” what he’s literally saying is “See me.”[3] In the story, when God first spoke to Abraham, Abraham responded in actions of blind obedience – gathering Isaac and the materials for the sacrifice. But importantly, he does not see or understand. Later he sees the mountain far off in the distance and when Isaac asks him where the sacrificial lamb is, he tells Isaac that God will provide, literally in Hebrew, God will see to it. What God sees, I think, is that Abraham has it wrong and sends a messenger to intervene. When the messenger of the Lord tells Abraham to stop his sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham looks up, and in seeing the ram caught in the thicket, finally understands. Abraham names the place, “the Lord will provide,” or, in Hebrew, “the Lord will see.” What Abraham finally sees is that he needs to put the knife down. I wonder how long the messenger of the Lord was trying to get his attention. I wonder how long the messengers of the Lord have been trying to get our attention – to put our weapons down. How long have the messengers of the Lord been trying to help us see that violence is always the result of our inability to see, to hear, to understand. How long it will take until we see that violence is not God’s will.

I was struck this week by the last line of our Romans reading, “the wages of sin is death,” because the grammar bugs me, and because it was on the marquee of an evangelical community congregation in my neighborhood for years (before it closed). In Greek, the word for wages is not the same word as in our Gospel reading that gets translated reward, but they both literally mean stipend or pay. The recompense (the figurative payment) of sin is death. If sin is broken relationship with one’s neighbor, and thus with the Divine, then the consequence of that brokenness can be understood as a death – a death of compassion, a death of a piece of one’s heart, a death of love in the community. In biblical terms, right-relationship is life; wrong-relationship is death. Indeed, Paul writes to the Jesus followers in Rome, what Jesus taught (and what Rabbi Hillel taught before Jesus), that the essential meaning of all of the commandments is Love your neighbor as yourself…love is the full totality of the Law. That is the thoroughly Jewish teaching that Jesus followers and later Christians made their own. 

Our Gospel lesson from Matthew this morning is about receiving prophetic ones, righteous ones, and little ones, and the rewards or wages for doing so. The word that gets translated “receive” is about welcome, acceptance, hospitality. Biblical reception or hospitality is not passive welcome or acceptance. Biblical hospitality is over-the-top (the way Abraham welcomed the strangers at Mamre, which we heard about last week).

This lesson comes at the end of the instruction that Jesus gave to his disciples, his students, who were being sent out to proclaim that the realm of heaven was very near. He told them to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. He told them not to worry about packing anything or practicing their speeches. He told them it would be extremely difficult, but not to be afraid of people who can kill the body but not the soul. He told them that the encounters would devastate them, that their journeys would break their hearts. (Lament, as you’ll hear Bill Blaine-Wallace talk about after our service, is a foundational response to life in Jesus Christ.) And he concluded with these three verses about what is called “inherent presence.” Inherent presence is what an apostle (one being sent) is or has – in Hebrew, the rule of shaliach – a duly authorized messenger for another person, was to be considered the person doing the sending because the one sent was fully empowered to act. So Jesus reminded them, the one welcoming you welcomes me and the one welcoming me welcomes the One who sent me.

This saying offers an answer to the implied question, ‘How do I find the Holy One?’ The answer works backward from the question.[4] To find the Holy One, find Jesus as Jesus manifests himself in the work of love, and the people who do the work of loving kindness. As Fred Rogers often said, “Look for the helpers.” When we provide hospitality for the ones who do the work of justice and mercy, we are providing hospitality for Jesus, and when we are providing hospitality for Jesus, we are providing hospitality for the Holy One. But then there’s a twist. I spent some time this week reflecting on the three examples of prophetic ones, righteous ones, and little ones. Here’s what I learned.

There’s wide agreement among Biblical scholars that the phrase “in the name of” means “because one is.”[5] One who receives prophets because they are prophets will receive a prophet’s reward – which, perhaps, is hearing the truth of the Word of God being spoken to power. That is a thrilling and inspiring reward (unless of course, you’re the one misusing the power, and then it’s disturbing). One who receives righteous persons because they are righteous persons will receive righteous persons’ reward – which, perhaps, is the joy of being with people who are in right-relationship with others and with the Holy One. So far, so good. Then whoever will give a cup of compassion (cold water) to one of the little ones – one of the people who has no economic or social power to take care of themself or to reciprocate, because one is a disciple – a student of Jesus’ Way, that one shall not lose the reward. Is the disciple one of the little ones? Or does the act of giving cold water to one of the little ones make one a disciple? Yes! Both! And what is the reward? The reward is mutual blessing — an encounter with the Divine.

This is not theoretical. This has been our direct experience, particularly in the last 3 ½ months at Emmanuel. You might know that in mid-March, when the City of Boston ordered businesses to close to reduce the spread of COVID-19, it became impossible for people living without adequate shelter to find water – water for elimination, water for washing, and water for drinking. Buildings were closed, public water fountains were turned off; bathrooms were non-existent. Emmanuel and St. Paul’s Cathedral were the only two churches that stayed open in the area. Right away the staff and volunteers of these two churches saw how desperate for water people were – how completely parched people were. Ecclesia and MANNA, working with Emmanuel and St. Paul’s, quickly worked out a schedule so that between our two churches, we could cover 6 out of 7 days with the staff and volunteers that were available. I have to tell you that I haven’t encountered a bigger concentration of mutual blessing anywhere else in the last few months — exhaustion, yes; lament, yes; blessing, over-the-top!

When you give a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty, who has no privilege or power to demand it,[6] you will receive the reward of mutual blessing. When you support one who gives a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty, it is as if you have given the water yourself. When you help pay the water bill, or the electric bill, or the salaries of the staff who keep the doors open, you will not lose the reward of a disciple of Jesus. Truly I tell you, you are spreading the news of God’s love and I want you to experience the mutual blessing too. I want you to know that the mutual blessing extends to you by the rule of shaliach or inherent presence.

What scripture may be holding up for us today is the complicated good news that we gather in the name of God who desires to dwell with us and in us and that messengers from God are always along our path trying to get our attention. Listen to one such messenger, named Mary Oliver. This is her poem, “Thirst,” in her book by the same name:

Another morning and I wake with thirst

for the goodness I do not have. I walk

out to the pond and all the way God has

given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,

I was never a quick scholar but sulked

and hunched over my books past the 

hour and the bell; grant me, in your

mercy, a little more time. Love for the

earth and love for you are having such a 

long conversation in my heart. Who

knows what will finally happen or

where I will be sent, yet already I have

given a great many things away, expect-

ing to be told to pack nothing, except the 

prayers which, with this thirst, I am

slowly learning. [7]

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