Home > Sermons > August 12, 2007

Abraham Father of Many Faiths

I wonder what Abraham and Sarah would have thought if they had known then what we know now. Abraham is considered by three major faith groups to be the Father of their faith. Jews have always traced their genetic lineage and their faith lineage through Abraham and his wife Sarah and their son Isaac. And so it is that Abraham tops the list of ancient Hebrew patriarchs.

But reading the same ancient story, and taking a different look at it, the Muslims trace their genetic lineage and their lineage of faith in God through Abraham and his concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael. But in Islamic tradition Ishmael who was banned from the tents of Abraham, kept close to his father Abraham.

And of course Christians trace their lineage of faith from Abraham and Sarah and down through their descendant Jesus Christ. The reading from the book of Hebrews from the early Church is evidence of that.

And so we are three Abrahamic faiths – more alike than we are different – perhaps more kinfolk than many want to admit. What is it about Abraham and his family that makes them so key to our understanding of faith and so important to our history?

A Hinge of History

Historian and author Thomas Cahill has been publishing a series of books which he calls the hinges of history, the first one being How the Irish Saved Civilization. The second one is called The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (Doubleday 1998). Cahill is given to sweeping generalizations as even the titles of these two books give evidence. But I found the opening part of this book, The Gift of the Jews, to be particularly fascinating. Cahill concentrates his attention on the story which we just read from Genesis.

And in Cahill’s telling of it, what Abraham did (and of course that included Sarah and the others who traveled with them) was something that noone had ever done before. Rather Cahill says, “In the revolving drama of the heavens, primitive peoples saw an immortal wheel-like pattern that was predictive of mortal life (p.23).” No matter where you would go on the earth – whether to native American Tribal people or to India or anywhere in Asia – to Europe or to Africa – you would find basically the same view of things. In that view all of life was lived on a great wheel. There was birth, life, death. Then rebirth would begin it all over again. On this wheel nothing ever really changed. Oh the seasons of one year and the seasons of the next were not always totally predictable. But the pattern was. One life was not identical with another, but all people lived in and were subject to the unchanging nature of the wheel of existence. Where you were born and who your people were, would dictate how your life would be lived and where you would die.

People were related to the place where they found themselves and to their own families, but their was no particular impetus to do anything out of the ordinary. All of life both physical and spiritual was included in the great wheel that kept grinding away.

But when Cahill turns his camera on Abraham (whom he reads from the original Hebrew text as Avram), Cahill refreshingly invites us to see the opening words of the 12th chapter of Genesis to be, in themselves a hinge of history. No one before Abraham had ever had such an idea! Abraham heard God tell him to challenge what was and to do something totally unexpected. The voice of God – perhaps even an as-yet unknown god – said to Abraham, and I quote Cahill’s translation:

“Go-you forth

from your land,

from your kindred,

from your house,

to the land that I will let you see.

I will make a great nation of you

and will give-you-blessing

and will make your name great.

Be a blessing!

I will bless those who bless you,

he who curses you, I will damn.

And all the clans of the soil will find blessing through you!”

So, comments the anonymous narrator, “Avram went (p. 59-60).”

This trip into the wilderness by Abraham and his family – a return to the wild for someone who had been living in the higher civilization of Sumeria – was all because his god told him to. It was a “brand-new idea,” says Cahill, and he continues:

We know that Avram was heading to Canaan, but did he? ... There is no reason to think that Avram knew where he was going or anything more than that his god had told him – that he was to “go forth” (the Hebrew imperative “lekh-lekha has an immediacy that English cannot duplicate) on a journey of no return to “the land that I will” show you, that this god would somehow make of this childless man “a great nation,” and that all humanity would eventually find blessing through him (p. 62).

So this is more than the story of Abraham – an adventurer or an deranged leader. Cahill maintains that this is the beginning a view of history which breaks out of the circle of Karma, and which begins to look at history as something linear. It is, as the sub-title of the book says, the gift of the Jews that changed “the way everyone thinks and feels” and to which we are indebted today. This is why Cahill defines Abraham’s action – and Abraham’s view of life – as a hinge of history. It was the critical point when this great change in human thinking began.

Abraham in the New Testament

The author of the New Testament book of Hebrews didn’t have the benefit of Cahill’s scholarship or wit, but in the book of Hebrews Chapter 11, we read that there was something very special about Abraham and Sarah. Hebrews says: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents...(Hebrews 11:8-9).”

This act which Cahill has defined as the hinge of history, because it is the morning star of a whole new way of thinking, was recognized by early Christians as the forerunner of the very kind of faith in God that becomes the foundation of our Salvation in Christ Jesus. Hebrews defines “Faith [as] the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Heb. 11:1).” We as followers of Christ believe in and hope for – even base our lives on things that we cannot see. Faith is a gift of God.

Abraham Father of Three Faiths

How is it that Abraham has become a recognized Father of three great religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? Surely Abraham would not recognize what any of these religions do or say as something that he did or said. So how does Abraham take such a place of prominence? To ponder that question might lead us off in a number of directions:

- Could it be that Abraham was such an incredibly bright intellectual light that his every thought and action has continued to send ripples down the stream of the ages? The Bible doesn’t portray him as so wise and insightful. He even does some questionable things sometimes.

- Or could it be that Abraham just stumbled onto something that the world was in need of ? By accident Abraham found a way out of its fatalistic view of life and death.

- Or is it as the New Testament Scripture weaves the story of Jesus together with the story of ancient peoples, that Abraham was a part of God’s incredible plan from the beginning? The promise that God made to Abraham that he would be a blessing to the rest of the earth has really come about. The plan of God, if that is what it is, would be even broader than the New Testament Church could have understood. They knew nothing of Islam – it came into being 100's of years later.

I don’t presume to suggest how you should view the faith of Abraham and Sarah and their position in history. But I do hope that we all ponder the type of faith that they represent. As they set out in faith – sure that their god was leading them – we continue to believe in a history where individuals are not caught in a wheel of fortune. A person is fee to make a difference in the world. They feel a call to do or to go and things are different.

We Can Make a Difference in History

It may be a young person determined to go to school, to get a degree, to make something of themselves – even if he/she is the first in the family to go to college. A person has a dream to make a difference in the world and they draw others together and gather the strength to make the dream happen.

I recently joined the Rotary Club of Evanston Lighthouse. As you know Rotary Clubs had their start in Chicago, and Rotary International is here in Evanston. Each week in our club we hear a speaker, and often it is a person who has seen something that needed to be done and they have set out to do it. Recently, for instance, on one person’s initiative the club raised funds to send school supplies to children in Afghanistan. Another member is going to personally carry the supplies to his native country.

Then there was another of our members who had a vision a number of years ago – long before she joined the club – to start a café for the homeless in Chicago. With some hard work, it happened – offering a ray of dignity to people that soup kitchens can not.

And one of the biggest things that Rotary does is to work with the United Nations to stamp out polio. A very unassuming member of our club, works in the International office to oversee the polio project for the whole world – and she goes to work in her Evanston office every day. And the end of polio is in sight.

It is because of the view of history that says what we do today makes a difference in the way things will turn out – that linear view that history is going somewhere – that gift that comes from Abraham via the Jewish tradition – that we must thank for these possibilities.

If we didn’t believe that history is going somewhere – why would you try to affect children in Afghanistan? Or why would anybody try to make the life of the homeless any better? Or why would anyone give money to stamp out polio? But we do believe what we do matters– it is the legacy of faith.

God’s Call to You?

What is God calling you to do with your life and with your substance. We are at such different places in our own journey of life. But from beginning of our life to its end we have the opportunity to follow the star of God’s leading. To use our days and to use our resources to make a difference in the world we live in.

Or we can just say there is nothing for me to do, but go along – go along with the views and values of everyone else – go along with what is easiest because that is just the way things are.

But the story of the faith of Abraham and Sarah is an inspiration to us. They set out, as old people, to find this new land that they didn’t have any inkling about. But they set out in faith. And that is what God calls us to do as well. Whether we are young or old or somewhere in between, we are called to step out on faith.

God Calls this Church

So perhaps First Congregational Church sits at its own hinge of history – things can go this way or they can go that way. It is still possible, I suppose, for people to say that things have gone along like they are for so long, that the end is just inevitable; a church in the Protestant mainstream is a dying church.

Or it is possible to catch the vision of faith – that substance of things hoped for that assurance of things not seen – and to believe that indeed God is calling this church to do and be something that we don’t even know yet. God may be leading you into a territory where we have never been before. Are you willing to go? That would be the response of faith.

Conclusion

“Go-you forth

from your land,

from your kindred,

from your house,

to the land that I will let you see.

I will make a great nation of you

and will give-you-blessing

and will make your name great.

Be a blessing! (Cahill, p. 60)”

Amen.