There used to be a bumper sticker that said, “If you love something, let it go.” I can’t remember what that was supposed to be about, but it sure comments on today’s Genesis reading. Everything in Abraham and Sarah’s lives—all the leaving home and dinners with angels and arguing over Ishmael—all of that had been pointing towards God’s promise to them. When Isaac was born, God’s promise put on flesh. Now God asks Abraham to put the very child on an altar as a burnt offering. What kind of God would do this? If “my ancestors were felons,” as the sermon titles this summer have suggested, they learned felony at a big knee. This is a horrifying story. Is this another Divine Trickster story? God “tested” Abraham all right. This was the essay question from hell. “You’ve got your heart’s desire, now give it back.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about children lately, and it’s not just because of the Beck family reunion. When I was pregnant, people kept telling me, “God just loans children to you, you’ve only got them for a little while.” I heard that so often I thought it might be the cause of morning sickness. But just as every parent secretly hopes their child will be born toilet trained, we don’t believe what people tell us about the babies growing up and leaving home. It’s the “leaving home” that won’t sink in. I’m not saying that the sacrifice of Isaac is a parable for modern home-leaving, but it does raise the issue of what Isaac represented to Abraham. If, as the story begins, “God tested Abraham,” tested for what? Is the test, “If you love something, let it go and it will come back to you—if you really loved it right”? Remember how Sarah and Abraham tried to make God’s promise come true and Ishmael was born through Hagar, forcing God to deal with collateral damage? Might this test be asking whether Abraham still thinks he’s responsible for making sure God’s promise to him is kept? Rick and I can’t dance together because we both try to steer. Rick keeps trying to steer because he’s bigger, he knows how to dance, and the social convention is that the man leads. I keep trying to steer because I don’t know how to dance. Isn’t that always the way? Is God offering a corrective to Abraham trying to steer? Perhaps Isaac had become an idol to Abraham. Perhaps the sheer joy of Isaac deluded Abraham into believing that the child was the whole promise. God makes the same promise to us that he made to Abraham and Sarah: presence, posterity, place, blessing. Just as God was with Abraham and Sarah, Jesus told his disciples he would always be with them, even to the end of time. The promise of “place” would have sounded different to a nomad like Abraham than it does to us, but Jesus says he has gone ahead to prepare a place for us. I don’t think Abraham was doubting the promise, so much as he was stuck on its concreteness. Posterity. Scholars tell us that the ancient understanding of “eternal life” meant living on through the memory of one’s children and grandchildren. I’m remembered not only by my children, I’m remembered because of them. When Abraham was told he would have more children than grains of sand at the ocean, that was a rich posterity. In Abraham’s mind, the birth of Isaac equaled God making good on the promise of posterity. When God said, “Put Isaac on the altar,” it was a corrective saying, “Not that kind of posterity.” It isn’t until the very end of the book that we find out that posterity isn’t about “being remembered,” it is about being. In Revelation today we read that not only will God’s home be with us, but in a fantastic turn of events, we ourselves will be God’s posterity! So why does Abraham sweat the posterity thing? Why do we? Because that Revelation thing is so pie-in-the-sky. Because children have a nasty habit of growing up and leaving home. Because it’s never the way we thought it would be. Like us, maybe Abraham had already heard, “God helps those who help themselves.” That slogan is as good as it is bad. There are folks who quit their jobs to pursue training in another field, without worrying about money for living expenses and tuition. We run into these folks when they call friends to give them the opportunity to be the hand of God’s providence in the world—and please make the check out to me. There are other folks who never get around to pursuing their heart’s desire, because they are unsure of how things will go. There is a fine line between making God the fall guy for finances, and the inability to take a risk on a new calling because you don’t trust God to continue to care for you.

But, oh man, what kind of God would ask us to do that—give up our children, give up what we most long for? Parents, do not try this at home. The most important line in today’s story is, “God himself will provide.” It’s a paradox, friends, and that is what makes it so true. The paradox lies in God as both the “tester” (does God ask Abraham to give up his son?) and God as the “provider” (does God provide the sacrifice?). Can the God who promises life also command death? God gives and takes in this story. Just as God gives and takes in our lives. God calls us to nurture the children of our community, and then God calls us to give up these children so that they can grow up and have their own lives—pursuing their own calls away from us. God puts us in faith community and then calls us to jobs halfway across the country. God gifts us with ministry skills and puts limitations on the exercise of these gifts. Think of Catholic women who have the gift of preaching, who are not allowed to even read the gospel in church. Or people whose family circumstances put their dreams on hold. Or people with well-paying jobs and children about to enter college who are called to give up the income to do mission work. We are always called to hold the joys of discipleship in tension with the costs.

Think of the Lord’s Prayer. It asks, “Give us this day our daily bread,” as well as “Lead us not into temptation.” Underlying the prayer is the fear that things might get so tough that we might not have enough faith. We might have to give up some cherished part of our lives, as if we were putting the child of the promise on the altar. What if there is no ram caught in the bushes? What if there is no other sacrifice to make God’s demands go away? God insists on undivided loyalty and absolute faith, and we would rather have an easier, less demanding alternative to God. The prayer asks for help. In our daily, concrete, ordinary lives, we are always risking our confession of that loyalty. But good news! This is not an essay test! It’s a test about our faith, but a test already set in God’s care for us (“Give us this day our daily bread”). That care is called “providence,” and “providence” isn’t just the name of a hospital chain. Providence counter-balances God’s test of us and ends that test in resurrection. Resurrection, in other words, means that God is keeping a promise where there are no grounds for believing it. God’s ultimate providence to us is the promise of new life in Jesus Christ. Every day. All day long.

Like Abraham we can say, “God himself will provide,” which means that faithful discipleship is not so much about our being faithful, but about God being faithful. This is about the faithfulness of God in keeping promises, even when there are no grounds for believing it. We live into that faith by praying both, “Give us this day our daily bread” and “Lead us not into temptation.”

Please join me in a litany of prayer. Your response to prayer will be, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” Lord of our lives, you made us, and we are yours. But all around us there are temptations to pretend that we can do whatever we want and that we are the only ones who matter. We need your help and protection, so we pray . . .

Lord, your world is filled with attractive things. Advertising promises that if we buy these things, we will be happy. It is easy to believe those promises and to spend our lives getting and enjoying things, so we pray . . .

Creator God, you made us and gave us talents. People urge us to use our talents to be the best and to come out on top. It is easy to forget that winning isn’t everything. It is tempting to ignore the rules and the needs of others as we work hard to win, so we pray

God, our loving parent, we are part of your family. But we think so much about what we are doing, what we want and what we need, that we tend to overlook the needs and wants of others. We easily forget those we do not see. We even forget those we are with every day. So we pray . . .

Lord of the world, we live in a rich and powerful nation. Remind us that we are responsible for the use of that power. Be with our leaders when they are thinking of using power unfairly to benefit only us. So we pray . . .

Lord, when we pray “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,” we remember thankfully that “thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” And we say, let it be so! And all God’s people say, “Amen!”