Today is the Sabbath. In synagogues right now, our elder brothers in the Old Testament are chanting this week's portion: Lech-Lecha — "Go forth." And the passage we've been reading all week is Moses' end (Deut 34). Theirs is a beginning; ours is an ending. Theirs is Abraham setting out; ours is Moses falling at the doorway of the promise. Today, from the Christian side, we draw near to our elder brothers in the Old Testament — listening to what they read, and letting our Scriptures talk with theirs.
Lech-Lecha opens with God saying to Abram: "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you" (Gen 12:1). No map, no timetable — only a command and a promise: "I will make of you a great nation." Abraham was seventy-five. He packed the tents and went. Jewish tradition reads this as the archetype of faith: faith doesn't see first and then go; it goes first, and then sees.
The Haftarah, Isaiah 40:27–41:16, sings like a song for the exhausted: "Those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles" (Isa 40:31). Israel on the eve of return from exile stood, like Abraham, at a doorway of "leaving" — leaving Babylon for the unknown. The prophet hands them Abraham's story: this is how your father walked.
Now let the two readings point at each other. All week we've read Moses counting his days (Ps 90); they read "mount up with wings like eagles." Same flight, two directions: one is life's brevity — "we fly away"; the other is faith's renewal — "mount up." Wonderfully, the answer hides in the same act: waiting. Moses counted his days waiting for God to establish the work of his hands; Isaiah says those who wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength.
And watch beginning talk to end: Abraham was seventy-five when called out of Ur; Moses was one hundred twenty when he fell on Nebo. One story opens with "go," the other closes with "stop." Yet both tell the same truth — a human life moves inside God's promise. Abraham moved his body; Moses moved a people. Abraham never saw the promise fulfilled ("all these died in faith without having received the promises," Heb 11:13); neither did Moses enter Canaan. Faith was never about arriving. It's about being on the way. The God who said "go forth" to Abraham is the same God who buried Moses on Nebo — the Caller at the beginning is the Burying One at the end, and He was faithful at both.
From the Christian side, we see one more thread our elder brothers may not walk with us: Abraham's "going" foreshadows the greater One who left His home — Christ, "though he was in the form of God... emptied himself" (Phil 2:6–7). And Moses' "stopping" foreshadows the One who said "it is finished" from the cross. We don't force this into the conversation, but we know in our hearts: beginning and end meet in Christ.
We hold honest differences with our elder brothers in the Old Testament that cannot be compromised — they do not confess the Trinity, nor Jesus as Messiah. Which is exactly why this virtual dialogue matters: we can name the difference honestly, and still learn honestly. Learn what? Their seriousness with Scripture — a portion every week, chanted word by word, the whole Torah in a year, every year, for millennia. While our devotional habits rise and fall with our moods, their reading never misses a week. Their faithfulness to the rhythm of Sabbath — a full day where work stops, phones down, tables full — while we answer emails on Sunday morning and call it dedication. A Christian who can't keep a Sabbath has no business smiling at his elder brother's "blindness." Perhaps the elder brother, whom we think is missing the point, is keeping the point we dropped.
Pray with me: Lord, thank You for our elder brothers in the Old Testament. Their weekly devotion to Your word rebukes our casualness; their loyalty to the Sabbath exposes our hurry. Bless every family reading Lech-Lecha in synagogue tonight — the candles, the table, the children hearing "go forth" for the first time. We don't claim to understand it all, but we are willing to learn — Abraham's "go," Moses' "stop," and the eagle's wings of those who wait upon You. Teach us to count our days like Moses, to go like Abraham, to wait like Isaiah's eagles. And reveal to them, in Your own time, the One David called Lord — until the day when beginning and end are gathered into one, in Christ our Lord, now and forever. Amen.