Life Without A Safety Net

When I watch high wire performers, I find myself repeatedly looking at the floor below to make sure the safety netting is in place. Just knowing that the net is there helps me to relax and to enjoy the show. Simply knowing that if somebody makes a mistake, and falls, the result will probably not be fatal allows me a certain measure of comfort.

Let us draw an analogy from the high wire artist safety net and apply it to our daily lives. Most of us prefer to live our lives with a “figurative safety net” of assumptions in place. These assumptions help us make decisions large and small. What does this figurative safety net look like? We count on this series of assumptions and conclusions to guide us and to define for us what we think is right and what we think is acceptable in the eyes of others and even in the eyes of God as we make decisions everyday.

While the exact specifics for each of our personal “safety nets” are unique, we nonetheless, can point to some commonalities which most of us share:

We trust that God is good, and always has our best interests in mind.

We believe that fairness and equality always apply to us.

We trust that God will never require us to do something we are not capable of doing.

We believe that our cultural and societal expectations regarding personal behavior, while not exactly God’s will, are nonetheless in a basic way in line with God’s will.

Even Abraham, the great father of biblical faith, lived life with such a series of assumptions and conclusions guiding him and instructing him. Certainly included in this set of assumptions would have been the notion that Abraham was to guard and protect the life of his child Issac. Yet, here in the 22^nd chapter of Genesis we find God calling Abraham to sacrifice his son. God calls him to kill the one Abraham was called to protect.

While our text does not offer us much insight into Abraham’s interior thought processes, we can safely assume that to inflict harm on Issac would have been to go against the very core of Abraham’s being. To inflict harm on one’s own child is to go against our basic human instincts, it is just not something a person does, unless there is mental illness involved.

Moreover, the very idea that God would call someone to kill his or her child is absolutely contrary to how we normally think of God’s fundamental character as loving and as life-affirming. To really grasp the horror Abraham felt in this story, we need to remember that Abraham, unlike ourselves, did not know how the story would end.

The truth is that this passage is one of the most challenging and, perhaps even frightening, of any story in the entire Bible. The idea of human sacrifice is frightening enough, then add to it the notion of a parent killing his own child, and it simply boggles the mind. The brutal image of God presented in this story challenges everything we think we know about who God is and what God wants.

The idea of God calling for such a thing a horrible thing drives us to re-examine our fundamental assumptions about the God we have come to know. It makes us ask the question, “How can this be the same loving God present in Christ Jesus, the God who could say, ‘Let the little children come unto to me’?

If we approach this story by suspending our knowledge of its ultimate outcome, we thereby allow its true power to challenge us to come to the surface. At a theological level this story is not about God playing mind games with Abraham, nor is it about human sacrifice, it is not about the love a parent has for a child.

In truth, this story is about how we are called to have absolute trust in God and to follow God’s will at all times, even when following God’s will means that we are called to depart from what is normally expected from us.

1. A parent is expected to always have a child’s best interest at heart.

2. We are expected to always value the life of another human being.

These two notions are crucial knots in everyone’s figurative safety netting. Yet, the point of this story is to remind us that God’s claim on our lives supercedes all other claims.

The power of Abraham’s witness in this story is that he trusted that it was God’s will for him to sacrifice Issac. Of course, he loved Issac. Of course, he dreaded the thought of losing him. Of course, Abraham knew that killing one of God’s creatures was fundamentally wrong. Yet, Abraham was willing to do it.

Why? The point for us to remember is that in the final analysis Abraham trusted God. He trusted that for whatever reason, sacrificing Issac was God’s will. By agreeing to sacrifice Issac, Abraham was living life without the safety net of what he thought was right and acceptable in the eyes of others and in the eyes of God. His actions are a testimony of faith which are unequaled anywhere else in the Bible - except by Christ’s willingness to walk to the cross.

This story drives home the truly radical nature of our calling as disciples. The God of Abraham and Moses, the God of Sarah and Miriam, the God of Issac and Jacob, the God of Rebecca and Rachel, and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, demands everything we have and everything we are. There can be no corner of us withheld from God. As hard as it may be to hear this, God calls us to love him more than anything else in the world. And to be faithful to that call means that we have to be willing to live without our carefully constructed safety nets.

Let me share a story with you. It is a story that took place in the first church that I served. One Wednesday night I was teaching a Bible study with a group of 8^th graders. The passage was from Matthew 10:37-39. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.”

One of the young ladies in the group, who knew me pretty well and was quite aware of my love for Leslie, Jessica, and Emily, challenged me with the rather pointed question of whether or not I loved Jesus more than my beautiful wife or precious little girls? Jessica and Emily were just little toddlers at the time.

Her question was sincere. She was not just needling the minister. She really wanted to know if I loved Jesus more than my family. We all want to know if our teachers really believe what they are teaching us, but youth are especially focused on determining the integrity and honesty of their leaders.

I looked her right in the eye and said, “Yes. However, the Jesus I know would never make me choose between him and my wife and children, because it is through him that I love them.”

In a way I didn’t answer her question, yet in truth I did. As difficult as it is to think about this in these terms, this is exactly the point of the Abraham and Issac story. God needed to discover whether Abraham loved his son Issac apart from God, or whether he loved Issac in God.

If Abraham loved Issac a part from God, then he would disobey God’s call. But if Abraham loved Issac through God, then - even as painful as it undoubtedly was for him - Abraham would not withhold Issac from God.

God’s call is for radical obedience, for us to be willing to risk everything to serve him. To trust in him above and beyond all of the things we normally rely upon for comfort and security.

This is not an easy thing for us to think about. We want to think that God will never demand anything from us that is difficult or sacrificial, yet the witness of scripture is that God calls us to live in a demanding and sacrificial way.

We are called to live seeking his will above all else. Abraham’s witness of faith is that we are called live without the safety net of placing our trust in our loved ones, without the safety net of placing our trust in human conventions of any kind.

The real danger in all of this is confusing God’s will with our own. The question is, “When do we abandon our safety net and strike out across the high wire without assurance of surviving?”

There is no clear cut answer to that question. It is something each of us must decide for ourselves within the specific context of our lives. For example, when do we stand up for injustice in the face of societal pressure? Or, when do we sacrifice time with our families to follow God’s will? When do we swim against the tide and speak out on an unpopular issue?

While there is no clear cut guideline for when to act, there is a hint of guidance contained within this story of Abraham and Issac. Abraham acted to sacrifice Issac only after he felt he had to no other option in order to remain faithful. He had no other course of action available except to obey. In this case, it was either obey, or disobey. In all of his previous dealings with God Abraham always had a way out. He negotiated his way to Canaan in the first place. He negotiated his way through Egypt. He negotiated his way past Sodom and Gomorrah. He negotiated his way with Hagar. But in the end, God gave Abraham a choice regarding Issac; either obey or disobey.

To live as Abraham lived is dangerous. To follow God’s will is dangerous. To be obedient is dangerous. It is to live without a net. May we have the strength to follow God’s will. So may it be. Amen.

Reverend Marc V. Mason

12^th Sunday in Ordinary time, 6/19/05

Trinity Presbyterian Church

Travelers Rest, SC