Abstract
Boundary-Crossing Faith
Ibrahim is a 32-year-old Palestinian who is the head gardener at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Gaza. A hundred years ago, his great-grandfather was appointed to the same job in Beersheba, 70 kilometres from Jerusalem. The work has been in their family ever since, despite their fleeing from Beersheba in the violence that followed the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Most of the 3691 graves Ibrahim and his colleagues look after are of British servicemen, but people from other Commonwealth and European countries are also buried there. What Ibrahim says about his work reveals his generous vision:
I learnt from my family to love our work. We feel it’s very important. These people gave their lives for their countries, and we’re trusted to take care of this historic place. It’s important to respect all dead people, whatever their nationalities or the reason they’re here.
The apostle Paul was interested in another Ibrahim whose story was also associated with generous vision: Abram the herdsmam, who in today’s Old Testament reading (Genesis 12.1–9) heard God’s call and received God’s promise to bless him. He was told to leave his ancestral home in present-day Iran, and head for another land. He would become the father of ‘a great nation’ who would extend God’s blessing to ‘all the families of the earth’ (12.3; in Gen 17.5 his name was later changed to Abraham to reflect the breadth of God’s promise). The account of his response is pithy and poignant: ‘so Abram went’ (12.4) into an unknown future, and set off for Canaan with his wife Sarai (in 17.15ff her name is changed to Sarah, to reflect God’s promise to bless her), his nephew Lot, and their servants and flocks.
In his letter to Christians in Rome, Paul uses later episodes from the story of Abraham in Genesis 15 and 17 to draw out the scope of God’s promise and the substance of Abraham’s response (Rom 4.13–25). The ‘great nation’ would be his ‘descendants’, who would be as numerous as the stars of heaven (15.5), ‘a multitude of nations’ living in ‘the land of Canaan, a perpetual holding’ (17.4, 8). After expressing his incredulity at a promise like this coming to an elderly childless couple (17.17), Abraham continued his journey in the faith that enabled him to receive God’s blessing: faith that Paul sees as Abraham’s willingness to trust God’s astonishing promise and live hopefully as he looked to the future, however much he wondered what lay in store for him.
The Koran regards Ibrahim of Gaza as a son of Abraham, through the line of Ishmael rather than Isaac. I’m struck by the parallels between the two men. Ibrahim sees his work as a sacred trust and a blessing that he has received, rather than something he’s entitled to. He must wonder what the future holds for him and his family, in view of the escalating violence in Gaza and the West Bank. Will his children inherit his blessing? What comes across in his story is the way he lives on the boundaries of life and death, treasuring what has been entrusted to him, and looking to the future with enough hope for him and his family to remain in Gaza.
Paul is particularly interested in the story of Abraham because he sees his faith as a force for unifying Jews and gentiles in the church in Rome. What matters to Paul is Abraham’s willingness to trust God’s gracious promise to bless him and his descendents. In Paul’s eyes, his ethnic identity – and that of his Jewish descendents – counts for nothing compared to his faith in the astonishing promises of God. This was the channel through which God’s blessing of righteousness (Rom 4.22; cf Gen 15.6) came to him, and therefore to his children. Paul sees Abraham’s faith as boundary-crossing, and calls for its pattern – trust in God’s promise, openness to receive God’s blessing, hope in God’s future – to be reproduced in the church in Rome, where gentiles and Jews are at odds with one another.
Today’s gospel reading directs us to another son of Abraham, the son of Abraham according to Matthew’s gospel (1.1). Reading the accounts of Abraham in Genesis and Romans alongside the two stories in Matthew 9.9–13 and 18–26 invites us to ask how Jesus’ faith echoes that of his esteemed ancestor. Matthew’s two stories are held together by a common theme: Jesus fulfils his vocation as the son of Abraham by through boundary-crossing faith.
In the first story he’s among ‘tax collectors and sinners’, people whom the more respectable members of the Jewish community keep at arm’s length. Tax collectors worked for the Roman occupation, with some having a reputation for dishonesty. ‘Sinners’ weren’t particularly scrupulous about observing the Torah’s requirements, especially those that maintained Jewish distinctiveness. And yet Jesus is at home with these marginal groups. He justifies his willingness to eat with them by referring his mainstream critics to the prophet Hosea: ‘Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’ It’s not that Jesus insists on rejecting religious practice, only that offering sacrifice should not get in the way of Israel’s primary call to live by ‘steadfast love’ (Hosea 6.6, translated as ‘mercy’ in the Greek Bible). The faith of the son of Abraham is driven by boundary-crossing mercy that channels God’s blessing into healing divided communities.
In the second story, Jesus stands on the boundary between life and death, like Ibrahim in Gaza tending graves amidst escalating violence. A synagogue leader (unnamed in this gospel) asks him to lay hands on his daughter, who he believes to be dead, in the hope that she will live again. But then Jesus is interrupted by a woman suffering from chronic haemorrhages, who would have lived in isolation during the twelve years of her debilitating illness. She touches his cloak in desperation, yet Jesus sees this as boundary-crossing faith that channels God’s gracious blessing into restoring her relationships as well as her body: ‘daughter, your faith has made you well’ (9.22). Meanwhile mourning for the leader’s daughter is under way, but when he arrives at the house with her father Jesus will have none of it: ‘She is not dead, but sleeping’ (9.24). This time it is the faith expressed by his touch that crosses boundaries, as it channels God’s gracious blessing into restoring her life.
What does boundary-crossing faith look like today? Here are two examples from the Middle East. On a visit to Palestine a year ago with the Amos Trust, a small Christian-based human rights organisation, our party visited a number of projects on the West Bank. One of the most impressive was the Tent of Nations, which is run by the Nassars, a Palestinian Christian family, from a hilltop farm 9 kilometres from Bethlehem. The farm is also a centre for reconciliation and non-violent resistance. It has been subjected to violence and intimidation for years. Last year its newly-planted olive trees were destroyed yet again by Israeli settlers. The Nassar family worry about being cut off from Bethlehem by the extension of the Israeli separation wall. But they’re determined to stay on their farm. ‘The land is like our mother’, they told us. ‘We care for her. We won’t leave her or sell her. We refuse to be anyone’s enemies.’ The Tent of Nations lives by gracious, boundary-crossing faith, practising steadfast love as it builds bridges between land and people, and Palestinians and Israelis.
The Amos Trust’s Christmas Appeal in 2022 supported the breast cancer screening programme of the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, which is run by the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem. Women in Gaza are three times more likely to die from breast cancer than in the UK. The hospital lives by gracious, boundary-crossing faith. Impoverished Gazans know that it offers compassionate care irrespective of religion, ethnicity, or ability to pay. Its director tells of a mother who came to Ahli with her child: ‘We are here because you are Christians. We know we won’t be neglected here’.
I wonder if Ibrahim would see Jesus the son of Abraham as his brother in compassionate, boundary-crossing faith. I wonder too how much we do, as those who inherit the promises God made to Abraham and live by his faith in the God who gives life to the dead (Rom 4.17), and whose blessing knows no bounds.