Join Mark Call of Shabbat Shalom Mesa fellowship this week for a two-part look at the first parsha chronicling the life of THE Patriarch, Abraham.

The Erev Shabbat reading begins with the title phrase, Lekh lekha, or “get thee out,” of your land, your home, everything you’ve known, and go to the place that “I will show you.” He just does so, in an act of faith that has stood as a testament to that faith for millenia:

And, again, there is much in the life of this first patriarch that is so fundamental, so important, and so long-forgotten now, that it amounts to an object lesson about what is wrong with a society which is so clueless about THE fundamental structure of society, and government.

It should be no surprise, then, that so much of what Abraham did, and represented, is anathema to a ‘church’ that prefers its own dogma to His Written Word. From marriage, to ‘works’, to circumcision – there are lessons here that have been twisted, or worse.

The Sabbath Day midrash asks a question that Mark suggests MUST be asked at “such a time as this,” now that the ‘Date Certain’ has passed, but the danger, and the challenges ahead, have only begun.

Do we understand why “the world” so DESPISES everything about “patriarchy”. And why, if we are to “return to Him,” it starts with understanding what the father Abraham teaches us?

The combined two-part teaching is here: