Salvation History
There are countless ways the Bible has been used and abused down through history. We need to continuously return to a simple truth about the Sacred Book and its message. An accurate description of the Bible is this: the Bible is the story of Abraham and his family and their experience of God.The Bible is the story of the Chosen People. It leads to Jesus and his saving acts of his death and resurrection we commonly call this story Salvation History. Salvation History, as it relates to the Bible, covers the two thousand years from Abraham to Jesus and the beginning of the Church.
Salvation History centers the story around several main characters. In the Old Testament there are Abraham and the Patriarchs. Then there is the story of Moses, the Exodus and the Covenant. Joshua, the Judges and Samuel proceed to the time of the Kings. Here David dominates with his son Solomon. The continual pattern of sinfulness by the kings leads to the rise of the prophets. It also leads to the division of the Jewish nation and the eventual exile in Babylonia.
The return from exile finds the Jewish people, God’s Chosen, in an almost continual state of oppression up to, and including, the time of Jesus. Jesus and his saving acts open up the beginning of the Church.
The Bible has a very selective choice of material in the two thousand years from the call of Abraham to the ministry of Peter, Paul and the other Apostles. This, indeed, is the story of Abraham and his family and their experience of God. It is a unique history teaching all humanity how to acknowledge and respond to the loving presence and experience of God in their lives. The central theme is a growing mindfulness of God’s presence among a struggling and broken people where love and grace are in a seemingly endless conflict with selfishness and sin.
Salvation History describes forces of good and evil in relentless combat. It places the focus on God’s saving presence in the midst of a besieged and fragmented people. Love and grace win out over selfishness and sin in the person of Jesus.
IIAbraham
Abraham emerges suddenly and surprisingly at the beginning of chapter twelve of the book of Genesis.
There is a dramatic call and promise that will influence the entire text of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. This promise and call also have an impact on the rest of the Bible. “The Lord said to Abram: “Go forth from the land your kinsfolk and your father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation…All communities of the earth will find blessing in you.” (Gen. 12:1-3)
Abraham’s story is a good reflection of the common human journey. It is a mixture of failure and faithfulness, sin and grace and, in Abraham’s case, an ultimate surrender to God.
The story of Abraham in the Bible is the presentation of an ideal person of faith. Abraham, as displayed in Genesis, is the product of editing over centuries by the biblical authors. Their description of this man of faith was portrayed as the ideal man of faith for all Jews to imitate. No doubt, in reality, Abraham’s life was less heroic and more ambiguous. He shared in our common struggle in responding to the emptiness in our heart. He, like all of us, longed to transcend the crippling limits of our mortality.
In common with all humanity, he was searching for the definitive goal of a permanent happiness and fulfillment. Abraham was able to move away from the false gods of his family and tribe. He made a basic surrender to a presence that gradually evolved in his awareness to a Loving Person.
He lived a life of integrity, openness and searching for more. His loving relations with others, along with a search for authenticity in his personal life, unveiled the Mystery held deep within him. This was the God that was calling him to a new life wrapped up in the promise of a fruitful posterity and an abundant land.
Gradually, this deep hunger within his heart directed him to this call and this promise that was God. The honesty and truth of his lived experience opened up to the Mystery that is the divine presence that engulfs all human reality.
At the conclusion of his life, Abraham owned little land beyond the burial plots for Sarah and himself. Then he is challenged to face the total destruction of his great posterity. This was the supreme test in the sacrifice of Isaac. Somehow Abraham’s faith let him go beyond what seemed to be God’s empty promise. His faith in God became a light in a very dark world.
Abraham’s faithfulness in this final darkness was presented by the biblical authors as an appeal to the Jewish people. They had lost their land, their kings and their temple. There seemed to be nothing in life to give them hope. Now, only God offered a meaningful way into the deepest hunger in their hearts. These were hearts fearful and darkened by the ravages of history.
They simply wanted happiness. Abraham modeled for them a way not to a passing happiness with material prosperity and security. On the contrary, Abraham witnessed to an unending experience of happiness in a life of faith in God. Abraham was calling them to the only choice for real life, a life only faith in the God of their ancestors could provide.
III
Abraham and Deep Personal Prayer
There is a lesson for us in Abraham’s journey of faith. The events of his life portrayed in Genesis 12-25 constantly pulled him deeper into the distressing questions of the human venture. There was a relentless encounter with an apparent darkness and emptiness. The promise and the call increasingly seemed like an elusive fantasy.The question for us, is how did Abraham handle this search for what appeared to be an evasive God? One answer, for sure, was the integrity and honesty of his own life. In spite of the biblical authors’ effort to present Abraham as the ideal man of faith, we can see that sin and grace were the constant struggle in his life.
Likewise, Abraham had to have prayerful reflection on the frequent disquieting predicaments in his life. He had to ponder God’s word and presence in his personal experience. He had to search for God’s will. Obviously, this led him to grow gradually in trust and faith, in commitment and service to God and neighbor.
There was a great difference between the man who was willing to give up is wife to the Pharaoh and the man whose faith had grown to a point that he was willing to sacrifice Isaac.
It is prayer that makes the internal journey away from selfishness to generosity with God a possibility. Prayer is the great liberating event that carries us beyond the common-sense experience of reality into the infinite wisdom of God’s presence in our life.
The story of Abraham is many things. For sure, it is a story of a person of deep personal prayer. It is a story of one who searched and pondered God’s presence in his lived experience. As prayer demands, Abraham brought his reflections to action, actions driven by God’s will. He let this prayerful experience expand his awareness over his lifetime. This led to a sense of wonder. He was loved by God.
In the end, nothing else mattered. In this love he found true freedom that transcended the call and the promise that had anchored so much security and direction his life.
Deep personal prayer will do the same for us. We need to remain faithful and generous in seeking to understand God’s word. We need to strive to embrace God’s will. This encounter with the divine is a call and a promise of a love without limits or conditions. Like Abraham, we will learn that God’s darkness is truly the fullness of light.
