From Ur of the Chaldeans to Ur of the Chaldeans
HAE sunt autem generationes
Thare: Thare genuit Abram, Nachor et Aran. Porro Aran genuit Lot; mortuusque est Aran ante Thare patrem sum in terra nativitatis suae in Ur Chaldaeorum…These were the children of Thare: Thare was the father of Abram, Nachor and Aran. Aran was the father of Lot, but Aran died ahead of Thare his father in Ur of the Chaldeans, the land of his birth.
(Gen 11, 27-28). Thus do we read of Ur of the Chaldeans in the very first book of Sacred Scripture, and, beginning with Abram, later to be renamed Abraham, the rest is sacred history.
Jews, Christians and Muslims — the great monotheistic faiths — trace their lineage to Abraham. His faith is normative for the people who worship the same God and recognize his sovereignty. Leave your land, your relatives and the house of your father…that command marked the beginning of the journey to Canaan and the journey of millennia that led to the visit of Francis, head of the largest group of Christians, to the land of Abraham.
As the pope neared the area that had been prepared for the interreligious encounter, the camera panned across the vast plain of Ur, and the commentator reminded the audience that this was where ancient Mesopotamia lay, and while it looked quite arid and barren from the picture, it was, in the ancient sacred texts, referred to as the land watered by the two mighty rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates, and since Genesis mentions these very same rivers in its description of the Garden of Eden, then close by must have been that marvelous garden prepared by God for his favored creatures, abounding in every good thing! This, I told myself, was land so ancient, so associated in the collective consciousness of humankind with the beginnings of civilization that here, history and myth coalesced and seamlessly overlapped!
When Abraham was called forth from this land, it did not only mean a change of residence — something that can almost be painlessly and effortlessly done these days. It meant a redefinition of his person, a rewriting of his narrative for he had to uproot himself from all that made life secure and from the identity that his family lent him. From Abram to Abraham. And there was no map, no plan he had formed, no destination he had chosen. The only direction given him by God was in terram, quam monstrabo tibi…to the land that I shall show you.
And from that time, it was a rough ride: the painful dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael — at least according to the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the period of famine that sent his progeny off to Egypt, the bitter slavery to which they were subjected there, the dramatic Exodus, the struggle to take possession of the Land of Promise, the division into two kingdoms, the successive destruction of both, the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians, the Southern Kingdom by Nebuchadnezzar — who was lord of Babylon, the very place from which Abraham had sallied forth. It must have seemed like God was going back on his word, for the Jews were taken to Babylon in chains, there to live as exiles until Cyrus whose army had defeated the Babylonians, would allow them to return to their homeland. And once returned, it was struggle first against the Greeks and then against the Romans, until Jerusalem was destroyed — as Christianity was aborning!
It would not be just to Pope Francis to expect a lot from a visit of three days. But he has taken a step never taken before – through no fault of his predecessors, of course. The time was just not right, or so they thought. The pope received a warm reception from the officialdom of Iraq that, not too long ago, in the Bush administration, was hardly even there. He met with representatives of the religious and ethnic groups and urged acceptance and inclusiveness on the very plain where God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. He associated with his brothers, the bishops of the Catholic Church from different rites: the Patriarch of Chaldean Catholic Church, the Patriarch of the Syrian Catholic Church and the Archbishop of Baghdad of the Roman Rite. No one knows what words were exchanged between him and the Ayatollah but the very meeting alone was something inconceivable in the immediate past. In many ways, Francis dared what many thought difficult, dangerous if not impossible. He dared leave his “homeland,” where he was comfortable and secure, to venture into the land where believers first heard God’s call.
Of Abraham’s vocation, the Sacred Quran writes: “And when his Lord tested Abraham with certain words, and he fulfilled them, he said: ‘I am making you the Imam of mankind’.” (2:124. Surat Al-Bagarah). I pray fervently and hope earnestly that this will be the first of the gathering of the children of Abraham so that they may learn from their common Imam the great lesson that, if from those plains, they would look up once more, as Pope Francis exhorted all, to look at the stars of the sky, then they would remember Him who promised long ago that they would be as numerous as they are now, who chose Abraham, extolled his faith and made it the model of all whom he calls to faith — to witness to a world that no longer recognizes the voice of God!