Is That Your Final Answer? Text: Genesis 22: 1-14 & Mark 8:31-38 March 16, 2003, Year B, 2nd Sunday in Lent The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Is that your final answer? Many of us will recognize this standard question from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire just before the person in the hot seat learns whether he or she will advance to the next level of cash money or go home losing most of what had been won. I guess this reveals how little TV I watch because other than the ABC news, which I pre-record to avoid commercials, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, is the last show I watched in its entirety, and Regis was still the host. This time God asks the question. "Abraham!" "Here am I." "Is that your final answer?" "Yes, Lord, that's my final answer." "Congratulations, Abraham, you advance to the next level of questioning. And, your next question is, 'Will you take your son, Isaac, whom you love, for whom you and Sara have waited so long; will you take him to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you?'" "Yes, Lord." "Is that your final answer?" "Yes, Lord, that's my final answer." "Congratulations, Abraham, you advance to the next level of questioning." As Abraham binds Isaac and stacks the wood around him he asks him, "Isaac, are you willing to be sacrificed to our Lord God, as he has asked me to do?" "Yes, Father." "Is that your final answer?" "Yes, Father, that's my final answer." "Congratulations Isaac, you advance to the next level of questioning." A medieval painting depicts Abraham standing over Isaac, who is bound to a stack of wood. Abraham has a long dagger like knife over his head poised and ready to strike, taking the life of the son for whom he and Sara had waited so long, who was to be the source of the future generations that God had promised him, whom he loved more than his own life. "Abraham, Abraham!" "Here am I, Lord." "Is that your final answer?" "Yes, Lord, that's my final answer." "Congratulations, you have won all there is to win." Let us be careful not to read or interpret this text too literally. I do not have time in this sermon to address the issue, and to do so will take us in another direction, but we must never hear this text as justifying taking a life. Instead, let us focus on the importance of not placing other things before God and what we lose if we do. I find preaching in Lent both the easiest and most difficult time to preach - easy because we avoid this portion of the Gospel so much, that almost anything that is said is like hearing it for the first time and difficult because we want to avoid the message as we have before. We want to approach the Gospel the same way we approach most everything else. We want immediate success. Thus, we want to hurry through Lent. We want Easter without the wilderness and without the crucifixion. We want a Lent in which we can give up one of our physically unhealthy vices and say that we have experienced a Lent of self-denial. However, we hesitate to venture into the wilderness that Lent invites us and to give up what leaves us spiritually unhealthy - denying ourselves those things on which we place greater value than God. Abraham loved Isaac more than his own life. Did he place greater value on Isaac than on God? Jesus calls us, not to the success our culture holds out to us, but to self-denial. While in other seasons of our church calendar we can celebrate the gifts we receive through the Gospel, in Lent, we are left to wrestle with the fact that we fully understand these gifts only after we have understood Jesus' passion and our call to self-denial. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a 20th century German theologian, who gave up his safety in the United States to return to Germany and confront the evils of Naziism and was executed the day before his prison camp was liberated by the Allied troops. Bonhoeffer said in his book The Cost of Discipleship that when Christ calls a person, he calls him or her to die. It is only when we are willing to give up what separates us from God - whatever we value more than God - only then will we be successful. Not successful in our culture's understanding of successful, but as Jesus informed us in today's reading from Mark. After Jesus taught his disciples that to fulfill his purpose, he was going to suffer many things, be rejected by those valued by their culture, and ultimately be killed. Peter says, "No way, Lord. You are the Messiah, the new king who will restore Israel to its former earthly greatness." "Peter, is that your final answer?" "Yes, Jesus, that's my final answer." "Sorry, Peter, you go home with nothing because you still don't get it." Fortunately for Peter and fortunately for us, we are always given another chance - even when we think it's our final answer. As I did Ash Wednesday, I continue to invite you into the wilderness, to journey into a Holy Lent. At this point in that journey, I ask you to prayerfully consider what you place before God. What separates you from experiencing the full glory of the Gospel? Think in stewardship terms. If we are not giving sacrificially, that pretty well reflects we are not loving sacrificially either. While this applies to our money, of course, it also applies to our time and talents. Abraham was willing to give up his son. That was his final answer. Fortunately God will not call on any of us to sacrifice our child or another human. However, God may ask us to assess where those relationships are unhealthy and we maintain them primarily to meet our needs. God may also ask us to sacrifice our pride in relationships needing reconciliation. In this journey through Holy Lent I invite you to hear Jesus' words as told by Mark and to understand that we are offered our life in its fullest and that we can reach this only through self-denial and not being distracted by what the world offers us as more attractive than God. In this journey, we must hear and accept the invitation to take up our cross and follow Jesus. We will flower a cross on Easter morning. This is good symbolism because it reflects that things began anew with the resurrection. However, this is not the cross that we are asked to bear. The cross we are asked to bear is the one in which we have prayerfully considered what in us we should let die so that what is the best in us can live to its fullest. Mark is telling us that losing ourselves for the gospel is life-saving. On Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, when a contestant is not sure of the correct answer, he are she has three lifelines. The 50/50 lifeline removes two wrong answers thus improving one's chances; the "Poll the audience" lifeline allows a contestant to ask the audience for help with the answer, the "Call a Friend" lifeline allows the player to phone someone he or she thinks is more likely to know the answer. God has also given us three lifelines. 50/50: Scripture reveals to us information that enables us to avoid some of the bad choices of life and be directed toward the good. Poll the Audience: The Church, the Body of Christ, provides us with guidance to the right answers. We find this both in our Tradition, the teaching of the Church over the ages, as well in caring people who want the best for us and help guide us in our choices. Through spiritual direction and prayer and study groups, they can guide us to the right answers. Call a Friend: The Trinity guides us to the right answer. God the one who called Abraham to allow nothing to separate him from God, makes the same call to us. Jesus, by willingly going on the cross offers us an example. While we have to allow more than the 30 seconds allowed on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, if we will wait silently and patiently, the Holy Spirit guides us to the right choices. We are invited into a Holy Lent to determine what we place before God. Unlike Who Wants to Be A Millionaire we do not receive guaranteed plateaus nor or are we eliminated by a wrong choice. Instead, we can either lose everything or gain everything, but we are continually invited to use our lifelines until we get it right. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? - It's not reality TV but real life, Christ asks the question, and you are the one who has to answer. - Will you come after me, will you deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me? Is that your final answer?