I Was Feeling Good Until ... Joshua 6.21

It's a good morning.

My wife is back in town, and me little heart is happy.

As with most mornings, the Daily Lectionary ... the Bible ... you know, THE BIBLE ... which I've studied for most of my life, taught to so many, and from which I've preached endless sermons, some of which were even pretty darn good. Ha!

But, as of late, I'm reading with careful eyes ... and things are hitting me hard ... like this morning's piece from Joshua, with Jericho in ruins, and Joshua says: Take all the valuables, the gold, silver and bronze, and we'll put them into the LORD's treasury, but as for everything else, everyone else, man, woman and child, dogs and cats, cows and goats, devoted [what a word to use] for destruction. Death, m'boys, death; carnage and destruction, kill 'em all ... they don't deserve life; their land is our land. Preserve Rahab and her family; she helped us. But as for the rest, kill' em. As for the city, burn it. As for the future, cursed be anyone who tries to rebuild it. 

Oh dear, what can I say?

There was a time when I would have said: Blood and terror, but such were the times.

These days, I simply say, Blood and terror ... and horrible and hideous ... yes, this happens; this is what nations do to one another; and every nation says that it's their god who commands it, who commends them for it; a god of unrelenting violence who finds blood rather tasty. And for those who care at all about this earth, about life, a word of rejection is needed here. A word that puts material like this into a museum, into a display of sadness, titled, this is what people do when they misconceive god.

Sadder, still, what this bloody business engenders in many who read it ... the Puritans and early Americans who saw the Indigenous Peoples as Israel looked upon the citizens of Jericho ... and down through the ages, as European Christians colonized the world, wiping out tens of thousands of people in a heartbeat, if not by sword, then by disease, and enslaving millions, devoting to a life of unrelenting cruelty and sorrow. Yuppers! The LORD is on our side, and the sword is the way of the LORD. 

I'll not do a Thomas Jefferson on the Bible, with cut and paste ... to make it more "sanitary" and pleasing. No, this is part of the Sacred Text, it's there, and I have to deal with it.

But no longer will I offer justification for it, or try to make it a metaphor, or allegory, or anything like that No, not at all. 

It's just horrible, hideous, miserable and unworthy of the Creator of the World. That ancient Israel should conceive of itself in this kind of blood, and by the sword is not unusual; this is how nations behave. But it's not what God commands or commends!

But that Jews today, and Christians, and anyone else, of whatever creed, who read this for justification of violence and domination, is the greater horror, and the greater crime against God and God's Creation.

It was hard to read today ... I was feeling good, and then this dirty little ditty, if you will ... that the way of the LORD is the way of the sword ... and if Joshua had the temerity to curse those who would try to rebuild the city, perhaps a curse upon those who take up these texts of violence and use them to justify their laws, their guns, their violence, their domination.

But, then, no curse is needed.

Because those who live by the sword die by it. The Bible says that, too, sort of. Whoever wrote that piece (Aeschylus) knew the story, and when Jesus quotes it (he quotes a Greek philosopher, rather than someone from his own religious tradition), he, too, knew the story, better than any of us. 

Now is not the time for me to say: the sword is the device of hell, not heaven; that "death to all" is the cry of the demented, and not the Word of the LORD.

For God so loved the world, that God gave ... upon this hangs all the Law and the Prophets ... and by such is how I read the Bible.

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?"

No Escape!

I continue to read theology and scripture, and so there are times when I wish I could simply retreat into points of doctrine and exegesis.

But every page of Scripture screams of politics, because of the Kingdom of God, and there Lordship of Christ ... and everything I read of theology demands a decision about how we treat one another, and the hope we have in Christ ... not simply for some distant future after death, but here and now, because "this is my Father's world," and the little children need to see and feel the lap of Christ.

Anything that ignores this joyful and demanding reality, anything that dismisses this world as of no concern, anything that smells of rapture, or some bizarre kind of escape clause from this life and its goodness, and its need of redemption from the forces of evil, is a contradiction of the gospel, a crucifixion of Christ all over again ... as the powers that be, in love with themselves and their glory, despise the glory of God, which is humble and kind, merciful and forgiving - values that the powerful, the comfortable, can't stand, because Christ shames their greed and reveals just how paltry are their riches.

So, for me, longing for escape, there is none. Longing for a retreat from this world and its present sorrow, there is no place of retreat from the command of God to Elijah to leave the cave and get back to work.

Troubling Texts in the Bible

Anyone else do the PCUSA lectionary this morning?

The readings from Deuteronomy and Titus proved unpleasant, not in any sort of spiritually challenging manner, but in the rawness of hatred of "the other" (Deuteronomy 7.12-16) and the imposition of "quietness" on the slave and "submission" of women to their husbands (Titus 2.1-15).

There was a time when I would engage in all sorts of exegetical/social/historical/critical gymnastics to soften these hideous passages. But that's not fair to the text - no sense in making it say something else. The text says is clear. And it's troubling to me in ways similar to hearing someone shamelessly promote the exceptionalism of the United States while banging the drums of war in order to secure global domination, or hearing those who demean others because of their race, economic status or gender.

I turn away from such people, and I turn away from such texts.

I confess that my "sacred text" suffers from these evils, and has been used to promote "righteous" war, the abuse of women and the institution of slavery.

For me, no sense in ducking the matter with sight-of-hand interpretations. These are troubling texts because they support attitudes and behaviors that have brought great harm to the world.

For me, the Spiritual Presence in our world today says something else about how to welcome and affirm "the other" and that slavery and misogyny are terrible evils. Whether it be a Martin Luther King, Jr. or an Anne Lamott, there are great and small voices lifting up the "better angeles" of faith, hope and love.

As for the text, I find much value in the prophets and their challenge of xenophobic traditions and how Jesus challenged the power of Jerusalem; I find hope in all the other texts that enabled leaders and missionaries and scholars to lay the foundation for the fight against slavery and misogyny, to craft the struggle to deconstruct national barriers and to welcome "the other."

The larger tradition offers me guidance: the text pitted against the text, and personal perceptions against personal perceptions. Leaving me, as God intended, with the task of making real decisions, for which we I am responsible.

Jesus stepped beyond the rules and laws of the day and cherry-picked the text to formulate his summary of it all: to love God deeply and to love the neighbor as the self.

As Luther said before the tribunal: "I can do no other, so help me God. Amen!"

Reading Joshua

Winners write history, and the Bible reflects that. Joshua is deeply nationalistic ... it's part of Israel's "history," but, then, so are the prophets and Ruth and Jonah and Esther. Because America is a large and powerful nation, and lots of Christians enjoy the privilege of such power (as have Christians in other western nations - Britain, Germany, Belgium, France), many have tended to read Joshua as the last word on power and might. It helps to remember that the name of Jesus is the Greek equivalent of Joshua; it is not by accident that the Son of God appears as a second Joshua, not with swords and trumpets, and tumblings walls,but with grace, mercy and peace for all, and a temple curtain torn asunder. As well, like Saul/Paul on the Damascus Road - a version of Israel's first king, but this time, a man of intellect and faith who was sent to the Gentiles with a message of hope and inclusion.

When the Southern Kingdom fell, God got out of the land business - it was too costly - in human lives and to the character of God - and ultimately it failed. Though the folks of Judah returned under Xerxes, there would never again be a nation/state comparable to that of Saul/David/Solomon. When the temple was destroyed, the connection to land was further severed.

Just because "it's in the Bible" is never a reason to go with something. It deserves our thought and a willingness to wrestle with it. There are a multiplicity of themes, greater and lesser ... in the end, we have to choose as we weigh the relative weight of ideas. The far greater weight is on a God of great compassion who truly loves the entire world. Our "holy" book wrestles with this, just like we do. Do we really want a God who loves the whole world? A God who is not a respecter of persons?