Our Father Abraham

Objectives:
1. To understand Gods covenant with Abraham and to see how that covenant is fulfilled in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. 2. To appreciate key figures and elements in the Abraham story - Melchizedek, circumcision, the sacrifice of Isaac - as they are interpreted in the Churchs tradition.

Covenant
In the ancient world, covenants established family relationships. The covenants God makes in the Bible do the same thing. By His covenants, God establishes a family relationship with His creatures, the human people made in His image and likeness.

 Through the covenants of the Bible, He bestows His blessing - a share in His divine grace and life - upon His people. By this blessing, He makes us more than simple creatures. He makes us true divine heirs and offspring - sons and daughters.

ABRAHAM
Abraham is called to reject the ways of those who would exalt themselves and try to make a name for themselves. If he follows God in faith and obedience, God promises to exalt him - to make his name great (see Genesis 12:2).

ABRAHAM
By his faithfulness, Abraham becomes the father of a new generation of men and women, a generation that lives by faith in the promises of God, as trusting sons and daughters.

Big Promises
God's covenant with Abraham has three parts, and it begins with three promises: to make Abraham a great nation (12:1); to give him a great name (12:2); and to make him the source of blessing for all the world (12:3).

 God later "upgrades" these three promises - turning them into divine covenants. God swears not only to make Abraham a great nation, He also makes a covenant in which He promises to deliver Abraham's descendants from oppression in an alien country and give them a specific portion of land (see Genesis 15:7-21).

 Not only will his name be great, but God by a covenant oath swears to make Abraham "father of a host of nations," a royal dynasty - "kings shall stem from you" (see Genesis 17:1-21). God elevates His third promise by swearing to make Abraham's descendants "as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore." In Abraham's descendants "All the nations of the earth shall find blessing" (see Genesis 22:16-18).

 By these three covenant oaths, God points our eyes to the future of salvation history. 1. Abraham is made a great nation in the Exodus, when by the covenant He makes with Moses, God makes Abraham's descendants into a nation possessing the land promised to Abraham (see Genesis 46:3-4).

2. God's second oath is fulfilled when David is made King and promised with a great name (see 2 Samuel 7:9) and an everlasting throne (see Psalm 89:3-4; 132:11-12).

3. And finally, these covenants point us to Jesus. His New Covenant fulfills God's promise to make the children of Abraham the source of blessing for all the nations.

Beloved Sons
Beginning within the Bible and coming to full flower in the writings of Church Fathers like St. Augustine, many have seen deep connections between the life of Isaac and the life of Jesus. Isaac's birth is a miracle - coming as it does to a 100-year-old man and his barren wife.

 There is an even more profound symbolism in the awful test that God gives to Abraham - to offer his only beloved son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. This story has long been interpreted as foreshadowing God's offering of his only beloved Son on the Cross at Calvary.

 Isaac is described as the only beloved Son of Abraham (see Genesis 22:2,12,16). Page ahead to the New Testament and you'll find God using these same words - "my beloved Son" - to refer to Jesus at two crucial points in His life, in His Baptism and Transfiguration (see Matthew 3:17; 17:5).

 Calvary, where Jesus was crucified, is one of the hills of Moriah. And as Isaac carried the wood for his own sacrifice, and submitted to being bound to the wood, so too will Jesus carry His cross and let men bind Him to it.

 Jewish tradition believed that Isaac was between 27 and 35 at the time of this event and that he willingly allowed himself to be bound and offered by Abraham. This would suggest an even further parallel between Isaac and Jesus - both giving themselves up, freely accepting their own death as an offering to God.

Signs of Flesh and Spirit

Abraham believed that God would give his only beloved son back to him. And by this faith, he upheld his obligation to the covenant he entered into with God.

 God made faith in His promises the condition of His covenant with Abraham. Faith is likewise the condition of those who would enter into the New Covenant made in Jesus.

 The blessings that God promised to bestow on the world through the descendants of Abraham come to us through our faith in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus. The sacrifice of Christ brings to us "the blessing of Abraham" (see Galatians 3:14).

 God made circumcision to be a sign of His covenant oath to make Abraham's descendants a royal dynasty: "Thus my covenant shall be in your flesh as an everlasting pact" (see Genesis 17:1-14). But as St. Paul teaches, this covenant sign in the flesh was meant also to symbolize the spiritual and sacramental sign by which we enter into the New Covenant, the royal family of God.

 Already in the prophets, "circumcision of the heart" had become a sign of dedication o f one's whole being to God (see Deuteronomy 10:16; Jeremiah 4:4; compare Romans 2:2529; 1 Corinthians 7:1819).

 And this happens in Baptism, which is the "circumcision of Christ" (see Colossians 2:11) and the true circumcision (see Philippians 3:3). As circumcision was the sign of membership in the people of Abraham, the "new circumcision" - Baptism - is the sign of membership in the Church, the new people of God.

Shem's Blessing
God promises to bless Abraham. And we know that those blessings come in his descendants, especially in Jesus. But during the course of Genesis, the only actual blessing that Abraham receives is from the mysterious kingpriest, Melchizedek (see Genesis 14:18-20).

 Through the faithfulness of Noah, God renewed his covenant with creation and the human family (see Genesis 9:1-17). But the first-born Noah, like Adam before him, fell into sin (see Genesis 9:20-22). Still, despite man's unfaithfulness, God is always faithful to His covenant promises. So He turns to a new first-born, Shem, the righteous first-born of Noah.

 Shem receives a cosmic blessing from Noah - "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem!" - which marks the first time in Scripture that God is identified with any one human being (see Genesis 9:26-27). God is designated as "the God of Shem" - a sign of Shem's great righteousness and stature before God.

 According to a long tradition - Jewish and Christian - the mysterious Melchizedek is actually Shem, the great patriarch, the righteous inheritor of the blessings promised by God after the Flood.

First-Born High Priest

If Melchizedek, a name which means "king of righteousness" (see Hebrews 7:2), is really Shem, the great son of Noah, then it means that the blessing God gave to Noah and Noah in turn gave to Shem is now being passed on to Abraham. The blessing of the righteous first-born will pass from Abraham on to Isaac (see Genesis 25:5) and to Jacob (see Genesis 27:27-29).

 Melchizedek is a high priest and a king. If he's also the first-born son of Noah, then his blessing upon Abraham is a sort of "ordination," a consecration, by which Abraham too becomes, not only a righteous first-born son, but a priest of God Most High.

 Adam, it appears, is being described as a first-born priest. Commanded to "be fertile and multiply" (see Genesis 1:28), he is, in effect, being made to be the father of a priestly people. This is the destiny of the human race. A destiny that will finally be achieved in Jesus the "first-born" royal Son and priest (see Hebrews 1:6; 5:5-6).

Age of Patriarchs
Isaac grows up to marry Rebekah. Like his mother Sarah, she's barren. But Isaac, as his father Abraham had before him, appeals to God to give them children (see Genesis 25:21; 15:3).

 While her twins are fighting in her womb, God tells Rebekah that each will be a nation, but the younger of the two, Jacob, will rule the older, Esau (see Genesis 25:23).

 This is another sub-plot in Genesis, closely connected to what we've talked about already concerning the "firstborn." Notice that after the failure of His first-born in Eden, God seems to prefer the younger son: Abel's offering is preferred to Cain's.

 Isaac is chosen over Ishmael. Jacob's youngest son, Joseph, becomes the hero of the later books of Genesis, while Reuben, Jacob's first-born, fails to defend him against his brothers (see Genesis 37).

 He chooses the young, the weak and the sinful to show that salvation history is governed by His free grace and His love. St. Paul gives us the general principle when he says that God chose Isaac over Esau "in order that God's elective plan might continue, not by works but by His call...So it depends not upon a person's will or exertion, but upon God" (see Romans 9:11-13).

 God Himself confirms this in showing Jacob a ladder into the heavens (see Genesis 28:10-15). Later, Jesus will apply this dream to Himself, revealing that in Him heaven and earth touch, the human and the divine meet. He is what Jacob saw as "the gateway to heaven" (see John 1:51; Genesis 28:17).

Joseph and Judah

Joseph is the victim of jealousy and rejection by His brothers, the children of Israel, and is sold for the price of a slave (compare Genesis 37:28 and Matthew 26:14-15). Compare the words of Joseph's brothers to the words of the evil tenants in the parable of Jesus (see Genesis 37:20; Matthew 21:38).

 Still, both Joseph and Jesus forgive their brothers and save them from death. The Pharaoh tells his Egyptian servants to do whatever Joseph tells them. And Mary will echo these words, telling the servants at the wedding feast to do whatever Jesus tells them to do (compare Genesis 41:55 to John 2:5).

 As Joseph explains to his brother, his story shows us that even what men plan as evil, God can use for the purposes of His saving plan (see Genesis 50:19-21).