From Terah to Abraham – Gen. 11:27-32
As always I encourage you to read the notes first and then the passage. http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/11. This is another genealogy. Compare it with previous one’s to see if you can detect what is similar and what is different. The differences are startling. What is the role of these genealogies that form markers, as it were, from the beginning Adam to Noah, then Shem to Abraham, and now Terah to Abraham.
At this point in Genesis although some things remain constant, namely God and his care and concern, some things change. For one thing God’s strategy becomes clearer. I ask you to attend to two simple words that might hold this transition. The first is promise. Next week we will read the promise that God makes to Abram. It is a remarkable event in human history. God promises. From then on, despite the concrete facts in the story which makes it seem impossible that the promise can or will be fulfilled, despite the fact that the family in which the promise emerges is anything but perfect, the promise shapes Abraham’s life.
In a startling way, we too are persons whose lives are shaped by promise. We too emerge out of families that are far from perfect; we emerge out of nations that are far from perfect, we emerge out of a church that is far from perfect. Despite all of this our life is shaped by a promise and as Christians that promise is fulfilled in Christ Jesus. In some way this one man, Abram, perhaps more than 3000 years ago, has become a beacon for three great historical religions.
Which leads us to the second word, faithfulness. The story of Isaac is seared into our memory that resonates with conflicting yet incredible resonance of faithfulness. We must also be clear though, that God’s promise is at one and the same time dependent on Abraham’s faithfulness and is independent of it. In fact Abraham proved faithful; in fact faithlessness was to mar the life of his descendants to our own day. I am a Christian because of the fact of Christ’s faithfulness in response to which God the Father raised him from the dead. Our faithfulness lies in his faithfulness though we too are summoned to be faithful. Life in its radical terror has been overcome by his promise of life eternal. If Christ has not risen, we are the most to be pitied.