This is a tough passage.  As a parent of a young child, I can barely conceive of God asking this of me.  So what are we to do with this passage?  I take a certain degree of comfort in knowing that we are not the first people to be troubled by this passage.  We are not the first people to wrestle with the meaning of this story and why it’s included in our scripture. 

From the beginning, we, the readers, are let into a little secret, that this is all a test.  But why is God testing Abraham?  And why is God testing Abraham in this way? For most of the narrative surrounding Abraham up to this point, was first that God will lead him to be the patriarch of many peoples, and second that Abraham, even in his aged state, will father a son.  So why is God so interested in taking this promised child away?

Perhaps this story isn't the story of a child sacrifice, perhaps it's about something else...

While we often attribute Genesis as our primary story of creation, the Bible contains multiple stories of creation.  So what sets these stories apart?  Why do we tell these stories?  We tell the story of creation because it tells us about who God is, what God longs for and it speaks to God’s relationship with humankind.  

We can easily get ‘caught in the weeds’ trying to figure the ‘how’ out of creation.  But what I believe is more important is the ‘why’ of creation.  God creates because God is a creator.  God delights in creation.  God’s creation story also tells us a bit about God’s longing for creation.  God’s creation is a peaceful creation, it stands out from other creation stories, in that it’s a generative creation, not one as a by product of violence.  It also speaks to God’s goal to return creation to this state of peace.  Finally God’s creation speaks to God’s particular and intimate relationship with God’s created, humankind, placing us ‘just a little lower than the angels’ and made in God’s ‘own image.’  It shows God’s particular affinity for humankind.

We tell the story of creation at the beginning, because it sets the stage for the larger drama of God’s story and our story.

The word Gospel comes from both the Greek and the Anglo-Saxon, in the Greek, it roughly translates to good news, however, in the Anglo-Saxon, godspell, it translates to good story.

Three questions emerged for me as I pondered the word Gospel.  First, what is the good story?  The Sunday School answer would be Jesus, but what is it about Jesus that is the good story?  As followers of Jesus, we do believe that there is a good story in Jesus' life, teachings, death and resurrection.  So what is it?  

Second, how are we living this good story?  How is Jesus’ good story making a difference in our lives and how we live?  As Anabaptist Mennonites we believe that this good story has implications for how we live our lives.  So how are we embodying this good story each and every day?

And lastly, how are we telling or sharing the good story?  This is better known as evangelism.  Yet, another word with baggage.  Evangelism shares the same root word as “good news,” and literally means sharing the good story. So how is this story being shared? 

God’s good story is embodied by Jesus, and makes a difference in our lives, so we can share it with the world.

American Evangelicalism would tell us that we need to be saved.  And many of the late 20th-century revival meetings were focused on doing just that: ‘saving souls for Jesus.’  Something that has always troubled me in this line of thinking was the unanswered question, ‘saved from what?’

The common, assumed answer is that we are to be saved from eternal damnation, from hell.  More philosophically, we could say that we are saved from being separated from God (eternally). But what if salvation means something else, something altogether different?  

What if salvation isn’t about being saved from something? What if, instead, it’s about being healed and restored?  The question then changes, healed to what?  Restored to what?  Redeemed to what?

Jesus' salvific act on the cross, I believe, is more about drawing us in and towards God, rather than preventing us from going to the Bad place.  Rather than moving from, we’re moving towards something.  Rather than escaping, we’re striving for.  It’s a little distinction, but it makes a difference.  It’s about restoring, redeeming and reclaiming humankind as the Good creation that we are. 

“Who do you say that I am?” Is the question that Jesus poses to his followers after hearing what the crowds are saying about him?  This question is as relevant today as it was then.  Who do we say that Jesus is?

For some, Jesus is a teacher, a moral guide, or an ethicist.  For others, Jesus is divine; the Son of God.  As Anabaptist/Mennonites, we confess that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.  And so we might use words like Saviour, Redeemer, Lord to talk about Jesus.  What do we mean when we talk about Jesus today?  Who is it that we’re imagining?

Like God and like each person, Jesus has many different sides to their personality.  When we focus on one at the expense of another, we lose important pieces of the picture.  This reflection will explore some of the essential facets of Jesus, whom we confess as Lord.

How do we speak about God? We each carry an image of God with us. For better or for worse, this image of God shapes our relationship with God. For some, it’s the image of God as a father, a loving, caring parent. For others, the image of God as father evokes memories of a strict, judicial parent.

God’s Hebrew name is best translated as “I AM.” This is the name that God tells Moses from the burning bush. God is.

We're invited to imagine God in a variety of ways. It allows us to finish the sentence, “God is…” God can be breath and air, like the Ruach we explored last week, God can also a burning bush, God can be..., you fill in the blank. What are the different ways that we could imagine God? 

How do we talk about the “Holy Spirit”?  It’s one of those phrases that we use which can have multiple meanings.  God’s Presence, Holy Ghost, Breath of God, Fire, or Spirit of God, even the Spirit of Christ.  All are possible meanings for the “Holy Spirit.”

In Hebrew, it’s known as the Ruach Elohim.  In Greek, it’s Pneuma, or Spirit, Wind, or Breath.  But it’s also known by the name the Paraclete, which can mean the 'advocate', 'counsellor', or ‘helper'.

The “Holy Spirit” seems to be as wild as its nature, whether it’s manifest as tongues of fire, wind, breath, language, or even the burning feeling of love.

On Pentecost Sunday, we turn our gaze towards the “Holy Spirit” and consider this often-used and yet equally confusing name for the presence of God.

In the years following the crucial Jerusalem Conference, the early church tried to live into the radical inclusivity of welcoming both Jew and Gentile into God’s Church.  This transition has gone more easily for some congregations than others.  At the beginning of this letter to the Galatians, Paul writes about how the church struggled to live into the ideal of the Jerusalem Conference, where some followed Jewish purity laws and while others did not.

Paul reminds us that faith is about trusting God to do God’s work, specifically around God’s relationship with humankind.  God has already gifted us a good and right relationship, we know this as salvation, or justification.  God has done the work to restore our relationships with God.  Our job is not to earn this, it’s a gift. Rather, our job is to live in the light of faith.  Faith, for Paul, is an orientation of life, a life lived in trust in the love and grace of God.

The account of the Council of Jerusalem found in Acts 15 is an account of a crucial conversation which became the turning point for the followers of Jesus.  There was heated discussion about the inclusion of Gentiles into the newly forming faith.  There were also questions of what was required of Gentiles to participate in the newly forming faith.  The debate at the core of this passage is identity.  More specifically, how much church members weigh their religious identity.  The resolution to this tension for the Jerusalem Council was to see and hear how God’s spirit was a work in the church, drawing together the diversity of the church, to affirm everyone’s primary identity as a follower of Christ, beloved by God.