SUNDAY SERMON: Never lose faith no matter the suffering

God said to Abraham, “Take your son, your only child Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him as a burnt offering, on a mountain I will show you.” PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The difference between me committing murder and Abraham sacrificing Isaac lies there.
  • After I have murdered a man, that man will remain dead and I can do nothing to bring him back to life.

God said to Abraham, “Take your son, your only child Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him as a burnt offering, on a mountain I will show you.” Why would God ask something that appears to be evil? How could he command what appears to be an act of murder? How could God ask Abraham to take the life of an innocent person, especially the life of his own son?

First, remember this: God is the Lord of life and death. He can command a sacrifice—including a sacrifice that results in the death of an innocent person—because he has the power to raise from the dead. This is why the letter to the Hebrews insists that Abraham obeyed believing that God was going to raise Isaac from the dead.

The difference between me committing murder and Abraham sacrificing Isaac lies there. After I have murdered a man, that man will remain dead and I can do nothing to bring him back to life. If Isaac was sacrificed, God would have to raise him from the dead because, as the letter to the Hebrews reminds us, God promised Abraham: “It is through Isaac that your name will be carried on.”

 In the end, God sends an angel to stop Abraham, because God mainly wanted to test his faith. But the fact remains that God did command Abraham to slit his son’s throat with a knife and pour the blood of his son on an altar. God wanted this so that we would understand what really happened when Jesus was being crucified.

 It is true that God did not crucify his Son. The Romans did that. But it is also true that, being perfectly able to prevent the crucifixion, God the Father did nothing while he watched his son, Jesus die in agony. God the Father did nothing when Jesus cried out: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

 More important, it is also true that God did something that made Jesus suffer infinitely more than anything the Romans could do. St Paul put it this way in Second Corinthians: “For our sake, God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God.” Pope Benedict XVI described this divine “sacrifice” by saying that it was the moment “when God turned against God.”

 The letter to the Romans states: “Since God did not spare his own Son, but gave him up to benefit us all, we may be certain, after such a gift, that he will not refuse anything that he can give.” No matter how much you have to suffer, never lose faith. “If God is for us, who can be against us?”