The promise is free but it has no home. Last week we left the Promise free but in the wilderness. The people of the Promise were wandering, without any concrete direction because they had failed to be faithful. Finally, after 40 years the generation of the Exodus had come to an end. An entirely new generation (with a few minor exceptions) had inherited the Promise. Their task was to go home…to conquer the Land which God had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
This part of the story of the Promise is often difficult for us to understand. Not that the people of the Promise ought not to have a home. Everyone needs a home. The issue becomes that there were already people living in the land. There were people who had migrated to that area over decades and centuries. They had established small cities and homesteads. They were, if you will, in the way of the Israelites calling Canaan home.
Though Israel's conquest of the land was not as quick, simple or complete as the scriptures imply none-the-less they did carve out a significant part of the land of Canaan for themselves. In the process they drove out some peoples and killed others. Cities were destroyed and innocent men and women died. We often ask ourselves how a loving God, a God of the Promise could either command or allow such a mission. Surely there was an easier and less violent way.
Perhaps this is the time for us to reflect on the fact that the realization of the Promise of God to release, renew and restore humanity is often a messy business. The world in which God and God's people are working can be brutal and cruel. Sin and its effects run rampant leading to death dealing manifestations (war, hatred, racism, sexism, homophobia to name a few). God, for whatever reason, has chosen to work with the world as it is in order that it might ultimately become what God desires it to be.
What that means is that in order for the people of God to have a home other peoples would need to move on…just as millions of peoples have done, and will continue to do, throughout the history of the world. Remember that this world is in process. It is still changing (demographically, politically and geologically). Nations, peoples, cities come and go. God's call upon God's people to make a home was not a statement that God's people were better or more deserving than the others who were already there. This was instead a part of the process of insuring that the Promise would have a secure geographic incubator in which to grow in order that God's people might ultimately bless all the peoples of the world.
Just as the post-Exodus generation inherited the Promise under new circumstances, so have we. The differences between those people and ourselves as keepers of the Promise are that we have no religious homeland and we are to love and not militarily conquer. Our calling is to be part of a worldwide movement through which the Promise is made real not only within our church but in showing the love of Christ for others through relief for Haiti, mission trips to the Yucatan, and our work in Pontiac and Detroit among others. As we do these things we will encounter the messiness of the world, but we trust that through the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ the Promise can be made real in the lives of all we meet…and lives will be saved and not lost.
John
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