A THEOLOGICAL MEDITATION · THE ROOT AND STOCK OF THE FAITH
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob & Moses
The Patriarchs & the Lawgiver · The Old Testament Roots of the Faith · The First Cloud of Witnesses
Abraham — AY-bra-ham · Ur of the Chaldees — ER of the KAL-deez · Hebrews 11 — the faith chapter · Sinai — SY-ny · Tetragrammaton — tet-rah-GRAM-ah-ton · I AM THAT I AM — Exodus 3:14 · Torah — TOH-rah
O God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who called a wandering Aramean from Ur of the Chaldees and made of him the father of all who believe; Grant us the faith of those who went out, not knowing where they were going, and who died not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off; through Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham in whom all nations are blessed.
The letter to the Hebrews, in its eleventh chapter — the great faith chapter that the whole Church calls simply Hebrews 11 — names the cloud of witnesses before this archive does. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. These are the archive’s own people — the original cloud of witnesses — the men and women who believed the promise before the promise was fulfilled, who died in faith without having received what was promised, but who saw it from afar. The archive has been building on their foundation since the first meditation. It cannot be complete without naming them.
Abraham (AY-bra-ham) left Ur of the Chaldees (ER of the KAL-deez) on no evidence except a word. He went to a land he had never seen because God told him to go. He was seventy-five years old. He left behind everything that constituted his identity — his country, his kindred, his father’s house — and set out with his wife Sarah and his nephew Lot and a promise: I will make of thee a great nation; and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. The whole of the Gospel is contained in that last clause. Paul, in the letter to the Galatians, says explicitly that this promise to Abraham was the Gospel preached beforehand to him: in Abraham’s seed — the Christ — all nations are blessed. The Apostolic series of this archive begins with the Annunciation, where Gabriel names the child Jesus; but the lineage that made the Annunciation possible began in Ur, when a wandering Aramean heard a word and obeyed it. Abraham is the first Christian in everything but the name.
Moses stands at the other pole of the Old Testament’s two great revelations. Where Abraham received the promise, Moses received the Law: the Torah (TOH-rah) given at Sinai (SY-ny) in fire and cloud and thunder, the ten commandments inscribed on stone tablets, the whole Levitical code that governed Israel’s worship and its common life. But before the Law, Moses received the Name: at the burning bush, asked by the one who spoke from the fire to tell the people who had sent him, Moses received the answer that the whole of the subsequent theological tradition has been trying to understand ever since: I AM THAT I AM. The Tetragrammaton (tet-rah-GRAM-ah-ton) — YHWH — the unspoken Name, the name so holy that Israel did not pronounce it, the name that the Greek translators rendered as the Lord and that Christians identify with the Son who said Before Abraham was, I am. Moses received the Name that the archive has been meditating on since the Holy Name meditation on 1 January. The name given to the child on the eighth day is the name spoken from the burning bush.
Isaac the son of promise, Jacob the wrestler who was renamed Israel, Joseph who was sold into Egypt and became the saviour of his brothers — the patriarchal narratives of Genesis are not merely ancient history; they are the theological grammar by which the New Testament understands the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The sacrifice of Isaac on Moriah is the prototype of the Father’s offering of the Son; the wrestling of Jacob with the angel is the prototype of every soul’s dark night before the blessing; the coat of many colours and the pit and the prison and the exaltation of Joseph is the prototype of the descent and ascent that Paul traces in the Christological hymn of Philippians 2. The Patriarchs are in the cloud of witnesses as its most ancient members, the roots from which the whole tree grows — and the tree is the Cross, and the fruit of the tree is the Body of the Lord in the Eucharist, and the Name on every lip at the Eucharist is the Name spoken first at the burning bush to a man standing barefoot on holy ground in the desert of Midian.
O God of the patriarchs and the lawgiver, who didst call Abraham from Ur and Moses from Midian and didst write thy Name in fire on the mountain; Grant that we, who have received the promise they saw from afar and the Name they dared not speak, may walk in the faith of those who went out not knowing where they were going, and may bless all families of the earth as thou didst promise to Abraham; through Jesus Christ thy Son, the seed in whom the promise is fulfilled, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.