After Adam sinned, God walked in the cool of the garden and God called to Adam, “Where are you?” By the hand of Abraham, God commanded the death of Isaac; God called Abraham and he replied, “Here am I.” “Here am I, my son,” Abraham answers Isaac as Isaac calls him father and questions him about the sacrifice. When the Angel of the Lord calls to Abraham from heaven he answers, “Here am I,” and God stops the sacrifice. Abraham declares himself to God, Isaac and the Angel of the Lord: he is present to them.

God new only love for Abraham and Abraham loved his son. For God to test Abraham by commanding evil shocks us. God is good. This is the mystery in the Cross – the violence is a revelation of God’s goodness. True love is freely given and freely accepted. In the Unity of God, love is perfect and glorified. God does not command evil.

We exist: we live and love and have our being in time and place. We know purpose in love and in life. We know suffering and danger and are subject to both without distinction. Bad actions bring consequences and we see that these consequences also befall the innocent. Bad actions often bring prosperity.

If our faith allows us to believe this is as a result of the goodness of a loving God, in the midst of it we have the faith to say with contrite hearts, “Here am I.” This is me! In our wrestling with the collateral of existence, God places the Cross and in faith we know that his death is our life. He lives having conquered death and his victory is our victory. In him we repent and choose life, and the death we deserve is placed on him.

In Christ we are redeemed- his blood brings us near to God and we are made clean. Our faith answers his calling of our name, “Here am I,” reflecting the revelation of the person of God :“I AM.” This is our blessing, realising God’s image within each of us, we are alive in Christ and creation is blessed. Freed from sin and death, we learn to love, as the one who is Love lives in us. He makes himself present in us so that he is present to the world. Mercy is shown by God living in us.

By Christ taking the penalty for sin, we are freed to love. We are freed to love God and all humanity as we love our selves, “Here am I!” We no longer skulk afraid of God and answer the God who calls our name, “Here am I!” He became sin so that we might live, the “I” in us present to the “I AM” of God.

The sacrifice on the Cross, its shock, its foolishness reveals God as sacrifice, satisfies the demands of justice so that we may know peace and mercy. Why? This is our place of wrestling. In the story of Abraham we can wrestle with the dissonance of the command. Our faith is that God is the God who provides. The Cross is the provision so that we are holy as he is holy, perfect as he is perfect.

Our faith in the Lordship of Christ; his life death and resurrection, restores us to life. In Jesus Christ we are healed. The righteousness of Christ is our righteousness; his death is our death and through our faith in his Lordship we are created new, born again, dead to sin. In him we bless the nations revealing God’s goodness. Because of his sacrifice our sacrifice is one of praise. Because of Jesus we can worship God in spirit and in truth.

We need to embrace the story of who we are. Our work is to believe in God as loving Father. How can he lay us on the pyre of judgement and wield the knife of our death and love us? We are free to accept as true that God loves us. Faith alone enables us to accept that, in the Cross, God takes his wrath upon himself and justice is served.

In our wilfulness, we are free to accept we deserve only death: in our being we are free to accept we are the objects of pure love. The Cross resolves this as the One, through whom we and all that is created has its existence, answers, “Here am I” to the “I AM” of God. Jesus bears the full fury of death and hell we deserve and defeats it. God provides the atoning sacrifice: himself! And the wrath is turned away: death is defeated. I AM declares, “Here am I” and in perfect obedience to the Father confronts death – but…