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Sunday, February 5, 2012

Passing the Test

Below is the text of the message in the Wheatland Parish for Sunday, February 5, 2012.  The scriptures are Genesis 22:1-19 and Matthew 4:1-11.

            I graduated from law school in the spring of 1984 and took the bar exam that summer.  I started seminary in 2006.  That means that I went over twenty-two years without having to take a test.

            I don’t know anyone who actually likes taking tests.  There probably are people who do; after all, God made each one of us different.  If you do, more power to you.  I’m sure that attitude helps you.  Even though I usually did fairly well on tests, though, I never really liked them.

            One of the reasons I did not like taking tests is that, the farther along you get in school, the more important those tests become.  I had classes where the vast majority of your grade would come from the final exam.  With the bar exam, of course, my ability to enter my chosen profession was at stake.  That’s a lot of pressure, you know?  Yes, you can take the test again, but they only give the bar exam every once in a while, and in the mean time I’d have had to find something else to do with my life, because I would not have been able to practice as a lawyer.  There was a lot riding on my ability to pass that test.

            That’s probably the biggest reason we don’t like tests.  We’re afraid we’ll fail, and we know that failing a test has consequences.  It’s bad enough when failing a test means we’ll fail a class.  It’s even worse when failing a test means we cannot enter the profession we want to go into.  It’s harder still, though, when we fail a test that’s given to us by God.

            The thing about those tests given to us by God, too, is that we usually don’t even realize it’s a test until after it’s over.  In school, we know in advance when a test is coming.  Yes, there are such things as pop quizzes, but we’re not likely to fail just because we mess up a pop quiz.  For the big tests, the finals, the ones that really determine our grade, we’re told when they’ll be.  We get time to prepare.  That’s not the way it works with God’s tests.  That certainly is not how it worked for Abraham and Isaac in our reading from Genesis today.

            We know from the outset that God was testing Abraham because the Bible says so in the first verse of our reading.  From what we can tell, though, Abraham had no idea that this was a test.  Abraham is minding his own business one day when God pops up.  God says, “Abraham!”  Abraham says, “Here I am.”  And God says, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah.  Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

            That’s it.  No explanation of what was going on.  Not even a hint of what God might be up to.  No recognition that this was going to be hard for Abraham.  No apology from God for asking Abraham to do such a hard thing.  Not the slightest bit of sympathy for Abraham at all.  God did not even tell Abraham exactly where they were going.  Just “go to this area that’ll take you three days to get to and when you get there, kill your son as a sacrifice to me.”

            Can any of us even imagine such a thing?  Think about it.  You’re at work or at home or whatever, just going about your business, and God shows up.  Without no explanation, with no sympathy or caring, God tells you to take your son or daughter and go to, say, Arizona.  God then says, “when you get there, I’ll show you a mountain for you to go up and kill your child on.”  Oh, and add to this the fact that child is the only child you have, and that you and your spouse had been trying for years and years to have a child and had pretty much given up when finally this child came along.

            Can you even imagine how Abraham must have felt?  I cannot.  Can you even try to imagine the conversation between Abraham and his wife, Sarah, about this?  Everything in them must have been saying “No.  We cannot do this.  We’re not going to do this.  God should not be telling us to do this.  This is totally unfair.  This makes no sense.  This has to be wrong.  It cannot possibly be God’s will for us to kill our only son, the son we’ve waited so many years to have.”  That must have been the worst night of their lives.

            We know what happened, though.  They were obedient.  The next morning, Abraham loaded up his donkey with supplies, got Isaac and a couple of servants, and they set out.  God told Abraham about the right mountain, and they went there.  Abraham got Isaac ready to be sacrificed.  It was not until the last possible second, after Abraham had his knife out, that God said this had all been a test and that Isaac was not to be killed.

            I wonder why God put Abraham through this test.  I wonder why God allowed Jesus to be put through the test we read about in Matthew, too.  After all, we the purpose of tests is so we can prove to the teacher that we know the material, right?  It’s so we can prove that we’re qualified to move on.  In this case, though, the “teacher”, so to speak, is God.  God, by definition, knows everything and can see into our hearts.  If that’s true, then God would’ve had no reason to test Abraham, and certainly would’ve had no reason to test Jesus.  God already knew they could pass the test.  So what was the point of making them go through this?

            As I thought about that, it struck me that there’s another reason we take tests.  It’s not just to prove to the teacher that we know the material and can move on.  It’s also so we can prove those things to ourselves.

            I mentioned taking the bar exam.  It turned out that not only did I pass the bar exam, I did extremely well on it.  You know what that did for me?  It gave me a lot of confidence.  My score on the bar exam did not just prove to the bar that I was qualified to be a lawyer.  It proved to me that I was qualified to be a lawyer.  It proved to me that I had the knowledge and the skill and the ability to actually be good at the thing that, at that time, I wanted to do with my life.  When I got my score the bar exam, I felt like not only could I become a lawyer, but that I could actually succeed at being one.

            I think that’s why God tested Abraham.  Maybe it’s not the whole reason, but I think it was at least part of it.  God wanted Abraham to know that he was worthy of being the father of the nation of Israel, and that he could succeed at doing it.  I think that’s at least part of why God tested Jesus.  God wanted Jesus, in his human form, to know that he was worthy, that he could withstand all the pain and suffering and temptation he was going to have to face, and that he really could succeed at doing what he’d been sent to earth to do.

            That’s why God tests us sometimes, too; so we’ll know that God thinks we’re worthy of God’s love.  Now, let me be clear about one thing.  I am not saying that every time something bad happens, it’s because God is testing us.  I don’t believe that to be true.  Bad things happen to us for a lot of reasons.  Sometimes it’s our own fault, sometimes we suffer because of the actions of others, and sometimes things just seem to happen and we don’t have any idea why.  I do not want anyone to leave here with the idea that I think God causes all the bad things in the world, because I don’t think that at all.

            I do think, though, that there are times when God does test us.  We may not know it at the time.  It may be that, just like Abraham, we only find out that it was a test after it’s over.  We may not understand why things are happening the way they are, just like Abraham did not understand why God was asking him to do the things he was asked to do.  Still, God asks us to be faithful, even when we don’t understand what’s going on or why.

            God does that because God knows that our faith gets stronger when it’s tested.  If our faith is never tested, then we don’t really know how strong it is.  A faith that’s never been tested is like a bridge that’s never been tested.  We think it’s strong enough to hold us and to keep us out of danger, but how do we know?  We don’t.  Once it gets tested, though, then we know it’s strong enough.  That’s how it works with our faith, too.  Once our faith is tested, we know it’s strong enough.  Then, we can step out confidently, knowing that our faith is strong enough to carry us through whatever life can throw at us.

            We all go through times in our lives where our faith is tested.  They’re not easy.  Abraham’s time of testing was not easy.  Neither was Jesus’.  Tests are not intended to be easy.  When we pass them, though, we know we have what it takes to follow God anywhere God leads us to go, and to do anything God asks us to do.

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