In Cedarburg, Wisconsin, my hometown, there are signs pointing to “Cedarburg’s Historic District”. Here is our old mill which dates back to the 1840s, not quite two centuries ago, as do other parts of the downtown.
“Historic”, eh?
Below is a picture of what remains of the holy Patriarch Abraham’s historic home town, Ur of the Chaldees, in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), which dates back to about 3800 BC – sixty-two centuries ago.
Ur’s ancient population was about 65,000, no small city. I understand it was damaged somewhat during the Iraq War * (2003-2011), but most of it still stands.
- …which resulted in the deaths of about 150,000 people. Saddam Hussein was a thug, but at least he protected 1.5 million Iraqi Christians. Today less than 120,000 remain. The rest are either dead or have fled.
In the Orthodox calendar, October 9 is the feast of the Patriarch Abraham and Lot who actually plays a much lesser role in this great story. I know nothing ever changes in our almost changeless Orthodox Church. However, Abraham’s wife played a much bigger part here than Lot did, so I wish we could change the title of this commemoration to:
The Righteous Patriarch Abraham and his wife the Righteous Matriarch Sarah
Today on earth almost four billion people – Jews, Christians, Muslims – look back to Abraham as our father in the faith. Sadly, we Orthodox Christians pay him little attention. If you listen carefully, the priest may mention him on October 9, when it falls on a Sunday. You can hear his name again in the Epistle for the Sunday before the Nativity of the Lord, when we list the Ancestors of Christ. And he appears once in the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil: In the Doxasticon of the Litany immediatedly after the Great Entrance, there is a gorgeous prayer uniting our intercessions with those of our Old Testament forbears: “Look upon us, O God, and consider our worship; and accept it as You accepted the gifts of Abel, the sacrifices of Noah, the burnt offerings of Abraham…” But you’ll never hear it. By tradition the priest says it silently – which usually means (as one priest friend of mine put it) he quickly “scans” it. I know the Liturgy of Saint Basil is long, but this is a waste of a significant and beautiful prayer.
And I think that’s it. The attention we give to our Patriarch Abraham is wholly inadequate.
Enough complaining. Now let’s try briefly to remedy the situation.
The Story of Abraham and Sarah
The whole story is found in Genesis, chapters 12-22. What follows here is greatly abbreviated. Portions in quotes are directly from the Scripture.
As we said, Abram *, his wife Sarai * and his nephew Lot were from Ur of the Chaldees. It was originally his father Terah who decided (for reasons not disclosed) to move his whole family – flocks, servants and all – to the land of Canaan, which today encompasses Israel, Palestine (including what’s left of the West Bank and Gaza), part of Jordan, and the southern portions of Syria and Lebanon.
- “Abram” means something like “exalted father”. “Sarai” meant “princess/woman of strength”.
However along the way, for reasons not given, they settled in Haran (probably now the village of Şanlıurfa in southeast Turkey). It says Terah lived 205 years * and died there.
- Why did people live so long? Nobody knows.
Then God * said to Abram, “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you; those who curse you I will curse; all the families of the earth will be blessed because of you.”
- In what way Abraham experienced God and heard His words we don’t know. Perhaps something like the prophets did later. “Elohim” is God’s Name here, a plural, usually translated from Hebrew into English simply as “God”. However, it was a proper Name, like His other Name YaHWeH given later in the Old Testament. To Abram “Elohim” probably sounded at first like just another god, not yet understanding that The God, Lord of Heaven and earth was calling to him.
[This part is not in the Scriptures: And when Abram told Sarai, she said “What?! Another move? We just got settled! Who is this “Elohim” – never heard of him, them! And now just because he said so, you want me to pack up and move again?” But move they did.]
Back to the Bible:
“Abram left just as the Lord told him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all of their possessions, and those who became members of their household in Haran; and they set out for the land of Canaan.”
But before they could get settled, there was a drought, and the whole family had to move to Egypt, where the Nile provided a sure source of water – and then finally back to Canaan again where he settled near the Oak of Mamre. * The locals had a bit of an issue with Abram’s belief that all their territory belonged to him, but that’s too much to go into here.
- At Saint Nicholas, Cedarburg, inside a small case we have a tiny portion of the oak of Mamre, which seemed to die in 1996, but since then a new sprout has sprung up.
There Abram and Lot had a temporary falling-out over who would take the best land down by the Jordan. Abram yielded, and Lot took the lowland including the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Uh oh.
About this time comes a strange story: “Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High *. And he blessed him and said: ‘Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.’ And he gave him a tithe of all.”
- in Hebrew “El ʿElyon”.
Who was this mysterious King of “shalom/peace” who appeared out of nowhere? who was superior to Abram, who gave him bread and wine? who then was suddenly gone? It seems like a prefiguring of Someone Who appeared later in history, does it not?
Despite trying hard, Abram and Sarai had no son to be his legitimate heir, so she gave him leave to have a son by one of her servant girls. (Things were different in those days.) And so Ishmael was born to Hagar. Then Sarai had a change or heart (perhaps things were not that much different in those days!) and tried to drive them both away – but Abram brought them back. Muslims claim to be descended from Ishmael – from Abram and Hagar.
“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly. … and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham for I have made you a “father of many nations”. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.’”
Who could possibly have imagined this? taken it seriously? And yet from this one man came the Jewish nation and of the Judaeo/Christian/Muslim tradition – many “nations and kings” – two billion people all heirs of Father Abraham.
Likewise, “as for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah * shall be her name. And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.”
- something like “mighty princess”
Again the question: Why do our three religions not give equal time to Sarah, who is the mother of us all?
God commanded that the outward sign of His Covenant with Abraham (what Christians call the “Old Covenant”) would be that on the eighth day after birth, each boy was to be circumcised * as the Jews still do.
- Odd, I must say. The sign of the Christian New Covenant is Baptism for both males and females – a significant change..
Abraham still had no legitimate heir. Now comes the fascinating, delightful story of the visit of the three “men”? three “angels”? “the Lord”? – they are called by all three names – to Abraham and Sarah. It was a hot mid-day when the three walked up to Abraham’s tent. With usual middle-eastern hospitality, Abraham had Sarah fix a big meal for “them” and slaughtered a calf. Then “he” said: “I will return… and Sarah your wife will bear a son.” Abraham said that was impossible! he was 100 and Sarah was 99.
Now Sarah was listening inside the tent. This struck her so absurd that she began to giggle. “The Lord” said “Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Sarah, embarrassed, said “I didn’t laugh”. He said “You did laugh”.
Three angels who are one man who is the Lord. Who are they? Who is he? We can see why Andrei Rublev used them to depict our undepictable God, the Holy Trinity. 
Then the Lord revealed to Abraham that he/they had come for another purpose, as well: “because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” *
- God who already knows all things has to go down to check up on Sodom and Gomorrah? Remember that at this point in history, ideas about God were still very primitive. In Old Testament times progressively, as mankind could handle it, God was revealing the truth about Himself – that He is One God, the source of all things, Who knows all things, in preparation for His final and complete revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ.
What? Sodom might be destroyed? But my nephew Lot lives there!
So Abraham begged God: “What if there are fifty righteous men there?” God said “For the sake of fifty I will not destroy it”. How about forty?… thirty?… twenty?… ten? “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it” – but there were not even ten. Lot was warned, so he came up out of the cities before fire came down and destroyed them, but his wife looked back and she was turned into a pillar of salt. (Don’t ask…)
Though the moral here is clear: When we leave something behind, whether it’s Ur of the Chaldees or Sodom or … I’m thinking back to when I left the Episcopal Church… or whatever, don’t look back. It will destroy you. Come up out of them. Don’t look back. Move ahead.
Now Sarah gave birth, and Abraham named the boy “Isaac”, which means “he will laugh”. He circumcised the boy when he was eight days old, according to the command of the Lord.
Now comes ones of the strangest stories in the Old Testament.
“God said to Abraham,’Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’ So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.”
As horrible as this seems to us, it may not have seemed quite so unthinkable to Abraham. In surrounding religions, it was normal for people to sacrifice their children to their gods. Abraham was still just beginning to know God, and was it possible, perhaps, he thought…? But yet, my only son…?
So he took the boy and off they went. When they got to the appointed place Isaac said “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So he bound Isaac and laid him on the altar and took the knife to slay his son.
Then an angel of the Lord called to Abraham: “Do not lay your hand on the boy, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
And there in the thicket was a ram, which Abraham killed for the burnt offering. Christians have seen here a foreshadowing of Another who was willing to give His Only Son in sacrifice.
“And Abraham called the name of the place, ‘The-Lord-Will-Provide’; as it is said to this day, ‘In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided.’”
“Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said: ‘By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son— blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.’”
The story says nothing about how poor Isaac coped with this. Is it irreverent to wonder if the boy may have suffered some PTSD? Or maybe things were different in those days.
I’ve skipped much of this great story. I suggest you open your Bibles and read the whole thing: Genesis chapters 12 through 22.
Sarah died at age 127 and was buried near Mamre “and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her”. They truly loved each other.
As for Abraham, he married again, had six more children (impressive I must say!) and died at age 170.
“This is the sum of the years of Abraham’s life which he lived: one hundred and seventy-five years. Then Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, the field 
which Abraham purchased from the sons of Heth. There Abraham was buried, and Sarah his wife.”
Abraham’s tomb is in the city of Hebron in the West Bank, among the Tombs of the Patriarchs, shared by both Muslims and Jews, their spaces separated by bullet proof glass. That’s what it has come to among the children of Abraham.
At the bottom of this Post, go to “Watch on YouTube” where Rick Steves will tell you all about it.
In conclusion, three things:
1 This is relevant to the current world situation. Since the land God promised to Abraham was Canaan, “which today encompasses Israel, Palestine including the West Bank and Gaza, parts of Jordan, and the southern portions of Syria and Lebanon”, how far do today’s radical Zionists intend to go?
2 What about the Covenant between God and Abraham and His people? Is it still in effect? Jews say it is. The New Testament says consistently that it is not, that the Jews, by rejecting Jesus their Messiah, broke their side of the Covenant, and that we the Church are now the true Israel, the true heirs and children of Abraham.
3 Long ago Cecil B. Demille make a movie about Moses and the Ten Commandments. I’ve always wondered why nobody has ever made one about the great story of Abraham and Sarah. I discover that now someone has! The same people who are producing “The Chosen” (that excellent series on the life of Jesus) last year released “His Only Son” about Abraham and Isaac. I haven’t seen it, but the reviews are quite good.
Next Week: I have no idea.