Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”….He called that place Bethel.
-Genesis 28:16-17, 19a

Whenever I visit my home in South Carolina, I love to go outside at night and take a deep breath. On a clear night the stars are far brighter than they are in Nashville. My parents live on the edge of the woods and though you can hear the distant hum of Interstate 26, the primary sounds are of the life that fills the place. Crickets. Cicadas. Birds bidding good night to one another. And a chorus of frogs that transform from a boy choir chirp to a deep bellow as spring turns to summer.

If I stop for just a moment, I feel peace. The world is still and I feel like God is just a little bit closer. I don’t see angels ascending and descending, but it definitely feels like the holy is in that place. That driveway in Spartanburg County is a Beth-el, a house of God. I am grateful for the times I remember that.

Sundays are hard. That is just the reality of my life right now. It used to be my favorite day; a time when I got to to do what I love. Now the day is salt in the wound. This difficult season has put a great strain on my faith. Strong in the initial weeks after stepping down, I find myself spiritually struggling. I feel alone; uncertain of whether there is a place for me. There is a spark of hope and sacred mischief that, for the time being, has been extinguished.

So when Parable of the Sower began to be read this morning at church, I braced myself for the wave of guilt. In this wilderness season, I am the rocky soil, the soil among thorns, the soil patrolled by a Hitchcockian number of birds. How on earth can something good take root when I feel like crap?

While I prepared for a guilt trip, I heard our assistant rector Rev. Sides say this, “Jesus doesn’t use parables to shame.” She said that the point is not for us to hear these words and feel like failures. We contain all four types of soil. We need to be aware of the areas of our life that our rocky or thorny and clear the land the best that we can. Yet Jesus is still going to graciously sow seeds.

Did the title tip my hand too much? The near sacrifice of Isaac has always been a troubling passage for me. Now I can put on my religious studies hat and tell you that compared to some other religious stories of the day that this tale is actually kind of progressive. The religion following the God of Abraham is different from other faiths; even though it feints in that direction, this God does not require child sacrifice. This story conveys the important message (one that I wrote about just last week) about the necessity and difficulty of obedience to God above all else. It asserts that such faithfulness will be rewarded. I also know that this story was told in a context that is dramatically different from our own. It is not written for modern audiences.

But, whew, I really hate this story. I didn’t feel great about as a kid and I truly do not like it today as a father. Despite all the caveats mentioned above, I cannot read this story and not imagine how everyone involved would walk away with irreparably scarred relationships.

How could Abraham have lived with himself knowing that he was moments from killing his own son? How could Isaac—who was tied up, laid upon an altar, and watched his father grab a knife to sacrifice him—not be a complete shell of a person? How could the relationship with father and son ever be the same? And how could either of them not feel conflicted about a God who played such a seemingly cruel game with both of them?

This is one of those texts with which people are not sure what to do. It is likely that a lot of churches will shy away from it. Or it is one that a church might triple down on and receive the wrong message (“As the army of Christ, we are at war with everyone and everything in this world!”). It’s a tough one. The text definitely has an edge as it reaches its crescendo. Jesus says that he didn’t come to bring peace. Rather he came to bring a sword that would sever the ties within one’s family. In fact, if you want to follow Jesus then you need to hate your own family.

It is one of those moments of jarring dissonance. Much of the gospel message aims to bring the Hope of God to fruition. There is a desire for justice, peace, and a love unlike that which the world has ever experienced. So when Jesus says that he came to set sons against fathers, daughters against mothers, and so on then we find ourselves clearing out our ears in hopes that we didn’t hear him correctly. It kind of seems antithetical to what he teaches. Does he really want his followers to go to war with their families?

I am writing this as I sit at my parents’ kitchen table in South Carolina. I am fortunate that I have parents who have been there for me from the beginning and are still here for me now. Yesterday at breakfast, Mom asked the loaded question of how I was doing and I could answer in full honesty because I knew she truly wanted to know and I had no fear that my response would not scare her off. I do not know where I would be without these two loving people.

So does Jesus want me to hate them? No, of course not.

The old saying goes that if you want to make God laugh, tell God about your plans. Apparently the reverse is true: if God wants to make us laugh, then telling us the plan is the way to go. That is the story here. Three mysterious visitors visit Abraham and Sarah and tell them that the very, very, very old couple is going to have a baby. Sarah overhears this ludicrous plan and laughs.

Yet God gets the last laugh. Sarah has a baby and they name him Isaac which means, “One who laughs or rejoices.” The skeptical chuckle at the seemingly outlandish turned into the giddy laughter of “How the heck did we get so lucky?” It is two people cracking up because things are ridiculously wonderful.

There is not much profound to add to the story except that I wish that we found more opportunities for laughter within the church. There are different ways that we experience the love and grace of God, but one of the ways is an unbridled joy that often does not get expressed in church. Come to think of it, that kind of joy does not often get expressed in our culture generally.

“Follow me.”

It seems really, really simple. In some ways it is. One of the lyrics that feels like it came preloaded in my memory is “I have decided to follow Jesus / I have decided to follow Jesus / I have decided to follow Jesus / No turning back / No turning back.” As a kid, following Jesus felt simple because the world is a lot less complicated. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God? Do you feel sorry for the wrong you’ve done and want to try to do what’s right? Then let’s go.

And even all these years later? Some days, it still feels kind of simple. Not simple as in easy but simple as in I still think Jesus is the best way we can encounter God, I am sorry for the wrong I have done, and I do want to try to do what’s right. Sign me up. Let’s go.

Yet other days I am reminded that biblically speaking, this whole “Follow me” business requires more than sign me up and let’s go.