This past Friday night, I watched the TV show Numb3rs for the first time. The ongoing story line is about a mathematician who assists the FBI with investigations through his math expertise. The rerun I saw involved the investigation of the leader of a religious group. In many ways the story seemed lifted from the headlines of news stories over the past decade or so. The religious group is polygamous, isolated from the rest of society, and tightly controlled by the leader, a man called Prophet Abner. The investigation concerns the suspected murders of a number of men who experienced violent deaths shortly after removing their families from the cult. As the story proceeds, it’s clear that the central issue for the members of the group is obedience. According to their tradition, the prophet speaks for God and failure to be obedient to the prophet’s directives will result in eternal damnation. The television show ends with tragedy for some of the prophet’s most devoted followers, generated by their leader’s own design. As the next television show began, I was still caught up in the question of obedience to God’s will. It’s clear to me that the fictional Prophet Abner and the real-life subjects his character was based on do not in all likelihood speak for God, but I’m just as clear that the question of authority has quite probably been at the base of disagreement within every faith group since the beginning of time.
Our Hebrew scripture story about Abraham and the almost-sacrifice of Isaac points to the difficulty of knowing God’s will for our lives. For most of us, the idea of God commanding a parent to kill a child is so far removed from our understanding of God’s relationship with us that we can’t imagine how Abraham could believe God would want him to do such a thing. The idea of being tested by God, the idea of God checking people out, poking at people to see just how far they’re willing to go to prove their obedience, is not the way most of us understand our relationship with the Holy. Most of us would not recognize the God that Abraham knew in this story.
I don’t know how Abraham heard God’s voice. I don’t know what God had in mind for Abraham and Isaac that day on the mountain. My experience of a loving God who seeks justice, compassion and care for all creation leads me to believe that the sudden appearance of that ram on that mountain that day was God’s way of saying: “Abraham, are you out of your mind?” But that’s my notion, based on my own experience with God’s voice and my perspective of the world around me.
I don’t know what God had in mind for Abraham and Isaac. What I suspect, based on our family story, the story of our relationship with God found in scripture, is that we humans tend to create God in our own image. We tend to hear God say what we might say. We tend to believe that God wants what we want. We tend to believe that God wants us to do things that bear an amazing resemblance to the things we want to do. A striking example of this is the steadfast belief held by all people in conflict: God is on our side. God is on my side.
We know that we sometimes hear our own desires as God’s voice. We also have a strong sense that God communicates with us and wants to be known to us. That leaves me—it leaves us—with a question: how do we know the difference? How do we know when we are hearing God’s voice and when we are hearing an echo of our own voice?
Our gospel portion points to two ways to help us discern whether we are hearing God’s voice or our own.
The first way is to be in community with people who are striving to live godly lives. You’ll notice I didn’t say perfect people or even righteous people—just people who are striving to live godly lives—lives of striving to meet the promises of our covenant with God. And how do we know that? We know because we see the essence of people around us. Over time, as we live and work, share and worship together, we begin to know where we can find wisdom—we begin to know where we can find people who have some practice at discerning God’s voice and who can help us sort out what we’re hearing.
One of the things that strike me about Abraham’s story is the absence of community around him. At the time of this story, Abraham is a man of substance. He travels with his kinfolks; he’s not alone out there as he travels to his new life. He’s not alone, but there is never any indication that he takes counsel with anyone else. His actions are based solely in his own understanding of God’s will. Never do we hear that he takes a respected cousin aside and says, “The strangest thing happened the other day. Let me tell you what happened—I’d like to know what you think about it.”
The second way to help us discern whether we’re hearing God’s voice or our own is to look at the probable result of our actions—to look at who benefits from the action we believe we’re being called to take. Jesus tells us “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple” will receive their reward. These “little ones” are the vulnerable among us—those who are weak, outcast or otherwise unable to care for themselves. The reward for those who care for the vulnerable, who seek justice and work for truth—the reward for those who turn away from the quest for power, admiration and position—the reward for those who strive to follow our baptismal covenant might not look like a reward to most people. When we seek to follow Christ, we are on a journey to a life that looks a lot like his—a life that runs counter to the values of the world around us. We are also on the road to a connection with God’s grace that strengthens us for the journey and helps open our hearts to the joy that’s present in every day.
Ultimately, it’s God’s grace that we trust to guide us in the choices we must make. When we keep our faces turned toward God, when we seek the counsel of those who don’t always tell us what we want to hear, when we look for the true beneficiaries of our actions, the chances are better that we’ll make choices that align with God’s deepest hope for our lives. And on the days when it all seems to be going up in smoke, we can remember that the end of the chapter isn’t necessarily the end of the story. We can remember that our God is the god of second chances.
We can remember Abraham and keep our eyes open for the ram.
Thanks be to God.