Our experiment in this worship series has been to turn to our neighbor and say the central idea of the sermon. So please turn to a neighbor and repeat after me, “Neighbor. Oh, Neighbor. There is no such thing. As other people’s kids.”

Yes there is no such thing as other peoples kids. We’ll get into this and how it relates to the binding of Isaac soon, but first a note about our bulletin covers.

Each of our bulletin covers featured Hocking Hills and the natural beauty of the place. The kids were away for a week at camp, so Kate and I decided to head down to Hocking Hills and take a hike on the Buckeye Trail. We thought we were in for a 6-mile round trip. It turns out, it was 6 miles one way. This expected 12-mile hike shows us that our journey of life is unexpected, long, and full of sights to see. If we have good traveling partners, the journey is that much more enjoyable. It is also good to know that we were on the Buckeye Trail at Hocking Hills (please note the blue blaze on the bulletin cover) and we are currently on the Buckeye Trail now. The trail runs around Medina Lake and around our Square.

These covers are meant to show us that death is a natural process of life. That’s the thing about life, no one gets out alive. Not even Abraham or Sarah. They were promised to be given a full life. A long life. But it wasn’t free from its worries or pain. There is suffering. There is famine in the land. And Abraham loses his son Ishmael as Sarah gets jealous of Hagar and sends her away. Yet God provides water for Ishmael and protects them.

Abraham also witnesses the death of Sarah. He remarries and has more sons, but the rabbis say he never gets over the loss of Sarah.

And today’s reading is a hard one. God tests Abraham’s faithfulness. He asks him to sacrifice Isaac, his long-awaited, promised son. Notice that Abraham is not surprised that God asks this. He doesn’t argue. Abraham has no problem arguing with God, he’s done it a few times.

When God says to Abraham that God will destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness… their wickedness which is undefined in Genesis but the Prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 16:49) and the rabbis up until the 1800s state that the sin of Sodom was inhospitality… turning away the stranger, offering up abuse instead of welcome… that’s why Sodom was destroyed according to the Bible. When Abraham hears this he knows his nephew Lot is in that city. So he says to God, “What if there were 100 righteous people, would you destroy those cities?”

“No,” says God. “But there aren’t that many.”

“Well what about 10?” counters Abraham.

“No,” says God. “But there aren’t even 10.”

“Well… how about 1?”

And that’s why God sends the angels to warn Lot to leave the city and to not look back. These are the very same angels that Abraham offered hospitality to and Sarah laughed out. The very same visitors Dan and Vicki Marty preached about in last Sunday’s blockbuster sermon that was so meaningful and so powerful.

Yet Abraham does not argue with God when asked to sacrifice his son. Nor does he ask how he should do it. While child sacrifice is not a practice in our culture, it was in Abraham’s time. The pagan gods demanded the best, the best of the sacrifices offered. The best rams, bulls, and other livestock. The best and unblemished birds. The best grain offerings. And yes, even children. There are many commands in Torah saying “Don’t sacrifice your children to Molech” an ancient Canaanite god.[1]  And the rabbis have wondered about this passage throughout the ages and I won’t give to you all the arguments here. I will offer my favorite interpretation.

Some rabbis state that Abraham doesn’t argue because Abraham is in on the joke. By now, he knows who God is. Abraham knows God’s character. God is one of blessing, who walks through the covenant offering alone, and alone bears the burden if the covenant is broken. Abraham knows what’s at stake for God if Isaac dies.

As they are walking up the mountain, Isaac asks, “What are we going to offer God?”

And Abraham says, “God will provide.”

And God does. A ram, caught in the thicket. That is what’s sacrificed. Abraham names that place, “God provided.” And names are important. God provided a ram, but Abraham still bound Isaac. Isaac is still tied up and must have been terrified.

God will provide. Yet we need to be aware of the ways we are binding our children. What are we sacrificing our children to? Each child should thrive. No parent should outlive their child. I’m not talking about childhood illness and tragedies that take our children from us; I’m focusing on preventable things. What are we sacrificing our children to in our day and age?

We have seen children get shot in their schools. Yet we are afraid to do anything about it. Nothing has changed. One guy tried to blow up an airplane with a shoe-bomb and now all of us from age 0-100 have to take off our shoes to board a plane. We have to get full-body scans because another guy had a bomb in his underwear. Yet nothing… nothing about mass school shootings. We aren’t looking for our ram there, we are sacrificing our children to our idol of guns and violence.

We have been feeding children at Garfield and at the library. We see how there are hungry kids in our community. Yet many are sacrificing these kids to their apathy and hardheartedness. They want those families to pull themselves up by the bootstraps but never bother to ask if they have boots in the first place. And if they don’t, why they don’t. They don’t see how kids are raising kids, older siblings are raising their younger siblings because the parents are working multiple jobs and still can’t make ends meet. I look at the plight of the working poor and the disappearance of the middle-class. And my heart breaks. We are sacrificing children to make the shareholders are happy.

I look at a school system that doesn’t teach home-economics and house-hold budgeting anymore. I see over-scheduled kids with baseball and soccer practices on Sunday mornings. I see us sacrificing our children to schedules and efficiency.

I see our society cutting school funding and extra-circulars and devaluing the trade schools. I see our society sacrificing our responsibility to the next generation. Teens and those in their 20s turn to addiction at unprecedented levels. Screen addictions, narcotics, alcohol. We are sacrificing our children to liquor and pills.  I’m so thankful for our recovery center, recovery groups like NA and AA and more.

We are binding our children with a crippling national debt, unending wars, and unchecked climate change. And I worry. I worry that we are binding and sacrificing. Heck, I worry about my own children and wonder how I’m binding them. I hope my nights away aren’t seen as a sacrifice for them. I wonder if there’s any hope.

In my office there is the picture donated in the 1970s. Jesus and the little children. It’s the first thing I see each and every day I’m in the office. Let the children come to me. That gives me hope. Then on the opposite wall. As I’m exiting. There’s a picture of the face of Christ made up of so many different people’s faces. It’s a reminder that we are the body of Christ. We are God’s promise. It takes each of us. When two or three are gathered. We don’t have to do this alone, we’re not called to do it alone. We do it together. We must wake up and see that there is no such thing as other people’s children. We are all God’s children and we belong to one another.

If we act like there are other children. That there are THEIR children… Well…. THEIR children end up becoming our nurses. Our mechanics. Our doctors and lawyers and our public leaders. THEIR children grow up and become adults. If we don’t care for them as children, THEIR children become troubled adults. As my mentor, the Rev Nancy Dahlberg used to say, “It’s much easier to raise a good child than fix a broken adult.”

There is no such thing as other people’s children.

Hear this good news: God will never require us to sacrifice our children. Not then, not ever. Not our kids and not THEIR kids for there is no such thing has other people’s children. God will provide us a way to promise, to thriving, for our offspring to be more numerous than the stars. Our children, whether they are our natural born or become ours through mentoring, through being our neighbor, through being our foreign exchanges students, there is no such thing has other people’s kids. We don’t sacrifice them. We dedicate them. We baptize them and say, “You belong to God. You are baptized in Christ. You have the Holy Spirit.” That is what we do as people of faith with our children.

Now all of the social issues mentioned seem overwhelming and so big. But the way to confront them is not all that complicated. It’s quite simple and easy and each of us can do it in our own way. I think the answer lies in a poem by William Martin entitled, Make the Ordinary Come Alive. It goes like this:

Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable but it is a way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand.

Make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.

The point of Before I Die is to re-prioritize your life and do the small things with intention. To do things like Perform on Broadway… which by the way… If your kid signed up or signs up to sing to play their instrument at church, they are performing on Broadway. The corner of Liberty and Broadway! There are so many great things on the board: to ski every resort in this country. To visit Ireland or play the piano. Do these things and make the Ordinary come alive, for that is a great witness to our children. 

For our offering… we will come up to our Before I Die wall one last time. We’ll look over what has been offered. If you are led, you can write your own intention. If you see something you can agree with, you can put a check mark beside it.

Dan will lead us in song, and we shall be together and offer our best to God.

Works Cited

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch

The poem comes from The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern by William Martin

Read more about the Before I Die project here: https://beforeidieproject.com/