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2330 South Jefferson Street
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2330 South Jefferson Street
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The Season After Pentecost, also called Ordinary Time, is the period which has 28 Sundays this year. The season begins with Trinity Sunday (the first Sunday after Pentecost) and continues through the day before the first Sunday of Advent. The Sundays of this season are designated as Sundays after Pentecost. SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST JUNE 29, 2008
As Christ cares, we care…
We care about
all people. ORDER OF WORSHIP-10:30 A.M. + Indicates the people standing ENTRANCE
Prelude
Chaconne in D
Minor by
Louis Couperin
PROCLAMATION AND RESPONSE SENDING FORTH
+Singing
396
O Jesus, I Have
Promised
Angel’s Story
THOSE SERVING TODAY:
The Altar Flowers Are Given
WE EXTEND OUR CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY TO: *CHILDREN (AGES 3 through 1st GRADE), may meet the acolyte to recess to Children’s Church. Please ask your child to line up behind the acolyte who will lead all children out together. After the worship service, parents must pick up their child in the Children’s Department; children will not be allowed to leave the room until their parents arrive. WELCOME! We're glad to have all who have joined us for this time of worship. Especially to our guests and visitors, we welcome you to South Roanoke and to our fellowship. We invite those who have no church home to make South Roanoke your church and add your witness to ours. AVAILABLE IN THE NARTHEX: The July/August Upper Room, hymnals in brail, individual hearing enhancement equipment, and children’s bulletins (ages 3-12). Please ask an usher to assist you. NEXT WEEK’S SERMON, Come to Me, Come As You Are, will be based on Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 20-25. Please read and study these texts this week. NEXT SUNDAY, JULY 6, is a “first Sunday”. This means we ask you to bring non-perishable goods to church with you to help feed the needy in the Roanoke Valley. THE AFTERCARE SOCIAL CLUB will meet on Tuesday, July 1 to go to Smith Mountain Lake. If you would like more information about our Social Club, please call bonnie dayton, 981-0237. THE CHURCH OFFICE will be closed on Friday, July 4 for the Independence Day Holiday.
YOU CAN HELP! VOLUNTEER IN MISSION TEAM TO MISSISSIPPI--THE DATE IS SET!: For the Hurricane Katrina relief effort we will be sending a group to Mississippi October 18-25. Please contact the church office as soon as possible if you would like to be a part of this mission team.
VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL:
If you are interested in helping to provide a meal for our children
during Vacation Bible School (July 6-July 10) (particularly Monday, July 7
or Thursday, July 10), please contact Elizabeth Carroll at 400-7528 or ______________________ CHURCH
PICNIC—JULY 27, 2008 ______________________________ I N M E M O R I A M
Lougenia W.
Ghiringhelli ________________________
God’s Promises
When: Sunday July 6 – Thursday July 10 5:30 – 8:00 PM
Contact Lee Anne Steffe 540-344-4477 or jsteffe@cox.net
June 29, 2008 7th Sunday after Pentecost
The Ultimate Sacrifice The ultimate sacrifice. That’s what God asks of Abraham, isn’t it? The ultimate sacrifice; Abraham and Sarah’s son of their old age; the one through whom the very promise of God is established. You remember the promise God made to Abraham. “You be my people and I will be your God. Your descendants will number as the grains of sand beside the sea and through you all the nations of the world will be blessed.” God had determined to bring humanity back from their fall. Ever since Adam and Eve turned away from God and went their own way the relationship of humanity and God had been severed, cut off on the human side in the arrogance of self-dependence and self-sufficiency. But God did not give up. God intended to win back these wayward children and establish once again a world, a life, of peace, justice, and love, a world that was shattered at the fall. So God chose Abraham and his descendants for this purpose. God intends to restore creation in relationship with the Hebrew people, Abraham’s wandering nomads who have no home. It seems obvious that the promise is dependent upon children. With the departure of Abraham’s first son, Sarah’s stepson, Ishmael, the promise is still “on hold” with little hope of fulfillment as they both advance to very old age. But by the grace of God a son is born, Isaac. His name, you remember, means “laughter,” so named because, when God told them they were going to have a child in their nineties Sarah understandably laughed out loud! It is through Isaac, then, that the promise will be accomplished. It is through him descendants will number as the grains of sand beside the sea. But God asks of Abraham the ultimate sacrifice—his son, Isaac. Although this demand certainly seems abhorrent to us, it was not all that unusual for the time. You see, the sacrifice of children to the gods in order to secure their favor was a common practice of the time. And so one of the very first things to be said about this story is that it establishes once and for all that the God of Abraham and Isaac does not demand this. It is a story intended to explain why things are as they are. Ancient stories often have this function. These kinds of stories are called by Bible scholars “etiological stories.” For example, the creation story, in part, explains why human beings must work so hard “by the sweat of the brow” and why snakes are to be avoided. This story serves a similar function by answering the question, “Why don’t the Hebrews sacrifice their children to their God?” It is the ending of the story that answers the question because, in the end, God does not require this but provides the sacrifice for them. So one way to try and understand this ultimate sacrifice that God demands is to remember that this is a story that explains why they don’t ever do that. But, to the extent we surely still have many questions about it, there are deeper meanings yet to uncover.
The interpretation of this story by ancient rabbis sheds further light on
its meaning. In a Midrash, or interpretation, of this passage, it is
suggested that the conversation between God and Abraham only records once
side of the conversation. Abraham surely did respond to God, after all.
This interpretation suggests that Abraham’s response to God may have
sounded something like this:
In this intimate
conversation we find a clue to a deeper meaning of this story. Isaac is
shown to be Abraham’s most beloved son, his favorite. Perhaps he loves
Isaac above all else. The gift, meaning Isaac, has become a substitute
for the giver, meaning God. Abraham is sorely tempted to worship his son
instead of God; he puts his faith in his son as the sole fulfillment of
the promise for the future rather than in the one who is the guarantor of
that future. In this context the event becomes a moment of testing for Abraham. The story says that God needed to find out how faithful Abraham is, how loyal his obedience, how confident his trust. In the end, Abraham passes this test and is reminded that his son is a gift, but the future is not in Isaac’s hands. The promise and the future is God’s. The future is never in the hands of those to whom it is entrusted. It is always ultimately in the hands of God.
Now
perhaps can begin to imagine ourselves in Abraham’s place this morning.
We tend to get attached to things ourselves. There are those things in
our lives, aren’t there, that we dearly love and trust in them for our
wellbeing and our future? We trust the gifts more than we trust the God
who gives them, don’t we? What is it for you? Your job? Your home?
Your 401K? Your health? Your children? Your grandchildren? What do you
dearly love upon which your future is totally dependent? What on earth
will you do if you lose your job, your home, your 401K? What will you do
if your children or grandchildren don’t quite live up to your
expectations? What will you do when you lose your health? What do you
trust more than you trust in God? What Abraham learns we must learn…it’s
in God’s hands, no matter what.
God demands of us what is demanded of Abraham—unflinching loyalty and obedience. It requires of us that the sacrifice we offer must be made to God and not to so many other things.
When Bishop Will Willimon of the Alabama Conference was serving as Dean of the Chapel at Duke University he and his wife, Patsy, were leading a study of this story for an intergenerational group of church members. They decided to show a film adaptation of the story and then to divide the group for discussion. She took the children to another room while he led the discussion with the adults. Earlier she had expressed some concern about showing the film to the children, but he said, “It’s only a little Bible story. What harm can there be in it?” This is how he described the experience of this Bible study: The group watched silently as the story unfolded…the dialogue, in Hebrew with English subtitles, added authenticity to the film. What an austere sight it was to see old Abraham struggle up the windswept, dusty mountain -- Moriah -- a knife under his coat and his son trudging silently behind him. Finally the bronze blade is raised, the boy’s black eyes flash with horror; then the voice stays the knife, the ram cries from the thicket and it is over. "Who knows what the word ‘sacrifice’ means?" my wife asked the children. A few hands went up, a definition was attempted here and there. "But what does sacrifice mean to you?" she continued. That’s when the trouble started. "My Daddy and Mommie are doctors at Duke," said one third grader. "They help sick people to be better. Every day they do operations to help people." "And how is that a sacrifice?" Patsy asked. But the little girl was not finished. "And I go to the day care center after school. Sometimes on Saturdays too. Mommie and Daddy want to take me home, but they are busy helping sick people -- so lots of times I stay at the center. Sometimes on Sunday mornings we have pancakes, though." And everyone, from six to 11, nodded in understanding. They knew. "But what does this old story mean to us?" I asked. "I daresay we moderns are a bit put off by the primitive notion that God would ask anyone to sacrifice his child like this. Can this ancient story have any significance for us?" "God still does," interrupted an older woman, hands nervously twitching in her lap. "He still does." "How?" I asked. Quietly she said, "We sent our son to college. He got an engineering degree, and he got involved in a (new) church. He married a girl in the church; they had a baby, our only grandchild. Now he says God wants him to be a missionary and go to Lebanon. Take our baby, too." She began to sob. The silence was broken again, this time by a middle-aged man. "I’ll tell you the meaning this story has for me. I’ve decided that I and my family are looking for another church." "What?" I asked in astonishment. "Why?" "Because when I look at that God, the God of Abraham, I feel I’m near a real God, not the sort of dignified, businesslike, Rotary Club god we chatter about here on Sunday mornings. Abraham’s God could blow a man to bits, give and then take a child, ask for everything from a person and then want more. I want to know that God." Someone else was crying now, a young woman whom I had not yet met, a new member of the congregation. The woman sitting next to her put her arm around her. "Gloria wanted me to tell you that her husband left her and the two children last week. She wants us to pray for her," she explained. "What on earth was all that about?" I finally asked. She knew no more than I. By then, the wind had died down, the bleatings of the ram could be heard no more, and Father Abraham had descended from the wild mountain, leaving our group of (modern) suburbanites on the flattened plain of middle-of-the-road, reasonable religion. William Willimon, Christian Century, March 16, 1983, pp. 237-8. The ultimate sacrifice. By now we surely find ourselves standing squarely in Abraham’s sandles this morning. By now we surely know that we raise questions about this text not just because we are intellectually curious about it. Yes, it is helpful to know that this story helps explain why the Hebrews never sacrificed their children. But we want to know. Who is this God, really? What is it that this God demands of us? Where should we place our trust? Can we entrust to this God our most beloved persons and things? Can we trust this God who just expects us to obey, never seems to tell us anything in advance, and wants everything from us?
Four hundred years ago the
wife of the great reformer Martin Luther listened as her husband read this
story of Abraham and Isaac and demanded, "How could a loving God ask
Abraham to sacrifice his only son?" "Why Katy," Luther said to her, "He
did it himself."
"Give It Up," the Rev. Samuel T.
Lloyd, Day 1, 1999,
Yes, this God demands everything from us and just expects us to obey.
This God demands that we trust the giver and never just the gift. This
God would have us no longer sacrificing our children and our precious
things to far lesser gods. This God demands everything and will stop at
nothing. For this God it is God’s way or no way, no matter what.
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