The stories about Abraham

Everybody should know the basic story about Abraham. Here are the stories straight out of Genesis, the first book of the bible, that we are going to talk about at confirmation class on Sunday:

First, a couple of versions of the Covenant story:

Genesis 12:1-9

1 The Lord said to Abram, "Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's home, and go to a land that I am going to show you. 2 I will give you many descendants, and they will become a great nation. I will bless you and make your name famous, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, But I will curse those who curse you. And through you I will bless all the nations." 4 When Abram was seventy-five years old, he started out from Haran, as the Lord had told him to do; and Lot went with him. 5 Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the wealth and all the slaves they had acquired in Haran, and they started out for the land of Canaan. When they arrived in Canaan, 6 Abram traveled through the land until he came to the sacred tree of Moreh, the holy place at Shechem. (At that time the Canaanites were still living in the land.) 7The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, "This is the country that I am going to give to your descendants." Then Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 After that, he moved on south to the hill country east of the city of Bethel and set up his camp between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There also he built an altar and worshiped the Lord. 9Then he moved on from place to place, going toward the southern part of Canaan.

Here are the three things I want you to remember about God's covenant with Abraham: God promises Abraham: 1) Many descendants, 2) God's blessing, and 3) a certain piece of land for a country. 
The hitch is, Abraham had two sons. And there has been disagreement for thousands of years about which of Abe's sons' descendants are entitled to that piece of land and that blessing.

Here is how it happened. When God made this promise, Abraham had no children. How can you become the father of a great nation, a whole country, without any children? Abraham's wife Sarah was old, and had no children, so Sarah arranged for her maid, Hagar, to be a kind of surrogate mother. Hagar and Abraham's son was called Ishmael. Apparently, that's not what God had in mind, according to the story in Genesis 17, in which God insists that Sarah's child will be the one who inherits the Covenant.

"You must no longer call your wife Sarai; from now on her name is Sarah.16 I will bless her, and I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she will become the mother of nations, and there will be kings among her descendants." 17 Abraham bowed down with his face touching the ground, but he began to laugh when he thought, "Can a man have a child when he is a hundred years old? Can Sarah have a child at ninety?" 18 He asked God, "Why not let Ishmael be my heir?" 19 But God said, "No. Your wife Sarah will bear you a son and you will name him Isaac. I will keep my covenant with him and with his descendants forever. It is an everlasting covenant. 20 I have heard your request about Ishmael, so I will bless him and give him many children and many descendants. He will be the father of twelve princes, and I will make a great nation of his descendants. 21 But I will keep my covenant with your son Isaac, who will be born to Sarah about this time next year."

People who follow Islam count themselves as children of Abraham through Abraham's son Ishmael. Jews and Christians count themselves as children of Abraham through his son Isaac. Having a common ancestor, according to the stories of our faith, should bring us together, but the truth is, sometimes we act out an ancient "sibling rivalry," fighting for the status of God's beloved children. As if God could choose! It's like asking your mother to chose between you and your brother or sister. That's what I think.

So come to confirmation class ready to re-tell the stories of Abraham and discuss the "so what."