Abe's other son: Jews and Arabs, both descendants of Abraham and recipients of God's covenants. (Vox populi - Justice for all).

Call me Ishmael. Melville begins his whale of a novel like this because the narrator is a relative outsider, and at last a castaway.

Now Father Abraham had two sons. The first was born to his concubine, Hagar -- a legitimate procedure then; indeed, his wife arranged it -- when he was getting old and thought Sarah could not produce a son and heir. Abe did this for God's sake, in order that the covenant could bear fruit through his offspring. Had not God said, "[N]umber the stars if you can ... so shall your descendants be" (Genesis 15:5)?

Then Abe had a visit from three messengers ("angels," although the old theologians used to insist that the one who spoke to him was Logos incarnandus, the Word-to-become-incarnate). The Word announced that Sarah would now have a son despite their advanced years. The old couple, recognizing they were beyond that sort of thing, found this news so amusing they laughed heartily.. And so it was, after nine months of hilarity, they named the child Isaac, that is, "Laughter." Sarah said, "[E]veryone who hears will laugh over me." And, indeed, the Good News is a laughing matter, a source of courage against the dark and the dread ever since. (Not that we Christians always act like children of Laughter ...) Isaac's descendants became "the children of Israel" after his son Jacob-Israel.

Meanwhile, back in the wilderness, the firstborn son was having a rough time, being banished with his mother, Hagar. But God had a promise for Hagar, too: this other son would also enjoy his own kind of covenant: "I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.... I will make him a great nation" (Genesis 21:13,18). This covenant also mentions a multitude without number, and even "twelve princes" to come. For God had named him Ishma-el, "God hears."

So the two half-brothers stand at the head of two Semitic races, Jews and Arabs. In time, the great religion of submission to God's will, Islam, came into being through Ishmael's people. (Muhammad is reckoned as Ishmael's descendant.) Today, only some 20 per cent of Muslims are Arabs since, in Muhammad's own lifetime, it spread both east and west, from Spain to beyond the Indus. Islam is the living symbol of God's other covenant: God hears. Father Abraham has sired three religions, three covenants: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, The Qur'an calls them "People of the Book."

The two modern inhabitants of ancient Palestine at each other's throats is a picture of irony, sibling rivalry at its worst. If only we Christians, thrust in between the two brothers as it were by the grace of the Brother of all three, Jesus the Christ -- if only we could truly mediate between them! The events of September 11 -- graphic and horrific images of destruction and pain -- challenge our faith in the gospel of reconciliation and peacemaking. To see the world as black and white is to take Sarah's part' casting out her rival, Hagar, to keep the covenant to herself. No room for reconciliation here, no grace, no laughter. Only a rush to judgment and a seatide of anger.

How complex is human history! Never a black-and-white, an us-and-them situation. Never a truly "just war," given the long road leading to conflict. Even Hitler was able to seize power partly because of circumstances traceable through the preceding decades, including the Peace of Versailles. Thus, the cycle of violence goes on, fuelled by short memory and prejudiced folklore. It is standard policy in warfare to demonize enemies, reducing them to subhuman "barbarians" with no reason to dislike us (we're so likeable) except sheer evil.

Is the lesson of the Cross to be so easily overturned by self-righteous nations who refuse to seek out causes and mutual guilt? Can we -- Canadians, Christians -- not find ways of witnessing to nonviolent means in the cause of justice for all? Or do we, too, think there is only one covenant, and we are its sole benefactors? "Cast out the slave woman with her son; for he shall not be heir with mine."

Joseph C. McLelland is emeritus professor of McGill University and The Presbyterian College, Montreal, and a contributing editor of this magazine.