Discussion Questions

1. Experiencing the Wilderness

• The sermon compared our modern lives to the Israelites’ time in the wilderness. What does “wilderness” look like for you today?
• Pastor Mark shared Barbara Brown Taylor’s idea that we don’t choose the wilderness—it happens to us. Have you ever felt thrown into a wilderness season? What was that like?

2. Hangry Faith

• The Israelites’ physical hunger made them forget God’s faithfulness. Pastor Mark joked about being “hangry” and reminded us we’re not ourselves when we’re hungry. How do your spiritual or emotional needs impact your faith and relationships?
• When have you, like the Israelites, forgotten past blessings during present stress? What helped you remember again?

3. Daily Bread vs. Long-Term Security

• God offers daily bread—not monthly or yearly—and invites us to trust. Why do you think it’s difficult to live with “just enough”?
• How does this challenge or reshape your understanding of God’s provision in your own life?

4. Recognizing God’s Gifts

• The Israelites received manna and asked, “What is it?” Have you ever missed or misjudged an answered prayer because it didn’t look how you expected?
• How can we become more aware of the “manna” God places in our lives today?

5. Serving One Another

• Pastor Mark invited us to serve one another communion in a “holy exchange.” How can we better serve and recognize God’s presence in our neighbors?
• In your life this week, who might be hungry—spiritually or emotionally—and how can you offer “bread”?

6. Applying the Sermon

• What is one tangible way you can trust God’s provision this week?
• How can RPPC—as a community—create space for others to receive “daily bread,” both spiritually and materially?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: You’re Not You When You’re Hungry appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Genesis 21:1–3, 22:1–14

The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him.

After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. And the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them walked on together.

When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide,” as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

A man goes to the dentist because he has a bad toothache The dentist conducts an exam and takes some x-rays. After looking everything over he says, “I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

The man says, “Let’s get the bad news over with first.” The dentist says, “You need a root canal and several fillings.” The man is taken aback. “What is the good news?”

The dentist replies, “Well, after this I will finally have enough for a downpayment on a boat.”

The Christian faith is about good news. That’s what Gospel means. It means good news. But what if the good news doesn’t always appear to be good from our vantage point? What if we don’t even really know what is good to begin with?

You and I tend to define good in relative terms: what benefits me; what is good news to me. But what about the good that comes from the bad? Or the good that confronts us with the uncomfortable truth about ourselves? Or the good news that is good for others, but not so good for you and me?

Barbara Brown Taylor says sometimes good news is a matter of where we hit the pause button. You win the lottery. That’s good. The IRS takes their chunk. That’s bad. You are able to afford all you need and more. That’s good. Suddenly people you haven’t talked to in years come out of the woodwork asking you to invest in their project or idea and you can’t or don’t want to say yes to them all. That’s bad.

We can see this truth in our story today. Abraham and Sarah finally have a child to call their own. That is good. But Abraham, who had grown impatient waiting and had a child with Sarah’s handmaid Hagar, now must send Hagar and their son Ishmael away. That is bad. God tells Abaraham to take his son Isaac up the mountain and offer him as a sacrifice. That is bad. But at the last-minute God provides a ram and Isaac is spared. That is good. Abraham earns God’s trust. That is good. Poor Isaac is scarred for life. That is bad.

Where do we hit the pause button? From which perspective or vantage point are we judging whether the news to be good or not?

Of the binding of Isaac, Ellen Davis writes, “This story appears front and center in Genesis, where no reader of the Bible can miss it, because the hard truth is that the world turns upside down for the faithful more often than we like to admit.”

She continues, “I remember the words of my young friend, a devout Roman Catholic, just a few hours after his first child had died in birth… “I could say, ‘Why me?’ But why not me? I knew this happens to people, and it never made me doubt God before. So why should I doubt God now? But still, I do not understand.”

Life presents us with many challenges and opportunities. We can’t always see how things will turn out. There is much we do not understand, and we do well NOT to rationalize or explain every tragedy, but simply let it be what it is. There is no guarantee in life that we will live free of pain and tragedy. Most of us will have more than our fair share of grief.

Where do we find God when things are turned upside down? What good is our faith? Where is the good news? Where do we go?

Davis writes, “The 22nd chapter of Genesis is the place you go when you do not understand at all what God allows us to suffer and, it seems, asks us to bear — and the last thing you want is a reasonable explanation, because any reasonable explanation would be a mockery of your anguish. This story of Abraham and God and Isaac is the place you go when you are out beyond anything you thought could or would happen, beyond anything you imagined God would ever ask of you, when the most sensible thing to do might be to deny that God exists at all, or to deny that God cares at all, or to deny that God has any power at all.”

There is an old theological formula that says if God is good and all powerful, then evil should not exist. Therefore, if evil exists then God either must not be good or not all powerful. But who says that our definition of good or power is correct? Do we really know what is good or only what is good for me? And who says power is about controlling every little thing? What about the power of letting go, the power of letting others find their own way and make their own mistakes?

Last week I told the story of parents taking their firstborn to college which concluded by stating, the best gift love can give is the gift of freedom. What if that is what the story of the binding of Isaac is really about?

What if it is not a divinely scripted experiment for God to demonstrate some barbaric lesson? What if instead it is a story about human freedom? A reminder that this gift is not without risk or challenges?

What if it is a story about how God loves us so much, that God allows us the freedom to choose and think for ourselves? What if it is about the risk God is willing to take on, to allow us the room to become our own unique selves, to make mistakes, to experience loss, to cause harm? Not because those things are good, but because the alternative means we are not really self-autonomous beings but mere characters in some divine play in which every line and movement is predetermined. What if out of love, God refuses to rescue us from every harm or danger, but nevertheless God promises to never leave us no matter what?

This past Thursday on Sept 11^th, my friend Alex wrote this on his social media account: The news today is of violence. An assassination in Utah. Russian military drones in Poland. Missile attacks against peace negotiators in Qatar. The relentless, indescribable hell of conditions in Gaza. Today is also our son’s birthday. He’s 15. When he was born, I remember being so grateful to have this gift of great joy to overwhelm the sadness of September 11th and what it did to [our] country. Because of him, today is for me not primarily a day to bemoan the brokenness of the world. It is a day to rejoice in the beauty of one wonderful human.

Friends, we live in a world where terrible and beautiful things happen every day. We do not always know what is good. We do not always exercise the power we possess in the most loving way toward others. We too often misspeak God’s name, confusing our own categories with divine commands or categories that were never given in the first place.

Simply put, the Good News is bigger than our categories of good and bad. God is not bound by our attempts to define God, to hem God in, to control God. Stories like the binding of Isaac push us deep into the mystery of God in ways that are uncomfortable and disturbing. And yet, in the end, it proclaims God is trustworthy, even in the most dire and unthinkable of circumstances. Things may not always turn out the way we hope or want, but all that means is that the universe is not designed for our benefit alone. Good news that is JUST for you or me, is not worthy of the name Gospel. God’s good news is bigger than that. It is for ALL of us. For God so loved the whole world. That is the Gospel. Amen.

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