Mark Heim and Abdul-Rehman Malik discuss blessing, migration, and the inspiring legacy of Abraham across religious traditions in Genesis 12:1-4a. The text is appointed for the Second Sunday in Lent, in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Those Traveling through our Midst (Second Sunday in Lent)
Voiceover Voice:
But there is an enduring hope, that in the shifting, in the migration, there will be blessing.
Helena Martin:
This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Join us each week as two Yale Divinity School professors look at an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.
This episode, we have Mark Heim, who’s the Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School, and Abdul-Rehman Malik, who’s the Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in Islamic Studies.
They’re discussing Genesis 12:1-4a, which is appointed for the Second Sunday in Lent in Year A. Here’s the text.
[Genesis 12:1-4a]
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.
Abdul-Rehman Malik:
Mark, one of the things that occurs to me when I read this is the statement, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.” And that really resonates with me because one of the things that is so emblematic in the Islamic tradition, when it comes to Abraham, Ibrahim in Arabic, is that the Quran too calls Abraham a nation. A nation unto himself. And I think that’s a really powerful idea and it, for me, it’s almost central to what’s happening in this set of verses.
Mark Heim:
We’ve said that this text is so central to both our traditions and it’s such a great place to start in our conversation. And this idea that the entire nation is contained within Abraham and Sarah at this moment, is striking. And the idea we don’t usually think about our, we think of ourselves as descendants. We don’t think of ourselves as the progenitors of a great nation. And yet we stand in that tradition. So, it’s a great text to begin with. And this call to Abraham to pick up and go, he knows not where, has always been certainly in my tradition, always emblematic of the nature of faith. The steps where it can’t really see entirely into the future. What’s going to be involved in this process.
Abdul-Rehman Malik:
Right. And he’s not young, Abraham. He’s 75 years old. He’s lived an entire life. And now he’s being asked by the Lord God to go out into this very uncertain future. But actually almost like an uncertain future with a certain ending, isn’t it? That the promise is there. That the promise of being a nation that is blessed and that all people on earth will be blessed through you.
I love what you said there, Mark, about Abraham containing nations. Because I think when I engage with that idea, I think about the other line of Abraham through Hagar or in Arabic, Hājar, and Ishmael, Ismāʿīl. And that, you know, there’s this sense in reading these verses of their expansiveness even though some who might be reading them may not see them as expansive, right? The meaning is expansive.
Mark Heim:
Well and I love the age note, right? From where I’m sitting on the span of years. That you could do this completely new project and this massive project at this time in your life is encouraging. It’s a blessing in itself. But I love the discussion about the three blessings. God is promising you a land, promising you to be a great people, but promising that all the nations of the earth will bless themselves by you. That’s such a, I mean the first two could be seen in a somewhat self- interested way, but the third is really asking us always to be thinking about what’s the purpose of our particular relationship with God and our particular community for the entire community. And it’s that universalistic tenor to this Abrahamic text, I think, is key to each of our traditions. But also is calling us into a community with each other.
Abdul-Rehman Malik:
And there’s a burden of responsibility there, isn’t there? It’s like, you know, if we are people of Ibrahim, if we are people of Abraham, and all peoples on earth will bless through us, then we need to be worthy enactors of that blessing and of giving that blessing out. So, I mean, I think we get into this really interesting conversation about chosenness and blessing. But I almost feel that as you enter into, you’re right, the tenor, the tone, the intentionality of these verses what it’s saying is, that be worthy of that blessing. That Abraham was given that blessing and he sought that travel into the unknown in order to achieve that blessing. The question comes back to me, is that have I travel? Have I gone into the unknown? Have I pushed the boundaries of my own experience in order that I may acquire the experiences and the skills, really the spiritual skills, that may allow me to be someone who is blessed to others.
Mark Heim:
I know when we’ve talked before, AR, you’ve mentioned the sense of continuity that the Islamic community feels with Abraham. And in a very concrete, liturgical, even geographical way. Could you say something about that?
Abdul-Rehman Malik:
Yeah. Thank you for that reminder, Mark. I feel like, you know, in the tradition and particularly in the prophetic tradition, the prophet Mohammad was very intentional about referencing Abraham as a father. And in the famous night journey that Muslims believe the prophet took from Mecca to Jerusalem, and then from Jerusalem into the heavens to an experience with the Divine. That on that journey, Abraham was met and that this kind of meeting happened between father and grandson. And that’s a very powerful idea. And it was a very powerful idea for the early Muslim community, and I think it’s as powerful for us today.
To think always when we think of our Christian siblings and our Jewish siblings that we see ourselves as part of a spiritual family. Certainly from our positionality, we see ourselves as part of a spiritual family. And that for me is like a powerful foundation to build relationship on, right.? We build relationship as human beings, but we also build this kind of spiritual DNA. And I think the idea that the prophet Muhammad is seen within the Islamic tradition as the seal of revelation, you know the last to be given this kind of formal revelation. The same formal revelation that came to Jesus and to Moses and we believe to Abraham as well. In a way, sort of closes out this tight spiritual relationship between all these important characters, really, in our divine story.
Mark Heim:
That it is Abraham and Sarah, it’s his family. I mean, it’s his group that’s called out that travels. We only hear kind of the name of Abraham and Sarah, but that this kind of pilgrim quality to a life of commitment and faith has always spoken to me so powerfully. That the promise is exciting. It’s a great gift. It’s a wonderful assurance to have, but it requires a certain uncertainty and a time of transition and a time of not knowing. A time of being open to unclarity. I mean, we can tell the story as a great kind of triumphant one, Abraham going out to this great future, but it’s a moment of accepting the call. It’s a moment of stepping away from possessions of familiarity and so on. So this is something that’s always been striking to me about the Abraham story. I mean, it comes to me when I’m facing that sort of incident, right. Of trusting. Trusting into the future on the promises of God. This features a lot in sort of the hymnity and devotional life amongst Christians and this kind of aspect of the story.
Abdul-Rehman Malik:
That’s so beautiful, Mark, and I resonate with it so much. Especially in a time where we have, as human beings, been witness to the mass migration of people. To people fleeing their home as refugees. And can you imagine being a refugee from Halab, from Aleppo, and reading these verses and knowing that our spiritual forefathers and foremothers too were sent from their country, and their people, and their father’s household, and their lands to other places. You know, it’s hard for us at times, I know it’s hard for me at times, to see, understand, come to terms with a divine plan. But there is, you’re right, in these verses an enduring hope. That in the shifting, in the migration, in the travel, there will be blessing.
And I think back to, you know, my grandparents who migrated as refugees from the newly created India to the newly created Pakistan during the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.
And I remember the incredible trauma that lingered in our family and continues to linger in parts of our family around that experience. And I sometimes feel that we actually didn’t spend time on thinking about the spiritual implications of what it meant to leave home. Often because we were afraid to confront that experience, right? There was a sense that there was a blessing, right? They were coming into a new land, a land where they would feel safe. A nation that was made to honor their faith and their tradition. And yet, to leave the familiar, and to leave the familiar that was familiar to you for generations not just a place that you’d live for a little while, is a difficult thing, I think, for us to contend with. And yet these verses bring us back to that. So, whether it’s the experience of asylum or refugeeness, the experience of migration, or as you said, coming to turning points in our lives, there’s so much hope here. And it’s so much connection here to the experiences that are in our spiritual genealogy.
Mark Heim:
When you lift up that dimension, I mean, it’s striking. A verse we’ve not talked about, “I will bless those who bless you. Those who curses you, I will curse it.” It kind of turns, it turns the image around. We’re focused so much on Abraham going out, but that’s focused upon those who will encounter him along the way, right? That you should accept the stranger, the migrant, the one who has been displaced. In this case on a quest, but maybe not voluntarily at all. That kind of divine concern for the traveler, and the stranger, and that commandment to bless those who are traveling through your midst.
Abdul-Rehman Malik:
Mark, that is profound actually. I feel like my heart pauses as you say that, because what you say rings so true. This idea of whoever curses you, I will curse is in fact, can be seen as a caution, right? As a caution to those of us who encounter those who are traveling on the way to God, or on the way to safety, on the way to a new home. What should our relationship with them be? How relevant is that to the moment we’re living in now and that we will continue to live in as people continue to try to find peace and safety in places other than the places that they were born.
Mark Heim:
Well, and that hope, all the families of the earth shall be blessed by you. To think, to see the arrival of other people, from other places, and other backgrounds, and so on as a blessing, as part of God’s greater blessing to your community is an aspect of this text I’d not thought about in this connection. But seems as you say, very, very profound. That the journey undertaken by Abraham is already a blessing in the encounters that are going to emerge from it with other peoples, other settings, other locations.
Helena Martin:
Thanks for listening. And thank you, Professors Heim and Malik, for your insights on Genesis.
For a transcript of this episode and lots more Bible study resources, visit YaleBibleStudy.org.
Chapter, Verse, and Season is a production of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. It’s produced by: Creator and Managing Editor, Joel Baden; Production Manager, Kelly Morrissey; Associate Producer, Aidan Stoddart; and I’m your Host and Executive Producer, Helena Martin. Mixing on today’s episode, and our theme music, are by Calvin Linderman.
We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.
Book of the Bible:
Genesis
Subjects:
Genesis
Guests
Text
New Revised Standard Version Bible
Copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Credits
Host and Executive Producer: Helena Martin
Production Manager: Kelly Morrissey
Creator and Managing Editor: Joel Baden
Assistant Producer: Aidan Stoddart
Music: Calvin Linderman
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Chapter, Verse, and Season gives listeners the opportunity to overhear the kinds of conversations that take place in the halls of Yale Divinity School. Each week, professors from different theological disciplines chat about biblical texts from the Revised Common Lectionary. They bring their own interests to the table and hopefully spark new insights into the scripture appointed for each Sunday.