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March 16, 2003; The Second Sunday in Lent, Year B
    The Rev. Harold "Skip" Comer, Rector

What are we willing to sacrifice our children too?  As I read the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, that question popped into my mind on Monday.  It has been on my mind a lot as our sons and daughters are deployed to the Middle East to wage war against Iraq.  It is one thing to send “the troops” oversees, but it is quite another when your own son or daughter is among those troops. 

We shutter in disbelief when we read stories of how Hamas has encouraged Palestinian children to become suicide bombers in their war against Israel.  We become enraged whenever we hear of a child who is sexually molested by a parent, let alone a member of the clergy.  We stagger in disbelief when we hear the story of a mother who claimed she was told by God to kill her children.

Can you imagine being told by God to sacrifice your child?  That is what we have just heard in our reading from Genesis.  It was a pass/fail test for Abraham.  He had to choose from what must have seemed a no win situation.  If he chose to preserve the life of his only son, he would be disobeying God and then the covenant that God had made with him would be dissolved.  If he chose to obey God, then his only son and the promise of a great nation would die.  Abraham passed the test by his willingness to sacrifice his only son.  At the last moment a ram appears and an angel tells Abraham not to kill his son, but to take the ram and sacrifice it in place of Isaac.

Abraham is the father of three world religions:  Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  That is, their origins in one way or another can be traced back to Abraham.  Certainly it would seem that this event,    the sacrifice of Isaac as it is known, reveals a God who chooses life instead of human sacrifice.  Yet throughout history man has invoked the name of God in its holy wars.

It begins centuries after Abraham is dead and buried, when the Hebrew people enter the occupied territory of the Promised Land and are told, so the Bible says, that God instructs Joshua to take possession of the land by force.  The Old Testament is full of bloody wars, many of them fought under the banner of God.

It didn’t take long, the Middle Ages to be exact, before the peace loving Christians took up the war banner of God, and under the cross of Jesus Christ sought to annihilate the infidels who had taken over the Holy Land.  There were, I believe, eight Crusades to free the Holy Land of Muslims, all of which in the end failed.  But the most frightening Crusade was the fifth.  I say this because it was the Children’s Crusade.  It is estimated that between thirty and fifth thousand teenagers and young adults participated in this Crusade.  They never reach Jerusalem.  Of the thirty to fifty thousand that left their homes and parents, only about two thousand ever returned, the rest died along the way or were sold into slavery. ^[1]       

And now we have jihad, the holy war of fanatical Muslims against America.

I read the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac and wondered, why didn’t we get the message.  God does not want us to sacrifice our sons and daughters to him as proof of our faith and obedience.   And, God does not approve of war in his name, no matter what faith we are! 

Unfortunately war and violence are a part of human nature.  History, from Biblical times has revealed that left on our own we will kill and be killed.  It began with jealousy as Cain declared war on Able and slew him.^[2]  Do you realize that the first killing involved two children!  Now they may not have been very young, but they were the children of Adam and Eve.  What happens to Cain after he kills his brother emphasizes the alienation violence, killing, and war cause between humanity and God.

The people of God teetered on the brink of alienation with God until a child was born.  We’ve heard the titles, “wonderful Counselor” and “Prince of peace.”  Yet from almost the beginning of his life death enveloped him.  I am referring to the slaughter of all the children two years and younger in and around Bethlehem by King Herod when he learned of the birth of the new king, named Jesus.^[3]   We know the story of Jesus.  We have heard a portion of it this morning from the Gospel of Mark.  He was perceived as a threat by some, and as he foretold, they killed him.

Man’s solution – kill it!  Where is “the love of God in Christ Jesus” that we cannot be separated from, that Paul talks about?^[4]  He lists all sorts of situations and disasters, natural, man made, and divine; even alluding to war itself, and boldly proclaims that none of these, not even death, can separate us from it.   “If God is for us, who is against us?”^[5]   The sad truth is that we are against ourselves.  By “we” I mean all of humanity.  But I also mean we ourselves.  We cannot point our finger at an enemy out there all of the time.  There are times when we are the enemy in our relationship with God.  When we choose a path of disobedience from the ways and teachings of God, should we really be surprised when we feel distant from God?

Jesus calls us to “take up (our) cross and follow him.”^[6]  The path that Jesus leads us down is that of love and sacrifice.  It is not an easy path.  It is littered with obstacles, obstacles that we must deny in order to continue our journey toward God.  It is a journey that is intended to transform us.  That is not only the purpose of the journey, but of Jesus himself.  He came to provide an alternative solution to our solution – “kill it.”

Now, I am not naïve enough to believe that if we just love Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and others enough – that they will repent of their evil or sinister ways.

I stand before you this morning with mixed emotions about the impending war with Iraq.  I will not even attempt to second-guess our President and other leaders of our nation about the threat that Saddam Hussein and others pose to our safety and the safety of all the people of the world.  Part of me says that the threat is real and something needs to be done.   The human response – more killing – may be the only way, but it is not God’s way!

We pray that not only will God hearken to our voice in these uncertain times, but that all men might come to their senses and see that killing only leads to more killing.  Let us pray that the children of the world – our children, the children of Iraq, Israel, Palestine, the children of all nations – God’s children, will not be sacrificed to the god of war.             

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