Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Covenant with Abraham
Commentary
for the May 14, 2022, Sabbath School Lesson
When Abram was ninety-nine
years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before
me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you
and will greatly increase your numbers.”
Abram
fell facedown, and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you:
You will be the father of many nations.” Genesis 17:1-4, NIV
Fifty years ago, before light
pollution had reached the levels we have today, I could look up into the night
sky and see the Milky Way surrounded by innumerable stars against a dark
velvety background. Unlike more primitive understandings, I knew these were not
simply holes poked in a blanket that let light shine through. It was too vast,
too awesome for such facile explanations. When I beheld the heavens, something
within me responded to what I was seeing, and I felt drawn to those stars as
though we were meant to be part of a much greater whole. While I could not
describe what I was feeling then, my whole being wanted to sing out in praise
of such glory and acknowledging my place in that universe. It was like doing a
difficult jigsaw puzzle and discovering a key piece that had not revealed
itself for hours, and now, there it was, in my fingers and easily sliding into
place. As I could now have a better idea of the puzzle’s image, so my life also
came into sharper focus.
Until the Industrial Age, most
people rose at sunrise and went to bed at sunset, so artificial light made
insignificant impact on the beauty of the heavens and their witness regarding
Creation.[i]Therefore,
the Bronze Age skies of Abraham’s time were magnitudes more glorious than I
could have hoped to experience millennia later. That was the sky Abraham saw
when God promised him descendants more numerous than the stars. It must have
been an incredible thought. Even cities back then had populations in the tens
of thousands, not the millions major cities have today. Other than looking at
the stars, it would have been hard to even conceive what so many people would
even look like.
Many assume this promise applied
to the Jews who eventually inhabited Canaan, the Promised Land. But while the
Pentateuch does indeed tell us they were given that land, that is not the
entirety of the covenant or of the people who were to enjoy its promises. Most
of the earth’s population of over seven billion are inheritors of that covenant
at least in part. But many of us are oblivious to our inheritance. We live our
lives in tedium seasoned with struggle, not realizing that a wealthy ancestor
has left us an untold blessing. The testamentary document has been safely kept
through the ages. Many homes even have a copy of it somewhere about. But the
struggles of life are so consuming of our time and energy, we set it aside. We
may think we will get to it eventually when things quiet a bit, but they never
seem to, and we are too soon old where even memory of any importance related to
the document fades. But being so widely available, even though it may
contribute to its being taken for granted, also testifies to its importance.
Else why would we still be keeping it around?
The covenantal seal, which also
gives the covenant its name is circumcision. While the Jewish people were known
for their adherence to the requirement for male circumcision indicating their
willingness to receive the covenantal blessing, they were not alone. I am not
talking about Christians here. Sometimes as Christians we assume a pride of
place among God’s followers, but a millennium and a half before Christ, Abraham
circumcised two sons under the covenant: Isaac and Ishmael. Being the son of a
slave, Ishmael could not inherit Abrahams’ wealth when there was a free born
heir to receive it. However, God’s blessing under the covenant was for anyone
circumcised per the terms of that agreement. Both the Jews through Isaac and
the Muslims through Ishmael are the heirs of that covenant. But while they are
both brothers with the same testamentary blessing, they behave more like Jacob
and Esau, or worse, see their brothers as Cain saw Abel.
I do not believe this was God’s
intent. God does not hate diversity. He loves it. Looking around us at our
world, we see diversity in abundance. Even things we take for granted are
identical are not. Life here is defined by a standard deviation parabola. While
most will be statistically “normal,” there are many outliers on either side of
the curve. This is true whether we are studying human beings or lady bugs. Life
in general demonstrating these trends argues strongly that far from wanting to
push everyone into a concise uniformity, God values diversity to such an extent
he infused Creation not only with its original diversity, but with the ability
to continue to produce it in perpetuity. On some level, an argument can be made
that the confusion of the languages at the Tower of Babel is an example of
God’s idea that we are better when we embrace diversity as an element of who we
are.
This raises interesting
questions. If Muslims hold hatred in their heart for the Jews, why do they
continue to mutilate themselves according to the covenant? And if the Jews hate
the Muslims, why do they not recognize the covenantal mutilation in their
Muslim brothers? Both are living according to the covenant that mutilated them
both. It is a covenant of blood, and yet blood denies blood.
When Jesus was incarnated two
thousand years ago, and we ended up with Christians, it was not to say that
Christians were preferred before Jews. The fact that Christians were grafted on
later should dispel that idea.[ii]
Christians should also not see themselves as preferred before Muslims either,
for while Christians were grafted on after the fact, Muslims were present at
the making of the covenant in Ishmael. That their prophet called them to that
long after Christ had died, arose, and ascended to heaven does not alter that
origin. Those of us who were grafted on later were no longer under the seal of
circumcision but nonetheless could only be partakers through the shedding of
blood. Not being descendants of either Isaac or Ishmael, our own blood would not
suffice, but Jesus, born a Jew, resolved that quandary eternally. Thus, the
covenant sealed with works became a covenant of grace. The blood given for the
covenant by the descendants of those who entered it was now gifted that all may
enter in, and diversity itself can find completeness.
Why is diversity so important to
God? It is the cure for selfishness. If we only love those who are like us in
thoughts or appearance, aren’t we just in love with ourselves? We are like
Narcissus seeking out our own image wherever we go, or like Echo, so busy
listening for our own voice we hear no others. Loving even our enemies is a
sure remedy for breaking out of that mold. If I am honest about my own flaws, I
must admit that a world with seven billion of me would be a nightmare.
Fortunately, there are others to balance out my eccentricities, just as mine
balance out theirs.
I love that Jesus chose a bunch
of squabblers to be his followers. He could have chosen only fishermen, but he
did not. He could have chosen only tax collectors. He did not. He could have
chosen only Zealots, but he did not. The arguments that ensued were divisive,
but they provided opportunity for Jesus to direct their attention away from
themselves. In the face of their selfishness, he modeled selflessness. This was
the foundation that gave us very early Christianity. Jesus grafted in those who
were not descended from Isaac and Ishmael and thereby demonstrated that the
covenant was always intended to be about love and selfless grace, not about
rights and privileges that produce advantage and arrogance. In the Parable of
the Sheep and the Goats,[iii]
he taught his disciples and all that would come after that salvation is
dependent upon our ability to turn our focus away from ourselves and our lives
to give ourselves in service to others, and not simply to one another. Need
arises in many ways. When Jesus said we would always have the poor with us,[iv] he
was not saying to Judas that it was not necessary to care for the poor, but
rather was echoing a sentiment expressed long before in Deuteronomy[v]
about the constant need to be a blessing to those in need. Judas struggled with
that.
While we live in a world filled
with narcissism and echo chambers, we are given the opportunity to choose
another path. We are offered instead the path of selfless love, and through
diversity a way to keep it selfless. We are told to love our enemies.[vi]
There is no viable way to interpret that to exclude anyone. Therefore, any
limit to our love for another because they are a certain type of person does
not define the error in their lives so much as it does the error in ours, for
it tells us where selflessness ends and selfishness begins.