Saturday, June 28, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Rublev
The LORD appeared to Abraham by the Terebinth of Mamre,
as Abraham sat in the entrance of his tent,
while the day was growing hot.
Looking up, he saw three men standing nearby.
Thousands of years later, Andrei Rublev painted the three men, depicting them as the Holy Trinity. In the early fifteenth century this most famous icon in the world graced the walls of a small village church near Moscow. Eventually named “The Trinity,” the three men represented the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. At the time the Trinity stood for all that was good in the world, for spiritual unity, peace, harmony, mutual love and humility.
They asked him, “Where is your wife Sarah?”
He replied, “There in the tent.”
One of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year,
and Sarah will then have a son.”
Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent, just behind him.
Two chapters ago Sarai abused her maidservant after she became pregnant with Abraham’s child, even though Sarai instructed Abraham to have intercourse with her. Hagar and her son Ishmael left the household and escaped to the desert, where God refreshed them and told them to return to Abram. I can only imagine the relationships in that tent were uneasy, to say the least.
At last, fourteen years later Sarah hears the Lord’s announcement. She will bear the long-promised, long-awaited son. Abraham was 100 and Sarah 86, they were withered and old, but they will have intercourse and a son will be born to them, a son named Isaac.
Isaac and his half-brother Ishmael eventually part ways. Ishmael fathers 12 sons, who become separate nations, while Isaac fathers 12 sons that become the nation of Israel. What we call the Middle East began in just this way, with families and clans, tribes and nations all coming originally from the house of Abraham.
So the torrid tales of the next several chapters of Genesis are only the beginning of a never-ending love-hate relationship between the sons of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, morphing in our day into the conflict between Israel, Palestine and all the Arab nations. Soon Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes will write that there is nothing new under the sun. Historians see this more clearly than the rest of us, who have trouble seeing beyond our own moments under that sun.
The Lord has remembered his promise of mercy,
The promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children forever.
Mercy? Where is there mercy in the Middle East? From this distance it looks like hatred rules. I’ve been told this is more political than personal, that Arab men and women relate to Israeli men and women without the animosity of their leaders, at least until bombs fall and fires kill anyone in the way. The Lord’s mercy, invisible and unfelt, seems like a cruel joke. But it is not.
Jesus saw the hatred clearly, and he saw that the children of Abraham might not know their Father’s mercy for awhile …
I say to you, many will come from the east and the west,
and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven,
but the children of the Kingdom
will be driven out into the outer darkness,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
Jesus kept on looking. In that dangerous jungle of secrets and unkept promises between brothers, he found some. On these rocks he would his church, wherever they were born. Even Rome.
Jesus said to the centurion,
“You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.”
My German ancestors don’t claim their Jewish (or Roman ancestry). But still I am thankful for whatever glimpse I might get of the tent where the Lord (all three) visited Abraham and renewed his promise. Because I’m part of that family too.
(Genesis 18, Luke 1, Matthew 8)
(posted at davesandel.net)
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