Today’s story about Abraham and Isaac presents us with a disturbing set of questions and challenges so numerous that we are tempted to go down the wrong path at several turns. Asking questions about the nature of God, or how God could command such a thing of anyone, etc. are just not helpful here. Neither is the attempt by some to frame this as a story about blind faith or total obedience. In today’s world of religious extremism, one person’s unquestioning obedience towards the voices they think are God’s can create a very dangerous world.

We need to wind the clock back a bit and understand more of the context leading up to this point. Twenty five, maybe thirty five years before this, God promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation with more descendents than grains of sand. Abram and his wife Sarai received new names of Abraham and Sarah as a sign of God’s promise. All Abraham and Sarah had to do was GO to the land that God showed them, and so they did. Soon after that, they discovered that Sarah was not capable of having children. They must have wondered about God’s promise for a long time.

Eventually Sarah hatches a plan for Abraham to have a child through her servant Hagar. This union leads to the child Ishmael who will become the father of the Arab peoples. This also leads to tension and calamity within the household. Abraham and Sarah continue to grow older and now Sarah is well beyond childbearing age. Nonetheless, she has a son and they name the son “Isaac” or “God laughs.”

“This is it.” This is the beginning of the promise they think. For decades they have yearned for a sense of being settled and serenity. They are old now (by biblical standards), perhaps 45 to 60. They just want to live in peace so they can see what this promise God made to them becomes. They are just like any of us. They want to watch their sons grow up. Isaac grows to age ten or twelve and God intervenes again.

Our story today begins with the simple phrase “After these things.” It is important to note that we are hearing this story from the perspective of a community that KNOWS God is testing Abraham and we already know how this story will unfold through history. But Abraham does not know that God is testing him. He only goes as God commanded him this time and years before at Haran. The Hebrew word for test here is the same one used in the story of Job. It means to examine whether something is true or reliable. God tests Abraham and Job and others in the Bible. God tests us too to see if we are reliable.

The real verb to pay attention to in the entire story of Abraham is not “test”, but “go.” The Hebrew fairly jumps off the page, “Lekh l’kha“, “Go forth to the land that I will show you.” “Go to Haran.” “Go to Moriah.” All Abraham and Sarah want to do is settle down and enjoy their old age but God keeps interrupting their lives, telling them to GO to some place far away and start over. “GO, GO, GO”, God commands them repeatedly for fifty years. And they obeyed.

“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.”

At each turn of his life when things seemed to be futile and they felt like giving up, God made the impossible happen and followed that with the commandment to give up the security they had in the past and GO somewhere new. Sometimes Abraham did not act reliably or honorably, such as when he told Pharaoh that Sarah was his sister. But God kept the promise to Abraham and Sarah throughout their roller coaster ride of following God’s commandment and occasionally backsliding.

Is not the story of Abraham and Sarah OUR story as well? Whether you have lived all over the place or never left your home town, life is a journey of listening to God’s imperatives in our life: GO to church. GO to school. GO to this job. GO to that spouse. GO the counselor when your children are driving you crazy. GO to confession when you are weary and burdened with troubles. GO, GO, GO to a land that God will show you.

Like Abraham and Sarah, God’s intrusions in our lives seem to come at the craziest, most inopportune moments – often when we think we think we have made it is when we seemed to get knocked down by unforeseen circumstances. Being faithful often requires us to put our well crafted plans for career, family, or retirement aside and pay attention to the crazy thing God has in store for us. Yes, Sara laughed and God laughed when she bore a son in her old age. And yes, we should laugh with God when we heed the plans that God has for us.

Yet in spite of Abraham, out of fear and cowardice, passing off his wife to Pharaoh as his sister, and in spite of the disastrous attempt to circumvent God’s promise by having a child with Hagar, God was faithful to Abraham and Sarah. God made good on the promise. God is merciful and forgiving, and that promise of faithfulness is there for us too.

We don’t know all the adversity this family faced. We know that when Hagar and her son were about to die in the desert, God provided for them. We know that when Abraham and Sarah had given up on the promise of a child, God provided for them. We know that at the moment of absolute terror with his knife raised above his son, God provided for them. We know they were not a perfect model of faith and confidence in God’s promise, and we know that God was faithful to them in spite of their backsliding.

Throughout his journey, Abraham demonstrated incredible faith and a strong tendency to try to manipulate this faith journey on his own terms. He had the all too human need to control things. Yet at the very worst moment of his life when he was asked to give up everything, he could see God’s new plan – the ram caught in the bushes. Abraham could see in the midst of this unfolding tragedy how God provides.

God tests us too in our journeys. We are not asked to be perfect models of faith. We are asked to see God’s providence for us in our worst moments in the midst of our tragedies and suffering. Only then can we see God’s promise to us. Only then will God tell us to GO to a new place; to the land of promise.

And so my friends, I conclude this with a familiar phrase from Spanish:

GO

with God.