From one of the very first Caminos: Abraham made many journeys in his lifetime, after God called him from Ur of the Chaldees. In his first great journey, having arrived in Canaan, he passed through the land to Shechem, where God spoke to him of his descendant’s ownership of the land.
The curious thing is that, after building an altar in the place of promise, he didn’t stop and build himself a home. He didn’t make a life for himself and his family there. He kept right on moving to the hill country east of Bethel, where he built another altar and on to the Negev, whose name means “dry,” where, there being a drought, he then moved on to Egypt, leaving the land of promise behind. Why would he do that?
If we continue reading Genesis’ account of Abram’s journeys, we come across a somewhat sordid tale of his arrival in Egypt. Pondering Sarai’s beauty, and fearing that the Egyptians would kill him to obtain her for themselves, Abram directed her to give pharaoh’s people the impression that she was his sister. Under this very false impression, pharaoh took Sarai into his household as his wife, bringing a curse of “great plagues” (Gen 12:17) on all Pharaoh’s household. In essence, Abram traded his wife’s beauty and sexuality for his own security. So much for Sarai.
Pharaoh, quite rightly miffed by Abram’s deception, returned Sarai to him and sent Abram from the country. Abram made his way back to Hebron, and dwelt for a while in the land of God’s promise. In the next chapters, God made a solemn covenant to Abram, whose name changed to Abraham, promising to be his strong right arm, giving him the land, and assuring him he would have countless descendants (ch. 15). The name change suggests a certain internal reorientation, perhaps even a “becoming.” But even a covenantal tie to the land failed to keep Abraham rooted. In chapter 20, Abraham headed off once more to the desserts of the Negev, taking up residence as an alien in Gerar, where Abimelech was king.
Though his behavior had already caused great problems for pharaoh, Abram, again, pretended Sarai was his sister, and permitted Abimelech to take her as his wife, again using Sarah’s body as collateral for his own well-being. Abimelech, warned in a dream that Sarah was Abraham’s wife, returned her to him, protesting Abraham’s treatment of him: “What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you, that you have brought such great guilt on me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that ought not to be done” (12:9). One easily concludes that Abimelech was a man of greater integrity and propriety, in that affair, than Abraham.
Gen 12:7-8 — 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said: To your descendants I will give this land. So Abram built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. 8 From there [by the oak of Moreh] he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel, pitching his tent with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. He built an altar there to the Lord and invoked the Lord by name.
For reflection: So, consider your own sense at this point? Was Abraham a good man or not? He may well have had many good attributes, but he was willing to boldly lie, willing to trade away his wife, and unwilling to learn from past events, even as others paid high prices for his deceptions. He certainly could have been a better man.
Abraham was the founder of a people, and the spiritual father for all Jews, Christians, and to Muslims as well. While we may be inclined to cut moral corners for great figures in history, the Bible hints that if Abraham was elect of God, it was for the person he would become, far more than the person he started out.
Perhaps, it’s precisely in the ambiguity of his moral life and the unfocused nature of his commitment to the values of the God he laid claim to, and who had covenanted with him, that he needed to continue on his journeys. He wasn’t ready for a home. In essence, he wasn’t “finished” yet. In fact, only after Abraham’s journey to Moriah, where he surrendered his will completely to God, even so far as pondering if he should sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac, did Abraham’s journeys come to an end. Though it’s never directly proposed, it appears to be an implicit message of the narrative, that as long as Abram still had work to do, he was still called to stay on the road, in essence, to remain on pilgrimage.
We all have a need for space in our life for growth. So often, though, modern life has so many demands, for productivity, to comply with work, to care for others, to attend to responsibilities, to attend to friendships, to encourage our children’s education, to maintain our homes and apartments, to do, to do, and to do yet more. Instead of growing and becoming, we settle for doing and achieving. We pass by the hallmarks of life, and we count them down, as though the birthdays, and the recognitions, and the events were the key to it all. In the frenetic fullness we learn to settle for the doable.
During the long days of walking, there is a freedom to probe, honestly, the areas of your own brokenness, the places where you sabotage yourself, the areas where the fault doesn’t lie with others, but with you. Your spouse, your children, your friends, the people who have stormed out of your life, may well have indicated the very places where you might review your own patterns. The Camino is a place with enough space to explore, critique, retreat, put away and return to the areas that require your examination. You don’t have to solve everything at once. You might even, like Abraham, find yourself exhibiting your worst behavior over and over while on pilgrimage.
Pilgrimage, done well, invites us back into being and becoming, over doing, learning the fragile edges of our brokenness, accepting them where necessary, healing them where possible, and growing. There came a time in Abraham’s life when he stopped using Sarai, stopped deceiving the others around him, and weighed the values of another life, that of his only offspring, and gives all to God. What he finds is that God doesn’t want Isaac. He wants Abraham. In that divine awareness, Abraham’s journeys find their end.
If working on yourself makes sense, take some time for it. With weeks of walking, you might be able to lay the foundation for some healthier, life-giving habits. If nothing else, you might be able to work out, through some patient probing of memories some personal inner healing.
God is waiting for us, too. The journey toward that divine encounter, for most of us, still lies ahead. It’s not that we haven’t experienced, and sometimes richly, the presence of the Most High. But there remain places where we could, in our own inner growth, become more open, creating a space that God would fill, recognizing the sacred ground in our own experiences and our deepest selves, where we could take off our shoes and stand in the Presence.
So, where do you need to repent and grow?
