What we do know of Abraham is his quite ordinary friendship with God and God’s friendship with Abraham, using the everyday stuff of the culture—hospitality, altar building, family relationships, famine, sacrifice—but using it all sacramentally, using the visible circumstances and people and things as witnesses and occasions for being in faith present to God as friend. In this he marks the very beginning of the biblical process. It is only right that Jesus gets the last word: “I have called you friends” (John 15:15, NRSV).
