Genesis 12: 1-9
Today we skip ahead a few chapters to the beginning of the story of Abraham, first of the patriarchs. All we know of Abraham before this story is that his family is from Ur, but has recently moved west to Haran, and that his wife, Sarai, is barren.
And the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your land and your birthplace and your father's house to the land I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and and those who damn you I will curse, and all the clans of the earth through you shall be blessed.”
And Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him and Lot went forth with him, Abram being seventy-five years old when he left Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew and all the goods they had gotten and the folk they had bought in Haran, and they set out on the way to the land of Canaan, and they came to the land of Canaan.
And Abram crossed through the land to the site of Shechem, to the Terebinth of Moreh. The Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your seed I will give this land.” And he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. And he pulled up his stakes from there for the high country east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east, and he built there an altar to the Lord, and he invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed in stages to the Negeb.
As Wayne mentioned in the scripture reading, we skipped over a few chapters to get to Abraham today. I felt kind of badly because we skipped over Noah's ark and the tower of Babel, both very neat stories. But the thing is, Genesis is full of weird & wonderful stories, we can't do them all or we'll be doing Genesis until Easter and even I might get tired of that!
Plus I figured most of you have heard many sermons and seen many plays and even movies about Noah and the flood. You know the story: the people of the world were terrible, God got mad, decided to destroy the world with a flood. Noah was a righteous man, God decided to save him and his family by having Noah build a big ark.
The story of the tower of Babel is not so well known. At that time most people were still living in same area, speaking the same language. It tells of how people decided to build a huge tower, one that would reach the heavens, and would keep everyone together. God is not impressed at this pride, makes them all start speaking different languages, which creates great confusion, and everyone scatters. Add those stories to the disobedience of Adam & Eve and Cain killing his brother Abel, and overall humanity is not doing so well in the first 11 chapters of the Bible.
Old Testament scholar Charles Haley says “As we have seen, in Genesis 1-11, God struggled with a repeatedly rebellious, violent, and corrupt humanity as a whole. As a result, God resolves to try a new strategy by focusing on one particular family among all the families of the earth.”
We don't know what it is about Abraham that makes God decide to try this new covenant, this new relationship, with him. On the surface it doesn't make much sense. For one thing, Abraham is 75. And while we all know many 75 year olds who are strong and vigorous, there are many in this church, generally if you are wanting to start a new dynasty, you start with someone a little younger. (Unless you're a candidate for president in the USA, but that's another story.) Plus, a previous chapter told us that Sarai, Abraham's wife, was barren. So how is Abraham supposed to start a great nation? Of course, looking at the story with the benefit of hindsight, we see it's typical of God to choose an underdog, someone who doesn't fit the usual profile for success.
Clearly God chose well because underdog Abraham is considered to be the father of three major religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Author Bruce Feiler who wrote the book “Abraham” says “the great patriarch of the Hebrew Bible is also the spiritual forefather of the New Testament and the grand holy architect of the Koran. Abraham is the shared ancestor of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. . . . He is history's first monotheist.”
Abraham is the father of Judaism because this story originated with the Jewish faith. Abraham is the father, Sara the mother. For Jews the most important thing about the story is God choosing Abraham and Abraham responding, it's all about the covenant. “You shall be my people and I shall be your God.”
Christianity grew out of Judaism and its holy writings became our Old Testament. It was the apostle Paul who created the strong link to Abraham though, not Jesus. Paul saw Abraham as a model of faith. God called him away from all he knew and Abraham didn't hesitate in responding. Paul says that through faith we are all children of Abraham.
With Islam it was a little different. Muhammed learned about the concept of one God from Jews. He was intrigued by this concept, believed it, and felt called to take it further. Muhammed saw Abraham as key to development of monotheism, the belief in one God rather than in many.
There are a number of places in the Qu'ran where Abraham is referred to.
Interestingly enough, there is no equivalent of the story we heard today. That's because in the Qu'ran God is always speaking directly, through Muhammed. Bruce Feiler says, “The Koran is written in a referential style. It doesn't retell events, it refers to them.”
Here's an excerpt of a verse from the Qu'ran about Abraham: “And remember that Abraham was tried by his Lord with certain Commands, which he fulfilled; he said, “I will make you an Imam (leader) to the people.”
Another makes an even more explicit connection between the three religions: “Say you: “We believe in Allah, and in the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to all Prophets from their Lord; we make no difference between one and another of them; and we submit to Allah.”
Muslims trace their ancestry of faith through Ishmael, Abraham's son with the slave Hagar, rather than through Isaac, Abraham's son with Sara as Jews and Christians do, but Muslims still recognize the role of Isaac and of major Jewish and Christian figures.
When I was studying this passage during the first year of my Masters of Divinity, I was at a Catholic university in Quebec, so we didn't get into the connections with Islam, but I still learned a lot. The professor was an expert in Hebrew, and he talked about how Hebrew was a language of few words, so if a word was repeated, that meant it was extremely important.
He had us look at this passage, focusing on the first 4 verses. What words are repeated? “Bless” and “blessing” are repeated five times. Despite our conviction that God in the Old Testament is judgmental and smiteful, the word “curse” or “damn” is found only twice.
The professor said this repetition of bless and blessing tells us as much about God as it does about God's relationship with Abraham. Like the first chapter of Genesis, God wants things to be good, God wants to do good things for Abraham, God wants the relationship to work out.
Unlike previous chapters, there's nothing here about God doing any cursing other than cursing those who curse Abraham. The blessing however goes not just to Abraham but to his descendants and eventually to all the world. That's very powerful. This goes way beyond the covenant with Noah, which was rather negative, there's no mention of blessings in it, just a promise from God not to ever destroy world again.
The story of Abraham is a true covenant of relationship. It's the first time we really see blessings since Creation. So Abraham is a source of blessing, original blessing, for three religions. This takes us a step further than world wide communion. World wide communion shows us that all Christian faiths have the same grounding, and encourages us not to judge one another but rather to focus on what we have in common.
This short reading from Genesis shows us how all of us as Christians are connected to Judaism and Islam and all who practice them. What does it mean to all be people of Abraham's blessing?
I really like what Charles Haley has to say about what this whole concept of being a people of blessing means to us today:
“We now realize that this selection of one particular family and people out of all the peoples of the earth does not entail God's abandonment of concern for other nations. Rather, God's election of Abram is a new strategy to address the evil and violence of all humanity. God's chosen people never exist in isolation.
They are called to a wider mission than just self-preservation. They are never allowed to claim an exclusive hold on God's concern. God remains committed to all creation and all humanity.”
This is important for us to understand today. Not just all people, but all of creation is blessed through Abraham and through Abraham's descendants, which includes us. So the big question is, what are you, what are we doing to be a blessing to others these days? And how are we working with others to make that happen?
Imagine if all Christians, Jews and Muslims worked together to be a blessing to one another and to the world. How different would things be today. I imagine Hindus, Buddhists and others would jump on board pretty quickly, especially since this wouldn't involved changing religions. After all, they all have versions of the golden rule, they all are centered on living in way that is giving.
We're talking about being a blessing in very practical, concrete terms. This isn't just sitting around saying nice things about other people. It's definitely about thinking of the needs of those around you, what you can do to help, whether it be with emotional needs or practical needs.
But it's also is wider than that. Two stories in the news this week brought that home to me. The first was about how Premier Legault of Quebec still denies systemic racism exists in Quebec, even after that terrible video of the Indigenous woman being verbally abused before she died in a Quebecois hospital.
The other story was more encouraging, it was about how Premier MacNeil of Nova Scotia made an apology on behalf of the government of Nova Scotia about systemic racism in the justice system in Nova Scotia, and he spoke of how they are already making concrete plans to work with Black and Indigenous leaders to create structures to address that racism.
Being a blessing means recognizing when blessing is not happening, when our society is not seeing all people as being God's people. We can't be a blessing for all people if we don't recognize abuse and injustice and try to address them, try to change systems and attitudes.
The apostle Paul is right when he says that as people of faith we are all descendants of Abraham. And as his descendants we are called to take his covenant with God as our covenant, to trust that God is with us, that God is blessing us even when it doesn't always look or feel that way, and most importantly, we are called to be a blessing to the world in all that we do and say, in how we live as God's people.
May God help us to be that blessing.