A Land without a People?
Today's daily lectionary reading from Genesis presents a troubling issue in the realms of both theology and history. The issue is significant and relevant in the context of the world of 2024.
The passage in question is the account of God's covenant with Abram (later Abraham), promising to give him many descendants from his "very own issue" (v. 4) in exchange for Abram's faithful worship and devotion. It's a big promise, considering that at this point Abram is at least 75 years old, his wife Sarai is in her sixties, and they have no children. He responds to God's promise with the complaint, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir" (v. 3). This prompts God to lead Abram outside under the night sky and say, "'Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' Then [God] said to him, 'So shall your descendants be'" (v. 5). The writer goes on to say that Abram "believed [God]; and [God] reckoned it to him as righteousness" (v. 6).
None of this constitutes the problem I mentioned earlier, but it lays the groundwork. Abram at this time is a stranger in the land of Canaan. He has emigrated from the city of Ur in what is now Iraq, and has been wandering about the land as a nomadic herdsman, pitching his tent where he will and relying on the hospitality of the people of the land. And it's important to emphasize that there are people in the land—folks who have lived there from time immemorial. There will be people living in the land a couple hundred years later, when Joshua will lead the descendants of Abram in an invasion of Canaan, and there will be people living in the land around three thousand years later, when the United Nations decide to give the Jewish people a homeland in this same region.
The problem comes at the very end of the passage, verse 18: "To your descendants I give this land." That short promise has been the occasion of so much misery and bloodshed throughout the history of this erstwhile land of Canaan. The Zionist movement had a slogan back in the 1930s and 40s: "A land without a people for a people without a land." But it was a lie. The land was by no means empty when the state of Israel was created, and the great powers—the former colonizers—did not adequately think through their decision. To this day we see an Arab community, sometimes led by uber-nationalists (aka terrorists), determined to cling to their land and homes and dignity, and a Jewish state, many of whom are determined to see the fulfillment of that promise to Abram. "To your descendants I give this land." The promise makes no mention of sharing, no mention of the legitimate rights of the other residents of the land, no mention of a two-state solution.
Unfortunately, there is not that much we can do to bring about a ceasefire in the current war between Israel and Hamas or a just peace in the wider conflict in the Holy Land. But we can learn from their example and apply it to our own history. Our white ancestors, inspired by "manifest destiny" and the thought that their descendants would possess the land "from sea to shining sea," wiped out or marginalized entire populations of people who lived here long before the first European set foot on these shores. What can we do to bring justice to the descendants of the Lenape and other tribes that used to call this region home? What can we do for the descendants of the people our ancestors enslaved for 250 years and have harassed and terrorized for 150 more? Is there a way for us to learn to live together in peace, where we can realize the prophet Micah's vision of a time when the people "shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid" (Mic 4:4)?
The God we know in and through Jesus Christ calls us to make amends, promote reconciliation, and do justice in our world. Let us explore ways we can do these things in our local community, in our nation, and around the world.
Grace and peace,
bob
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