Scripture: Genesis 13
This is a sermon that has several weaknesses that I can think of right off. You will probably be able to think of several others before I’m done.
One of the weaknesses I’m thinking of is that this is pretty much of a “preaching-to-the-choir” kind of a sermon. You will see and I will explain why I say that as I go along.
Another weakness I’m aware of is that it’s a sermon that grows very much out of my reaction to a magazine article that got my blood boiling or curdling or whatever your blood does when you get upset by something, and I realize this magazine article is something that very few of you have read and therefore we don’t have a common reference point. You don’t really know what I’m talking about or where I’m coming from on this, so I’m going to have to do my best to explain. But I am going to try to do that, because this is where my spirit is this week.
Those of you who were here last week know that I mentioned the situation in Gaza during my sermon. I mentioned it partly as an example of a kind of violence that has very deep roots, where the fears and resentments and whatever other feelings have given rise to the current violence just art not likely to go away, where the violence is likely to return even if there is a temporary stop to it, where the prospects for any lasting peace, or even any lasting end to the killing and the suffering are dim and distant at best, and thus where, at least for me, the worldly reality gives me every reason to despair and little reason to hope. I was feeling, and am feeling, burdened by the situation in Gaza. I mentioned it not just because it is a convenient example of how stubborn and solid and depressing such situations can be, but also because this particular situation has gotten to me, for whatever reason.
You know how it is. Of all the situations in the world that are sad beyond words and that might move you to tears, and God knows there are plenty of them, sometimes one just comes to grab your attention and works its way inside you more than the others. Just for a while. Later something else will come along to take its place, but for a while one situation will trouble you more than the rest. That has been Gaza for me recently. It may be because I have traveled in that part of the world. It may be because of the news reports about the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, supplemented by reports I receive on the computer from church folks in Gaza that the UCC has some connection to that speak of what things are like for ordinary civilians in Gaza these days. It may be for lots of reasons or for no particular reason. I don’t know. But Gaza has been a significant part of my prayer life recently.
I intended to bring up the people of Gaza, as well as the “issue” of Gaza, as a prayer concern today, if no one else did. I didn’t intend to make it the subject of my preaching. I didn’t really want to treat it as an “issue”. Nor did I want the sermon to sort of slide into being a discussion of current events, which is always a danger when you’re focusing on something that falls into that category. Now that I am preaching at least partly on Gaza, I guess that might be another weakness, or potential weakness anyway, of this sermon. But I couldn’t help myself, whatever weaknesses might result, and the reason I couldn’t help myself was the magazine article I referred to earlier.
With the feelings I’ve been describing about Gaza very much on the surface, I opened my most recent copy of a magazine called The Christian Century, which some of you have probably heard of, but which few of you probably read, other than maybe some of our clergy members of the congregation (I know David and Padmasani get it. It’s not just for ministers but clergy are certainly one of the target groups for the magazine).
In this current issue is an article by a professor of Old Testament from Notre Dame, Gary Anderson, who was not someone previously known to me. The title of the article is “Does the Promise Still Hold?” The promise referred to here is the promise made to the Jews, made by God to the Jewish people through Abraham, that the land of Canaan or Palestine is to belong to them. That promise appears at several points in the book of Genesis but perhaps most prominently and pointedly in chapter 13, which we heard this morning as our scripture. “The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.’” A far-ranging, grand, and sweeping promise to Abram and his people. And that last word, “forever”, frankly, when I think about it, just almost takes my breath away. “The land that you see I will give to you and your offspring…forever.”
Professor Anderson asks, in the title of this article, “Does the Promise (regarding the land) Still Hold?” And his answer is an unqualified, resounding “Yes”. I was a little disturbed when I first saw the article and scanned enough of it to realize that the answer the author was proposing to his own question was “yes”. As I read the article more closely I became increasingly disturbed. It was not just that he was saying yes, the promise still holds. It was the fact that he didn’t seem to have very much difficulty giving that answer, didn’t acknowledge that other people for good reason might have difficulty giving that answer themselves, and it was what he said besides “yes” that troubled me.
Here’s where the fact that you haven’t read the article may make it a little hard for me to communicate why it would affect me as emotionally as it did, but I can try to give you a few samples. He says, for instance, that in contrast to most nations who establish themselves as a country by occupying a certain piece of land over a long period of time and developing governments and customs and traditions and so forth, in contrast to this, (this is a quote now) “the Jews’ claim to a land is of a completely different order. Canaan is theirs not by dint of any set of conventional circumstances; it came to them as a gift from God. Israel’s claim to the land is of a supernatural order.” Oh really, I thought. All the rest of us are living on land and have become nations by some combination of accident and conquest, and complicated forces of history. Israel is a country and is entitled to a certain piece of land because God has said so, and we know that because it’s in the Bible. That’s the way I was understanding this fellow, and it wasn’t sitting well, to say the least. But I decided to give him a chance. I read on.
A little later: “Still, Christians must also insist that the promises of scripture are indeed inviolable and that Israel’s attachment to this land is underwritten by God’s providential decree.” Is this very different, is it different at all, from saying that God is on Israel’s side? And does he really mean that Christians must insist on this, that this is part of what it means to call yourself a Christian? The author does make clear at various points that he is not saying that every policy of the Israeli government must be supported. Israel is not entitled to the land regardless of how it acts toward its neighbors, but it is God’s will that Israel be there and a certain amount of military action in self-defense is clearly ok in a hostile environment. OK, so now we’re back to current events and policy debates and so forth, so maybe I’m taking what he says out of context, I think. Maybe I’m putting too much emphasis on a few statements. Maybe I’m misinterpreting what he’s getting at.
Then I come to the end of the article. I’m reading along and I come to the author’s final sentences which hit me like a ton of bricks. “Let me make the modest suggestion,” he says, “that our thinking about the modern state of Israel begin with a prayerful consideration of the promises that God made to the Jewish people. On this point scripture is clear: God loved them first and most.” The end.
Why am I bringing all this up in a worship service, making a big deal about an article that I know you haven’t read, and that is after all just the thoughts of one man? Even if I don’t like what he says, why don’t I just keep my quarrel with this person to myself? Well, it’s this matter of how he uses the Bible, a book that we read in a communal way every Sunday, that in many ways is embedded in the life of the congregation, Sunday School, Bible study groups, and so forth, not to mention more subtle ways, a book that I value, have spent a lot of time with, and accept as the sacred writings of my faith community, meaning the whole Christian community.
This author clearly implies that if I am going to call myself a Christian then I need to take what the Bible says, at least on a matter like this, maybe not in every historical detail but on a matter like this, Christians need to take what the Bible says to be true. Israel has a God given right to this land. It’s in the Bible. And of course it is not just this author who thinks this. I’m sure he is just putting into words what many people think and maybe spelling out the implications of what many people say they believe. And in the magazine there were three respondents, one of whom was a man named Walter Brueggemann, a Biblical scholar who is a member of the UCC, who for a Biblical scholar is widely known, someone admired and turned to by many in the liberal/progressive wings of the church. I saw with some relief that he was one of the respondents because I assumed that he would react with something of the horror I did. He didn’t. He in fact began by saying that he agreed with what Anderson had said and would not presume to instruct or challenge him. He in fact did go on to offer a slightly different viewpoint, but it was only slightly different, way too subtle given what is at stake here. In any case, this is an article appearing in a mainstream religious magazine, and carrying an endorsement from a Biblical scholar who has mainstream and even liberal credentials. I could not treat this as just the sort of far out thoughts of one person.
Besides there is too much at stake here. For one thing, Gazans are suffering terribly. Their plight is definitely a matter for our prayers. It is not the case that our thinking about Israel and all things Middle East ought to begin with a remembrance and reverence for God’s promise to Abraham and the thought that the Bible says that God loved the Jewish people first and best. In fairness, the article I’ve been talking about was not written with Gaza in mind, was written I’m sure well before the current Israeli attacks started. But that doesn’t matter. Given the world we live in, at no time should it be said and in no way should it be said that God loved the Jewish people best. As Christians we must say that is not true, no matter how clearly people may think it is stated in the Bible. It is not true that God has a special place in God’s heart for any particular people, Jewish people or anyone else. Given the current situation, that seems an especially heartless and un-Christian thought and even if it was not intended to be applied to the present circumstances in Gaza, it’s a thought that shouldn’t be entertained if it can’t stand up in the light of those circumstances.
For another thing, there is the implication, more than an implication, that in the muddy turmoil of the Middle East, at this point in a complicated and bloody history stretching over thousands of years, where tragedy has been piled upon tragedy to a large degree because of people fighting for various causes who sincerely believed that God was on their side, there is more than an implication from this author that God is on the side of the Jewish people and indeed of the state of Israel. Sometimes when I mention in sermons the evil that has been done because people thought that God was one their side, I think maybe I’m beating on a straw man. No one really believes that any more. But then here I encounter exactly that notion in a publication I am in habit of reading, and endorsed, even if not completely whole-heartedly, by someone I have benefitted from and generally esteemed.
And for still another thing, and the last thing for today, there is this question of how we are to read and use the Bible. I do feel a need to mention just one little thing that I’ve skipped over so far. And that is that even if what the Bible says carries a great deal of weight for a person and they are inclined to treat it as authoritative, the promise given to Abram in Genesis, and this was before he took the name of Abraham, was to his descendants, and his descendants included the children of Hagar, who are generally interpreted to be the Arabs of later history. Was the land to be given to them too? Maybe other parts of our scriptures further define the descendants of Abram as being the descendants of Abram and Sarah, ancestors of the Jewish people. But if we’re going to talk about what the scriptures say, we need to take into account not only that other people have scriptures—the Koran—but this aspect of what our own scriptures say. What our scriptures say may not be so crystal clear after all.
But having said that, let me leave it aside. I think it is time for Christians to be clear that a grown up version of our faith does not give us permission to just say that something is true because the Bible says it is, which is always mixed in with what someone in particular says the Bible says. I suppose it’s ok to say that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, but in most other matters we need to say more, a lot more than the Bible tells me so. This is why I said at the beginning that in a way I would be preaching to the choir this morning. By and large Sojourners are not inclined to think or say or do something just because “it’s in the Bible”. We assume instead that the Bible is there to be interpreted, thoughtfully and prayerfully. We know it is not meant to be taken literally, and I think generally realize that it’s not even so easy to know what the Bible literally says, even if we wanted to take it that way. But we don’t in general. Personally, I hope we take it seriously, but that is different, a lot different, from taking it literally.
And here’s the thing, back on the article I’ve been talking about. When someone says, as this person did, that if you’re going to call yourself a Christian, you need to accept what the Bible quite clearly says, I have trouble, and sometimes I get angry. As I just said, rarely is the Bible, taken as a whole, quite as clear as those who think it is clear make it out to be. But when the Bible is used, I emphasize the word used, to make the very objectionable and highly dangerous point that Israel is entitled to the land by the decree of God, and that Christians need to accept that idea because it appears in the scripture, well it not only defines Christians in a way that I don’t accept, but it presents scripture in a light where even Christians are less inclined to take it seriously. Maybe it would be better, if this is what scripture says, to just go about trying to be Christian in other ways. If scripture says things like this, maybe it is not worthy of being taken seriously. People might well come to that kind of an attitude if scripture is presented in the heavy handed way this article does…and of course it is presented in a heavy handed way in many contexts. And if this leads to our not only not taking it literally but also not taking it seriously, then it distresses me.
Maybe I’ve taken a long time to say things that you already know or already agree with, but given a situation that is extreme, especially for Palestinian civilians, and dangerous for the world and for the integrity of the Christian faith, I needed to say it anyway. For me, it was not something where silence was possible today. Amen.
Jim Bundy
January 11, 2009