GENESIS 12:1-4a. The call of Abram (or Abraham as he later became known) to leave his homeland and migrate to an unknown country is one of the crucial events of the Old Testament. Whether the stories surrounding this migration are tribal legends or actual events, there is no doubt that they became a formative part of Israel's faith history. Later generations would look back to this patriarch and see in Abram's obedience to the divine summons the initial response to God's covenant with Israel.
PSALM 121. This psalm has been sung in paraphrase form by many generations of Scots and Canadians. The latter paraphrase by the Marquis of Lorne, Governor-General of Canada 1879-1883, is better known to us as the hymn "Unto the hills around do I lift up my longing eyes." Its message is simple and powerful: God watches over us as permanently as the mountains mark the horizon.
ROMANS 4:1-5, 13-17. As a rabbi well trained in the religious traditions of Israel, Paul cited the call of Abraham as evidence that obedient response to God in faith is the key to Israel's religious heritage. Paul based his conviction that we are given a firm relationship with God (justified is the term he used) by similarly responding to God in faith. Obeying the law was not sufficient, he argued. Faith must come first before there can be any obedience to the law.
JOHN 3:1-17. John regarded this meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, as one of the most significant events in the theological separation of early Christianity from Judaism. Here he states the real purpose of Jesus' life and ministry. In many ways, the story reiterates what Paul had said to the Romans: Faith in God's love so fully revealed in Jesus, God's Son, is the only means of coming into a right relationship with God and our neighbours in this age or any age. Indeed, the whole of the New Testament conveys a similar message for all the world.
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