Our ancestors in the faith were not people to be proud of, not the kind of people you want your kids to date. Abraham twice passed off his wife, Sarah, as his sister, to save his own neck. Jacob tricked his brother and his father for the birthright, which didn’t particularly annoy his brother, because at least he got a good meal for it. Joseph’s brothers sold him as a slave, as an alternative to outright murder. Moses became a fugitive when he committed murder. These were not lovely people. And yet, through them, God established the Chosen People. What kind of God would choose such thugs?

That’s exactly our question this summer: “What kind of God would—?” We’ll be looking at God’s Severe Grace in claiming such questionable types as founders of the faith. Because these characters are so unsavory, we will need to ask over and over, “What kind of God would--?” When we struggle with the answer, we come to know God in new and intimate ways. Which requires us to find ourselves in the stories. Our children have an advantage over the grown ups in doing this. Our children are used to putting themselves into the story, because they are used to Godly Play story-telling. I once heard Jerome Berryman, the inventor of Godly Play, tell today’s story. It changed how I understood the story. It isn’t possible to recreate for you the whole story the way Berryman did, but I’d like to show you what I saw in God’s promise to Abram and Sarai.

After telling the story, Berryman asked, “What part could we take out of the story and still have it be this story?” When he offered to take off one of the rivers, it was as if a bolt of lightning hit me. No! The promise made to Abram and Sarai—the promise of posterity and place and blessing—the promise came with a choice. Remove one river, and there is no choice.

What kind of God would ask a comfortable, content family to get up and go? Somewhere. Just get up and go. That’s a mighty vague destination, and here they are at the confluence of two rivers. “Go.” What kind of God would do that? What kind of person would take seriously that open-ended promise? Since we’ve read ahead in the story, we have to wonder what kind of posterity would they have, with no children, and the two of them already old? Besides, the “place” promised to Abram and Sarai is already occupied by other people—not chosen, apparently. Our ancestors stand at the confluence of two rivers, a promise in one hand and a choice in the other. Left or right? Which way? God only says, “go.” What kind of God would not tell me which way to go? I grew up hearing, “God has a plan for you.” Wouldn’t you think that, if that were true, God would be a little more clear about that plan?

When my life fell apart at 38, I found myself in the middle of the very messy unraveling of what I had, up until that time, thought of as God’s plan for my life. Either I had taken the wrong path as I set out on life at 20, or God’s plan was wrong. Neither option was pleasant to contemplate. With 20/20 hindsight, I kept seeing my youthful self in an old-fashioned train round house. I’m the little engine on the turntable, faced with the many possible courses for my life, as if they were railroad tracks radiating out in all directions like the spokes of wheels. As the roundtable turns, the little engine (me) decides which track to take as the plan God has for her life. Come to find out 20 years later, the track she has chosen was the wrong track! Worse yet, all the tracks are moving away from each other! I’m doomed! I’ll never get back onto God’s track for my life!

Through the grace proclaimed to me in a loving church community, I discovered that the track choices presented to me—and to all people as they discern the courses to take in life—these choices are not like spokes of a wheel, moving further apart, with no hope of ever re-converging. Our track choices are more like spaghetti strands—crossing each other, moving towards each other and away—so that we always have choices and new opportunities. God is ever offering hope, new chances to be making our way toward God’s will for our lives. What grace!

This is what the Abram and Sarai story tells us today. The answer to “What kind of God would--?” is about choices. This is not a Divine Trickster God who makes contingent promises, presenting Abram and Sarai with two choices: “Choose one way or the other, kids. Pick the right one and you’ll become the ancestors of multitudes, you’ll inherit the land I’m giving you. You pick the wrong one and--! Haha, you lose!” It’s that Divine Trickster who says to us, “Two choices: U of O or enlist in the Navy. Marry this person or remain single. Only one is right, but you have to guess which. I’ll let you know later how you did.” We do not worship the Divine Trickster. Sometimes we make it sound that way. Is this the person God picked out for me to marry? Is college part of God’s plan for me? Is the job in Pennsylvania God’s will? If we divorce will God still love me? What should I do? What is God’s will? If we are honest, we have to admit that we sometimes pose our decisions as if God were the Divine Trickster. If we want to know God more intimately it’s a possibility we have to face. It’s part of asking, “What kind of God would--?”

That question, that possibility, is necessary, because otherwise we run the risk of making our God too sweet—a God of Easy Answers. You know this God. This is the God who says to Abram and Sarai, “Take either river. It doesn’t really matter which. In fact, it doesn’t even matter if you leave Haran. Whatever you do or don’t do, I’ll fix it.” This is the God who lets us off the hook. We like this God. We don’t have to take responsibility for our actions, because God fixes things for us. That’s like saying, “Rolls Royce or Yugo, it doesn’t matter; a car is a car.” And when we make our God that easy, we are settling for a Yugo, when God is really offering us a Rolls. God loves us, no matter what, but the promise to Abram and Sarai involved getting up and going. The gospel always forces a decision, taking a position, saying yes or no. Who could worship a God with no accountabilities? Who would have respect for a God like that? As the two rivers show, our God gives us choices. But this is a God who expects us to make a choice. This is not a God who stands back, objectively daring us to make the right choice or gleefully anticipating the wrong choice. This is where things get scary. When Abram and Sarai stood at the confluence of those two rivers, God became vulnerable. For our sake. The plan for the Chosen People, the plan of salvation, was put in the hands of that little incomplete family group, standing on the banks of the river, about to set out because God said, “Go.” Imagine. God waited for humans to make a choice. Right fork. Left fork. God’s plan depended on these two choosing. The answer wasn’t so much “right or left.” It was about choosing. And then, God going with them. That’s the whole point, friends. God went with them. That is what it means to us that our ancestors were felons. God goes with us. God gives us choices—so that God will go with us. The choices, the confluence of rivers in our lives, the decisions we are required to make, the times we are those little engines on the roundhouse turntable set to choose a track—it’s about God going with us. But not until God has become vulnerable to us. It is not that God has no standards for us. That would be Wimpy Grace, and we worship the God of Severe Grace. In Christ, God has shown us the standard and given us the means of meeting the standard. It is about this table. It is about God’s desire for communion with us.