January 26, 2003
“Traveling
Mercies”
Linda A. Knieriemen
David Van Biema, writer of the Time magazine cover story on Abraham last
September, (maybe you saw it) writes about his cab ride across Manhattan’s
Central Park on the way to see his rabbi about his son’s circumcision.
The stereo is playing a catchy tune, unfamiliar to the writer, and so
he asks the cabbie about it. The
Moroccan musical group is speaking to Israel on behalf of the Arab people.
The chorus repeats, “We have the same father…why do you treat us
this way? The song
was called Ishmael and Isaac, and the father of course, was Abraham.
One
song captures the irony that is the Middle East, one song, names both the
source of the conflict, and a glimpse of the hope—Abraham. This figure
from the 12th Century BC is the spiritual, and some claim
biological father of 12 million Jews, 2 billion Christians, and 1 billion
Moslems. They have the same
father, but they are hardly one big happy family.
Bruce Feiler, in his current best seller, “Abraham, A Journey to the
Heart of Three Faiths” observed the movement of people about Jerusalem
(which for all three religions is a sacred city), on a particular Friday mid
December. Christians, preparing
to celebrate Jesus birth move to the north toward the Via Delarosa, (that
ancient road down which Jesus walked toward Golgotha) where monks,
recognizing both the birth and the death of Jesus, solemnly process with
crosses. Jews move toward the
south to light candles at the ruins of the Western Wall of the temple to
mark the end of Hanukkah, and 200,000 Moslems turn to the east and bend in
unison to pray the Sabbath prayers for the last Friday in the holy month of
Ramadan.
Three groups, fanning out into three streams have the same ancestor.
For Jews, Abraham is the founder of the nation of Israel.
For Moslems, Abraham
is the first true monotheist (a believer in one God).
For Christians, Abraham is the one with whom God made covenant, a covenant
that would be renewed in Jesus Christ through the lineage of David.
We have the same ancestor. This
is a time when the children of that ancestor desperately need to talk with
each other, us…not only high officials trying to avoid war, but we, in
here in Grand Rapids -- Moslem, Jewish, Christian.
One place to begin that conversation is with what we share in
common—Abraham.
What do you know about Abraham? I’m not naďve enough to think Abraham
holds the magic answer to peace, but getting to know him as he comes to us
in story, and remembering his interactions with God, will make us more
informed, as we try to accept rather than demonize those who are different.
Who is this Abraham and where did he come from?
A Middle Eastern geography lesson is a good place to begin.
Look at a modern map of Iraq and draw a line south through Baghdad,
following it about 70 miles to the south.
There, under your pencil near the Euphrates River is the approximate
position of ancient city Ur, a major trade center, as civilized as any city
in the ancient Near East. This
is the home of Terah, the birthplace of his son Abraham, and is the place
where Abraham marries Sarah. After his call from God, he and his family
traveled northwest to Harem, in what is today southern Turkey.
The Abraham clan were not nomads, but neither were they settlers.
They moved about freely from one place to another without apparent purpose
or direction.
Abraham and his family are the pivotal family in the history of the world.
In the first 11 chapters of Genesis, prior to Abraham arriving on the
scriptural scene, God isn’t having much luck with humanity.
Adam and Eve made a fatal culinary decision; Cain and Abel displayed
the worst of sibling rivalry, and much to God’s displeasure, bigheaded
folks with a superiority complex built the Tower of Babel. As if God is
offering Creation Part 3, God initiates a new method, a new project. God’s
context narrows from the whole creation, the whole human family, to one man,
his wife, and his future family. What is so remarkable, so earthshaking
about this man?
Abraham goes, in faith with a promise, and a belief in One God.
Let’s take those ideas, one phrase at a time.
When Abraham is called, he goes.
First Abraham is open, and is able to listen to God’s very
directive voice. Then he responds when God says, Go! We might imagine that
since the family is not settled anyplace permanently, that to pull up the
tent stakes and pack the saddlebags again was no major request. But this departure is different than any other had been.
God asks, really commands Abraham to leave all that he holds dear,
beginning with the general and moving down to the specific the intimate.
Leave your country, your kindred, and even your immediate family and
God says. “Go!”
God speaks with the same imperative tone as at Creation when God
cries, “Let there be light”, and LIGHT!
God speaks with the same imperative as Jesus who calls unexpected,
average people like Peter and James and John, “Come, follow me”, and
these children of Abraham walk away from the lakeside, their work, their
fathers and mothers and their security and follow him.
Moslems say that Abraham “submits” to God, that his rapid response is
a sign of what will be his ongoing submission to the will of Allah.
The very word “Islam”, means submit, a word which makes many
modern people shutter and run but in reference to our relationship with God
it’s the same principle we preach and try to practice—but as reformed
Christians, rather than speaking the language of submission we use the
language of sovereignty. We accept that we need a presence bigger than we
are and we choose to live under that strong presence.
Abraham, our common ancestor, accepts God’s call, and embraces it, he
believes in the promises, he obeys God’s commands, and according to the
record, he asks no questions. He is the prototype for all disciples who
forsake everything and follow.
It has
been said that:
To be on a journey and not to change, is to be a nomad.
To not be on a journey and to change, is to be a chameleon.
To be on a journey and to change is to be a pilgrim.
Abraham
and Sarah journeyed as pilgrims, risking change.
That is our heritage.
Part One, Abraham goes. Part Two:
He goes out with a promise, living by faith.
Beginning
with Noah and God’s promise of salvation to him, God continues to be the
promise-maker, but now gets specific, targeting the promise once made to the
whole creation, to just one family. To
a barren, landless, purposeless couple, God promises children. God promises
land. God promises a nation. God
promises blessing (prosperity, favor).
If Abraham’s submission to God causes him to respond, it is
Abraham’s faith which causes him to trust God to fulfill these
unlikely, even laughable promises. Belief in the promises and the beginning
of their fulfillment shapes the whole of Abraham and Sarah’s life.
It pushes them to faith.
William Sloan Coffin says that, “Faith is not believing without proof,
it is trusting without reservation”.
Father Abraham and Mother Sarah model for all their children that
kind of faith. Whether
trusting in God for the birth and health of children, a safe and warm home,
a just and peaceful nation, or your salvation, remember what sustained your
ancestors on their spiritual and physical journey through life—faith in a
promise. Theirs was a trust without reservation.
It is
with the understanding of those promises, to whom they were made, and what
they refer which contributes to today’s geo-political-spiritual conflicts
in the Middle East. Four
cherished promises, four prizes for which the people of three great
religions fight. Which
son inherits the land? (read, who gets the West Bank) Who will inherit the
blessing? (read, the Arabs?, the Jews?)
To what degree can a promise be shared? (read, Christians, Jews,
Moslems) This of course is
where the family feud begins. All the children of Abraham claim the
promises—but they can’t see to live together in their fulfillment.
First, we have said, Abraham goes out; second, he goes out with a promise,
living by faith and thirdly, he worships One God.
When Abraham left home and family and country, Abraham also left his
family of gods, his collection of idols.
No one had done this before. In
no society in the ancient near east did people rely on the strength of one
god to provide for all their needs. For
Moslems in particular, Abraham’s acceptance that God-is-One is paramount. In fact, in the Koran, a story is told of the child Abraham
smashing the statues of gods, the idols, he finds in his fathers shop.
The story nicely previews Abraham’s allegiance to one God.
Belief and action are often inconsistent. It is highly unlikely that
Abraham and his family make a 180-degree turn from polytheism to monotheism
overnight. In fact we know from
later family stories that they did not.
The People of Israel 500 year’s later still struggled. When Moses
is up on the mountain praying, the Israelites forged a Golden Calf hoping
their honor of their ancestor’s god might speed their exit from the
desert. Moses and his God
seemed ineffective. Another 500 years later, the prophets railed against the
people of Israel for worshiping the false gods of power and money and sex
and prestige. And today, centuries later, while we claim to be monotheists
fooling ourselves into thinking that we worship only the Almighty God of
Jesus Christ, we still try to hide our favorite gods in the folds of our
garments—the gods of stuff, of self-reliance, individualism, power,
success.
Abraham demonstrates his allegiance to God by building altars.
Along the way from Haran to Canaan and as far as the Negev desert in
Arabia, he constructs altars to God in whose hands he has placed his family.
These places of personal and family worship are vehicles of
expression of gratitude to God for the promises.
This was belief enacted.
To
learn from our common ancestor would mean that we commit our lives not only
in theory, but in practice, to God. Or Yahweh, or Allah, all the same God
and allow God to shape our lives.
We have the same ancestor. We
share the same genes. The same
promises, the same faithful God. What
a commentary on a broken world and our broken souls that we persist in
fumbling around in the chaos our differences rather than finding order and
harmony in our commonalities?
A story is told by all three religions which goes like this:
Two brothers live on either side of a hill.
One is wealthy but has no family; the other has a large family but
limited wealth. The rich
brother decides one night that he is blessed with goods and taking a sack of
grain from his silo, carries it to the silo of his brother.
The other brother decides that he is blessed with many children, and
since his brother should at least have wealth, he takes a sack of grain from
his silo and carries it to that of his brother. Each night they go through
this process and every morning each brother is astounded that he has the
same amount of grain as the day before.
Finally, one night they meet at the top of the hill and realize
what’s been happening. They
embrace and kiss each other. And
at that moment, the heavenly voice declares, ‘this is the place where I
can build my house on earth.” That
hill is the city of Jerusalem, a place shared by all the children of
Abraham. It is where Solomon
built a temple, where Jesus prayed, where Mohammed ascended.
The degree of love shown by those two brothers is what is necessary
before God can be manifest in the world, in Jerusalem, the City of Peace, or
anywhere.
We have the same father, Abraham. When will we learn to love? Why do
we treat each other this way?
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