Will You Trust God?

Caravaggio, The Sacrifice of Isaac

c. 1601-02
Uffizi Gallery, Florence

The Second Sunday of Lent

Today’s Readings: Gen. 22:1-2,9,10-13,15-18; Ps. 116; Rom. 8:31-34; Mk. 9:2-10


In Abraham’s world, having a son was everything. It was prestige and it was survival. Whatever you did for your livelihood, your son would be your trusted helper and eventually your partner. And of course, a son was a man’s assurance that his family line would continue.

The bible is full of stories of people who were miserable because they didn’t have a son. Abraham and his wife, Sarah, were childless and quite old—in their late 90s. They probably had been praying for 80 years for a son! Then miracle of miracles, along came Isaac.

Today’s first reading starts out, “God put Abraham to the test.” How’s that for an understatement? God told Abraham to take his precious and beloved son—the one he was waiting for for 80 years—and sacrifice him! And Abraham, that man of great faith, was fully prepared to do it.

I can’t even begin to imagine having to make a choice like that to obey or disobey God. I wouldn’t be able to conceive in my mind that God would ask something like that of me. And even if I did understand, I’d probably try to convince myself that I didn’t really understand what God was asking, because surely he must have meant something else… something that made more sense… something that better fit into the way I pictured the scheme of things. Certainly not to make me wait 80 years for a blessing, give it to me, and then ask me to give it all up.

But wait a minute.

Is it God who is being unreasonable in what he’s asking… or is it me? I think you know the answer to that one!

What we often forget is that God sees the bigger picture—and like it or not, his ways are not our ways. If God wants something to happen, no surprise: it’s going to happen—whether his approach makes sense to our limited way of thinking or not.

Even though I have no doubt that Abraham was heartbroken that the Lord asked him to offer up the life of his little boy, still, Abraham was blessed with a faith that just wouldn’t quit. He knew that God’s love and providence were absolute. He knew that God had promised to make his offspring more numerous than the stars in the heavens or the grains of sand in the desert. What he didn’t do was second-guess God’s way to make it happen. If God said to do something, what’s to think about? Surely blessings would follow.

The gospel today has one of the accounts of the Transfiguration. Jesus went up the mountain with perhaps his closest friends: Peter, James and John. These disciples were understandably shaken by what they saw: Jesus becoming radiant and glowing before their very eyes… Moses and Elijah appearing and speaking and then vanishing… God the Father’s voice emanating from the sky: This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.

Like Abraham, the apostles got a peek at the divine, and the reality of God left them quaking. It was one of those defining moments where they had to stop and try to figure out what in the world was going on. What were they supposed to make of all this?

When all was said and done, the apostles realized that they had to do exactly what Abraham did: they knew that God loved them, and so they figured it was safe to do as he asked. They accepted that Jesus was his beloved Son, and they listened to him—despite the heavy cost of that discipleship. Why? Because they knew that this was the path to blessing, to the kingdom of heaven.

Maybe you think that things for us are different from the way they were with Abraham or Christ’s apostles. But not all that different. If we hung out with God as closely and devotedly and faithfully as our fathers in the faith did, I have no doubt that our experiences might be just as remarkable as theirs.

Be that as it may, God inserts himself into our lives all the time. We may just not realize it because we tend to crowd him out with a lot of noise, a lot of activity, and a lot of doing things our own way.

The lucky ones among us catch a glimpse of the Lord now and then, and his presence registers. Maybe it’s simple inspiration. Maybe he gets our attention in a more radical way like a heart attack.

Either way, we realize in those graced moments that it’s OK to trust God because he loves us as he promised… because he’ll keep us safe no matter what. That means it’s also OK to do what he says—even if it seems like he’s asking us for something off the wall:

I want you to quit your job and sell your house and go and be missionaries in Africa… I want you to become a nun and be my bride… I want you to give up your career and home-school your children… I want you to go be an activist and fight against injustice or discrimination or poverty or hunger or war… I want you to serve me as a deacon or a priest…

I’ve met people who have heeded the Lord’s promptings and gone off to do all those things. And if you think it’s easy to step out of your safe, snug world, think again. Discipleship takes guts.

I think it’s great that we hear today’s lesson in early Lent. Giving up our preconceived notions about God, ourselves, the world, and even the Church, is the perfect Lenten devotion. We don’t do it blindly, but with profound trust and faith and love. This is my beloved Son. Listen to him. How can we possibly go wrong if we do as he asks?