How the way we read the Bible feeds very real, 2023 suffering - 'the Promised Land' and war, a sermon

 This was the sermon I gave today - 

29^th Oct 2023

Lectionary Deut 34 v 1- 12 – Death of Moses, in sight of Promised Land, Joshua to lead people in

Context – war in Middle East after huge Hamas attack on Israel; and Israeli massive military response.

There are various different reasons why people might be ready to run me out of town after this sermon, but as we have church council after, I hope you can wait until after that. The challenge to preachers of using the lectionary is that we are confronted with passages we probably wouldn’t have chosen. This week’s reading all felt like the end of the story so far. And I wandered around other options instead, but came back to this one.

The saying for polite conversation is don’t mention religion or politics, well you came here for religion, but politics is also in everything. I couldn’t refer to this passage of the Israelites being on the verge of the Promised Land without mentioning what is happening in that very land today.

Firstly terrorist attacks are wrong; always wrong; yet also the resort of the desperate when radicalised. Secondly there is always a right to respond to violence and hold people to account for their crimes. However the casualties are the innocent, to use a Biblical verse “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.“ Matt 2 referring to Jeremiah 31 The wailing comes from Palestinian and Israeli mothers; from Muslim, Jewish and Christian fathers, and those with no faith. It comes from families of fighters and families of peaceseekers.

How did we get here? Well politics are complicated, in school for History GCSE [back in 1991] we had to look at a modern conflict for one of our units. We did the Arab/Israeli conflict. There are so many factors from the ending of the Ottoman Empire and the French and British mandate in the Middle East – Britain promising self rule to both Palestinians and Jews, offering the same land! Then post WW2 western cultural guilt about the Holocaust creating Israel, regardless of the varied mix of people in the land, and enforced on the local population.  [White Europeans deciding what happens and borders in lands far from their own home, see also the carve up of Africa in 1800s]

All of that and so much more got us to here and the suffering of the most vulnerable on all sides. But our Bible and how people read it is also part of the equation. And if the politics didn’t rile you, my views on the Bible might, and I don’t expect listeners to agree with me or accept what I say without question.

The first 5 books of our Bible start with 2 creation stories, through a flood judgement, to the start of the story of ‘God’s People’. Abraham is promised to be the father of nations – Arabs link themselves to Ishmael – with Isaac as the path to the Israelites. Through all those stories covered in sunday school – Jacob vs Esau, the 12 sons of Jacob and the story of Joseph of the fancy coat, centuries in Egypt and then Moses, saved from death, raised in royal circles, but called to lead his own people out of Egypt to the land promised to Abraham. Plagues in Egypt, parting the Red Sea, getting the Ten Commandments and years of wandering in the wilderness.

And then the Promised Land is in sight and the great leader Moses dies. In the next book in our Bible we see Joshua (one of the 2 good spies back in the day- song 12 spies went to spy on Canaan, 10 were bad and 2 were good)) taking over and leading the people across the River Jordan in a variation of the Red Sea crossing with the Ark of the Covenant, symbol of God’s presence, standing in the middle until all the people crossed over. Then we move on to conquest, Joshua’s army attacking cities, including the famous falling of the walls of Jericho (Song – Joshua fought the battle of Jericho...and the walls came tumbling down)

How we understand these old stories feeds into even modern politics – it is the Promised Land theology that has underpinned both where the Jews were offered a homeland, and the expansion policy of certain groups. Not all Jews are Zionists – there is one ultra orthodox group that was against the formation of Israel, as it was man made not from God. And not all Zionists are Jews – in my first circuit as a minister there was a ‘Prayer for Israel’ group in one of the churches that the leader guided as ‘may God smite all the Muslims in the ‘promised land’. He believed that despite hundreds of years of ancestry in a place, all Palestinians should move out in favour of Jews (except Palestinian Christians), because – the Promised Land. And in case anyone thinks that Christian Zionists are pro Israel, the underlying belief is that a restored nation of Israel is a key stage in the Last Days, the End Times which involves the end of Judaism. There is even a Christian group that has collected funding to help rebuild a Jewish temple in Jerusalem, because to them that is needed before the second coming of Christ.

These maps need to be put in context - before 1947 the land was under the British mandate and included Muslims, Christians and Jews.  Palestinians would be pushed out of the area to become Israel but also Jews left the Palestinian areas (compare the religious divide and horrors with the partition of India and Pakistan - also previously under British rule...) But the territorial changes since 1947 has been through wars and 'assertive settlements'

Expansionist zionism has massively reduced the area allocated by the UN partition for the Palestinian areas since 1948. And Biblically based ideas have fed this political view, and the atrocities that grow from it. This is why I say that how we read the Bible, how we interpret the stories we read, is so important. It doesn’t just shape our view of the past but is a real and powerful factor even in 2023.

The Bible gives a story of the conquest of Canaan that is God’s will, both in that the land is promised to the Israelites and because the Canaanites are so terribly sinful that they deserve to be annihilated. These are the stories that give glorification of the victory over Jericho (in Sunday school we/I were spared from the account of all people being slaughtered); or in later battles with the Philistines – cue Samson’s attacks or Gideon winning over a much bigger army with his 300 men.

But this is one of the sections of the Bible people can have the most problems with. How is the God of love and grace that Jesus spoke of the same God demanding that whole populations be wiped out, men, women, children, animals? Or in other cases saving the young unmarried women who could be taken as wives by the fighters?

A literal reading of the Bible presents us with so many issues like this. Noah’s ark is a beloved story even outside the church, the opportunity to introduce animal names and cuteness – but is actually about a massacre of everyone and all of nature except those on the boat. There are those, including well funded US projects (eg The Ark Encounter in Kentucky) that invest all their time in justifying a literalist view of the Bible, against all the science. What if that money and time was applied to feeding the hungry, giving shelter and provisions to the most vulnerable?

I however lean a different way. I see Genesis 1 as a beautiful poem, with echoing lines, and patterned to point to a 7 day week including a Sabbath. I see in Genesis 2/3 a narrative designed to wrestle with the question of ‘if there is a perfect creator, why is there evil and suffering?’ I see in the stories of Abraham to Moses to David and Solomon an origin story of a culture, including the emergence of their understanding of God, from one among other tribal, or regional deities, to the one God across nations and generations. Much of the early books of the Bible dealing with the earliest points in time are considered by scholars to have been written much later, during the time of the exile (when Babylonians and then Persians conquered Israel, and the elite were taken to live in a strange land – Psalm 137 and hit song ‘By the rivers of Babylon…’) This was a time to reaffirm national identity and gather together stories of the past and their right to their lands. Some scholars date these texts even later.

Archaeology and records recovered from other communities around affirm the later kings of Israel and Judah, but nothing about King David and earlier. Some of the cities listed as destroyed in Joshua have been located but scientific dating puts them centuries later.

Personally I read the Bible within the insight of these questions about dating, whilst still listening to God’s voice. I find more theological trouble with a literalist position, which in reality is in itself a particular interpretation. There is no such thing as the ‘clear sense’ when reading words transferred across languages, over thousands of years when the use of words change in meaning, divorced from the injokes and cultural clues of the time. When we don’t have an actual source text, but only manuscripts copied across a hundred years with differences between them and scholars spending careers trying to follow the trails towards what an original letter of St Paul might have said.

These things can challenge our faith, but I find that they can enrich my faith through glimpses of the human writers and their reasons for writing. Our Christian faith is in (at the beginning) God the creator, Christ the word; and the Holy Spirit who moved over the chaos; in God the father who loves like a mother hen; in Jesus the man who is God incarnate; in the Holy Spirit who is with us to the end of the age. The Bible does not claim to be God speaking, but something that God can speak through.

I respect that others may not agree with my approach to the Bible, but as I see the negative impact of certain interpretations on modern lives, be it fuelling the fires in the Middle East, or condemning people for who they love, or demanding that people must trust faith or science – a choice that leads many to reject faith – then I am reminded of ‘know them by their fruits’. If my Bible interpretation causes more suffering in this world; then I ask what is broken in my interpretation, for the God I have encountered loves all people.

Whatever you feel about what I have said, if I have provoked you to think about your faith experience, then that is positive. May we always question our assumptions, to prove them or find new understanding. God is with us in the wondering.