Raising rocks: this land is whose land?
Third Advent Sermon, by Jeff Taylor
December 16, 2012
Texts: Isaiah 12: 2 – 6, Luke 3: 7 – 18
[As Abraham:] You seem surprised. I guess I’m not quite what you were expecting? You thought maybe someone a little older, more . . “patriach”-ish? Maybe with white hair and a beard and a shepherd’s staff? I’m not a common shepherd you know, I have people to do that for me: or at least I did. I guess I’m not anything to you anymore: just some heavenly forefather gathering up my departed children into my bosom as they reach this side. Well, there’s more to it than that. I’m sorry if my appearance today doesn’t meet your expectations; but things are not as they appear. I mean, that’s the point today isn’t it: things are never entirely as they appear.
Well, to the matter at hand: I’m supposed to read this text from your scriptures, from the good news as told by Luke. Yes, I know, written long after my sojourn in this realm. But I am no longer bound by your time or space. So, to the text. Um, I tell it with a bit more detail than the version you have in front of you so you’re welcome to listen to the story.
Luke 3:7-18: John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You slithering brood of snakes! Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is coming? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. And do not even start to say to yourselves, “We are safe: we have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. The ax is already lined up against the root of the trees and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
And the crowds asked him, “What should we do then?” So John told them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”
Even those who collected tax for the Roman invaders who controlled the land in those days came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” And John told them, “Collect no more than you have been authorized to.”
Roman soldiers whose job it was to keep order and enforce Roman law also asked him, “And what about us, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation: just be satisfied with your actual wages.”
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were wondering in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah; John answered them (even though they hadn’t actually asked) by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing pitch-fork is in his hand, to clear the floor against which the stalks of wheat have been beaten. He will gather the wheat grain into his granary; but the leftover chaff he will burn with a fire that can’t be extinguished.”
Well, not too subtle, is it? We’ll come back to John’s challenge shortly. But did you notice he referenced me in this story? “Children of Abraham.” Actually, that isn’t anything new, they borrow my name all the time, you see: Abraham – if you hadn’t figured it out yet. In your tongue that’s how it is said anyway. When I was in this realm I remember hearing it more as “Avram,” or was it “Avrahehm,” or Ibraheem? I forget now. Or rather, it is no longer a difference to be remembered. Either way, they borrow my name, all the time. “Our father Abraham,” this and “Our father Abraham” that.
You know why don’t you? They want to own me, or a piece of me anyway. That’s how it worked in those days in those places: naming something showed that you had some measure of power over it. In this case they’re trying to own . . . really, my faith.
But I suppose we can’t hold them solely responsible for that: they weren’t the first to borrow my name after all. You know who that was, right? The first? You know I can’t say it. I mean, it’s not a secret who it was, I just literally can’t say it – it’s impossible: all consonant sounds with no vowels, it’s designed not to be said. You know, “the Name?” He was the first to borrow it as his own and to modify it some. In order to show he owned me? Sure, yes, I was his servant, I gave myself over to him when he first spoke to me and ordered me to give up my land beside the great rivers – the very rivers that had nourished our mother Eve and our father Adam. The land I had a right to receive from my fathers. That was the first thing he did for me: stripped me of my inheritance in this realm, this kingdom.
I understood that he would give me another land and lots of descendents to fill it. I had begun take possession of a new land in Canaan but then I abandoned it almost immediately because it was barren. You should have seen the looks on the faces of those Egyptians when they saw this wealthy Babylonian with all his massive herds moving in. Well, we didn’t stay long, not at first. And then there was the time of which I do not like to speak. They do, they never stop speaking of it. But I prefer not to dwell on that time. Eventually my descendents returned to Canaan and there established a commonwealth and soon after even a kingdom.
Three kings. Three! – and it was all over. Three lousy kings and then they turned against one another and became weak against their neighbours; the northern half falling first to Sennacherib and then the southern to Nebuchadnezzar, both kings of the lands of my fathers. There they were, a thousand years after the Name had called me out of that place, back in it again – no longer as possessors but as the possessed. Then there was a brief return to Canaan for some before it was the Greeks and then the Romans, and then . . .
I used to think that he had forgotten his covenant with me – his covenant to give me descendents and a land for them to live in. I got descendents (and that’s a story in itself) – lots of them, through Isaac and Jakob, and through Ishmael – descendants like the sands on the desert, as promised. But what of the land? Since leaving this world I have sometimes despaired of his ever giving the peoples who bear my name their own lands?
And then I remembered: he, the one I cannot name, he bears my name. “I am the god of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jakob” That’s how he introduced himself to Moses, and then to them all. And they, not knowing his name, borrowed my name for their own and for his. This is how they called him, “the god of our fathers, Abraham . . .”
They didn’t know his name because he wouldn’t give it to them. Just tell them, “I am who I am” he told Moses. Do people of your time and your place understand this? You can’t know the god’s name, because you can’t own him or any part of him. He is not a tiger or a frog that we might name and have dominion over. He is not to be seen, or touched, or spoken of as if we “know” who he is. We don’t know. He is not god of just this thing or that thing, nor god or just this place nor that place. He is not the god of this mountain or that mountain, that we might call just those mountains holy. There are no holy mountains or holy lands: it is all holy land; for wherever he is, that place is holy, just as he said to Moses when he met him at a bush in the desert. And he is everywhere! As my son David sang, “The whole earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” He is . . . Master of the Universe.
So, did he give me a land for my children? He didn’t just give me “a” land, he gave me all lands. In all the many lands to which they have been disbursed they carried my name, standing in place of his – “the god of Avram . . .” And he did not give all lands just to my children: he gave us all lands for all his children – the sheep of his pasture and the people of his hand.
Well, the Baptist had it right in Luke’s little story about the sons of Abraham, both the “pure” ones and those who had become Roman tax collaborators, gathering with their Roman possessors at the edge of the same river, all hoping to get clean. John first made them come clean. He wouldn’t let them in the water until he did what the Name had first done for me: strip them of power to name the land – liberating them from the powers of these kingdoms. To my descendents he said, “God can make more of you people out of stones.” He’s right. He’s absolutely right, just as the Name brought my first born son Ishmael back to life at a stone, and gave me my second son Isaac through my and my princess’s stony bareness. God can make sons of Avram any time, any place. So he told them, “Relinquish the power of your culture, your tribe, and share with whoever has need of what you have more than enough of.”
To the tax men he said, “Relinquish the power that Rome gives you to take whatever you like, and just collect what is needed to pave the roads and build the aqueducts.”
And even to Caesar’s own soldiers he dared say, “Relinquish the power your earthly citizenship gives you to pad your earnings at the expense of those whose land you now possess. This is not your land, nor theirs, nor the land of those who held it before them. It belongs to the one too holy to name.”
You people today, you make the same mistake I did, along with my fathers before me in Babylon, and my children in “Israel.” He struggles with God, that’s what Ish-ra-el, means. My people contended with their god, and their neighbours, for a blessing of land. So when they and you have managed to pester the Master of the Universe sufficiently for him to let us learn the hard way, we take possession of his lands and name them as our own.
In recent centuries you have tended to divide God’s land among yourselves into nation-states, where culture and language determine who is in and who is out. Yes, here in this land you have experimented with the idea of a nation based on legal and ethical values, rather than linguistic and cultural uniformity. Most recently, though, your Trudeau’s vision of such a nation seems to have fractured some; and in any case, that nation still relies on the protection of the sword and the amassing of great wealth in the hands of you few citizens of this holy earth. However just or unjust your society is, the nation claims sovereignty for itself and denies the Holy One’s sovereignty over the whole earth. This is why you are still about the business of choosing who is allowed “in.”
You benefit from your citizenship in such a strong and usually noble society. But why should only you benefit? Why did the Name bless you with such enormous privilege? Surely only so that you would bless others with the same.
Well, I did the same as you, as did my fathers and my descendents. I know you want to do better than we did. I know you want everyone to have such great blessing as you have. One of you told me that your grandparents came to this place from Russia after the communist revolution and they were so grateful to have been “allowed” to come here, they hung pictures of the king and queen in their living room as a sign of gratitude. And they did this even though they were pacifists whose welcome here included years on the barren prairie during the great depression, suffering ridicule for speaking German, the language of the enemy against whom they would not fight. They were grateful.
Of course, the land they farmed, when it would be farmed, had previously been the land of the Blackfoot people to whom they sent their young horses to be broken in, but who they could not recognize as equal partners in the cycle of being oppressed and oppressing, being possessed and possessing.
One of you told me of a time when you became suddenly aware of the Name when you were visiting the Roman peninsula, and went to a local church with a new acquaintance who could not speak your language, nor you hers. But in the presence of Holy One, there was no need to agree on naming other things. You were not far from the Kingdom of the Holy One.
Similarly one of you told me of a time travelling in Africa, the land that may well have given birth to all our mothers and fathers, in the land of that great ancient civilization, Zimbabwe. You were travelling across a national border, and it was closed to you. Fortunately, it would open, to you at least, in the morning. In the cool of the night, with no place to sleep, Zim women travelling the same path shared their blankets with you, showing you where on the pavement it would be safe to sleep and how to secure your things against thieves. These sisters and you were not far from the kingdom of the Holy One.
Many, many, many times you each, most of you, have reached across borders of nation and status and language and all manner of identity barriers – the dividing walls of hostility – to say to another, “let me give you my name – I am your servant.” Many times together you have assisted those new to this land, and you are still doing that. As families and individuals and smaller clusters, you are reaching out to all the stones that the god of Avram has named as his own and you are saying, let me give you my name – I am your servant.
There are many good ways to do this, and to challenge the kingdoms of this world to do the same. To remind them, as did my son, my beloved son, Yeshua (Jesus) that they would have no power on the earth except that the Holy One allowed them power. You can tell them that and sometimes they will listen. You can show them how to do justice to the sojourner in the land, and sometimes they will learn from you.
There are many good ways to welcome the Holy One’s sojourning children to this place – this church, your home, this nation. Whatever of these many good ways you choose to do good, know that the Holy One who borrowed my name, does you an even greater honour, giving you far greater power. For the god of Avram not only knows your name, he gives you his name. Yes, you are privileged to know and bear the name of the one whose name is too holy to speak. As citizens of the kingdom of the Holy One, you bear his name, Christ, as you sojourn as “Christians” in the kingdoms of this world. Rely then, on the power of the Holy One, and fear not the power of the nations. If the Holy One is for us, who can be effective against us? The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.