Sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Charles Robertson, Jr., Pastor, Wilshire Presbyterian Church, March 20, 2005:
"Abram went and his children followed." You may have read the following article in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, February 12th. Those of us on the Interfaith Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, February 10-21, 2005, had it downloaded on a laptop, and read to us on our tour bus in Israel on what must have been Sunday the 13th.
The article began: "Mahmoud Abdel-Baset was scared.
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"Mahmoud Abdel-Baset was scared. As director of religious affairs for the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles, he and his interfaith partners had condemned the Taliban's destruction of precious Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. He had participated in prayer vigils after the Los Angeles riots and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He had helped lead countless discussions about the intersection of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But last year, when his partners at the Wilshire Center Interfaith Council proposed a joint pilgrimage to Israel, Abdel-Baset gulped. How, he wondered, could he sell this trip to the Muslim community at the height of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians? Could they separate raging political emotions from religious belief? ‘With so much bloodshed and suicide bombings, it was the least opportune time to talk to my community about this,’ [he] recalled. ‘I didn’t know how to break it to my board.’ But he did. And some members of his mosque agreed to take the trip. In the euphoria of the achievement, [his] early fears vanished.”
One disclaimer. Mahmoud says he didn’t say he was scared, but terrified! But whether he was scared or terrified, his situation was similar to that of Abraham, to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” The scriptures don’t mention Abraham’s reaction to his call from God, but anyone of us would say, “What?!?” And being scared or afraid wouldn’t even come close to how we might feel. Yet Abraham is willing to pack up all that’s dear to him, and leave the familiar behind on the promise that a new “home” is down an unfamiliar road, obscured by an uncertain future.
Here Mahmoud, or as we called him, Imam Mahmoud, our leader—and I might add our three other organizers and leaders of the pilgrimage, Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein of the Wilshire Blvd. Temple, Fr. Rick Byrum of St. James Episcopal Church and Deacon Eric Stoltz of St. Brendan Catholic Church—were faced with a journey into the unknown with 45 members of three faiths which, in addition to the current strife in the Middle East, have historically been hostile to one another, despite our common roots in Abraham.
Like Abraham, Imam Mahmoud, Rabbi Stephen Julius, Fr. Rick, and Deacon Eric took a “leap of faith,” as we sometimes call it. Faith is not 100% belief, as some people think. There is always doubt lurking about us. That’s the nature of faith. So it’s important to affirm the legitimacy of doubt, because some people think they’re not truly faithful because they occasionally have doubts. Our experience at time is that the stronger our faith, the stronger our doubts! Or, as Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote, “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”
When Abraham first hears God, he has no idea as to how what is to become his lifelong en-counter with God is going to unfold. As the scripture scholar Walter Burghardt points out, “leaving home and dear ones was little more than a first act in Abraham’s drama of faith.” He hasn’t an inkling of the joys and sorrows, struggles and celebrations that lie ahead. Nevertheless, because he responds to God’s call in obedience, or as our Muslim sister and brothers would say, with submission, he eventually becomes the father of the world’s three great monotheistic religions, and an example of faithfulness to us all.
Abraham doesn’t know that his response to God’s call, after he arrives in the Promised Land, will cause him to seek relief from famine in Egypt, or that, because he will be afraid, he’ll pass his wife Sarah off as his sister, and she’ll be taken into Pharaoh’s harem. He can’t foresee that his response will lead him and Lot, his brother’s son, to part. He has no idea that God will give him and Sarah new names—from Abram to Abraham and from Sarai to Sarah. He never guesses, leaving home at 75 years of age (!) that he’ll have one son, Ishmael, by Sarah’s Egyptian handmaid, Hagar, at age 86 (!), and another son, Isaac, by Sarah, at a 100 years of age (!). Nor does he know that through Ishmael he’ll become the father of the Arab peoples and revered in Islam, and that through Isaac and his son Jacob, or Israel, he’ll become the first of the patriarchs and the father of Judaism.
There’s something else in Abraham’s story that binds not just Mahmoud but all our Muslim pilgrims to him. All 15 of our Muslim colleagues are immigrants to the United States from Egypt. Thus they’re not only sons and daughters descended from Abraham—biologically and spiritually—but from Hagar the Egyptian as well. Like Abraham, they, as is true with over two-thirds the members of this congregation, at some time in their lives felt called to leave their homeland and come to a land of promise, the United States.
Of course, many of the rest of us are descendants of immigrants, but we haven’t known the fear and anxiety, nor felt the hope and promise of moving to a new land—like Abraham and other immigrants in all ages. It’s difficult for us descendants of immigrants to imagine life as it was in the “old country.” But we can be sure that venturing beyond the bounds of the known world, beyond the familiarity of the community in which we live, requires great courage.
Notice, however, that God doesn’t tell Abraham where to go. “Go to a land I will show you,” God says. At least our Muslim sisters and brothers and our immigrant grandparents knew where they were going when they left for the U.S. But not Abraham! God gives him no map! How many of us would be willing to make such a journey with all our belongings to a land we’ve never seen, and especially without knowing where it is? No map! Abraham responds and goes “as the Lord directed him.” The reason he is called the father of faith is evident. He responds to God’s call and goes without counting the cost.
Significantly, our great patriarch’s initial encounter with God is centered upon the divine directive to “go forth.” Abraham’s willingness to respond in faith would involve much more than travel arrangements, passports, and visas. Indeed, as another biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann, explains, “the command in Genesis 12:1 . . . relates not only to geography but to the orientation of Abraham’s innermost being.” In leaving his country and kindred, Abraham follows God’s lead to new realms of possibility and purpose. His “migration,” both physically and spiritually, becomes a model for the movement of any person from despair to hope, from fear to faith, from doubt to trust, and from death to life.
Whereas Abraham’s former life revolved around his family and flocks, from the time he answers God’s call, his life becomes invested in a promise. God’s promise of property, progeny, and prosperity shapes and directs the remainder of his life. We would think that he’d at least ask for some assurances before he packs up to leave Haran for destinations and adventures unknown, but he just goes. Abraham’s “migration” to God and his obedient response are absolute. He responds in faith and obeys without question. Faithful and obedient in his reply to God, he be-comes a blessing in his example by which all the families of the earth are blessed. Blessed by his name and graced by God, we the children of Abraham are similarly called to respond to God, and live lives of faith—in peace and justice, love and harmony with one another.
The history of our relationship with God in the three Abrahamic faiths begins with a promise to Abraham that he will be blessed and become a great nation, in whom all the families of the earth will be blessed. The promise is fulfilled in Islam with another divine promise to Hagar, that her son Ishmael will be the father of a multitude. The promise is fulfilled in Judaism with the covenant God strikes with Abraham that he will be the father through his son Isaac of another multitude. The promise is fulfilled in Christianity by our being engrafted into that covenant by faith in Jesus Christ, as St. Paul tells us in the 11th chapter of his letter to the Romans, and one more multitude is brought forth.
For all of us, however, so far removed from Abraham’s time, this promise may seem quaint and irrelevant to our lives. What exactly is God promising us? Another covenant, another land, or children in our old age? We already have the promise to Hagar, the covenant with Abraham, and we Christians have the new covenant in Jesus Christ. We already live in a land flowing with milk and honey. Do we need God to test us by asking us to sacrifice our children? What do we need? What does God require of us?
Let me quote again from the article in the L. A. Times. “In promoting the trip, Abdel-Baset says, he challenged his community to ‘put your money where your mouth is’ on issues of interfaith harmony and Islam’s inclusive embrace of Judaism and Christianity. ‘It’s easy to talk,’ he said, ‘but this trip is putting us to the test. We’re going to live together and visit each other’s holy places . . .” These are words that apply to all of us of all three faiths. Especially in this post-9/11 world we have to learn to live together and not only respect, but honor one another’s faiths. But, we may ask ourselves, did this interfaith pilgrimage make any difference?
To answer that question, let me quote from another article, this one by Jessica Steinberg on February 23rd, in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. “The group stood in silence, heads bowed. The triumvirate of Catholic, Episcopal and Presbyterian ministers [Deacon Eric, Fr. Rick, and myself] waited for responses within the prayer circle at the Cenacle (the upper room), the traditional site of the Last Supper, on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. [Let me add, “where we celebrated the Eucharist, with Christians receiving communion, and Jews and Muslims receiving God’s blessing”.]
“‘I wish for peace among our brethren,’ said one of the Jewish participants. ‘I wish for those outside this room to sense the prayers and hopes that we have for one another, and for people of all religions,’ said one of the Muslims. A few wiped tears from their eyes as each participant greeted one another, kissing, hugging, telling each other, ‘Peace be with you,’ “Moving into the February afternoon sun . . . Abdel-Baset . . . shook his head in amazement. ‘Every time we pray together, we have this reaction,’ he said. ‘People weep, people share. It’s an incredible response.’”
And Harvey Schneider, one of our Jewish pilgrims, commenting on the holy places we visited, said, “Building are just buildings. The most important thing of all is just to get to know people of different faiths. It’s a wonderful thing, even if we don’t get together ever again. It’s enough just to know that we all want the same things.” We all want the same things. That’s what God wants of us.
The God who first reveals Godself to Abraham, and, for us who are Christian, becomes incarn-ate in Jesus Christ, promises Abraham that he will be a blessing to all nations. Beginning with Abraham, God calls together communities of people—Jewish, Christian, Muslim—and gives us commandments, teaches us to seek peace and justice, and urges us to love God and one another with equal passion. Further, God promises Abraham and all his descendants, including us grafted in through Jesus Christ, that pain and death—most clearly exemplified for Christians in Jesus’ suffering and death—as our Jewish and Muslim pilgrims said they learned in their experience of the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem—that pain and death are not God’s last words for us. Descendants as numerous as the stars, a blessing for all the nations of the earth, and resurrection are God’s last words.
Vaclav Havel, playwright and dissident, philosopher and former president of the Czech Republic, writes in the face of all the unknowns he and his nation have faced in the past century that hope “. . . is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.” As we travel on our faith pilgrimage through life as children of Abraham, his example encourages us not to give up hope. God has done mighty and wonderful things through Abraham, and will do so through us.
The New Testament scholar John Teitjen, in an article on the passage in Hebrews, quotes a story told by the late scholar of religions, Mircea Eliade. “Once there was a . . . rabbi from Cracow named Eisik. He had a dream. In the dream he was told to travel to Prague. Under the great bridge leading to the royal castle he would find a hidden treasure. The dream was repeated three times, and he decided to go. He found the bridge, but it was guarded by soldiers, so he did not dig. “As he loitered in the vicinity, one of the soldiers asked him what he had lost. The rabbi told [of] his dream and the soldier burst into laughter. ‘Really, poor man,’ the soldier said, ‘have you worn out your shoes by coming all this way simply because of a dream? . . . “‘I too once had a dream,’ said the soldier. ‘It spoke to me of Cracow, ordered me to go there and look for a treasure in the house of a rabbi named Eisik. The treasure was to be found in a dusty old corner behind the stove.’ . . . ‘But,’ said the soldier, ‘being a reasonable man and not trusting in dreams, I decided not to go.’ The rabbi thanked the soldier, returned to Cracow, dug behind his stove, found the treasure, and put an end to his poverty.”
Tietjen says, “The people of God believe in a dream. . . . Like Rabbi Eisik you have to go to Prague to find out if it’s true. You have to act on the dream. You live by faith.” Now I would paraphrase Tietjen by saying, “We pilgrims, the children of Abraham, believed in God’s call to live in peace and harmony, justice and love with one another. Like Rabbi Eisik, we had to go to another land to find out if it were true. We had to act on our calling. We had to live by faith.”
And again like Rabbi Eisik, we discovered that our treasure was not in the Holy Land, but that our treasure, and, indeed, our calling, was to return to our homeland, and share this experience in faith with all of God’s children. And so may it be, that Abraham went, and all his children followed.
AMEN!
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