Abraham's New Life - Walter Brueggemann Part 2

This is my second post dealing with Genesis and  Walter Brueggemann's excellent  1982   commentary on Genesis.   The issue for me here is:  How does Abraham illustrate what it  means  to “call upon the name of the Lord” as described in Genesis chapter 12?

Possible route of Abraham and Sarah, public domain map from biblestudy.org  

My experience is that Christians have little interest in Abraham, even though he is put forth by NT writers as a revered believer who lived an exemplary life of faith in action. See Romans chapter 4 and Hebrews chapter 11.  Abraham is famous for his  “faith,” his “obedience,” his “obedient faith,” and his “faithful obedience,” and all too often these terms come off in sermons and inspirational writings as slogans.  That is a shame because the Genesis accounts of Abraham are jarring and life changing.   Combine a close reading of  the text of Genesis chapter 12 with Brueggeman’s take on it, and you will see in  Abraham one of the most vivid pictures of a “changed life” as any in the Bible.

I don’t have space to cover the several NT passages which refer to Abraham, or which refer to this subject of calling upon the name of the Lord.   But one NT matter is worth noting, as a preface here.    Based on the texts of the Gospels and what we know of second temple Judaism in the days of Jesus, what was Jesus' likely attitude toward Abraham?   A serious response to that question is beyond my competence as a nonprofessional Bible student. But these words of  Jesus in John chapter 8 leave me with the impression that Jesus knew the Genesis accounts of Abraham cold:
 [39] They answered him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do what Abraham did, 
[40] but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God; this is not what Abraham did.  ...
[56] Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad."
John 8: 39-40,56  (RSV).

As a first century Jew Jesus would have seen himself as one of the children of Abraham. Abraham was the father of the Jewish faith. Here in John 8 Jesus engages in a highly charged verbal exchange with his opponents, who make their argument based on that same status - that the people of Israel are the children of Abraham. Jesus challenges that. If they truly had Abraham as their father, they would have accepted Jesus, but instead Jesus says, "you seek to kill me." Jn. 8:40.  These verses from John 8 show that Jesus looked at his own mission ("my day") as something connected to and even within the vision of Abraham who "saw it and was glad." Jn. 8:56. From these words of Jesus about Abraham, I have to believe that if you read Genesis 12 you are reading a section of scripture which Jesus loved, and may well have had memorized. Abraham and Jesus had the same mission, to bring blessing to the world. In a sense, Abraham initiated this mission, and Jesus brought it to a kind of fulfillment. (Well, the people of Israel are still waiting for fulfillment, as we see in Romans 9-11, but that would have to be the subject of another post.)

In a few short verses here Genesis describes God’s call to Abraham and Abraham’s response:

[1] 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.
[2] And 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.

[3] I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves."

[4] So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
Genesis 12:1-4  (RSV)

As “Abram went” (v. 4) and  in the course of his travels  God came to him again, and again Abraham responded:
[6] Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

[7] Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, "To your descendants I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
[8] Thence he removed to the mountain 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 called on the name of the LORD.
Genesis 12:6-8 (RSV).

These verses from Genesis 12 raise monumental issues of our faith, the covenant, the formation of the people of God, the redemptive plans of God for the whole world, God’s  promises, the meaning of  faith, obedience and cultic practice (the altar).   But in this post I only want to address the single issue raised by verse 8 where Abraham “built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.”   What does it mean to call upon the name of the Lord?

To call on the name of the Lord means much more than saying words to God.  Walter Brueggeman commented as follows:

To “call on the name” means to turn to the one named as the single referent of life.  Thus, the cultic practice of Abraham [building an altar] expresses a life-identifying decision he had made in verse 4.  It is appropriate to link this decision of Abraham to the primal commandment, to have “no other gods.”  Luther’s well-known interpretive comment on the commandment is that “whatever your heart clings to and relies upon is properly your God."  … Calling on God’s name encompasses the whole of life.
Brueggemann, commentary on Genesis, at page 125.

For Abraham the “life identifying decision he made in verse 4” was his decision to leave his home country and go to "the land that I will show you" Gen. 12:1. Looking at these verses from Genesis 12 as a whole, to call upon the name of the Lord means that Abraham must listen to God, believe in God, leave his home country and worship at the altar as he journeys to the place where God calls him to go.   

Next post I will continue this reflection on Genesis 12 and address the theme of journey.