"The Poetry of Call: Abraham, the Father of Us All"  San Williams, UPC

Genesis 12:1-4

Last week during our trip to Turkey, Jan and I stepped out of a Volkswagen bus onto the ancient soil of Harran.  This is the very place where Abraham heard God’s call and received God’s promise to bring a blessing to all the nations.  Harran is located in a hot, barren landscape in what, today, is southeast Turkey, just a few miles from the Syrian border. We found ourselves standing in front of adobe beehive-shaped homes that have remained essentially unchanged for three thousand years. Looking down the hill, we could see the remains of an Assyrian university, where studies in astronomy, philosophy, natural sciences and medicine once flourished. We climbed to the top of the hill in Harran and explored the ruins of what was once a three-story domed facility that served multiple functions. In biblical times, caravans regularly passed through Harran, which was strategically located on a busy trade route. Our guide pointed to three rooms standing side by side and told us that, in the early centuries after Christ, one room served as a Christian chapel, one a synagogue and the third a mosque. This meant that travelers stopping over in Harran had a place to worship whether they were Christian, Muslim or Jew.  

Can you picture that?  Two thousand years ago, Jews, Christians, and Muslims traveled together in one caravan, and worshipped side by side. As I stood in that spot, I was seized with the realization that Judaism, Christianity and Islam began in the same place, sprang from the life of the same person and are heirs to the same promise. Jews, you recall, identify Abraham as their founding father. Christians trace the lineage of Jesus back to Abraham, whom the Apostle Paul calls “the father of our faith.” Muslims revere Abraham as a friend of God, a father of the prophets, and an ancestor of Mohammed.  So this morning as we ponder how to understand God’s call to us today, consider this possibility:  We, the children of Abraham--Jews, Christians and Muslims—are called by God to overcome our fears of one another and to caravan together towards the blessing of peace that God has promised to all the families of the earth.

But first let’s look at the call of Abraham, the father of us all.  We read this morning how God called Abraham to leave Harran, his kindred, his home, and go to a land where God would make of Abraham a great nation and through him bring a blessing to all the families of the earth.  Everything about God’s call to Abraham is counter-intuitive, unlikely and full of risk. No guarantees are given, no map provided, no destination assured—just a command to leave the familiar and venture into the unknown, trusting in a promise that that must have seemed, to Abraham—and perhaps seems to us today—an impossible dream.  

This summer I discovered the poetry of Father Kilian McDonnell.  His poetry is raw, gritty and imaginative. In his poem, titled “The Call of Abraham,” McDonnell portrays Abraham wrestling with God’s call, rebelling against the unlikely nature of it—yet obeying it nonetheless.  Abraham declares to God:

                At seventy-five,

                am I supposed to scuttle my life,

                take that ancient wasteland, Sarai,

                place my arthritic bones

                upon the road

                to some mumbled nowhere?

                Let me get this straight.

                I will be brief.

                I summarize.

                In ten generations since the Flood,

                You have spoken to no one.

                Now, like thunder on a clear day,

                You give commands:

                Pull up my tent,

                desert the graves of my ancestors,

                leave Harran

                for a country you do not name,

                there to be a stranger.

                God of the wilderness,

                From two desiccated lumps,

                from two parched prunes,

                You promise all the peoples of the earth

                will be blessed in me.

                You come late, Lord, very late,

                but my camels leave in the morning.

There you have it.  Without any certainty, and fully aware of the risks, Abraham nevertheless leaves behind all he knows, goes in obedience to this larger vision that God has set before him—a blessing to all the families of the earth.

And we, who are the children of Abraham—Jews, Christians and Moslems—are similarly called to leave behind our narrow-minded, parochial vision that pits us against one another and makes us strangers to one another. We may be three separate Faiths, but we have the same call to embrace God’s universal blessing for all peoples everywhere. Yes, there are Muslims who have perverted Islam and who are a threat to the very promise of peace that is Islam’s foundation. Actually, throughout history, all our faith traditions have been subject to gross distortion and terrible misuse. Sadly, the examples are too many to name.  Yet our calling today is for the children of Abraham once again to caravan together, because we are called to a common destination.  I’m not suggesting we lose our respective religious identities.  I certainly don’t want us to sink to spouting banalities such as reflected in the comment, “Well, all religions believe the same thing.” Truth is, there are significant differences, and our differences are as important as the similarities. Yet by caravanning together, we create space for honest conversation and personal interaction. Such dialogue can enrich, rather than threaten, our own faith. 

I found this to be the case as we traveled in Turkey last week.  When I heard the Muslim call to prayer five times each day, I was prompted to reflect on my own prayer life:  What calls me to prayer as a Christian? How are my prayers similar, and how different, from those of practicing Muslims?  In Turkey we were the recipients of the overwhelming generosity, hospitality, and good deeds of our Muslim hosts. “You honor us with your presence,” said one, “and we bless one another through our sharing together.”  Of course, good deeds are also central to Christians. Our motivation for good deeds, however, may differ. We Christians tell a story about how God has come to us in the person of Jesus, loved us and saved us quite apart from our own righteousness. Thus, for us, good deeds flow as a response to God’s grace.  I’m suggesting that we compare notes, and learn from one another without insisting that the other become like us.

I know that many Christians will disagree with what I’ve said this morning.  Many will decline to come along on a journey that joins Christians with Jews and Muslims. But, friends, that’s their loss.  Metaphorically speaking, we all need to go back to Harran, there to remember that we all began in the same place, and we have the same spiritual father in Abraham. As everyone knows, people who have the same father are brothers and sisters to one another.  Perhaps the crux of God’s call to us today is to embrace God’s larger family, leave behind our fears of one another, and journey together in faith toward God’s promised blessing—a blessing of peace to all the families of the earth.