Friday, January 29, 2010

Visions From Our Story: The Promise in Limbo

If you have ever seen a yo-yo then you will have a great visual image of the next chapter in the story of the Promise. God would draw the people close. The people would run away. God would pull them back in. Again and again in the Book of Judges this fleeing and drawing played itself out.

The first running away begins almost immediately after the death of Joshua. The New International Version puts it this way in Judges 2:10-15. "After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.
Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the LORD to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths."

As we learned last week, the conquest of the Land of Promise had not been as complete as the book of Joshua would lead us to believe. Entire swaths of land and numerous cities remained firmly in the hands of those who had been in the land before the Israelites arrived in mass. The Baals and Ashtoreths were the primary god and goddess of the Semitic peoples in Canaan. Baal and Ashtoreth were fertility gods. The belief was that in order to insure good harvests people needed to engage in sexually oriented rituals (with both male and female cult prostitutes), offer human sacrifices and participate in ecstatic and violent rituals.

The people of Israel were tempted to abandon the worship of YHWH (the Hebrew consonants used to write the name of God who had given them the Promise and had liberated them) in order to become like their neighbors and worship Baal and Ashtoreth. The result of this transfer of allegiance inevitably led to Israel's political and economic oppression. Out of their despair the Israelites would cry out to YHWH for relief. YHWH, the always promise keeping God, would then send them judges to liberate them. The judges were charismatic leaders who could rally the Israelites to fight for and win their freedom. There were twelve judges in all (including Gideon, Samson and Deborah) which meant that the yo-yo of faith to apostasy and back was a regular event for almost 200 years.

While you and I do not live in a world in which there are statues of Baal and Ashtoreth around every corner, we live in a world in which there are competing claims for our time, talent and treasure. There are competing world views which call for us and our children to abandon our lives as people of the Promise. The Israelites abandoned God because they forgot the story of what God had done for them and adopted the story of the Baals and Ashtoreths. They forgot the story of the Promise. Our task is to insure that we and our children do not forget our story. We need to be sure we remember that there is a living God who loves us passionately and calls us to be coworkers with Christ in the release, renewal and restoration of the world.

Part of our vision then needs to be the constant telling and retelling of our story so that it is not forgotten and thus becomes the foundation of our and our children's worldviews…thus one of my reasons for my retelling the story.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Visions From Our Story: the Promise Comes Home

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

Monday, January 11, 2010

Visions From Our Story: The Promise Wandering in the Wilderness

If you have not discerned by now the story of the Promise (the Promise of God to Release, Renew and Restore God's world so that humanity can love God, love neighbor and steward creation) is one that lives what appears a very roller coaster like existence. One minute everything looks rosy; the Promise is at work in the world. The next minute the Promise appears to be in danger of being lost in the trials and tribulations of those people who carry it. While we hope that God's love and power will insure that the Promise is brought to completion, the Biblical tale of the promise is one that makes us wonder if humanity is capable of being an effective partner in this endeavor.

This week's story is one that shines a very bright light on the struggle of human beings to keep the Promise alive. When we last left the people of God, the carriers of the Promise, they had been set free from the slavery in which they had been held. We might think that the people would be so grateful for this freedom that they would do anything that God asked of them. As we will discover that was not the case.

Following their liberation the people of God were asked to do two things. The first was to be faithful to God and the second was to enter into the Land of Promise, in which they would be safe. They would not be willing to do either.

The first request of God, to be faithful, was ignored almost immediately. The people made a stop in the wilderness at Mt. Sinai where God was going to give them the Law, the rules by which they could live and be the people of the Promise (Exodus 19 – 34). While Moses was away receiving the Law, the people decided find another god. Turning to Aaron (Moses' second in command) they requested he make a golden calf for them that they might worship it rather than the God who had set them free (by the way archeologists have found similar golden calves dating from the time of the Exodus). Needless to say neither Moses nor God was pleased by this and there were consequences meted out.

The second request of God, to enter the Land of Promise, was also ignored. Moses sent spies into the Land of Promise. Their report was positive (it is a land flowing with milk and honey) and negative (there are giants there who live in fortified cities!). The people decided to hear only the negative and refused to enter the land (Numbers 13:17-14:25). At this point God has had it with the people. God's decision was that the people would wander in the wilderness for 40 years until almost all of the rebellious generation had passed away and God could start afresh.

My guess is that there are times when we feel as if we are wandering in the wilderness…as if there is little purpose or direction to what we do as a faith community. We go through the motions, doing good things, but in the end as one person described it, "It is like we are a cruise ship circling the harbor, but not really going anywhere." The challenge that is before us, as we vision, is to listen to the two commands given to the people after they have been set free. We are to be faithful to God; listening to God's call upon our lives rather than the competing claims of society. We are also to be seeking God's leading as to the direction we are to be going; asking, what kind of church are we to become that we might be co-workers with Christ in releasing, renewing and restoring God's world? So my friends as we enter 2010 let's get on the road and see where God is leading us.