Another Story

Genesis 12:1-12

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

Sermon

Today we have a really challenging passage in our Bibles. The way we read today’s text and those that flow from it has a huge impact on the way we live our lives — it affects how we treat others, who we think is worthy of dignity, love, and safety, and our relationship to violence. 

We’re going to explore two different readings of this text and the big, overarching narratives of the Pentateuch. The first one goes like this:

…

Once upon a time—long, long ago, in a land far away—God had a bone to pick. You see, there were these people called the Canaanites. They lived next to God’s favorite people, like Abram. You see, these Canaanites were bad. They were mean, evil, and dirty. They were so dirty, and dangerous, and different that nobody could live next to them without getting dirty. They didn’t talk like God’s favorite people and God’s favorite nation. They didn’t do things the same way, or follow the same religion, or believe the same things. So God hated them.

One day, God has it with them. So God tells Abram, “Even though they’ve been there for a long, long time, the Canaanites are actually on your land. One day, you need to show them who’s boss. One day, make sure your descendants invade them. Take their land. Show no mercy, and use whatever violence you need to. And you know what — if anyone gets in your way, they’re cursed. And anyone who helps you, they’re some of my favorites, too.”

So Abram goes and does all that. God hated the Canaanites—those supposed foreigners—and got what he wanted. It was what was right, because those Canaanites were evil.

…

That’s reading one. And in case you think this is dramatic, here’s what the Book of Deuteronomy says. Quote: “show [the Canaanites] no mercy. Break down their altars, smash their pillars, hew down their sacred poles and burn their idols with fire.” (Deut. 7:1-5).” God has Joshua lead military conquests into the “promised land.” There are battles, invasions, and attacks that last for chapter after chapter in the Hebrew Bible.

What I’ve just described is a real way of reading these passages, by real people, maybe even some of us here today. When I was preparing for this week’s sermon, I ran across articles by mainstream Christian publications that depict the genocide of the Canaanites as a moral and ethical good. [1]

But every way we read scripture—and every way we theologize about God—has a real-world consequence. Every choice has its consequences.

In the late 17th-century, one such minister urged his congregants to go and take a stand against “[the Canaanites] annoying Israel in the wilderness.” But the modern-day Israelites? It was European colonists. This minister, Cotton Mather, believed there was a divine prerogative and divine favor on his side — American Indians needed to be wiped from the face of their own land. It most certainly happened.

“But every way we read scripture—and every way we theologize about God—has a real-world consequence. Every choice has its consequences.”

We find ourselves, especially as Americans, consecrating violence in the name of our own moral superiority. We think of ourselves as pure in motivations—always fixated on freedom or patriotism—and in doing so, blind ourselves to the reality that we are anything but superior. We build bombs in the name of Jesus Christ, because we mistakenly believe that we are God-fearing people, and our enemies are godless Canaanites. We find prooftexts in the Bible to justify sending money to foreign militaries who indiscriminately attack civilians with chemical weapons. Brutality is justified, we think, when its against people who are criminals, or dirty, or different than us.

But if I had to guess, so many of us know that Cotton Mather—or those who build bombs in the name of Jesus Christ or Abraham—don’t have it quite right. There’s something that’s inside all of us that says a genocidal God isn’t the true God who created all things in love.

We do have another choice in how we listen to scripture — one that doesn’t end in war, or violence, or dehumanization. So listen to this a little differently, listen in a way that also might be uncomfortable at times, but tells a story that starts and ends with love.

“We build bombs in the name of Jesus Christ, because we mistakenly believe that we are God-fearing people, and our enemies are godless Canaanites. We find prooftexts in the Bible to justify sending money to foreign militaries who indiscriminately attack civilians with chemical weapons. Brutality is justified, we think, when its against people who are criminals, or dirty, or different than us.”

Once upon a time—long, long ago, in a land far away—God knew about this nobody named Abram. There were lots of peoples on the earth, some forming nations and societies that were powerful, militaristic, and prone to conquest. Abram, though, was different. He wasn’t from one of those peoples.

God wanted Abram to have his own people. So God made covenants with him to give him lots and lots of descendants, but unlike the other nations, it wasn’t so that they could dominate others. It was so that everyone—every single person and people—would be blessed.

And that blessing started off with Abram becoming a migrant. God told him to leave everything he knew behind — to risk life and limb, to cross borders and lands in order to find his way to a foreign land. God wanted this new, beloved people to start off from an immigrant, who didn’t know the rules, who spoke a different language, who worshipped a different God than everyone else around him.

Abram did what God told him — he did, indeed, settle in that new land. He passed by Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. He went to Bethel. And Ai. And eventually, all the way to Negeb — he went place by place into Canaan, meeting new neighbor after new neighbor, not as a conquistador, but as a strange, funny-sounding migrant.

Later, as Abram’s family grew and his descendants continued on, they found themselves enslaved by a mighty power. Then they broke free, but were desert migrants. They were stuck in the wilderness, once again crossing unfamiliar lands speaking different languages and living in different ways. 

Eventually, they fought their way back to Canaan, but still had lots of Canaanites living among them. It was hard, but they made it back, and God was on their side. Because they still lived with Canaanites among themselves, God made special rules to make sure they treated strangers fairly and lovingly. God told them again and again: I made you aliens living in a foreign land, and called you out of those foreign lands as immigrants. God said they should protect and care for those people. God said that they should make them citizens of their society. (Lev. 19:33-34, 24:22).

“We have another choice in how we listen to scripture — one that doesn’t end in war, or violence, or dehumanization.”

In this retelling, we find our lives captive to a different kind of promise. Blessing doesn’t begin with conquest, but begins with wandering and foreignness. It begins with leaving home, not for the sake of taking things and dominating others, but leaving home for the sake of blessing others. This is a migratory journey of love — a journey out of familiarity and into uncharted territory. 

For Abram, this wasn’t as nice a promise as we make it on this side of our Bibles. God is telling him to go into a land that is full of licentiousness and debauchery and strangeness — go and be a blessing to them! All those people who put a pit in your stomach, and who give you that gut reaction to be disgusted, those are your new neighbors. That is going to be your land, too.

So unlike our first telling of this story, God isn’t calling Abram to violently destroy the Canaanites, or become a genocidal maniac, but rather, God is calling him into a relationship with those Abram might be disgusted by. Go and move into the neighborhood, yes, as an immigrant and foreigner. 

God is often calling us out of our comfortability, too, and into the foreign and strange. We’re going to have to rearrange the spiritual furniture in our lives, and have things shaken up. We have to pack up, hop into the moving truck, and go to unexpected places with people we don’t know and who we might not like. And you know what? God’s called us to be a blessing not for the sake of better attendance, or bigger offering plates, but because God loves the neighbor and stranger and foreigner and immigrant, too.

“God is telling him to go into a land that is full of licentiousness and debauchery and strangeness — go and be a blessing to them! All those people who put a pit in your stomach, and who give you that gut reaction to be disgusted, those are your new neighbors. That is going to be your land, too.”

What we hear today isn’t a flat, simplistic narrative about modern-day countries or militaries. Today’s story is absolutely not a consecration of genocide, or national boundaries, or violence against those we deem immoral. It couldn’t be more the opposite. 

This is a story about all of us — about journeys into the lives of those we dislike or fear. It’s a story about God’s blessing, which is never zero-sum and can never run out. This is a story that consecrates a world full of foreignness and strangeness—strangeness that is precisely what makes God’s love so great. This is about a commendation to a world full of love for those unlike us, that is most certainly complicated, but most certainly alive in hope.

Amen.