On Near-Human Sacrifice or, The Parenting Secrets of the Origami Dog

I led worship today in my home congregation, neglecting the lectionary readings in favour of using Genesis 22:1-13 and Romans 4:1-8, 13-18.

Why would I choose these texts for Mother's Day? Find the full sermon below. 

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The dress was beautiful. Sure, it had a bad case of static cling but this was late winter in Winnipeg, so I didn’t think anything of it. I only noticed because the young girl was standing next to her mother, and her mother was fussing over her dress and saying “I should have used a dryer sheet. I don’t normally bother but this dress really needs it”. The other mother in the room said “my family doesn’t normally use the dryer, we just hang all our clothes to dry”. And I felt a strange awkwardness in the room because I think I was witnessing one of those competitive mom moments. You might know what I mean by competitive mom moments. That time it was probably the “who’s the more eco-friendly mom” competition, but other times it’s: who can pack the healthiest lunch, who can afford the time or money to put their kids in hockey, dancing, swimming, piano lessons, and sometimes whose kids can sit the quietest in church.

A couple minutes later, the daughter in the staticky dress walked over to another kid. She started telling her “my mom can make an origami dog and when you pull its tail it opens its mouth like it’s barking”. The other kid didn’t reply. So I listened to this girl tell that same story about the origami dog about six times to the other child who seemed disinterested. Obviously it was an important story though.

How about the story about Abraham and Isaac? That’s an important story too. It has to be, it’s in our holy scriptures. Yet it’s a hard story to handle. It doesn’t have instant appeal like an origami dog. A lot of religious people over the years have looked at this story and said that it’s about faith, faith so strong that Abraham would be willing to sacrifice the thing most dear to him in order to obey God. People say that this story is about God testing Abraham’s faith. That seems kind of cruel of God though, doesn’t it? And is the kind of God who would ask someone to kill their child as a sort of test the same kind of Loving God that Jesus described?

Our second scripture reading today, the letter to the Romans, has an interesting take on Abraham. The writer emphasizes that Abraham was not justified by works. As in, God was not pleased with Abraham because of the things he did. The writer says God was pleased with Abraham because of Abraham’s faith. Maybe God wasn’t pleased with Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, rather he was pleased with Abraham’s faith that even as he was preparing to do something awful, unthinkable, Abraham still believed that God was NOT cruel. That IS strong faith.

But still, if you look at this story from the perspective of Isaac, who is walking up the mountain, getting more and more confused, starting to worry, getting tied up, watching his dad standing over him with a knife, being absolutely petrified, you probably think: well that is not very good parenting. That’s much worse than forgetting a dryer sheet.

And if you think about Sarah, Isaac’s mother, watching her husband taking her son away, perhaps suspecting what was about to occur, you might wonder where is the part in the story where Abraham talks it over with his wife: “honey, God wants me to kill our son”. A good father would probably at least run it past his wife before he killed her only son that she had prayed for all her life. These just don’t seem like that actions of a responsible parent.

And yet – everything turned out okay. Isaac was not sacrificed and went on to live a good, long life. And Abraham became a father of many nations, with descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. And if Abraham could have been involved in a plot to kill his son and still go on to be remembered as a great man, there is hope for all of us.

And hope is really what it is all about. The whole endeavour of parenting is about hope. Hope that what we do will be good enough for our children and good enough for God. And as the writer of Hebrews points out, this hope, this faith and trust that we have in God, is all that God is asking for. He quotes Psalm 32 and says

“Happy are those whose wrongs are forgiven,
    whose sins are pardoned!

 Happy is the person whose sins the Lord will not keep account of!”

This is good news. This is God’s good news: God is not counting our mistakes, God is celebrating our hope. God couldn’t have expressed this any more certainly than when God sent Jesus to us to tell us that the greatest commandment is love. We make mistakes. Abraham, as a human, also made mistakes. But God was pleased with him because of his faith, and by faith I’m not talking about a belief in any doctrine or creed, I’m talking about the belief that the greatest commandment is to love God and love each other, the belief that love is enough.

So if God isn’t counting our mistakes, neither should we. And moms aren’t the only people who are constantly comparing themselves to others, we all do it, and often we feel that we come up short. That’s why the writer of Hebrews worked so hard to emphasize for us that we shouldn’t focus on our actions, we should focus on our faith. And I think it’s important to note that faith doesn’t mean that you can go around doing a bunch of evil stuff if you can do it while reciting church doctrine. True faith is the faith that makes cruelty impossible. If you have faith that God has instructed us that the greatest commandment is love, everything you will be done out of love.

So this is my special message for moms today: don’t worry about what other people think about your parenting. Spend some time doing something fun with your kids that you both enjoy. That little girl in the nursery didn’t care that her dress was staticky, she cared that her mom spent time having fun with her.

Parenthood, like any important relationship, is a test. Your success or failure is not determined by how many mistakes you make, or how well you measure up to what your neighbours are doing. If you want to do well on this test, keep the faith, and remember, love has been, is, and always will be… enough.