Sermon: Listening for God

A few months ago, I came across home security footage of these adorable rabbits caught jumping on a trampoline. Maybe you saw this one too. The rabbits were jumping with so much joy having found this bouncy nylon canvas.  I watched it a few times because I couldn’t believe my eyes. What an amazing, one of a kind chance to catch rabbits doing something like this! I didn’t even know rabbits could jump on a trampoline! They looked like they were having so much fun. I was mesmerized by the impossible becoming possible.  I even shared it with my sister and best friends. 

I’m embarrassed to say it now, but I’d been tricked. We’d all been tricked. It wasn’t until I took a step back to really think about it, that I realized there was no possible way this video could be real. I started asking questions- how did they get up on the trampoline? How did they even know that the material was elastic enough to bounce their little bodies into the air? It wasn’t adding up. I opened the comments on the video and read what I suspected, “AI SLOP.” 

AI videos like these have taken over social media.  Some of them are easy to tell they are AI- the videos have extra fingers or teeth, disappearing and reappearing shapes, weird lighting, and glitches in the frame, while other AI videos are much harder to discern if they are real. We don’t always catch these things because we have a tendency to scroll passively.  We value entertainment over critical thinking. We can be easily emotionally manipulated when what we see fits our confirmation bias, and when our critical thinking skills lay dormant, we are sitting ducks for manipulation.  In the case of the trampoline rabbit video, what difference does it make if I believe that to be true or not?  The problem wasn’t the rabbits. The problem was realizing how easily I can believe something without stopping to ask if it’s true. 

At it’s core, trust always involves risk. We trust that a chair will hold us, because it’s the chair’s job to do so. Did you inspect the pew for it’s structural integrity before you sat in it this morning? My guess is, probably not. You’ve sat in that same pew for years and years, and it’s never failed to hold you safely. But the second it starts to feel rickety and wobbly, and your blind trust is questioned. Every movement, every creak of the chair temps you to imagine your body crashing to the ground. And it’s an unsettling feeling.  And if it’s unsettling when we can’t trust a chair, imagine what happens when we’re not sure we can trust what we think we hear from God.

Today’s story from Genesis is a deeply disturbing and horrifying story centering around trust and obedience, and at its center is the attempted murder of a child.

Thankfully, the murder of Isaac was botched at the last minute by supernatural intervention, but the fallout afterwards shaped the future of generations. It’s a hard story to hear, especially in our modern context. There are so many questions I have about this story like, 

How could God ask Abraham to kill Isaac? This was Abraham’s only child, the child he loved deeply, the child God just a few chapters before, promised to Sarah and Abraham after all those years of prayer, infertility, and despair…the child at the core of God’s promise to Abraham to make him a father to many nations? Why would he ask that of Abraham? God literally and ironically becomes a threat to that exact promise. It doesn’t seem to add up. 

This text reads like a dramatic psychological thriller with twists and turns meant to keep you reading. A good psychological thriller  draws you in with suspense, not using action or violence, but using fears, secrets, misperceptions, and uncertainty about what is real. The tension builds as you start to question who to trust and what is actually real.

And in this psychological thriller we call Scripture, we have an emotional high stakes story unfolding before our eyes.  And the question that haunts this story is this: Did God really ask Abraham to kill Issac? And it makes us wonder, was Abraham delusional in thinking God really asked him to kill his son as a sacrifice?    This request from God seems too shocking and morally disturbing. And yet, Abraham didn’t even question the command. He just responded with unyielding obedience. Why didn’t he doubt the character of the request? Why didn’t he speak up against it?

It’s not like Abraham hasn’t argued with God before.  In one of the boldest moments of scripture in Genesis 18, Abraham challenges God’s plan to destroy the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. He questions God’s justice, intercedes for strangers, and bargains with God to change God’s plan. And God does!

And yet, when God asks Abraham to kill his own son….. radio silence.  Abraham never even challenges God. Why not now? Why for strangers and not for your own beloved child, Abraham?

Abraham feels a lot like an unreliable narrator, someone whose version of the story makes us question what’s true. We don’t know who to trust.  

I'll be honest: I don't like this story. I don’t like it at all. It’s horrific to imagine a father willing to kill his own son because "God told him to." And I struggle with the way this story has often been preached as the ultimate example of faithful obedience, as though unquestioning compliance is the highest form of faith. And yet, this is one of our foundational stories in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. 

And maybe the reason this story has endured for so long is because it refuses to let us off the hook. It forces us to ask: What do we do when what we think God is saying doesn't sound like God at all?

This isn’t a modern discomfort. People have been troubled by this story for generations. The great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant struggled with this story, too. Kant questioned Abraham’s ability to interpret God’s own heinous request, questioning whether or not he had a religious experience or was just plain mad. What is reasonable or unreasonable to believe?, Kant would ask. The more disturbing or morally wrong a message from God seems, the more skeptical you should be that it actually came from God. 

So if someone thinks, ”I think I hear God telling me to kill my child,” there should be a huge pause between, 1. “I think I hear God.” And 2. “Therefore I should do this terrible thing.” This pause exists because human beings can be mistaken.  We can misunderstand our own experiences, our feelings, or what we think God is saying. Abraham should have stopped and questioned the command instead of immediately obeying it. This skeptical interpretive pause means taking time to ask: Could I be wrong? Does this fit within God’s character? Does this violate basic moral principles? Am I misinterpreting this experience? This is all the work of discernment- asking questions to distinguish the truth from error as we search to recognize God’s voice. At first this story makes us ask, “How could God ask Abraham to kill Isaac? But maybe the the more important question is this: How do we know when the voice we hear is truly God’s?

When I was a teenager, I started attending church.  A baptist church. I didn’t grow up in a religious household. No one in my family was Baptist.  In fact, my mom grew up Catholic and my dad grew up Methodist, so terms like “the lord’s supper” and “sinner’s prayer” and “believer’s baptism” were never spoken in our house, and were all new to me.  I was invited to attend a baptist youth camp, and while there, I made a decision to follow Christ at the age of fifteen.  I saw my peers living out their faith and I wanted to be a part of that too. And I sure did take it seriously.  I came home ready from camp to evangelize all of my friends. I couldn’t stop talking about Jesus to anyone who would listen. I was at church anytime the doors were open, because I couldn’t get enough. I was all in. 

As a new believer, I tried to learn all I could. I fervently read the Bible on a daily basis. If my church would have had awards for perfect Sunday school attendance, I would have gotten one. But I had a lot of unanswered questions. My Sunday school teachers and my pastor kept talking about “God’s will.” And as any curious teenager would, I asked, “how do you know what God’s will is?” I really wanted to make sure I was following that because I began to feel a call to ministry and I wanted to make sure that it was in the playbook of “God’s will”. To my surprise, these trusted adults in my church couldn’t answer my question.  No one could give me a satisfactory answer, especially when I confessed to them I felt called to ministry, a place where I had only seen men in leadership. 

I agonized over this for a long time. What I needed was some one to teach me about the spiritual practice of discernment.  Discernment is more than just the process of making a good decision, or choosing right from wrong. It’s a powerful process utilizing prayer, and meditation, and silence, to evaluate thoughts, impulses, and life choices to align them with God’s character. It’s a lifestyle, a framework, an approach to everyday life that gives us the tools to use when we are faced with a new decision. 

Discovering God’s will wasn’t a matter of uncovering a pre-written playbook for my life,  like I so badly wanted in my adolescence,  but rather, discernment is an attitude of listening to God in all of life, in all the ways that make us “us”.  It can look like prayerfulness, active awareness, and just openness to God. 

In 1521, Ignatius of Loyola was a 30 year old Spanish nobleman and solider.  He loved status, adventure, and dreamed of military glory.  But during the Battle of Pamplona, a cannonball shattered one of his legs and badly injured the other. His military career was over.  

Confined to bed for months, he wanted to read stories about knights and romance, but none were available.  Instead, he was given two religious books, Life of Christ and The Golden Legend.  As he read, he noticed something important.  When he fantasized about returning to military glory, the excitement faded and left him feeling empty.  But when he daydreamed about imitating the saints and following Christ, he felt a deeper and more lasting joy.  After his recovery, he spent nearly a year praying, fasting, and writing down prayers, meditations, questions for self-examination and methods for discernment.  These notes became the Spiritual Exercises, a four stage guided process of prayer and discernment. 

Ignatius spent months learning not to trust every inner voice, knowing that humans can mistake their own desires, fears, and impulses for the voice of God. We must discern this voice. 

I don’t think any of us will ever hear a voice telling us to sacrifice our children. But every one of us will face moments when we wonder: Is this from God? Is this fear? Is this my ego? Is this something else entirely? That's why discernment matters.

God is active and moving in the world and within our own lives, and we must enter into the world of silence and mystery so we can become aware of the ways God is working within us. Some of the most basic questions we can ask ourselves as we discern are: Is this of God or not? And, “does this draw me closer to God or further away?” We can utilize these prompts for big life changing decisions as well as the smaller, less consequential choices. 

Luckily for us, discernment isn’t done alone.  Discernment is communal. It should be done in community, with people who are in our circle of support, the people who help us see the big picture. These are the people that see our gifts, our struggles, and our passions, and they can call us out when we aren’t living into them. They know our heart and can help us find the threads that run through our lives so that we can shift through the all the details to find clarity. 

I’ve been fortunate to have those people in my life who have been beside me, praying, and walking with me. Some of these people are fellow female clergy, some are longtime friends, and some are even in this room! As my calling to ministry has evolved over the years, they’ve helped me discern the deep wants of my heart and helped shine light on how God is leading me. 

Early on in my ministry at this church, I remember telling my Baptist Women in Ministry mentoring cohort that I never wanted to preach.  I was really feeling fulfilled in my ministry to teenagers, and didn’t want to shift my ministry to one that included preaching… and it sounded scary to be vulnerable in a pulpit. And yet, over time, things did begin to shift. With every opportunity in the pulpit, I could feel the Spirit working within me as I crafted my words. I began to realize my own passions and gifts, and noticed my desires shifting towards WANTING to preach.  My spiritual director and clergy friends continue to encourage me to pay attention to this. This is the work of discernment- evaluating our thoughts, passions, and gifts, as it aligns with God’s character.

My BWIM mentoring cohort often remind me of that day I said I never wanted to preach, and now I am here, in front of you, proof that God uses our gifts, passions, talents- all the things that make us US, to call us into the fullness of who we are meant to be. 

The tragedy of Genesis 22 isn’t that Abraham heard a voice. The tragedy is that he never stopped to ask whether the voice sounded like the God he knew.  

Faith is not blind obedience. Faith is discernment. Faith is the courage to pause.  Faith is asking the hard questions.  Faith is listening in prayer and in community.  Faith is holding your certainty loosely.  Faith is paying attention to what draws us toward love, mercy, justice, and life. 

I was fooled by rabbits on a trampoline because I didn’t stop long enough to ask if it was true.  But the stakes were low. When it comes to our lives, our callings, our relationships, and our understanding of God, the stakes are much higher. 

Ask questions. Pay attention.  Listen to the people who know you and love you. Commit yourself to prayer.  Test what you hear against the character of God revealed in Jesus. Because the voice of God does not lead us towards fear, violence, hate, or death. The voice of Go leads us towards love, wholeness, and abundant life- for all.  The work of faith is not certainty. The work of faith is learning to recognize the voice of the One who is always calling us towards life.