Exodus 33.2 - Hideous Ideas

I used to read a passage like this serenely:

I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites (Exodus 33.2)

But, alas and alack, no more serenity.

In the light of what White Europeans did to the inhabitants of North and South America, and to the peoples of Africa, and with the continuing plague of racism in the United States, a plague rooted in the American South and American evangelicalism, to read of peoples displaced by none other than God, for the sake of the few, disturbs me deeply.

We're talking here of people, children, families, hopes and dreams, and all the rest ... and without batting an eye, the Text speaks of an angel driving all of them out, lock, stock and barrel ... and where did they go? What happened to them?

Sure, I know the story - much of this never happened, and the Promised Land remained populated by its original inhabitants. But at best, an uneasy relationship, punctuated by conflict and war, not unlike modern-day Israel and the Palestinians.

Whatever happened is one thing, but the thought is another. And the thought is this: here are a people whose lives do NOT matter, people of no account, people who have something we want, and we'll not buy it from them, we'll take it from them, and god is on our side.

In just a few words, all the horror and sadness of history is encapsulated.

Ultimately, as the story plays out, God abandoned the land business, closed out and locked up, with a sign: "No More!" It was too costly, and it compromised God and God's people as well.

And if God apologized, God did so through the Prophets and through the Christ, with a vision of love and hope and peace for all the world, all its peoples, all its creatures, great and small - every rock, river, and tree.

Perhaps, now, the Spirit of God speaks through the tragedy: "Is this what you think? Is this what you want? Is this how you conceive of me and yourself?"

Can a Nation Hate Itself?

Self-hatred?
Is it possible for a nation?
To "enjoy" such a misery?
To lacerate itself with its own contempt?

When hope is gone for reason and wellness?
Then to jump into a cauldron and be done with it?
To make a mess of the mess even messier?
To cheer the insanity of failure?

Because self-hatred is the flower of all hatred:
Our racism, a cancer of the soul.
Our misogyny, a disease of the spirit.
Our willingness to throw one another away.

And our religion:
Oh God, what a foolish business it is.
From Billy Sunday to Billy Graham.
Megachurches and miracles and always the quest:

For the golden day, the 5 easy steps.
Into the kingdom of fraud, and to be with Jesus.
And along comes the pretender king.
And all the pretending grows all the more harsh.

And foolish.
And ugly.
And full of deception.
And all the more, the lies.

Self-hatred?
When there's no one else left to hate?
Can a nation hate itself?
... out of shame?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Forum, First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, Feb . 19, 2017

Feb. 19, 2017 Forum,

First Congregational Church of Los Angeles

The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

December 10, 1964

When Laura approached about what I’d like to do with this series, it didn’t take me long to choose this piece of it, with its focus on two remarkable prophets, and how two “simple” verses were woven into Dr. King’s acceptance speech.

The Peaceful Kingdom

Isaiah 11

¹      A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,

      and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

²      The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,

      the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

      the spirit of counsel and might,

      the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

³      His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.

      He shall not judge by what his eyes see,

      or decide by what his ears hear;

⁴      but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,

      and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;

      he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,

      and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

⁵      Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,

      and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

⁶      The wolf shall live with the lamb,

      the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

      the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

      and a little child shall lead them.

⁷      The cow and the bear shall graze,

      their young shall lie down together;

      and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

⁸      The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

      and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

⁹      They will not hurt or destroy

      on all my holy mountain;

      for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD

      as the waters cover the sea.

Peace and Security through Obedience

Micah 4

¹      In days to come

      the mountain of the LORD’S house

      shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

      and shall be raised up above the hills.

      Peoples shall stream to it,

²      and many nations shall come and say:

      “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,

      to the house of the God of Jacob;

      that he may teach us his ways

      and that we may walk in his paths.”

      For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

      and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

³      He shall judge between many peoples,

      and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;

      they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

      and their spears into pruning hooks;

      nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

      neither shall they learn war any more;

⁴      but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,

      and no one shall make them afraid;

      for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.

⁵      For all the peoples walk,

      each in the name of its god,

      but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God

      forever and ever.

*The film clip …*

Both Isaiah (the text for today) and Micah (737-696 bce) are 8th Century Prophets, a time wherein the Judean Kings were at their greatest level of power in a kingdom now divided.

After Solomon’s death, his son, Rehoboam, assumed the throne and issued a number of mean-spirited “executive orders” (1 Kings 12.6-11) and so the Kingdom split into Northern (Israel) and Southern (Judah) … ultimately the Northern Kingdom fell to Assyria (722 bce) and the Southern, or Judah, fell to Babylon (587 bce) and led to the “Babylonia Captivity.”

The Northern and Southern Kingdoms were often enemies and combatants. After Israel’s fall (the remnant of which was know in the New Testament as Samaritans (treated by the Jews {Judeans} as half-breeds and spiritually defective). 

Jesus, himself, from the “northern” area, while not a Samaritan, was still considered an outsider to the true land of Judah that saw itself as the pure expression of faith and blood.

By the time of the 8th Century, Israel was gone, so the prophets in our purview are directing their thoughts to the Southern Kingdom, i.e. Judah and its capital city, Jerusalem. 

The prophets grew in influence as the kings/queens grew in power, along with their religious support staff (ha!) … the prophets challenged the kings/queens and the priestly guild of Jerusalem, with all of its pomp and circumstance and its enormous wealth (certainly the case which Jesus addresses time and again). The prophets were bold, frequently in trouble, accused of treason and heresy, suggesting that if Judah continued on its way, it would all end badly.

Yet the prophets also looked to better days … days of peace and prosperity … the peaceable kingdom wherein opposing realities would come together and people were no longer prepping for war, but for peace, and would thus experience a great sense of safety and comfort - not just psychologically or spiritually, but materially, with everyone enjoying their own figs and vines.

All of this and more was in the mind and heart of Dr. King, a man of the Bible, engaged intelligently (as opposed to ideologically, or literally) with the text, and with theologians who tackled the vast social questions and systemic systems of the day, as well as the personal matters that so occupied evangelicalism (i.e. swearing, drinking, dancing, smoking, card playing, theater attendance) … on these good thinkers, like Paul Tillich, Dr. King built his ideas, his resistance and his blueprint for a just society, upon their work, and that of the Prophets, and the Prophet we honor in life and faith, Jesus of Nazareth.

Gandhi, and others, too, were influential … those who worked for peace, but never at the expense of justice, those who saw life in all of its wholeness … and for his work, Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and for his work, his faith, his vision, we honor him today.