The Rev. Noah Van Niel
June 28th, 2020
The Chapel of the Cross
Proper 8 (A): Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42
To hear audio of this sermon click here. And remember you can sign up for The Chapel of the Cross sermon podcast and get all our Sunday sermons sent right to you by clicking here.
Wilfred Owen was born in England in 1893. At the age of 22, like many of his peers, he enlisted in World War I. He served until November 4th, 1918 when he was killed in action, exactly one week, almost to the hour, before the armistice. The reason we know his name, and the reason he is not just another forgotten young soldier like many who died in the Great War, is because of his poetry. Owen is regarded as the greatest poet of the First World War. Much of his work is a searing indictment of the glorification of battle and military heroism; an expose of the horrors of the trenches and the senselessness of mass death. You may be familiar with some of his more famous poems like, Dulce et decorum est (It is sweet and fitting), Anthem for a Doomed Youth, or Futility. You may not know, that Owen also wrote a poem entitled, The Parable of the Old Men and the Young, in which he retells the story of the binding of Isaac as seen through the lens of World War I.
The story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis Chapter 22, which we just heard this morning, is a tense narrative, remarkable for how much drama is packed into its relatively few words. But its content is deeply, deeply disturbing. To have this father with his hand raised ready to slaughter his innocent child just turns your stomach. It’s even more offensive in the original Hebrew. The knife he has is more like a cleaver. The “binding” more like a trussing. This is a butchering, plain and simple. A butchering of an innocent child recast as some example of supreme faith to which we all must aspire. It’s only redeeming quality—if you can even call it that—is that Abraham doesn’t ultimately go through with it. However, in Owen’s retelling of the event, in a gut punch of a final couplet, he removes even that one redemptive component. Listen:
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
Abraham stopped. He changed course. He did not sacrifice his son. What Owen is implying is that, rather than sacrifice the Ram of Pride, the powers that be in World War I were even more horrific than Abraham, because they did not stop which resulted in millions of youth being slaughtered.
Good thing we’ve learned our lesson. Or have we? Columbine. Sandy Hook. Parkland. Just three of the now numerous school shootings that have slaughtered hundreds of innocent children. We’ve got young Black men and women being shot dead in the street or in their home by law enforcement, or citizen vigilantes, reigniting the truth that for hundreds of years in our country just to be young and black has been a capital offense. We’ve got brown children seeking out a better life who are dying in detention camps on our borders. We’ve got an opioid crisis claiming thousands of adolescent lives every year.[1] I could go on.
Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac is a horrifying story, but at least he didn’t actually kill him. World War I was horrifying, but that was a war and casualties, while tragic, are to be expected. If you ask me, the most disturbing thing is how in this day and age we continue to slaughter the young people of our country, particularly young people of color, in many and varied ways. I can draw no other conclusion from this than to think that we have made the collective decision that their lives are expendable, don’t matter. If I’m wrong, if I’m ungenerous in my deduction, then why would we allow, in this most prosperous nation, 11 million of them to go hungry every year, and 12 million of them to live in poverty, both of which correlate to all sorts of negative outcomes as they grow. If they grow. 73% of those children living in poverty are children of color.[2] In North Carolina 21.2% (1 out of 5) kids live in poverty. The 11th highest in the country.[3] And 86% of those are children of color.[4]
We forget, it seems, that our salvation is tied to how we care and provide for our “little ones.” Jesus said so himself, “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you none of these will lose their reward.” If you’re like me and your stomach turns as you read the story of Abraham and Isaac, and could never imagine doing that to your child, even if God demanded it; if you can nod in solemn agreement with Wilfred Owen as he condemns nation states for sacrificing their children in the name of national pride, why can we not also commit ourselves unequivocally to safeguarding those “little ones” who look to us for protection and care, particularly those little ones who do not look like us or live near us? Of all the aspects of justice that are demanded of Christians, there would seem to be no clearer call on our discipleship, than this: take care of the children.
Why is this so hard to do? Part of the problem, at least as I see it, is that it is not possible to care about other people’s children as much as we care about our own. I love my kids more than I love your kids. It’s one of our “natural limitations,” to borrow a phrase from St. Paul. We can be told to love everyone for as long as the preacher has breath, but the reality is, that love diminishes the further and further we get from the immediate. As Christians, we should always be trying to expand the reach of our hearts, but at the same time, we should not base our conceptions of justice upon them. That is why, a few chapters before our Gospel passage this morning, in Matthew 7, when Jesus puts down his golden rule—“do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—he is not establishing an emotional commandment, but an ethical one. This is a rule that says, “Imagine that it is you—decide how you would like to be treated in that situation—and then make it so all people can be treated in the way you would like to be.” That means not only do you, on an individual basis, engage with other people with kindness and love. It also means you establish rules and policies that ensure everyone will be treated that same way and have the same opportunities and protections that you do regardless of whether you know or care about them. The same goes for our children. Imagine it is your child living in poverty—would you want to send them to an under-resourced school? Would you like to not be able to take them to the doctor because you couldn’t afford it? Would you like to work 60 hours a week and still be unable to pay your rent let alone sign your kid up for soccer camp? If we are true to our Law, to God’s law as we have received it, and we would not like to live in those circumstances, then no one should have to. So long as they do it is wrong. It is a violation of the law that Jesus gave us. And if we are really to present ourselves to God as “instruments of righteousness” (again, St. Paul) then we must do something about.
People keep arguing about whether faith should be involved in the political sphere, whether we should, as Christians have a voice in public debate around laws and policies. To that I would say, that if my faith holds paramount the policy of doing unto others, that “unto others” part inherently brings us into the political realm. If we want to live a life of safety and security, then it is incumbent upon us to establish ways for that safety and security to be enjoyed by all people so they can live the abundant life for which they have been created and not left hungry and poor and forgotten and dead. When you hear people start talking about the need for “structural reforms” or “dismantling systems of oppression,” this is what they are talking about. A clear-eyed examination of the frameworks we have built into our society to ensure things like fairness, safety and security, things that we would want for ourselves and especially our children, are available to everyone. The question that is confronting us now, as Christians just as much as Americans, is “Are those structures, those frameworks working? Have they been built and applied in such a way that they actually do grant the same opportunities and protections to us as to everyone; to our children as to every child? Judging from the results, the answer to that question has long been, “No,” not all lives matter equally, particularly the lives of people of color; particularly the lives of our “little ones” who remain unprotected and undervalued in numbers that should make us ashamed. For us, as followers of Jesus Christ, nay, as human beings, that cannot be anything but unacceptable. And it must change. Luckily more and more people in positions to refashion those structures are finally waking up to that fact. To what effect remains to be seen. But we are not just living through a moment of crisis in our common life we are living through a moment of decision. We stand with our hand raised, knife glinting in the sun and our God is calling out us—“Abraham, Abraham, Stop! There’s another way. He doesn’t have to die.” Abraham stopped. Will we?
[1] https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/substance-use/drugs/opioids/
[2] https://www.childrensdefense.org/
[3] https://www.ncjustice.org/
[4]http://www.nccp.org/profiles/NC_profile_7.html