BIRTH OF A NOTION
Scriptures: Genesis 26:1-5
Revelation 21:1-7
I guess it’s true for all of us – I know it certainly is for me – that throughout our lifetimes the Middle East has been a hotbed of turmoil, anxiety, conflict, or, as the Bible puts it, wars and rumors of wars. I’m not just talking about Iraq, although obviously what’s going on in that country is so very much on our minds. But there is increasing tension in Iran, there continue to be flare-ups in Lebanon, and, of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems as far away from a solution as ever. If there is any other region of the world that has as much conflict going on, I’d sure like to know what it is.
I got to thinking about this after the service two weeks ago when Ray and others observed that in mentioning and honoring the Jewish High Holy Days I had forgotten all about Ramadan, which began on September 13 and continues for a month – so, devout Muslims are about halfway through this most holy time for them. It is a time of fasting and prayer, even as for Jews Yom Kippur – just past on September 22-23 – was a time for intense prayer.
Holy times like Ramadan and Yom Kippur – and Advent and Christmas for Christians – are particularly good times for helping us in understanding people as people. The war in Iraq and the troubles in other places in the Middle East tend to make us think in generalities about, say, the Iraqi people or in stereotypes about Muslims and Arabs. I heard an Arab woman on television the other day plaintively say, “But they don’t know who we are.” There is much in our media and even in our conversations that fans the flames of anti-Muslim or anti-Arab sentiment. On the other hand, there are some good signs. I was in Arizona Charlie’s last week after our usual Tuesday breakfast, and there were two Iranian men playing blackjack with me. The dealer made it a point to engage them in conversation and to talk about how she appreciated people from Iran. Especially in a time of conflict, as we find ourselves now in Iraq, we need to find ways to “slip into one another’s moccasins” and see other people as they see themselves.
I was reminded of this need in another way, too, by seeing an article about D.W. Griffith’s epic film, “Birth of a Nation”, which is now 92 years old. When it opened in 1915 it ran for what was at that time the fantastic length of over three hours. “Birth of a Nation” chronicled the events of the Civil War and the reconstruction period in the South. As a Southerner, Griffith took a point of view that we would find extremely repugnant – namely, that it was the advent of the Ku Klux Klan which brought the South back to life after the disastrous war. But granted his own perspective, Griffith in this film gives us an epic concept of what it means to have a sense of being born as a nation, to have an identification with a land and a culture that gives purpose and direction. Through this grand sweep of events we are able to see how this Southerner was able to identify with the land, the people, the culture in such a way as to give him that sense of purpose. We would want vigorously to disagree with Griffith’s evaluation of the role of the Klan, but we can enter into this argument with him only after we have seen through his eyes – or, in this case, the lens of his camera –how a people’s identification with land and culture helped them to understand themselves.
Jews, who have just gone through the atoning experience of Yom Kippur, would understand what Griffith was getting at in terms of an identification with the land, for this kind of an understanding parallels the birth of the Hebrew nation – both in ancient times and in our own day as Israel has become such a focal point for hope in the future. And I believe that Muslims would “get it”, too, for identification with Mecca and the necessity of making a holy pilgrimage there at least once in a lifetime is central to Islamic faith. The Jew, however, would move far beyond what D.W. Griffith was depicting, for the birth of Israel was more than just the birth of a nation in a cultural or geographical sense – it was also the birth of a notion – the notion of God’s involvement with humanity, the notion that “the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” What can we as Christians learn from Jewish and Muslim self-understandings as a way of coming to our own understanding about all that is happening in the Middle East and beyond?
The beginning point is the gift of land. God’s involvement with God’s people is demonstrated most concretely through the promise to Abraham and Isaac: “for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands….” The very idea of the land is central to Jewish identity. In spite of many years of Diaspora – of sojourning in different lands – it was the thought of Jerusalem and Palestine – those particular places – that helped to hold together the fabric of this great religious notion.
Now, it’s hard, I know, for a Christian to share this passionate dedication to a piece of property – especially one that isn’t all that great shakes as land (you think we’ve got water problems in Southern Nevada, you should live in Israel!). As a matter of fact, this identification with the land is one of the basic differences between Jew and Christian, between Muslim and Christian. Oh, we each of us have our roots somewhere – many of you have lived quite some years here in Las Vegas or Henderson or North Las Vegas (although as the ad on the classical radio station, KCNV, puts it, most of those who live in Las Vegas have come from somewhere else). But the places that we might identify ourselves with, such as Las Vegas or Nevada or the USA, are political-geographical entities. Now, of course, Jerusalem and Israel are also political-geographical entities. But they are so much more, as well. Besides Muslims, the one other group of peoples that approaches the Jewish understanding of the land is Native Americans. Their religious concepts of Mother Earth and the sacredness of particular sites have much to teach us as Christians. When I was producing television programs for the National Council of Churches one show I really wanted to do was to get a Native American spiritual leader and a Muslim imam and a Jewish theologian together in a TV studio to talk about their understandings of the sacredness of the land – with a Christian there as a moderator primarily to listen!
We Christians have our sense of identity more with a spiritual entity which identifies us with God through Christ’s resurrection. We would speak not so much of Jerusalem as of the New Jerusalem – the new heaven and earth of the Book of Revelation, which are essentially placeless, spiritual concepts relating us to God and the whole of humankind. Yet, this sense of universalism should not blind us to the value of locating the sacred in a specific place.
The late Rabbi Balfour Brickner points us to this difference and yet the value of both when he wrote, “The image and remembrance of Jerusalem is totally woven through the entire fabric of Judaism. And when Jews pray or sing or speak of Jerusalem, they are not talking only about some ‘ideal state of being’. They are thinking of a piece of real estate. To be sure, Judaism can exist without Jerusalem, just as God is not rooted to any given place…. But if it is not place-rooted, Judaism is certainly place-oriented, and oriented in a way different from and more intense than the orientation of either Christianity or Islam…. Universalism with its soaring message of one, unique God, everywhere for all…at all times, is matched in Judaism by a particularism that relates this God, at least for Jews, to a place and a land in an undeniable fashion.”
(I would quibble a bit with Rabbi Brickner’s characterization of Islam as not being so intensely place-oriented, given what I said a moment ago about the Muslim’s devotion to Mecca; but his larger point still holds: it is difficult for Christians to grasp the importance of this Jewish place-orientation.)
But a question may now occur to you: can God really give anything so concrete as land? If so, what is to keep us from saying to the small girl that it’s all right to pray for that new bicycle you want or to the wife with an invalid husband that it is legitimate to pray that your husband will get well? Has not the whole thrust of Christianity been to affirm of God “thy will be done”, rather than seeing God as the giver of specific things?
However, there is a difference of degree here. In the first place, the land was not asked for; in fact, it was no prize, and the people have struggled throughout their history to keep it. Secondly, the Bible indicates that this was the will of God – that to pray “thy will be done” in this situation was to affirm that God’s will was for the people to have the land. Thirdly, and most significantly, the land is a symbol to the people of the covenant they have made with God. Identification with a place puts a seal on the people’s covenant with God.
Now we can begin to see the similarities as well as the differences between Christian and Jew on this matter. The birth of this notion – that of God’s involvement with us through a covenant freely offered to all of us – comes to us both through commitment to a place and through commitment to an idea. In Genesis when Isaac is told to “Reside in this land”, God tells him directly, “I will be with you…and I will fulfill the oath that I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all these lands….” In Revelation when the vision of the New Jerusalem is offered, God’s voice also says directly, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them….” Here at almost the opposite ends of the Bible –in Genesis and Revelation -- this same great notion of God’s presence with human beings is affirmed. For Jew and Christian alike God has broken through that impenetrable barrier of divine mystery and has said, “I will be with you”.
For the Jew this notion of God’s involvement with us comes through the symbol of the land and the concept of peoplehood – a people who have a God-consciousness to offer the world. For the Christian this notion of God’s involvement with men and women comes through a dedication to a man who was more than human. Because Christ came, died, and was resurrected for us, we can affirm that God is a part of our lives and the life of the world.
The important point is that both paths are legitimate – both ways of understanding the birth of this notion lead us to an involvement, in God’s name, in the world, as, indeed, is the path of the Muslim. And these three paths lead us back to what we can do in response to all of the war and turmoil in the Middle East. We can help all those around us see the people there with new eyes. For, first and foremost, these paths of the three great faiths lead to repentance – repentance for our failures in living up to the covenant we have accepted when we accept the birth of this notion in our own lives. This is why the joy of the New Year is followed for the Jew by the Day of Atonement – a day of penitence and meditation upon human need in the light of the vision of God. This is why the fasting of Ramadan leads the Muslim to a keen sense of the need for penitence in the light of all that is wrong in the world. And this is why the joy of Easter is followed for the Christian by the claim of Pentecost – when those who would be disciples are sent forth into the world to meet God there in penitential awe and commitment.
God is the God of all peoples. This we are able to affirm because Isaac was given the land and because Jesus died on a cross. As is often the case, the simple and direct words of a teenager say it best: “The world is non-sectarian. It doesn’t care what faith you are. It asks first that you get involved in it and that you keep your eyes open and your ears tuned in for other people.” Even though this young person’s comment was about humans, it could also apply to God. God is non-sectarian. God is not concerned so much about the details of faith as about seeing and hearing and being tuned in to other people. This great notion, which gave birth to a nation, a people, a religion, now offers to us the same opportunities for involvement as it did to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob – and Jesus of Nazareth, who is called the Christ.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
September 30, 2007