I'll Have My People Call You (The Angel of the Lord)
Sermon Recap: This sermon tackles one of Scripture's most unsettling passages by shifting the focus away from Abraham's obedience and toward the character of God. Set against the backdrop of ancient cultures where child sacrifice was practiced, the story's true surprise is not God's command but God's intervention.
Isaac represents not only Abraham's beloved son but also his understanding of how God's promises would be fulfilled. When God provides a ram instead, Abraham discovers that the promise depends on God's faithfulness, not his own efforts. That insight is captured in the name "The Lord will provide."
The sermon connects this theme to the ways God still provides today—through endurance, community, unexpected grace, and ordinary acts of love. Ultimately, it points to Christ, where God's provision reaches its fullest expression: a God who does not demand sacrifice from a distance but enters human suffering and gives God's own life for the world.
(Given 6-28-26, St. Augustine's Church, Kingston RI)
The above sermon focused on the character of God revealed in Genesis 22. But there's another feature of the story that's worth exploring on its own. As Abraham prepares to sacrifice Isaac, it isn't simply "God" who intervenes. Scripture tells us that the Angel of the Lord calls from heaven and stays Abraham's hand. That seemingly small detail has generated a remarkable amount of theological reflection throughout the Church's history.
Most of us don't spend much time thinking about angels. When we do, they're often imagined as winged guardians or the cherubic figures that populate Christmas cards and Renaissance paintings. Scripture presents a much richer picture. Yes, angels are God's messengers—but one figure, the Angel of the Lord, doesn't behave quite like the others. Unlike ordinary angels, the Angel of the Lord frequently speaks not merely for God, but as God.
In Genesis 16, the Angel appears to Hagar in the wilderness and promises, "I will so greatly multiply your offspring." Hagar's response is telling: she believes she has encountered the God who sees her. The pattern continues in Exodus 3. Moses first encounters the Angel of the Lord in the burning bush. Yet only a few verses later, the narrator simply says that God speaks from the bush. The distinction between the Angel and God seems to fade away.
The same ambiguity appears in Genesis 22. The Angel of the Lord calls out to Abraham just before Isaac is sacrificed and declares, "You have not withheld your son... from me." The Angel doesn't merely relay God's words but speaks with divine authority.
These passages raised an obvious question for the early Church: Who exactly is this mysterious figure? One of the earliest Christians to answer that question was Justin Martyr in the second century. Justin argued that the Angel of the Lord was the eternal Word—the Son of God before the incarnation. Since Scripture teaches that "no one has seen the Father" (John 6:46), Justin reasoned the one who appeared to Abraham, Hagar, and Moses must have been the Son making the Father known.
Other early theologians, including Irenaeus and Tertullian, developed this idea further. For them, the incarnation was not God's first self-revelation. Rather, the Son had always been the one through whom God encountered humanity. So in terms of who Jesus is, Bethlehem was the climax of that revelation, not its beginning according to this line of thinking.
But, not every early Christian thinker agreed. Augustine offered a more cautious reading, suggesting that these appearances could be created angels speaking with God's authority rather than the Son personally appearing. An important reminder that the Church has never spoken with a single voice on this question (keeping the list of when it has notably short).
Even so, it's worth asking why so many early Christians found Justin's interpretation persuasive. At the heart of their reading was a conviction rather than a curiosity about angels. They believed the God revealed in Jesus Christ is the same God who has always been active in the world. The incarnation was not the moment God first decided to draw near, but the fullest expression of a relationship already unfolding throughout Israel's story.
And this is a theological conviction I will always stand by.
Regardless, whether we ultimately identify the Angel of the Lord with the pre-incarnate Christ or prefer Augustine's more restrained approach, these passages invite us to read the Old Testament with fresh eyes. They remind us that Christians have always (and faithfully) read Scripture as a unified story of God's self-revelation; a story that reaches its fullest expression in Jesus, but begins long before Bethlehem.
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