Clone of Traveling with Abraham
Commentary
You remember the story... Abraham was a great old man, probably 125 or so! God had come to him in the past in strange and wonderful ways. When he wore a younger man’s clothes, the VOICE had called him on a journey with no fixed destination. But the beckoning was always one of blessing: “I’ll give you land beyond measure! I’ll make sure you have a child, old as you are! Your descendants will populate these hills and valleys like rain!”
Well, the land sort of took him in. Moreover, after some fits and starts, he and Sarai did get a child. And even though his pension plan was still not entirely clear, life in these later years was peaceful and prosperous. After all, there was Isaac. His boy’s name meant “laughter!” and that’s certainly what he brought Abraham these days. Life had turned out okay.
Now the VOICE came to him again. But was it really the same VOICE? “Sacrifice your son Isaac on the altar to me!” it said. What kind of God was this? Or was it perhaps a demon’s mocking mimic? “Kill your boy! Choke out the laughter!” God forbid! Please, God, let it not be so!
There would be no sleep this night. Abraham’s mind whirls while his old bones crawl in pain. Get the servants... Get the transportation... Get provisions... Get wood... Get the son...
Three days travel they go, with every step harder than the last. Isaac chatters his usual banter, laughter echoing in Abraham’s cold heart. Reluctantly Abraham spies the high place finally. The mountain of doom. The plateau of death.
Strangely gruff, Abraham orders the servants to stay. “The boy and I will go it alone from here.” Two on a murderous mission. Only one will return. The father-son hike soured even more when Isaac’s laughter lilted a deadly chilly question: “Where’s the lamb, father?”
What could Abraham say? Does he tell Isaac the truth: “Son, the God who said he loved me enough to give you to your mother and me now says he wants you back, and I’ve got to do the dirty work!”? How do you lie with a straight face when heaven is ripped apart by hell? Is it a spiteful retort, spat out in unholy jest, that finally clears his throat: “My son, God will provide...”?
So here they are, clearing and building and preparing. And now the end creeps with horror into Isaac’s eyes. His father binds him. His father thrusts him on the wood. His father stands over him with a glinting knife. And the laughter dies...
But not yet. In a miraculous moment, time stops and grace points to another sacrifice. The son is free, and faith is affirmed. And he calls the place Moriah.
Moriah is one of those delightfully ambiguous names that can mean several things at once. It probably has to do with seeing at this point, or knowing. Where God sees, he will be seen. Something like that.
But what is it that God sees on a mountain called Moriah? For one thing, he sees a man. A weak man. A stumbler on the earth. A businessman who got ahead in life. A husband who cheated on his wife. A father who knew the joy of bringing new life into being.
Even more than that, God sees a man who was willing to put it all on the line. Here was someone who counted his relationship with the God of the voice to be the one thing that mattered, the one thing that put everything else together, the one thing that could raise even heaven out of this stench of hell.
Probably the most important thing about the moment of seeing is not only that God sees Abraham there on Mount Moriah. In some mysterious way, God is also seen by Abraham.
A geography lesson tells the rest of the story. On this same barren spot of ground, centuries later, David would urge Solomon to build the temple of God. It would stand as a doorway between earth and eternity. And then, in the mysterious design of the ages, one day another Father would walk these slopes with another son. That son, too, would raise his voice to his Father, and the Father, for a time would be silent. The wood of the offering would be prepared, and the son would be lifted as a sacrifice. On what the world would later call “Good Friday” this other Father would shed tears of pain as his child died, this time with no escape.
Somehow history would repeat itself and more with a vengeance. Yet this Lamb would also be chosen by God for the altar. And laughter would be silenced for three days while all the world looked on in wonder.
Abraham found his faith that day on Mount Moriah, but it cost God his son on the same spot. The mystery of life is found now not in a faith that pretends laughter, but in a promise that God knows pain. Because he has walked a mile in Abraham’s shoes and ours, God will never leave us. He will never forsake us.
Genesis 12:1-4a
The narratives of the patriarchs are not merely documentary history through which Israel could fashion a set of lively bedtime stories. Instead, the very heart of Israel’s identity was shaped as the nation reflected on certain aspects of the lives of its forebears. For this reason, there is no complete history of Abraham, or entire biography of Isaac, or fully developed life of Jacob. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to formulate these from the limited amount of historical information given about each.
Instead, the purpose of these stories, particularly since they appear to emerge from the Sinai covenant-making events of Exodus, is to provide a basis for Israel to understand who she is as a nation. This becomes more apparent when the essential focus of each major story cycle is probed.
Although later references to Israel’s ancestral parentage would emerge as the standardized phrase “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” in reality the second part of Genesis contains three major story cycles in which Isaac is only a footnote to those of Abraham and Jacob, and Joseph is added as a key player in the larger drama. In rough overview, Genesis 12–50 may be outlined in this manner:
Abraham Story Cycle (chapters 12–25)
Jacob Story Cycle (chapters 26–36)
Joseph Story Cycle (chapters 37–50)
Each of these story cycles adds a unique element to Israel’s self-identity when read backwards from the covenant-making ceremony at Mt. Sinai. In this way they form, with Genesis 1–11, a deliberate extended historical prologue to the Suzerain Vassal treaty by staging that event over against the prevailing worldviews of the day, and within a certain missional context that illumines the purpose of Israel’s existence and the reason why Yahweh takes such interest in this tiny nation.
Abram is an Aramean from the heart of Mesopotamia, whose father Terah begins a journey westward which Abram continues upon his father’s death. Whatever Terah’s reasons might have been for moving from the old family village—restlessness, treasure-seeking, displacement, wanderlust—Genesis 12 informs us that Abram’s continuation of the trek was motivated by a divine call to seek a land which would become his by providential appointment. This is the first of four similar divine declarations that occur in quick succession in chapters 12, 13, 15 and 17. Such repetition cues us to the importance of these theophanies, but it ought also causes us to look more closely at the forms in which the promises to Abram are made.
In brief, Abram’s first three encounters with God are shaped literarily as royal grants. Only in Genesis 17 does the language of the dialogue change, and elements are added to give it the flavor of a Suzerain Vassal covenant. This is very significant. When Abram receives royal grant promises of land or a son, he seems to treat these divine offerings with a mixture of indifference and skepticism. He immediately leaves the land of promise in Genesis 12 and connives with his wife Sarai and her handmaid Hagar to obtain an heir in Genesis 16. Even in the stories of Genesis 13-14, where Abram sticks with the land and fights others to regain his nephew Lot from them after local skirmishes and kidnappings, Abram turns his thankfulness toward a local expression of religious devotion through the mystical figure of Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18-20). Only when God changes the language of covenant discourse, bringing Abram into the partnership of a Suzerain-Vassal bond, does Abraham enter fidelity and commitment to this new world and new purpose and new journey.
For Israel, standing at Mt. Sinai in the context of a Suzerain Vassal covenant-making ceremony, the implications would be striking. First of all, the nation would see itself as the unique and miraculously-born child fulfilling a divine promise. Israel could not exist were it not for God’s unusual efforts at getting Abram and Sarai pregnant in a way that was humanly impossible. Second, the people were the descendants of a man on a divine pilgrimage. Not only was Abram en route to a land of promise, but he was also the instrument of God for the blessing of all the nations of the earth. In other words, Israel was born with a mandate, and it was globally encompassing. Third, while these tribes had recently emerged from Egypt as a despised social underclass of disenfranchised slaves, they were actually landowners. Canaan was theirs for the taking because they already owned it! They would not enter the land by stealth, but through the front door; they would claim the land, not by surreptitious means or mere battlefield bloodshed, but as rightful owners going home. This would greatly affect their common psyche: they were the long-lost heirs of a kingdom, returning to claim their royal privilege and possessions. Fourth, there was a selection in the process of creating their identity. They were children of Abraham, but so were a number of area tribes and nations descending from Ishmael. What made them special was the uniqueness of their lineage through Isaac, the miraculously born child of Abram and Sarai’s old age. Israel had international kinship relations, but she also retained a unique identity fostered by the divine distinctions between branches of the family. Fifth, in the progression of the dialogue between Yahweh and Abram there was a call to participation in the mission of God. As the story of Abram unfolded, it was clear that his commitment to God’s plans was minimal at best until the change from royal grants (Genesis 12, 13, 15) to the Suzerain Vassal Covenant of chapter 17. Each time Abram was given a gift he seemingly threw it away, tried to take it by force, or manipulated his circumstances so that he controlled his destiny; only when God took formal ownership of both Abram and the situation through the Suzerain-Vassal Covenant of Genesis 17 was there a marked change in Abram’s participation in the divine initiative. The renaming of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah were only partly significant for the meaning of the names; mostly they were a deliberate and public declaration that God owned them. To name meant to have power over, just as was the case when a divine word created the elements of the universe in Genesis 1, and when Adam named the animals in Genesis 2. Furthermore, in the call to circumcise all the males of the family, God transformed a widely used social rite of passage symbol into a visible mark of belonging now no longer tied to personal achievements like battlefield wins or hunting success, but merely to the gracious goodness of God, and participation in the divine mission.
But what was that divine mission? Only when Israel heard the rest of the covenant prologue, and then followed Moses to the promised land, would it become clear. Still, in recalling the tale of father Abraham in this manner, Genesis places before Israel at Sinai a very important element of its profound identity: we came into this world miraculously as a result of a divine initiative to bless all the nations of the earth; therefore we are a unique people with the powerful backing of the Creator, and participating in a mission that is still in progress.
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
The story of God’s righteousness as grace and goodness begins with Abraham. God has always desired an ever-renewing relationship with the people of this world, creatures made in God’s own image. Paul describes God’s heart of love in 3:21-31, using illustrations from the courtroom (we are “justified”—3:24), the marketplace (we receive “redemption”—3:24), and the temple (“a sacrifice of atonement”—3:25). Moreover, while this ongoing expression of God’s gracious goodness finds its initial point of contact through the Jews (Abraham and “the law” and Jesus), it is clearly intended for all of humankind (3:27-31).
This is nothing new, according to Paul. In fact, if we return to the story of Abraham, we find some very interesting notes that we may have glossed over. “Blessedness” was “credited” to Abraham before he had a chance to be “justified by works” (4:1-11) In other words, whenever the “righteousness of God” shows up, it is a good thing, a healing hope, an enriching experience that no one is able to buy or manipulate. God alone initiates a relationship of favor and grace with us (4:1-23). In fact, according to Paul, this purpose of God is no less spectacular than the divine quest to re-create the world, undoing the effects that the cancer of sin has blighted upon us (Romans 5). It feels like being reborn (5:1-11). It plays out like the world itself is being remade (5:12-21). This is the great righteousness of God at work!
John 3:1-17
The fourth gospel’s unique prologue highlights several ideas that are then unraveled throughout the whole. First, both Jesus and the message of Christianity are tied to the comprehensive foundational values shaping common philosophic systems of the day. “Logos,” in the Greek mind, was the organizing principle giving meaning and identity to everything else. By using this term to describe Jesus, John portrays him as more than just a fine teacher who said a few nice things on a Palestinian spring afternoon. Jesus is, in fact, according to John, the very Creator of all things, and the one who gives meaning to life itself. Apart from Jesus nothing makes sense or has any intrinsic meaning.
Second, “light” and “darkness” explain everything. Right up front, John helps us think through life and values and purpose in a stark dualism that is engaged in a tug-of-war for everything and everybody. In our passage for today, Nicodemus will come to Jesus in the darkness of night (chapter 3), only to be serenaded by Jesus’ fine teachings about walking in the light. The blind man of chapter 9 is actually the only one who can truly see, according to Jesus, because all of the sighted people have darkened hearts and eyes. Judas (almost a doppelganger to Nicodemus) will enter the room of the last supper basking in the light of the glory that surrounds Jesus (chapter 13), but when he leaves to do his dastardly deed of betrayal, the voice of the narrator ominously intones “and it was night.” Evening falls as Jesus dies (chapter 19), but the floodlights of dawn rise around those who understand the power of his resurrection (chapter 20). Even in the extra story added as chapter 21, the disciples in the nighttime fishing boat are bereft of their netting talents until Jesus shows up at the crack of dawn, tells them where to find a great catch, and is recognized by them in the growing light of day and spiritual insight. Darkness, in the Gospel of John, means sin and evil and blindness and the malady of a world trying to make it on its own apart from its Creator. Light, on the other hand, symbolizes the return of life and faith and goodness and health and salvation and hope and the presence of God.
Third, as a corollary to these ideas, John shows us that salvation itself is a kind of re-creation. Using a deliberate word play to bind the opening of the gospel to the sentences that start Genesis, John communicates that the world once made lively by the Creator has now fallen under the deadly pall of evil and needs to be delivered. The only way that this renewal can happen is if the Creator re-injects planet Earth with a personal and concentrated dose of the original light by which all things were made. Although many still wander in blindness or shrink back from the light like cockroaches or rodents who have become accustomed to the inner darkness of a rotting garbage dump, those to whom sight is restored are enabled to live children of God once again. Here in John 3, re-creation is expressed through the idea of being “born again,” and in the love of God for the whole of the world (“cosmos”), which brings it back to life after it has become dead and dark.
This leads to a fourth theme of the prologue, namely that the New Testament era is merely the Old Testament mission of God revived in a new form. Jesus, the Logos, comes to earth and “tabernacles” among us (John 1:14), just as the Creator had done when covenanting with Israel, and commissioning her to become a witness to the nations. Furthermore, those who truly recognize Jesus for who he is, see in him the “glory” of the Father. This is a direct link to the shekinah glory light of God that filled the tabernacle and the temple, announcing the divine presence. The mission of God continues, but it will now be experienced through the radiance that glows in all who are close to Jesus. The “tabernacle” that houses the glory of the divine presence is on the move into the world through this “only begotten Son of God” (1:14) and all who become “children of God” (1:12) with and through him. So it happens for Nicodemus, and all others who sneak out of the shadows to “walk in the light.”
Application
There is something wonderfully paradoxical about the Christian church. Its origin as a unique social phenomenon clearly dates from the Pentecost events described in Acts 2. Yet, at the same time, Jesus’ disciples, who were at the center of the church from its very beginning, would say that this “new” community of faith was simply part of a centuries-old already existing people of God, stretching back all the way to Abraham and his family. In God’s initial encounter with Abram, recorded in Genesis 12, it is clear that the relationship between God and Abram was missional in character. The Creator wished to “bless” all nations of the earth, but would enact that blessing through Abram and his descendants. This became the source of Israel’s unique identity: bound to Yahweh through the Sinai covenant, and positioned on the great highway between the nations in the territory known as Canaan. For the mission to work, people would have to flow to and through this piece of property, and Israel would have to be the visible face of God and God’s intentions.
Yet after thirteen centuries of tenuous existence in the “Promised Land,” the larger world of human spread and discover was expanding, and “Canaan” could no longer be considered the center of all civilizations. Along with that, the witness of Israel to the nations had become muted through historical circumstances and internal challenges. So, the Creator became a creature in the person of Jesus (John 1:1-14). He taught and showed and expressed the divine mission, and then initiated the “new” Christian church from among the “old” people of Israel. What had once been geographically based now became a mobile, international community of witness within every culture. The missional engagement which began centuries earlier through Abram’s little family as a centripetal force, pulling all nations into Israel’s witnessing orbit, was now flung out as a centrifugal spray, invading and influencing every territory on earth.
But how are these two developments connected? The whole message of the Bible is based on the continuing relationship between the old and the new. This association is rooted in a number of theological axioms:
Alternative Application (Genesis 12:1-4a)
This season of Lent will end soon with Jesus’ arrival at the capital city of ancient Israel and modern Judea, and there he will be welcomed as king. The crowds immediately and publicly connect Jesus to David’s royal family (21:9) and give him a royal salute. Furthermore, when Jesus enters the city, he moves directly to the temple. This, of course, was “God’s house,” the dwelling of Yahweh on earth. It was the permanent replication of what the tabernacle had been throughout Israel’s wilderness wanderings. Just as when that portable structure had been dedicated by Moses, and the glory of God swooshed in as Yahweh took up residence (Exodus 40), so the same had happened while Solomon dedicated the first temple (1 Kings 8). But a vision later recorded by the prophet Ezekiel announced the awful portent that the glory of God was leaving the temple, and that God had gone back to heaven, moving out of Israel’s neighborhood (Ezekiel 9–10).
It was Yahweh leaving “God’s House” that precipitated the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and initiated the years of Jewish exile and captivity. When Cyrus of the Persians issued an edict sending the exiles back to Jerusalem, they rebuilt the temple on a small scale with their modest resources. But the glory of God never returned to the rebuilt temple. During the times of the prophet Malachi, around 400 B.C., the people were still pleading with God to return and take up residence with them again (Malachi 3–4).
It is this history that the gospels draw upon, as they mark the steps of Jesus entering Jerusalem. Jesus goes directly to the temple, the house of God, and by implication, his own house as God. He cleans the place, a task which only the owner of the house can authorize (Matthew 21:12–13). There Jesus receives his kingdom citizens who need royal favors—the blind and the lame (Matthew 21:14). While Jesus is holding royal court, he is also presented with an impromptu concert from the most trusting stakeholders in his realm: the children (Matthew 21:15). When the “chief priests” (i.e., those who have been left in charge of God’s house), chide Jesus for inappropriately seeming to take over, Jesus quotes Psalm 8 as if it were his own, to verify the correctness of these happenings (Matthew 21:16). Jesus is king. Jesus is the eternal ruler who has a right to sit on the throne of David, fulfilling the covenant Yahweh made with him. Jesus is the obvious resident of Israel’s royal palace.
But these tenants have no use for Jesus, and do not want him to disturb their hold on power and territory. A few verses later Jesus’ authority is directly questioned (Matthew 21:23–27), within the very temple courts themselves. In response, Jesus tells two parables (Matthew 21:28–46), each of which declares the horrible things that are about to happen because the tenants reject the royal claims of the Creator’s family. Jesus is king, but this rule will not be won easily. It will be gotten only through the horrible death that Jesus is about to endure.
Matthew never relents from this central message that Jesus is the last and greatest and eternal son of David. Before the crucifixion, Jesus is identified openly as king at least four different times (Matthew 27:1–44). When Jesus dies, the curtain of the temple, which marked Yahweh’s hidden quarters and separated God from the people, is torn away, so that the place becomes ceremonially dysfunctional (Matthew 27:51) and Israel’s ruler must move out of this residence. Even the earth itself heaves and groans in the seismic religious shift that is taking place between the old and new forms of the covenant mission of Yahweh (Matthew 27:52).
But the picture is clear. God prepares a home for us. When we leave that home, because of our own willful tendencies, God comes back, pursues us, until God finds a way to “tabernacle” with us (see John 1:14). In the long run, however, it is God who creates a new dwelling for us and calls us back home. This is the home that truly matters, and the one which stands as the archetype of all our other homes and places of residence. Most importantly, there is no question as to who is the true Master of this house. It is not Adam. It is not Eve. It is not Abraham, nor Noah, nor even Moses. This house belongs to God. And the one who truly serves as steward and host of God’s house is Jesus.
Well, the land sort of took him in. Moreover, after some fits and starts, he and Sarai did get a child. And even though his pension plan was still not entirely clear, life in these later years was peaceful and prosperous. After all, there was Isaac. His boy’s name meant “laughter!” and that’s certainly what he brought Abraham these days. Life had turned out okay.
Now the VOICE came to him again. But was it really the same VOICE? “Sacrifice your son Isaac on the altar to me!” it said. What kind of God was this? Or was it perhaps a demon’s mocking mimic? “Kill your boy! Choke out the laughter!” God forbid! Please, God, let it not be so!
There would be no sleep this night. Abraham’s mind whirls while his old bones crawl in pain. Get the servants... Get the transportation... Get provisions... Get wood... Get the son...
Three days travel they go, with every step harder than the last. Isaac chatters his usual banter, laughter echoing in Abraham’s cold heart. Reluctantly Abraham spies the high place finally. The mountain of doom. The plateau of death.
Strangely gruff, Abraham orders the servants to stay. “The boy and I will go it alone from here.” Two on a murderous mission. Only one will return. The father-son hike soured even more when Isaac’s laughter lilted a deadly chilly question: “Where’s the lamb, father?”
What could Abraham say? Does he tell Isaac the truth: “Son, the God who said he loved me enough to give you to your mother and me now says he wants you back, and I’ve got to do the dirty work!”? How do you lie with a straight face when heaven is ripped apart by hell? Is it a spiteful retort, spat out in unholy jest, that finally clears his throat: “My son, God will provide...”?
So here they are, clearing and building and preparing. And now the end creeps with horror into Isaac’s eyes. His father binds him. His father thrusts him on the wood. His father stands over him with a glinting knife. And the laughter dies...
But not yet. In a miraculous moment, time stops and grace points to another sacrifice. The son is free, and faith is affirmed. And he calls the place Moriah.
Moriah is one of those delightfully ambiguous names that can mean several things at once. It probably has to do with seeing at this point, or knowing. Where God sees, he will be seen. Something like that.
But what is it that God sees on a mountain called Moriah? For one thing, he sees a man. A weak man. A stumbler on the earth. A businessman who got ahead in life. A husband who cheated on his wife. A father who knew the joy of bringing new life into being.
Even more than that, God sees a man who was willing to put it all on the line. Here was someone who counted his relationship with the God of the voice to be the one thing that mattered, the one thing that put everything else together, the one thing that could raise even heaven out of this stench of hell.
Probably the most important thing about the moment of seeing is not only that God sees Abraham there on Mount Moriah. In some mysterious way, God is also seen by Abraham.
A geography lesson tells the rest of the story. On this same barren spot of ground, centuries later, David would urge Solomon to build the temple of God. It would stand as a doorway between earth and eternity. And then, in the mysterious design of the ages, one day another Father would walk these slopes with another son. That son, too, would raise his voice to his Father, and the Father, for a time would be silent. The wood of the offering would be prepared, and the son would be lifted as a sacrifice. On what the world would later call “Good Friday” this other Father would shed tears of pain as his child died, this time with no escape.
Somehow history would repeat itself and more with a vengeance. Yet this Lamb would also be chosen by God for the altar. And laughter would be silenced for three days while all the world looked on in wonder.
Abraham found his faith that day on Mount Moriah, but it cost God his son on the same spot. The mystery of life is found now not in a faith that pretends laughter, but in a promise that God knows pain. Because he has walked a mile in Abraham’s shoes and ours, God will never leave us. He will never forsake us.
Genesis 12:1-4a
The narratives of the patriarchs are not merely documentary history through which Israel could fashion a set of lively bedtime stories. Instead, the very heart of Israel’s identity was shaped as the nation reflected on certain aspects of the lives of its forebears. For this reason, there is no complete history of Abraham, or entire biography of Isaac, or fully developed life of Jacob. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to formulate these from the limited amount of historical information given about each.
Instead, the purpose of these stories, particularly since they appear to emerge from the Sinai covenant-making events of Exodus, is to provide a basis for Israel to understand who she is as a nation. This becomes more apparent when the essential focus of each major story cycle is probed.
Although later references to Israel’s ancestral parentage would emerge as the standardized phrase “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” in reality the second part of Genesis contains three major story cycles in which Isaac is only a footnote to those of Abraham and Jacob, and Joseph is added as a key player in the larger drama. In rough overview, Genesis 12–50 may be outlined in this manner:
Abraham Story Cycle (chapters 12–25)
Jacob Story Cycle (chapters 26–36)
Joseph Story Cycle (chapters 37–50)
Each of these story cycles adds a unique element to Israel’s self-identity when read backwards from the covenant-making ceremony at Mt. Sinai. In this way they form, with Genesis 1–11, a deliberate extended historical prologue to the Suzerain Vassal treaty by staging that event over against the prevailing worldviews of the day, and within a certain missional context that illumines the purpose of Israel’s existence and the reason why Yahweh takes such interest in this tiny nation.
Abram is an Aramean from the heart of Mesopotamia, whose father Terah begins a journey westward which Abram continues upon his father’s death. Whatever Terah’s reasons might have been for moving from the old family village—restlessness, treasure-seeking, displacement, wanderlust—Genesis 12 informs us that Abram’s continuation of the trek was motivated by a divine call to seek a land which would become his by providential appointment. This is the first of four similar divine declarations that occur in quick succession in chapters 12, 13, 15 and 17. Such repetition cues us to the importance of these theophanies, but it ought also causes us to look more closely at the forms in which the promises to Abram are made.
In brief, Abram’s first three encounters with God are shaped literarily as royal grants. Only in Genesis 17 does the language of the dialogue change, and elements are added to give it the flavor of a Suzerain Vassal covenant. This is very significant. When Abram receives royal grant promises of land or a son, he seems to treat these divine offerings with a mixture of indifference and skepticism. He immediately leaves the land of promise in Genesis 12 and connives with his wife Sarai and her handmaid Hagar to obtain an heir in Genesis 16. Even in the stories of Genesis 13-14, where Abram sticks with the land and fights others to regain his nephew Lot from them after local skirmishes and kidnappings, Abram turns his thankfulness toward a local expression of religious devotion through the mystical figure of Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18-20). Only when God changes the language of covenant discourse, bringing Abram into the partnership of a Suzerain-Vassal bond, does Abraham enter fidelity and commitment to this new world and new purpose and new journey.
For Israel, standing at Mt. Sinai in the context of a Suzerain Vassal covenant-making ceremony, the implications would be striking. First of all, the nation would see itself as the unique and miraculously-born child fulfilling a divine promise. Israel could not exist were it not for God’s unusual efforts at getting Abram and Sarai pregnant in a way that was humanly impossible. Second, the people were the descendants of a man on a divine pilgrimage. Not only was Abram en route to a land of promise, but he was also the instrument of God for the blessing of all the nations of the earth. In other words, Israel was born with a mandate, and it was globally encompassing. Third, while these tribes had recently emerged from Egypt as a despised social underclass of disenfranchised slaves, they were actually landowners. Canaan was theirs for the taking because they already owned it! They would not enter the land by stealth, but through the front door; they would claim the land, not by surreptitious means or mere battlefield bloodshed, but as rightful owners going home. This would greatly affect their common psyche: they were the long-lost heirs of a kingdom, returning to claim their royal privilege and possessions. Fourth, there was a selection in the process of creating their identity. They were children of Abraham, but so were a number of area tribes and nations descending from Ishmael. What made them special was the uniqueness of their lineage through Isaac, the miraculously born child of Abram and Sarai’s old age. Israel had international kinship relations, but she also retained a unique identity fostered by the divine distinctions between branches of the family. Fifth, in the progression of the dialogue between Yahweh and Abram there was a call to participation in the mission of God. As the story of Abram unfolded, it was clear that his commitment to God’s plans was minimal at best until the change from royal grants (Genesis 12, 13, 15) to the Suzerain Vassal Covenant of chapter 17. Each time Abram was given a gift he seemingly threw it away, tried to take it by force, or manipulated his circumstances so that he controlled his destiny; only when God took formal ownership of both Abram and the situation through the Suzerain-Vassal Covenant of Genesis 17 was there a marked change in Abram’s participation in the divine initiative. The renaming of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah were only partly significant for the meaning of the names; mostly they were a deliberate and public declaration that God owned them. To name meant to have power over, just as was the case when a divine word created the elements of the universe in Genesis 1, and when Adam named the animals in Genesis 2. Furthermore, in the call to circumcise all the males of the family, God transformed a widely used social rite of passage symbol into a visible mark of belonging now no longer tied to personal achievements like battlefield wins or hunting success, but merely to the gracious goodness of God, and participation in the divine mission.
But what was that divine mission? Only when Israel heard the rest of the covenant prologue, and then followed Moses to the promised land, would it become clear. Still, in recalling the tale of father Abraham in this manner, Genesis places before Israel at Sinai a very important element of its profound identity: we came into this world miraculously as a result of a divine initiative to bless all the nations of the earth; therefore we are a unique people with the powerful backing of the Creator, and participating in a mission that is still in progress.
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
The story of God’s righteousness as grace and goodness begins with Abraham. God has always desired an ever-renewing relationship with the people of this world, creatures made in God’s own image. Paul describes God’s heart of love in 3:21-31, using illustrations from the courtroom (we are “justified”—3:24), the marketplace (we receive “redemption”—3:24), and the temple (“a sacrifice of atonement”—3:25). Moreover, while this ongoing expression of God’s gracious goodness finds its initial point of contact through the Jews (Abraham and “the law” and Jesus), it is clearly intended for all of humankind (3:27-31).
This is nothing new, according to Paul. In fact, if we return to the story of Abraham, we find some very interesting notes that we may have glossed over. “Blessedness” was “credited” to Abraham before he had a chance to be “justified by works” (4:1-11) In other words, whenever the “righteousness of God” shows up, it is a good thing, a healing hope, an enriching experience that no one is able to buy or manipulate. God alone initiates a relationship of favor and grace with us (4:1-23). In fact, according to Paul, this purpose of God is no less spectacular than the divine quest to re-create the world, undoing the effects that the cancer of sin has blighted upon us (Romans 5). It feels like being reborn (5:1-11). It plays out like the world itself is being remade (5:12-21). This is the great righteousness of God at work!
John 3:1-17
The fourth gospel’s unique prologue highlights several ideas that are then unraveled throughout the whole. First, both Jesus and the message of Christianity are tied to the comprehensive foundational values shaping common philosophic systems of the day. “Logos,” in the Greek mind, was the organizing principle giving meaning and identity to everything else. By using this term to describe Jesus, John portrays him as more than just a fine teacher who said a few nice things on a Palestinian spring afternoon. Jesus is, in fact, according to John, the very Creator of all things, and the one who gives meaning to life itself. Apart from Jesus nothing makes sense or has any intrinsic meaning.
Second, “light” and “darkness” explain everything. Right up front, John helps us think through life and values and purpose in a stark dualism that is engaged in a tug-of-war for everything and everybody. In our passage for today, Nicodemus will come to Jesus in the darkness of night (chapter 3), only to be serenaded by Jesus’ fine teachings about walking in the light. The blind man of chapter 9 is actually the only one who can truly see, according to Jesus, because all of the sighted people have darkened hearts and eyes. Judas (almost a doppelganger to Nicodemus) will enter the room of the last supper basking in the light of the glory that surrounds Jesus (chapter 13), but when he leaves to do his dastardly deed of betrayal, the voice of the narrator ominously intones “and it was night.” Evening falls as Jesus dies (chapter 19), but the floodlights of dawn rise around those who understand the power of his resurrection (chapter 20). Even in the extra story added as chapter 21, the disciples in the nighttime fishing boat are bereft of their netting talents until Jesus shows up at the crack of dawn, tells them where to find a great catch, and is recognized by them in the growing light of day and spiritual insight. Darkness, in the Gospel of John, means sin and evil and blindness and the malady of a world trying to make it on its own apart from its Creator. Light, on the other hand, symbolizes the return of life and faith and goodness and health and salvation and hope and the presence of God.
Third, as a corollary to these ideas, John shows us that salvation itself is a kind of re-creation. Using a deliberate word play to bind the opening of the gospel to the sentences that start Genesis, John communicates that the world once made lively by the Creator has now fallen under the deadly pall of evil and needs to be delivered. The only way that this renewal can happen is if the Creator re-injects planet Earth with a personal and concentrated dose of the original light by which all things were made. Although many still wander in blindness or shrink back from the light like cockroaches or rodents who have become accustomed to the inner darkness of a rotting garbage dump, those to whom sight is restored are enabled to live children of God once again. Here in John 3, re-creation is expressed through the idea of being “born again,” and in the love of God for the whole of the world (“cosmos”), which brings it back to life after it has become dead and dark.
This leads to a fourth theme of the prologue, namely that the New Testament era is merely the Old Testament mission of God revived in a new form. Jesus, the Logos, comes to earth and “tabernacles” among us (John 1:14), just as the Creator had done when covenanting with Israel, and commissioning her to become a witness to the nations. Furthermore, those who truly recognize Jesus for who he is, see in him the “glory” of the Father. This is a direct link to the shekinah glory light of God that filled the tabernacle and the temple, announcing the divine presence. The mission of God continues, but it will now be experienced through the radiance that glows in all who are close to Jesus. The “tabernacle” that houses the glory of the divine presence is on the move into the world through this “only begotten Son of God” (1:14) and all who become “children of God” (1:12) with and through him. So it happens for Nicodemus, and all others who sneak out of the shadows to “walk in the light.”
Application
There is something wonderfully paradoxical about the Christian church. Its origin as a unique social phenomenon clearly dates from the Pentecost events described in Acts 2. Yet, at the same time, Jesus’ disciples, who were at the center of the church from its very beginning, would say that this “new” community of faith was simply part of a centuries-old already existing people of God, stretching back all the way to Abraham and his family. In God’s initial encounter with Abram, recorded in Genesis 12, it is clear that the relationship between God and Abram was missional in character. The Creator wished to “bless” all nations of the earth, but would enact that blessing through Abram and his descendants. This became the source of Israel’s unique identity: bound to Yahweh through the Sinai covenant, and positioned on the great highway between the nations in the territory known as Canaan. For the mission to work, people would have to flow to and through this piece of property, and Israel would have to be the visible face of God and God’s intentions.
Yet after thirteen centuries of tenuous existence in the “Promised Land,” the larger world of human spread and discover was expanding, and “Canaan” could no longer be considered the center of all civilizations. Along with that, the witness of Israel to the nations had become muted through historical circumstances and internal challenges. So, the Creator became a creature in the person of Jesus (John 1:1-14). He taught and showed and expressed the divine mission, and then initiated the “new” Christian church from among the “old” people of Israel. What had once been geographically based now became a mobile, international community of witness within every culture. The missional engagement which began centuries earlier through Abram’s little family as a centripetal force, pulling all nations into Israel’s witnessing orbit, was now flung out as a centrifugal spray, invading and influencing every territory on earth.
But how are these two developments connected? The whole message of the Bible is based on the continuing relationship between the old and the new. This association is rooted in a number of theological axioms:
- First, it is built upon the confession that there is a God who created this world, and uniquely fashioned the human race with attributes that reflected its maker.
- Second, through human willfulness, the world lost its pristine vitality and is now caught up in a civil war against its Creator.
- Third, intruding directly into human affairs for the sake of reclaiming and restoring the world, the Creator began a mission of redemption and renewal through the family of Abraham, the nation of Israel.
- Fourth, Israel’s identity as a missional community was shaped by the Suzerain-Vassal covenant established at Mt. Sinai.
- Fifth, in order to be most effective in its witness to other nations, Israel was positioned at the crossroads of global societies, and thus received, as its “promised land,” the territory known as Canaan.
- Sixth, the effectiveness of this divine missional strategy through Israel was most evident in the eleventh century B.C., during the reigns of David and Solomon, when the kingdom grew mightily in size and influence among the peoples of the ancient near east and beyond.
- Seventh, this missional witness eroded away, almost to oblivion, through a combination of internal failures and external political threats, until most of the nation of Israel was wiped out by the Assyrians, and only a remnant of the tribe of Judah (along with religious leaders from among the Levites, and a portion of the small tribe of Benjamin) retained its unique identity as the people of Yahweh.
- Eighth, because of the seeming inadequacy of this initial method of witness, as the human race expanded rapidly to places beyond ready contact with Israel in Canaan, the Creator revised the divine missional strategy, and interrupted human history in a very visible manner once again, through the person of Jesus.
- Ninth, Jesus embodied the divine essence, taught the divine will, and went through death and resurrection to establish a new understanding of eschatological hope, which he then passed along to his followers as the message to be communicated to the nations.
- Tenth, Jesus’ teachings about this arriving messianic age were rooted in what the prophets of Israel had called the “Day of the Lord,” a time when divine judgment for sins would fall on all nations (including Israel), a remnant from Israel would be spared to become the restored seed community of a new global divine initiative, and the world would be transformed as God had intended for it to be, so that people could again live out their intended purposes and destinies.
- Eleventh, instead of applying all aspects of this “Day of the Lord” in a single cataclysmic event, Jesus split it in two, bringing the beginnings of eternal blessings while withholding the full impact of divine judgment for a time.
- Twelfth, the Christian church became God’s new agent for global missional recovery and restoration for the human race, superseding the territorially bound witness of Israel, with a portable and expanding testimony influencing all nations and cultures.
- Thirteenth, since the “Day of the Lord” has begun but is not yet finished, Jesus will return again to bring its culmination.
- Fourteenth, the church of Jesus exists in this time between Jesus’ comings as the great divine missional witness.
Alternative Application (Genesis 12:1-4a)
This season of Lent will end soon with Jesus’ arrival at the capital city of ancient Israel and modern Judea, and there he will be welcomed as king. The crowds immediately and publicly connect Jesus to David’s royal family (21:9) and give him a royal salute. Furthermore, when Jesus enters the city, he moves directly to the temple. This, of course, was “God’s house,” the dwelling of Yahweh on earth. It was the permanent replication of what the tabernacle had been throughout Israel’s wilderness wanderings. Just as when that portable structure had been dedicated by Moses, and the glory of God swooshed in as Yahweh took up residence (Exodus 40), so the same had happened while Solomon dedicated the first temple (1 Kings 8). But a vision later recorded by the prophet Ezekiel announced the awful portent that the glory of God was leaving the temple, and that God had gone back to heaven, moving out of Israel’s neighborhood (Ezekiel 9–10).
It was Yahweh leaving “God’s House” that precipitated the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and initiated the years of Jewish exile and captivity. When Cyrus of the Persians issued an edict sending the exiles back to Jerusalem, they rebuilt the temple on a small scale with their modest resources. But the glory of God never returned to the rebuilt temple. During the times of the prophet Malachi, around 400 B.C., the people were still pleading with God to return and take up residence with them again (Malachi 3–4).
It is this history that the gospels draw upon, as they mark the steps of Jesus entering Jerusalem. Jesus goes directly to the temple, the house of God, and by implication, his own house as God. He cleans the place, a task which only the owner of the house can authorize (Matthew 21:12–13). There Jesus receives his kingdom citizens who need royal favors—the blind and the lame (Matthew 21:14). While Jesus is holding royal court, he is also presented with an impromptu concert from the most trusting stakeholders in his realm: the children (Matthew 21:15). When the “chief priests” (i.e., those who have been left in charge of God’s house), chide Jesus for inappropriately seeming to take over, Jesus quotes Psalm 8 as if it were his own, to verify the correctness of these happenings (Matthew 21:16). Jesus is king. Jesus is the eternal ruler who has a right to sit on the throne of David, fulfilling the covenant Yahweh made with him. Jesus is the obvious resident of Israel’s royal palace.
But these tenants have no use for Jesus, and do not want him to disturb their hold on power and territory. A few verses later Jesus’ authority is directly questioned (Matthew 21:23–27), within the very temple courts themselves. In response, Jesus tells two parables (Matthew 21:28–46), each of which declares the horrible things that are about to happen because the tenants reject the royal claims of the Creator’s family. Jesus is king, but this rule will not be won easily. It will be gotten only through the horrible death that Jesus is about to endure.
Matthew never relents from this central message that Jesus is the last and greatest and eternal son of David. Before the crucifixion, Jesus is identified openly as king at least four different times (Matthew 27:1–44). When Jesus dies, the curtain of the temple, which marked Yahweh’s hidden quarters and separated God from the people, is torn away, so that the place becomes ceremonially dysfunctional (Matthew 27:51) and Israel’s ruler must move out of this residence. Even the earth itself heaves and groans in the seismic religious shift that is taking place between the old and new forms of the covenant mission of Yahweh (Matthew 27:52).
But the picture is clear. God prepares a home for us. When we leave that home, because of our own willful tendencies, God comes back, pursues us, until God finds a way to “tabernacle” with us (see John 1:14). In the long run, however, it is God who creates a new dwelling for us and calls us back home. This is the home that truly matters, and the one which stands as the archetype of all our other homes and places of residence. Most importantly, there is no question as to who is the true Master of this house. It is not Adam. It is not Eve. It is not Abraham, nor Noah, nor even Moses. This house belongs to God. And the one who truly serves as steward and host of God’s house is Jesus.
