At the Easter Vigil tonight, the 2nd reading is one of the most dramatic of all the scriptures. Abraham is asked to sacrifice his only son by God.
It sounds horrible and ridiculous. Why would God ask for a human sacrifice? Some scholars believe that because human sacrifice was common during that time, that this is God’s prohibition of that sacrifice from this day forward.
Still, why would God test Abraham in this way anyhow? We forget that God’s promise to Abraham of a son, namely Isaac, was a promise that a great nation would come from him. That Abraham descendants will be great indeed.
Abraham had to be scratching his head…how can I kill Isaac and still have descendants? I’m an old man who is lucky enough to even have this son!
But it is Abraham’s faith in God that turns the story into a deep and touching drama. God will find a way to keep his promise. God must have a reason to ask this of me and I will trust that his ways, though mysterious, are the ways that I must follow.
Truly that’s the faith that we are called to, each time tragedy befalls us as well. Can we believe that God can make a way out of no way?
Perhaps no time is more suited to call this to mind than it is tonight. When death seemingly has had the final word, are we still hopeful that the light can break the darkness? When the savior we look for has been killed by hanging from a cross, can we hope beyond hope that something else is surely coming our way?
When God is killed, can we trust that death cannot hold God in its dastardly clutches?
God always finds a way to provide us with what we need, what can and 
does sustain us. This Easter we believe that light always shatters the darkness. If that’s true and if Jesus really has overcome death than we need not be afraid of anything. We never have to fear death, for resurrection is always just another breath away.
Come Risen Jesus, break the chains of death and provide for us a way to renew our belief that somehow God always finds a way.
He is Risen. Alleluia.