Leaving Ur

“The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. 'Leave your country and your people,' God said, 'and go to the land I will show you.'”

“So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran...”

Stephen, 1^st Century martyr as quoted in Acts 7:2-4

Sometime around the Second Millennium B.C.E., during what archeologists refer to as the Middle Bronze Age, a small clan of Semites begin heading north along the main trade route that leads from their home. In their rear view mirror is Ur, vast cosmopolitan city of the Sumerians, the most centralized bureaucratic state the world has ever known. The last feature of that place to slip beneath the horizon is the towering temple to the moon god, Nanna. Their journey, to quote Roman Catholic scholar Thomas Cahill, is “a migration in the wrong direction” - a turning-away from the modern, the civilized, everything that you and I would call normal. In some real way, Abram, the leader of this small caravan, is stepping off the map into that region that ancient cartographers used to mark with, “Here There Be Dragons.”

Here There Be Dragons

What would provoke someone from New York City to leave it? Economic downturn? Political turmoil? A desire for greener pastures? Of course, those of us who live contentedly in rural areas cannot imagine anyone actually wanting to live in the Big City – be it New York, Chicago or the Twin Cities - with its traffic, crime, pollution and, well, people. We like our “wide open spaces” and from our perspective Abram and his people are wise to “lit out for the territories.” But as far as his peers and contemporaries were concerned, Abram is going the wrong way. The high life is not to be found in the place where he is headed. Rather, he is risking his entire family fortune by moving his people north. This move of his makes no sense whatsoever.

I try and imagine the conversations that might have happened within their small camp as they proceeded up that highway:

“So, where exactly are we going...?”

Abram leaving Ur

“Where is all this leading, Abram?”

“How can you be so sure that you heard right?”

And (who knows?)

“Are we there yet?”

He does not know and he cannot say. All he can say for certain is that he feels compelled to follow the leading of the One who calls him to turn his back on the only life he has ever known. He has no road map to reference. No virtual tour to get a sneak peak of the land they are traveling to. Whatever else this journey may be it is one of blind faith. And those who go with him are just as courageous – or crazy – as he is.

The Great Ziggurat of Ur

Abram's story, while unique in its particulars, is the not the last time that God will ask someone to make a leap into the dark for the benefit of a greater cause. Moses, when he asks God for a sign that he is really hearing right, is told, in so many words, “when you get back here with all the people then you will know that I have sent you” (Exodus 3:12). I can almost hear Moses say, “Uh....yeah...thanks...” under his breath. Or Joshua who is directed to put in the van of the fighting force their most precious commodity – the Ark of the Covenant – and tell the priests to step into the Jordan. The author adds this little tid-bit: “Now, the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest” (Joshua 3:15). Would you have wanted to be one of the guys pulling “front-duty” on the Ark that day of the Crossing? Or Esther who violates all known protocol by entering the king's chambers uninvited and unannounced, risking everything with the hopes that the king will smile on her. And then there's the story of Peter. As Matthew tells it, Peter and Andrew were in the middle of an otherwise ordinary work day when the Rabbi comes walking along the shore of the sea and offers an invitation to them that is very similar to the one offered to Father Abraham a couple of ages ago: leave what you know and follow me into a life you know nothing about. “Join me in this great work of the Kingdom,” Jesus invites them.

As I read Abram's and Peter's stories again I ask myself, “Would I do it?” Would I just walk off in the middle of my work day and step off into the unknown because I felt God was leading me to do so? Frankly, the very phrase - “God is leading me” - used to make me cringe because it conjured up faces of those I have known who have said the very thing to do what seemed to me the craziest of things. But nearly twenty years into my present calling admittedly these days I don't spend a lot of time asking God what he would have me do today. Pray. Serve. Preach. Teach. Plan. Study. Visit. Encourage. Write. While the weeks vary with activity, my life often has a stale sameness to it as if I could do these things by rote. And sometimes I do. It feels nothing like Abram's epic journey across the Fertile Crescent 2000 B.C.E.

The actual Ziggurat of Ur

As usual, the Biblical narrative is a wonder in terseness. In response to Yahweh's invitation to leave his “country, people and father's household” to go “to the land I will show you”, the author tells us this: “So, Abram left, as the LORD had told him and Lot went with him” (Gen 12:4). Says Cahill of this moment,

So, ‘wayyelekh Avram’ (“Avram went”) – two of the boldest words in all literature. They signal a complete departure from everything that has gone before in the long evolution from of culture and sensibility. Out of Sumer, civilized repository of the predictable, comes a man who does not know

where he is going but goes forth into the unknown wilderness under the prompting of his god. Out of Mesopotamia, home of canny, self-serving merchants who use their gods to ensure prosperity and favor, comes a wealthy caravan with no material goal. Out of ancient humanity, which from the dim

beginnings of its consciousness has read its eternal verities in the stars, comes a party traveling by no known compass. Out of the human race, which knows in its bones that all its striving must end in death, comes a leader who says he has been given an impossible promise. Out of mortal imagination comes a dream of something new, something better, something yet to happen, something – in the future.

(The Gift of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, pp. 63-64)

Abram's Journey to Canaan

Matthew's account of this same crossroads in Peter's life is equally terse and (for me) eyebrow-raising:

“At once they [Peter and Andrew] left their nets and followed him” (Matthew 4:20, NIV). Which man do you know who would just leave his power tools out in the open and simply walk away from them? And what do you think his wife said when he didn't come home for dinner that night or she learned that her nice, sedate life as a fisherman's wife was suddenly overturned? I'm wondering why Matthew didn't include that conversation in his narrative? I think it would make for some good reading today. But regardless, Peter leaves and nothing can ever be the same. Which gets me to the point of this meditation: salvation is more than just a place – a moment where we prayed “to receive Jesus” - but a journey that if it is real shapes us into people with different values and priorities than those from our native country, people and, even, household. And if I awake from my stupor and find that for all my talk of being a “pilgrim in progress”, I'm still living in Ur what else is there to do but flee like Pilgrim from the City of Destruction and take up the quest for Eternal Life.

"Life...I must have Eternal Life!"