The God who Provides, Hears, Gives and Welcomes.
I’ll be honest: when the readings hand us Genesis 22 first thing on a Sunday morning, part of me wants to quietly check whether there is another page — perhaps one with a softer tone, something with sheep, bread, or Jesus telling a story about seeds.
Instead, we get Abraham and Isaac, the knife, the mountain, the terrible silence of that walk, and Isaac asking the question that makes your stomach drop: “Where is the lamb?”
It is not easy to read. I do not think it is meant to be. I am always slightly suspicious when someone makes it sound too easy, as if the whole thing can be tidied up with one neat sentence and we can all go home feeling spiritually efficient.
Some passages resist being wrapped up too quickly. They sit with us. They unsettle us. They ask what kind of God we think we are dealing with, and what kind of trust and faith we might have in this God.
Abraham says, “Here I am.” He says it more than once. It sounds simple, but it is not small.
“Here I am” is not a heroic speech. It is not polished or especially impressive. It is simply availability: the prayer of someone who does not have the whole map and may not even be holding it the right way up but is still trying to listen.
That may be closer to most of our faith than we care to admit. We like the idea of faith as certainty, preferably with good posture and a calm facial expression.
But much of the time, faith sounds more like this: “Lord, I’m here. I’m not sure I understand. I’m not sure I’m doing this well. I have doubts. I have questions. I may need a cup of tea before I can be useful. But I’m here.”
Psalm 13 gives us permission to say the less tidy parts out loud: “How long, O Lord?” Not once but again, and again.
How long will you forget me? How long will you hide your face? How long must I carry this ache around?
One of the great gifts of the Psalms is that they do not require us to pretend. They do not say, “Come back when you’ve cheered up.” They do not ask us to edit our prayers until they sound more holy. They let us arrive honestly.
And that is good news, because some of us are not always at our most spiritually radiant. Some of us lose patience with the dishwasher, mutter unkind things in traffic, or spend far too long composing the perfect reply to an email we probably should not send.
I mention this hypothetically, of course. The point is that God is not waiting for a more impressive version of us to show up. God meets the real one.
Paul, in Romans, puts it in stark terms: sin pays wages, and those wages are death; but God gives a gift, and that gift is life. Wages are what we earn. A gift is what we receive.
That is the awkward little scandal at the heart of grace. We keep trying to invoice God for our goodness, or discount ourselves because of our failures, and God keeps saying, “No, this is gift.” Not earned. Not performed into being. Given.
That does not mean nothing matters. Paul is not saying, “Do whatever you like; God has it covered.” He is saying something more demanding, but also more hopeful: you are no longer owned by the old powers.
You do not have to keep serving the things that diminish you, others, or the world God loves.
In Christ, a different life is possible: not a perfect life, thank heavens, because that would rule most of us out before morning tea, but a freed life — a life slowly turned towards mercy, truth, and love.
Then Jesus, in Matthew, brings it right down to earth: whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones will not lose their reward.
After Abraham’s mountain, after the Psalmist’s anguish, after Paul’s grand language of sin and grace and eternal life, Jesus says: start with welcome. Start with a cup of water.
That feels wonderfully ordinary — almost embarrassingly ordinary. We might prefer something more dramatic, something that sounds better in a parish newsletter: “This week I transformed the spiritual landscape.”
But Jesus seems quite interested in small acts done with love: a cup of water, a kind word, making room, learning someone’s name, noticing who has gone quiet, and letting another person be received rather than assessed.
Maybe that is where these readings meet. Faith is not always grand certainty. Sometimes it is Abraham’s “Here I am,” spoken with trembling hands.
Sometimes it is the Psalmist’s “How long?” spoken through tiredness and grief. Sometimes it is Paul’s reminder that we live by gift, not by spiritual achievement. And sometimes it is Jesus saying that the kingdom of God can be glimpsed in something as plain as hospitality.
So perhaps the invitation today is not to become instantly brave, endlessly patient, or impressively holy. That would be nice, obviously. If anyone works out how, do let me know.
Perhaps the invitation is gentler and deeper than that:
- to be present to God as we are;
- to tell the truth in prayer;
- to receive grace as gift;
- and to practice welcoming in small, real, slightly inconvenient ways.
Because the God we meet in these readings is not a God of death, fear, or abandonment.
- The Lord provides.
- The Lord hears the “How long?”
- The Lord gives life to us, as a, free, gift.
- The Lord comes to us in the one who needs welcome, and in the one who offers it.
And if all we can manage this week is to say, “Here I am,” and offer someone a cup of cold water, that may be a more faithful beginning than we realise. Amen.
Reverend Maku Potae
Chaplain.