1st Tuesday of Advent (November 29) Abraham: An Altar Builder.

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
 
Prepare to Listen.  Light the 1st purple candle and be still and silent for however long it takes.  Pray: Seek the LORD and his strength, seek his presence continually.
 
Prayerfully Read Genesis 12:5b-9 and 13:18
When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh.  At that time the Canaanites were in the land.  7Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’  So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.  8From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the LORD and invoked the name of the LORD.  9And Abram journeyed on by stages towards the Negeb…. 

18So Abram moved his tent, and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an altar to the LORD.
 
Prayerfully Wonder
Without hesitation or protest, Abraham [1] left his father’s house in obedience to a vague, “Go to the land that I will show you,” and an impossible promise, “I will make of you a great nation” (12:1).  His first stop in Canaan was at “the oak of Moreh” in Shechem, a sacred religious site for the land’s inhabitants.  And yet Yahweh, Abraham’s God was there, and again promised, “To you and your offspring I will give this land.”  In response, Abraham built an altar to the LORD, alongside the altars to ‘pagan’ gods.  His next stop was near Bethel where he built another altar, and “invoked the name of the LORD.”  He made public that Yahweh was the God who had his allegiance.  Later, God repeated the promises of land and descendants, and Abraham built his third altar to the LORD, alongside the pagan symbols at “the oaks of Mamre.”  He didn’t, as Gerald West maintains, “destroy [their religion] or insert his own religion over against it, but [sought] to identify and associate his religion with it.  Would that we were as gracious!” [2]
 
Living the promises of Yahweh, as Abraham discovered, wasn’t easy.  It meant living with people of different religions and cultures.  Abraham is our example, not only of faith, but of a willingness to be good news to those among whom we live.  He foreshadowed the gospel, the good news of Jesus, that, as the angels sang, is of “great joy for all people” (Lk 2:10).  Abraham lived the good news among the very different residents of Canaan who believed in a very different God.
 
Prayerfully Reflect
How can you live with the same gracious acceptance of ‘the other’ as Abraham did?
 
Respond in Prayer
Lord, help me live today with the graciousness of Abraham towards others so that they experience you as good news and not as judgment.  Amen.
 
Live Obediently.  Be gracious to all people today.
[1] For name change from Abram to Abraham, see Gen 17:3-5.
[2] West, Gerald.  Genesis: The people’s Bible commentary.  Oxford, UK: The Bible Reading Fellowship.  2006, p. 86.