Leaving Home: Genesis 12:1-3

"Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.."

Packed in these few words is a narrative of immense scope and power. We have here, theologically speaking, the generative act of salvation-history. Nowhere does the text indicate why God preferred Abram/Abraham over Shem, Ham, Arpachshad or any of the other figures named in Gen. 8-10. We just have the result here of the divine choice, a choice that has reverberated through time and made Abraham the father of three great world faiths in our day: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

In order to understand the text better, I will point to four themes: (1) Abraham's Family of Origin; (2) The Separations of Abraham's Life; (3) Multiple Blessings; and (4) Setting Out.

I. Abraham and His Family of Origin

We deform the passage slightly when we begin with 12:1. Actually, our story begins in 11:27, when we are introduced to Terah, Abram's father. Abram was one of three boys, the youngest of whom died before they set off for Canaan. But two points of especial interest for the following narrative are these: (a) Terah already set off for Canaan with his remaining two sons, their wives and his grandson Lot. They only made it as far as Haran before Terah died. Thus, the whole idea of leaving Ur and coming to Canaan didn't originate in a "call" to Abram back in the land of Sumer and Akkad. The call emerged out of the dynamics of family-of-origin life. We don't know if Terah had a "call" to come to Canaan or why he actually went, but we now realize that Abram's "call" in Gen. 12:1 was really only a sort of derivative call, an "echoing" call, a response that imitated dad. We sometimes try to remove the realities of grace from the nitty-gritty of nature. Here the drama of call happens to a person whose father was already making the trip to the same place; (b) Sarai is mentioned as barren already in 11:30. Thus, the reader will be faced with an incredible irony upon hearing 12:2. Haven't we just read that Sarai is unable to bear children? How is it, then, that Abram will become the instrument of blessing to the world? These two "preliminary" points don't remove the "grace" from the following narrative; they "humanize" it and through this humanization, make it more noble and attractive.

II. The Separations of Abraham's Life

When God commands Abraham in 12:1 to "up and leave," God does so by mentioning three specific "ties" that need to be broken in order for Abraham to be obedient. These ties are among the most intimate associations imaginable for humans. Abraham is to leave: (a) his country; (b) his people in general; and (c) his family of origin. The only ones he takes with him are his wife Sarah and his nephew Lot. What is it like to be told to abandon all three of these in one fell swoop? The three go from the most inclusive to narrowest categories of intimacy. Leaving one's country was difficult enough. We have an OT story about the ancient practice of bringing one's soil with one upon leaving the country of one's birth--so as never really to leave behind one's homeland. But Abraham didn't seem to do this. Then, he leaves his "kindred," all those people who could tell him the story of what it meant to be a descendant of Noah, of Shelah, of Eber. When he left these people he left his stories. A person without stories becomes a person without identity. Thus, unless Abraham will be graced with a new identity, an identity which fills in the gaping holes caused by leaving "all" behind, he will be abandoned in soul and mind. Finally, he leaves his family of origin ("your father's house"). Family, as he always understood it, will be a thing of the past. It is the future which will beckon--and the God of the future.

Has faith for you ever had a dimension of leaving anything? Of cutting ties to land, people, family? Do we understand the kind of feelings that may have been part of Abraham's life as he ventured out on his journey?

III. Abraham and the Blessings

Instead of focusing on what Abraham loses through the three separations, the divine command stresses what he will gain. The word "bless" or "blessing" occurs five times in the next two verses. Certainly something dramatically powerful is going to happen through Abraham. And the drama is particularly pointed because he lives with a barren woman. How can be becaome a blessing to people? That will not even be fully evident to us as we read the story in Genesis, but will only start to unfold as we understand the rest of the Bible and the history of the people of God. Particularly interesting to me is the form of the blessing in v. 3. Notice that those who bless Abraham will be many ("those who bless you") while the one cursing him is in the singular ("the one who curses you"). I am not sure what to make of this, but it suggests that even though Abraham will face times of rejection and curse, the times of blessing will be much fuller, deeper and more significant. Certainly the curses have shaped the history of the Jewish and Christian people; but ask a faithful Jew or Christian and s/he will probably tell you that the blessings far outweigh the curses.

IV. Abraham Sets Out

The language is stark in its simplicity. "So Abram went, as the Lord told him," v. 4a. As commentator Gerhard von Rad says:

"The one word wayyelek ('and he set out') is more effective than any psychological description could be, and in its majestic simplicity does greater justice to the importance of the event. Abraham remains dumb, a wonderful trait of absolute obedience when compared with a promise the full importance of which he could scarcely imagine. Here is one of the passages where Abraham becomes a kind of model. Throughout the entire story one must always remember that to leave home and to break ancestral bonds was to expect of ancient men almost the impossible," Genesis, p. 161.

Conclusion

So deeply did this story become embedded into the consciousness of Israel and the early Christians that the author of Hebrews alludes to this story when describing Abraham as one of the heroes of faith:

"By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God," Heb. 12:8-10.

What are corresponding acts of faith for us today? What separations do we need to make? What blessings are we going to mediate? How can we "set out" without complaint? The time of Lent is a great opportunity for asking these questions.

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