Hate and Conquest in Scripture

Transcribed from the Sermon preached November 4, 2005

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings:  Joshua 3:7-17; I Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew 23:1-12


    Our passages this morning may hold positive lessons for our relationship with God, but I have to admit there is theology here I am not comfortable with.  This morning, I am not going to unpack the texts in the usual manner.  Basically, I just want to complain.  The book of Joshua is a story about how, under Joshua’s command Canaan was conquered, the Canaanites were slaughtered, and their lands expropriated and redistributed to the tribes of Israel.  In Thessalonians we find our author using language that is later applied by the powerful Church to justify the repression and killing of Jews.  “They killed the Lord Jesus and drove us out.  They displease God and are hostile to men in their efforts to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved.  In this way they heap up their sins to the limit.  The wrath of God has come upon them at last.”  Just as the early Israelites saw God as helping them slaughter the Canaanites, so the author of Thessalonians sees the hand of God in the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome, and later Christendom saw God calling Christians to a crusade against Muslims and Jews.

These passages and the history of their use ought to cause us to cringe as we read the headlines of today.  The Zionist movement was well on its way through purchasing large tracks of land in Palestine in the first half of the last century.  Still, following the Holocaust of Jews in World War II, allied powers helped establish the state of Israel, against the will of many in the Middle East.  Many radical Muslims called for Jews to be driven out.  This week, the Iranian president reasserted anti-Israeli propaganda during a state sponsored rally for this purpose.  He said Israel should be “wiped off the map.”  This is particularly scary knowing Iran is working to get nuclear weapons.  Not only that, but we are neck deep in the quagmire of our own arrogance in Iraq.  God has apparently called George Bush to war.  How willing and able would we be to jump over to Iran?  With the Jewish motto, “Never Again,” we know that if it comes down to it, Israel will not wait for the U.S. to come to the rescue with its large conventional army.  Meanwhile, hard line orthodox Jews, still holding the belief that God gave them a particular piece of land, and the order to drive others out, seem intent on taking all of Palestine from those who were there before.  Never mind that the precise territory delineated in Genesis to Abraham has only been held as one unified territory for one generation in all of history.  It was held by King David whose scribes incapacitated the Abrahamic myth to help unify other tribes under David’s power.  Some hundred years later Josiah sought to reestablish control and authority over tribes and used the mystical stories in Joshua to help justify his move.  Today the same myths are used to justify settlements.  Homes are bull dozed and people driven out or killed.  Settlements of passionate Zionists take their place, spitting and beating peaceful protestors.  Filled with hatred, the Palestinians lash back, taping bombs to themselves and blowing themselves up, killing as many Jews and friends of Jews as possible.  They are quite certain that this is what their God is calling them to do.
 
With similar arrogance, certain that Jesus is the only way, and America is the new promised land, hard line fundamentalist Christians cheer on the Christian empire and any leader who invokes the name of Jesus.

    Randall Terry, a representative of the Christian Right says, “Our goal is a Christian nation.  We have a biblical duty; we are called by God to conquer this county.  We do not want equal time.  We don’t want pluralism.”

    One might think the solution is to abandon the sacred texts.  But frankly I believe we are in this mess in part because this is what too many thinking people have done.  We give up the texts and then the fundamentalists have a free reign at their own interpretation.

    It is not “Jews” as a people who killed the prophets and Jesus; it is arrogant people who are certain they have a hold on God’s truth, whether they are Christian, Jews or Muslim.  “God is on my side.  I hold the truth.”  “No, God is on my side, I hold the truth.”  “No, God is on my side, I hold the truth.”  Will the real people of God please stand up!

    I don’t know about you, but all of this certainty is making me feel uncertain about the course of our world.  It is important in such a context as ours, that we hear the woes of Jesus directed at ourselves first.  How do we say one thing and do another?  How do we make a show for others, trying to impress them with our pompous robes and important seat?  How do we enjoy our titles and use our knowledge to puff ourselves up?
 
    Lott and Werner Pelz write in God is no More, “I fear my enemy, because he wants what I have.  I hate him because he has what I want.  My enemy is mean, since he will not trust me, presumptuous since he expects me to trust him.  He refuses profusely to see life as I see it, and I suspect he waits for the opportunity to compel me to see it his way.  My enemy is my safety valve: in him I can freely condemn what I uneasily feel I should condemn in myself.  He is, so it seems, necessary for my life.”
 
    Lloyd Averill, writing in the Christian Ministry (Sept. 96) points out, “Jesus tells us to love our enemies, not to have no enemies.  The good person is not the one who lacks enemies, as though goodness always has the power to purge opposition.  The person who lacks enemies is only non-descript – so lacking in character that he goes his way unnoticed.  Goodness does not go unnoticed.  Jesus was put on the cross by others.  “Does the enmity, the unfriendliness I provoke in others, result from qualities in my own life that would link me to the man on the cross or to the men who hanged him there?”

     Presbyterians believe in representative democracy. Averill continues, “At base a democratic order might be defined as alternatives to mutual murder among people who don’t like each other.  Compromisers are not necessarily soft on moral principal; they are strong on life against death and civic community against civic hatred…Religious folk, above all, should acknowledge that they are not God either.”