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            As we prepare for our Lenten journey, which will take us to Christ’s cross and resurrection, today’s first reading tells of Abram (later Abraham) setting out on a journey to a destination which the Lord would show him, leaving behind his country and his father’s house. 
            Abraham is called “the father of all believers” and is venerated by all three monotheistic faiths, but for very different reasons.  For Jews Abraham is the father of their nation, the one to whom God promised descendants as numerous as the dust of the earth (Genesis 13:16), and to whom he gave the land of Canaan (today’s Palestine) as an everlasting possession (Genesis 15:18).  For Muslims Abraham is the hanif, who abandoned his father’s idols to worship the one true God, and to whose pure monotheism Islam is a return.  For Christians Abraham is the one made righteous by faith, who foreshadows Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, who would be saved, like Abraham, by faith apart from the works of the law (Galatians 3:6-9). 
            The 12th chapter of Genesis marks the transition from the world of legend to the historical arena of the 2nd millennium.  The stories of the patriarchal period are related to what was going on in the Fertile Crescent at that time and present the kind of evidence with which the historian and the archeologist must reckon. 
            But Genesis 12:1-4 also marks a turning point in the literary drama.  God’s three-fold promise, to possess a land, to become a great nation, and to be a blessing to the peoples of the earth, is the golden thread that runs through the Biblical epic from Abraham to the conquest of Canaan. 
            Abraham’s call initiated a new kind of history, the history of God’s actions through Israel to bring a blessing upon all humankind.  Abraham is the father of the people whom God chose for a special task in the historical plan.  After the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), which presents a dark picture of divine judgment, Abraham’s call is like a burst of light.  Unlike the builders at Babel, who aspired to make a name for themselves, Israel’s greatness would lie, not in herself, but in the God who was active in Israel’s history to overcome confusion, disharmony, and sin. 
            The Biblical author has transformed the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph from mere cult legends into the foundation of the history of Israel.  God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God who appears to the later patriarchs renews the promise first given to Abraham. 
            Abraham’s journey to an unknown land typifies the journey which each of us must take into the unknown, in order to encounter there the God who calls us to fulfil the spiritual destiny begun in the sacrament of baptism. 

February 22, 2009

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