The Decision to Sacrifice

A sermon preached by Father Dwight D. Duncan, ssc, Rector, St Matthias, Dallas, Texas
16 March 2003 - The Second Sunday in Lent (Year B)

Scripture: Genesis 22:1-14

This is the second in a series of three sermons addressed toward the parish's Living Stones Capital Stewardship Campaign


One day a pig and a chicken heard their master say he was looking forward the next morning to a big breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken turned to the pig and said, "Farmer Smith is so good to us, why don't we supply his meal, instead of those other pens and coops to which he goes?" "Yeah, fine," replied the pig, "all it requires of you is a contribution; of me, it requires a sacrifice."

Would you agree? When the word "sacrifice" is said, do chills run up and down your spine, as perhaps they did Mr Pig's, images rising before you of slaughtered carcasses and bodies splayed on an altar or hung from a rack, blood running like dark-red rivulets on the ground? And here we are, in our Living Stones Capital Stewardship Campaign, asking you to make a sacrifice for the good of this parish. What are we asking you to do: be Mr Pig for us?

Actually, we are asking you to be Mr Pig and Mrs Chicken, because in fact both would have offered a sacrifice for Farmer Smith, though not of the same magnitude. A sacrifice is made a sacrifice, you see, neither by blood-shedding nor by destruction of the victim. What makes a sacrifice, a sacrifice is this: something good is given up for the sake of a higher good. The higher good for Mr Pig and Mrs Chicken to which each would offer in some measure the good fruit of their bodies was the good of providing a meal for their master, in gratitude for his good care of them.

That is what each of us is asked to do in this campaign: for the sake of God's glory and the good of this parish in her service of him, you and I are being asked to reshape our lives, our priorities, our lifestyles so that we can free up a chunk of money to give to this campaign. To achieve this, each of us will have to consider whose we are: God's, and what he asks of us in his service. And God always asks nothing more and nothing less than a sacrifice, a real denial to ourselves of some good for his glory and service.

We have witnessed this fact today in an event recorded in the 22nd chapter of Genesis, an event which was crucial for our salvation. Let's see what it has to say to us. To do so, we must begin prior to the moment of this event.

We begin with Adam and Eve. Following upon mankind's fall from grace, God began a process to save us from the consequences of our Sin and draw us back to himself. Not to worry! I'm not going to set it all out for you and keep you here all day. I'll just cut to the chase and say that the process of our redemption required the construction of a community which had such a strong faith and trust in God that through it God's purposes could be accomplished.

But communities, as God has constructed this world, do not spring out of thin air. They are born from the loins and the spirits of men and women, and those men and women form them into what they may be. So, to bring about such a faithful community, God chose one man to work upon, to fashion him into a man of strong faith and trust in him. The man chosen was Abraham, and his story is recorded for us in chapters 12 through 25 of the Book of Genesis.

But how does God fashion a human into a person of great faith and trust, through whom great things may be achieved? God does this by promising a great good to us and by requiring from us a great sacrifice. One must give up a lesser good for the sake of a greater one.

Now Abraham's first sacrifice occurred prior to the one of which we have heard today. Abraham was living a comfortable, successful life with his wife and extended family in the cosmopolitan city of Haran, a life much like the one most of us in this parish live, if not more so. And yet, somehow, Abraham heard God calling him to leave this security and go out on his own, to a place to which God would bring him, and to an experience by which God would make him spiritually and physically the father of a great nation, a nation through whom all the nations of the earth eventually would be blessed. To win this promise, Abraham set out, on a physical journey, yes; but more, on a faith-journey.

And indeed Abraham prospered greatly. But one thing he lacked: offspring by his wife, Sarah. They wondered, how can the promise be fulfilled? But, marvelous to say, it was: even though quite advanced in age, Sarah conceived by Abraham and a son was born, Isaac. And Isaac would become the means by which Abraham's faith and trust in God would be greatly expanded. Which brings us to the horrific event of which we have heard this day: the almost-slaughter of Isaac by Abraham, willing to give him up to the God who had given Isaac to him.

Let us grasp the magnitude of what Abraham was doing in offering up to God his only child: This son was Abraham's only physical evidence of and hope for the fulfillment of God's promise to make of him a great nation. Further, since at this time our Hebrew forebears knew of no possible future with God beyond the grave, the only vindication of one's existence into the future was by one's children. In Isaac, Abraham had a future, a victory over death.

But at some point in his spiritual maturing, Abraham knocked head-on with reality. And that reality questioned him: "In whom do you trust, Abraham? The One in whom all life exists, who creates and keeps everything in being? OR is your trust in yourself, you who have no power either to make life or to give it back, once lost? You have the same choice before you as did your forebears, Adam and Eve: you can have me as your Lord, putting your whole trust in me; or you can have yourself. And if yourself, then you will spend your life trying to stave off death. It is a losing game, Abraham, lost even before you die. You will lose living for fear of dying."

At that point Abraham made his choice: In offering up his son, he was, in the most radical way, abandoning himself into the hands of his creator, trusting God to make good on his life as well as Isaac's. Abraham did this without knowing how it would and could work out.

But you and I do know: At the moment in which Abraham raised the knife above his son, God provided a ram in Isaac's place. Ah, but more than this did God provide: From the loins of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and his wife Rebekah, would arise and be formed into a community of faith and trust, the people Israel. And from Israel arose Mary, true daughter of Abraham, our tainted nature's solitary boast because of her extraordinary faith and trust in God. And from our Lady came whom? Jesus, the Savior.

Think of it! Eternal life and the gates of heaven opened for every creature in the cosmos, including you, including me, because Abraham was willing to lose his life for God's sake. Great things, you see, are achieved only by sacrifice, by our willingness to put our faith and trust in God, and so to give up some good for the sake of a higher or greater good.

This is what each of us is being asked to do and challenged to do in our Living Stones campaign. The higher good is the improvement of our facilities. But their improvement not for the sake of beautification and making us proud of ourselves, but so that they will advance our service of God instead of, as they now do, hindering our service of him and the expansion of that service.

To achieve this, without in any way diminishing our present service of God, we must each give in addition to, over and above, what we presently commit to funding our mission and ministry. This is where the reality of sacrifice comes to us: what are you and I willing to do, AND what are you and I willing to do without, for the next three years, in order to answer God's call to us? You just heard what Lori and David are planning to do; and you know it is a sacrifice.

This moment in our parochial life is a time of testing for each of us individually and all of us together, just as the offering of Isaac was a testing time for Abraham. How real, how deep, how broad is your faith and mine, is our common faith, in him who has opened to us the gates of heaven? This community and its blessed life ... this lovely house of God in which we feast with him ... those other buildings in which we gather to grow and to fellowship and to serve, which now need replacing ... All of this, our life physical and spiritual, have been provided for us by God through the sacrifices of those who have gone before us. All this is their legacy to us. It is now our responsibility to emulate their sacrifices, both for our present service of him and for those who will come after us. Now is the time for each of us to make our legacy.

And you and I will be made by our sacrifices. Abraham became God's man, our hero of faith, by his willingness to offer up his good for the sake of the good of obedience to God. I pray that those who come after us, will be able to look back on this time and us within it, as their heroes and heroines because of the changes we were willing to make in our lives and the self-denial we were willing to make of our resources for their sake.

May the example and the prayers of blessed Abraham, blessed Isaac, and blessed Jacob, our fathers in faith, and of holy Mary, the great Mother of God and our mother, encourage and empower us in our decisions.


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