The Abrahamic covenant is featured in today’s readings. In Genesis we have the original story. In Paul we find his wrestling with this story for our sake. The issue is whether we who are not Jews can claim the promises God made to Abraham and his descendants. If we detach it from these mythological trappings, the issue is whether Gentile followers of the Jew, Jesus, can have an equal place in the new communities with Jewish followers.

Today, the victory of the positive answer is so fully established among Christians that the whole discussion seems of historical interest only. No Christians fear that their lack of Jewish credentials will deny them roles in the church for which they are otherwise qualified. Yet there are issues today centering on these stories that are of great importance. Overcoming centuries of contempt of Jews requires rethinking relationships to the Abrahamic covenant.

Although there is much in the account of God and God’s behavior in the stories about Abraham that many of us do not take seriously, there is a sense in which the God we worship in our Christian churches is still today the God of Abraham, the wandering Aramaean. It was through these stories that the idea of God as one who is not bound to one limited locality or natural phenomenon was established among an ancient people. It was a first step toward belief in the oneness and universality of God. This is an idea we learned from the Jews. To worship this God was to join the Jewish community, that is, the heirs of Abraham. We Christians take it for granted that we have done so and can employ the Hebrew Scriptures as our own. But this has not been so evident to Jews.

Jews understandably think the covenant was between God and Abraham and his descendants. It is clear from the extended passage that one could claim the descent without genetic connection, but the replacement was circumcision. The ordinary reading of the Genesis account is that the circumcision of males set the heirs of Abraham off from others.

Paul resolved the question to the satisfaction of later generations of Gentile Christians by focusing on the basis of Abraham’s selection. This question is not explicitly dealt with in Genesis. One might conclude from the story that Abraham was rewarded because of his obedience to God. This obedience expressed itself in obeying the commandment of circumcision. The implication would be that to claim the legacy of Abraham would require obedience to the Jewish law.

Paul had to counter that reading. He claimed that it was Abraham’s pistis that won God’s favor. This is translated as belief, but its meaning is different from what others came to identify with belief. It has nothing to do with adhering to a creed, for example.

Pistis is much more than commitment to particular opinions. It could equally well be translated as trust and faithfulness. One who has pistis will certainly seek to serve God, but this relationship is not one that identifies obedience to God with obedience to any set of rules or laws. Today believers can share Abraham’s pistis without adopting the elaborate system of laws, beginning with circumcision, to which Jews required obedience. To Paul, the pistis evoked in Gentiles by his message was a fuller participation in the legacy of Abraham than any detailed conformity to rules.

The passage from the Psalms shows that Paul’s basic understanding had solid roots in the Hebrew tradition. It assumes that the Jewish God, the God of Abraham, is the one and only God. It anticipates that eventually the other peoples will recognize this and serve and worship this one God. There is no specific condition, such as circumcision. All that is required is the recognition that this is the one true God and the willingness to serve and worship. This is much more like pistis than obedience to law.

Before turning to Mark, I cannot forbear one comment that is only tangential related to the thrust of today’s passages. In the original Hebrew we are told that it is el Shaddai who addresses Abraham and establishes a covenant with him. In the English translation and in translations generally, we read “God Almighty.” If the Bible elsewhere explained that God is “almighty” this replacement of the proper name with a biblical understanding that avoids a proper name might be acceptable. It was this way when the tetragram YHWHwas replaced with “the Lord.” The Bible certainly teaches that God is Lord.

The Bible also teaches that God is mighty, and the nature of divine power in the Bible is an important question. But “almighty” (Latin omnipotentia) means that God has all the power. The Bible does not teach that and, in fact, strongly implies that we have the power to go against God and indeed that there are many other powers. Some suggest that the Bible teaches that God has the power to overrule all other powers, and that “Almighty” can be understood in this way. There are, indeed, assurances that in the end God will emerge wholly victorious, but “Almighty” seems to imply that at any moment God could effortlessly attain this victory. This does not fit the biblical vision.

The enormous struggles that Christians have had with the problem of evil follow chiefly from the impression that we should believe that God is almighty. Returning to a Biblical understanding of God’s power opens the door to more credible thinking. “Shaddai,” as a proper name, does not have a meaning. On two occasions Jewish rabbis have suggested to me that it evokes the idea of mountains and of women’s breasts. One reminded me that the Grand Tetons are named as the “great tits.” One suggested that we might call El Shaddai, the “Breasted One.” If we had been told that it was the divine “Breasted One” from whom Abraham accepted a covenant, our religious history might have been somewhat different.

The Marcan passage is quite different. We are in the season of the year that prepares us for Jesus’ death and resurrection. Mark depicts Jesus as recognizing not only that his confrontation with the authorities will endanger his life but also as knowing the outcome in some detail.

However, the message is not about the future events but about the nature of the faith for which he calls. It is uncompromising. He rejects Peter harshly when Peter wants him, for quite understandable practical reasons, not to talk so boldly about his fate. He rebukes any wavering. As he faces his destiny without trying to avoid it, so should his hearers. If faithfulness to God leads to being killed by fellow humans, so be it. Faithfulness is true life. To try to save one’s life at the cost of such faithfulness is to lose it.