Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Southwest Michigan

Readings

Today’s service is the first in our February series Pieces of Abraham exploring the relationships between the three great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, each of whom claim Abraham as their spiritual father.

As conflict in the middle east resurged in recent years and as Americans sought to understand more about Islam after 9/11, scholars of religion and culture have been giving more attention to the figure of Abraham and asking the question: since Abraham is revered by each faith, might Abraham be a key to unlocking the door of peace? I find that question fascinating and hopeful. The conflicts are larger than religion, certainly. They are also about politics and economics and culture. But without understanding the religious aspects, political and economic solutions will never be enough. They all need to work together.

And so, this sermon series. Today I’ll focus on the historical framework of Abraham and the three faiths which claim him.

Next week I’ll delve more into theology, looking at different ways of understanding the will of God. Week three I’ll focus on religious divides here in the US. And for the final service in the series, February 26^th, we’ll welcome Dr. Michael Spath – director of the Middle East Peace Education Project – to our pulpit to share his experiences and perspectives on violence and peace in religion. He’ll also join us that Sunday afternoon for a public forum on Islam entitled: from Jihad to Justice.

This morning I begin by sharing two readings with you. The first is from Genesis. It is our first glimpse of Abraham – known then as Abram – and it is known as The Call:

Genesis 12:1-7

The Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.

I will make of you a great nation,

And I will bless you;

I will make your name great

And you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you

And curse him that curses you;

And all the families of the earth

Shall bless themselves by you.”

Abram went forth as the Lord had commanded him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the wealth that they had amassed, and the persons that they had acquired in Haran; and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they arrived in the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, at the terebinth of Moreh. The Canaanites were then in the land.

The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will assign this land to your offspring.” And he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.

My second reading is the opening paragraphs from a beautifully written book and the source of much of today’s sermon, by Bruce Feiler’s called Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths. (pp. 2-5)

They start walking just after dawn. They stream through the streets, begin climbing the hills, and drop a few coins in the outstretched palms of the poor. They leave their houses, their lives, their neighbors, and come by themselves or in groups of two or three. Their heads are covered, their eyes down-turned. They are alone. But when they pass through the gates and lift up their eyes, suddenly they are in an illuminated place, a familial place. They are home. No one is alone in Jerusalem: even the stones know your father.

Once inside, the stream divides. Christians turn north. Today is the last Friday before Christmas, and this afternoon monks will lead a somber procession carrying crosses down the Via Dolorosa. Jews turn south. Today is the last Friday of Hanukkah, and at sunset rabbis will hold a jubilant ceremony lighting six candles at the Western Wall. Muslims turn east. Today is the last Friday of Ramadan, and at noon clerics will hold a massive prayer service with two hundred thousand bending as one.

Today is not rare. Jerusalem is a touchstone of faith, and has been since before time began. The legends of monotheism are clear on one thing: Before there was time, there was water, and a darkness covered the deep. A piece of land emerged out of the water. That land is the Rock, and the rock is here. Adam was buried here. Solomon built here. Jesus prayed here. Muhammad ascended here.

And Abraham came here to sacrifice his son. Today that rock is a magnet of monotheism, an etched, worn mask of limestone, viewed by few alive today, touched by even fewer, hidden under a golden dome, and made more powerful by the incandescence that seems to surround it at every hour. The legends say God issued the first ray of light from the Rock. The ray pierced the darkness and filled his glorious land. The light in Jerusalem seems to fit that description perfectly. Washed by winter rains, as it is this morning, the air is the color of candlelight: pink, saffron, rose; turquoise, ruby, and bronze. It’s a poignant irony that the light is all these colors, and yet the worshipers wear mostly white and black, as if they’ve yet to achieve the richness of the source.

Which is why they come in the first place. The Rock is considered the navel of the world, and the world, it often seems, wants to crawl through that breach and reenter the womb of the Lord. As my archaeologist friend and traveling companion Avner Goren says while we hurry through the streets and climb to a perch overlooking the city, “To live in Jerusalem is to feel more alive, more yourself. It’s an honor, but it’s a burden, too.”

Stand here, you can see eternity. Stand here, you can touch the source.

Sermon Abba Abraham

Reverend Jill Ann Terwilliger, Minister

Once upon a time there was a man named Abraham. In the middle of his life, childless and doubting the power of the tribal gods and man-made idols his people worshiped, Abraham was called out of obscurity by an invisible, transcendent God, told to leave his father’s house and go into the wilderness with the promise that if he was faithful, this new God – the one and only God – would make his name great and his descendents as numerous as the stars. Abraham believed, and through his belief, became the first monotheist.

It’s hard for us to comprehend today what a monumental leap of faith Abraham made. In the land of his day, in the uncertain landscape of the desert and among the semi-nomadic tribes, it was family and the power of your gods that made living possible. And yet Abraham, with no children of his own, leaves his father’s house to follow a new, untouchable God. And lo and behold, Abraham is rewarded. God keeps the covenant. And the story of Abraham’s faith and his closeness with God becomes one of the most powerful and most coveted legends around. Judaism, Christianity and Islam each find a model of perfect faithfulness in Abraham and come to claim him as the father of each of their faiths.

Through time, his story has been told and retold, interpreted and reinterpreted, by every generation and every family of faith. There is no longer one Abraham, but hundreds and hundreds of stories.

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Once upon a time there was a man named Abraham. He lived over four thousand years ago in the shifting sands of the Fertile Crescent and its nearby deserts. He was the son of Terah, descendent of Shem, son of Noah, descendent of Adam. He was of the 20^th generation of humans on earth. Abraham fathered two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. And he fathered three religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

He was the first monotheist. He had a covenant with God who promised to make his name great and his children as countless as the stars. In return, Abraham was faithful to his God. This much we know. Or at least, this much the Torah – the Old Testament – tells us. The Torah tells us some other stories about Abraham and his family, too.

It tells of Abrahams travels and of his conversations with God. It repeatedly echoes and amplifies Abraham’s first call and covenant telling him which land his heirs will inherit and how numerous his descendents will be. All the while, Abraham continues to age and remain childless. Sometimes he’s even a bit incredulous with god: I’ll be a great nation? Give me a break! I have not even one son!”

It tells how his wife, Sarai (later Sarah) failed to get pregnant by the age of 90 or so. So finally, she gives her servant Hagar to Abraham that Sarah might, “bare a child through her.” This is how Abraham’s first son, Ishmael is born.

And the Torah tells the well-known and much-hated story of God’s request that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac, and Abraham’s willingness to do so. Isaac is saved only at the last moment when a ram is caught in a near-by thicket and Abraham sacrifices the ram to god in Isaac’s place.

And the Torah tells more about these stories plus a few others. And it tells of Abraham’s death. And then the Torah – the oldest source of Abrahamic stories – is quiet.

And then the interpreting begins. And then, from the Rock of Abraham, paths diverge.

Once upon a time there was a man named Abraham, say the Jews. But before they were Jews, the people in this land were know as Israelites; and before Abraham was their rock, they had a crisis on their hands. The Israelites had wandered the desert for 40 years and then conquered the Promised Land. David became the king and God made a covenant with David. God said “I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession.” In return, the Israelites had to build a temple in Jerusalem, which they did.

“And it worked! … The Kingdom of Israel quickly became an empire to rival the ones in Egypt and Mesopotamia. But Mesopotamia soon fought back and … the Israelite kingdom was wiped from the Fertile Crescent” (Feiler, p. 119). The Israelites became refugees in Babylon. Had God broken the covenant with David? The ends of the earth were clearly not in their possession. So the spiritual leaders of Israel began to redefine their identity. They pulled out the oral legends of Moses and found his laws gave structure to a people in turmoil. But they needed a spiritual figure as well, one who was close to God but who could understand their trials, a figure who could bridge the gap between the human and the divine. And again out of the oral legends, they pulled Abraham. This was a conscious choice the spiritual leaders made. Abraham could have faded away in the sands of legend, but he served a purpose, and from that choice, Abraham became a giant.

What Abraham had that the Israelites needed was a covenant with God that predated the land. “I will make a great nation of you,” said God, “and I will bless you … all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.” Wherever they were, in exile or not, God would be their God. God would protect them and make them a great people. And so the stories of Abraham were told and re-told, they were written down by the scribes and eventually they became the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. The People of the Book were born and Abraham was their Father.

For a while, these stories were enough. But as the political climate changed the stories of Abraham needed to change to speak to the times. As Christianity emerged and the Romans became more powerful, Jews became more and more isolated, and there was pressure to convert. It was no longer enough that they were a people blessed by God through Abraham. Now, they needed Abraham to be a Jew – the first Jew – and to belong to the Jews alone.

At the heart of being Jewish was to observe Mosaic law. The problem was that Moses was around some 700 years after Abraham. How could Abraham have observed laws that had yet to be revealed? The rabbis found a link. In Genesis 26 God says that Abraham obeyed “my commandments, my laws, and my teachings.” In fact, the rabbis decide Abraham not only obeyed the laws before any one else, but that he invented them.

Once upon a time there was a Jew named Abraham, and he became more Jewish and more perfect with every passing generation.

Once upon a time there was a man named Abraham, say the Christians. But first, before they were Christians, they were Jews and followers of Jesus trying to reform a Judaism which they believed was straying from righteousness. Jesus was crucified and in death became even more powerful than he had been in life. His followers claimed he was the messiah the Jews had been waiting for, but when they shared this idea with their fellow Jews they found few who wished to join them. And so, Jesus’ followers decided to broaden their appeal to include non-Jews. “To do this,” Feiler writes, “they needed to link Jesus to a figure who was not Jewish. They needed a founding father who was blessed by God, who had a deep spiritual pedigree, and who exemplified the faith that Jesus himself embodied. They needed Abraham” (p. 139).

And so, the Apostle Paul did what the rabbis had done: he re-wrote the story of Abraham with a new emphasis and a new conclusion. By the time Paul was done, Abraham was the model for a religion based on faith in God rather than in following the laws of Moses. After all, Abraham had received God’s promise 700 years before the laws were given. He received God’s promise because he believed. Also, Paul pointed out, Abraham received the promise before he was circumcised, so that, too, is not “a precondition for righteous behavior.” In fact, Abraham was circumcised so that he could be both “ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised” and “ancestor of the circumcised.”

For a while, this new all-embracing Abraham was enough, but as their political power ebbed, Christians sought more power in religion through an exclusive relationship with God. It was no longer enough that Abraham was the father of Jews and Gentiles alike. Now they needed Abraham’s blessing to fall on Christ and his followers alone. With another twist of a Genesis text, Paul determines that God’s blessing is only for one offspring of Abraham, and that one is Christ. Anyone who follows Christ is an heir of Abraham’s promise.

Once upon a time there was a Christian named Abraham and the divide between Jew and Christian became wider with every passing generation.

Once upon a time there was a man named Abraham, say the Muslims. But before there was Islam, there was the prophet Muhammad: a successful trader, an illiterate, bringing the message of Monotheism to a land of many tribal gods during the Seventh Century of our era. Over a span of more than a decade, Muhammad received revelations from God which he recited to his scribe. There is no narrative in the revelation. This is only God speaking directly to the people in Arabic so beautiful it sounds as though it must have come from God. This revelation is what we know as the Koran.

Muhammad wasn’t the first to bring the idea of monotheism to Arabia. Trade was increasing. Jews and Christians were even settling in the land, and stories about Jesus and Moses and David were spreading. These old characters made their way into the Koran, and so did Abraham. Feiler writes, “For maximum effect, Muhammad needed to link his message to a prophet his audience could identify with. To do that, he needed someone similar to him, someone connected to Arabia itself, and someone also bringing a message of monotheism to a reluctant population of polytheists. He needed Abraham” (p. 165-6).

Like Christianity before it, Islam was not conceived as a new faith, but as a renewal of an ancient and pure faith. Like believers in Christ before him, Muhammad “fully expected Jews and Christians to follow his return to pure monotheism.” When they did not, the universal message gave way to an exclusive message. Abraham submitted to God. This makes him a Muslim, “one who submits.” And Adam submitted to God, as did Noah and Moses and David and Jesus. Strip away everything else, and at the heart you find they were all Muslim.

Once upon a time there was a Muslim named Abraham, and the three paths connecting Abraham with us continue to diverge.

Once upon a time there was a man named Abraham, son of Noah, son of Adam. He was chosen by God, listened to God, submitted to God, argued with God. His story has been retold and reshaped by every generation of Jews and Christians and Muslims. So now I wonder, does he have a message for us today? Can he be reshaped yet again as a man of Peace and a symbol of Unity?

As Bruce Feiler traveled the Middle East and United States speaking to scholars and religious leaders of all three faiths only one was unwilling to consider shared ownership of Abraham, shared conversation, and some vision of peace with Abraham at the heart. I find this hopeful.

Maybe there are clues as well in other stories shared by all three faiths. Stories like the one about the brothers who secretly help each other and wonder how it is their own stores of grain are never depleted. The story’s conclusion is that when this kind of generosity and care for one another is practiced between people, there God is present.

The legends say the hill the brothers lived on was the hill now topped by the Dome of the Rock, the navel of the world, the place in Jerusalem where people of all faiths come to touch the source. But only if we can first touch one another, only if we learn to live in relationship with one another, can we ever hope to touch and to know the holy.

May this hope become so.

May we make it so through our living.

				10441 Shaver Road • Portage Michigan • 269.324.7262

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