B
Proper 7 BFC 2015
1
Samuel 17:1-49
June
21, 2015
In Greek, the root word for both “economy” and
“ecology” is the word “house,” “home,” or “household.”[1]
Etymologically then, “economy” means the
“managing of the household.” Remember
that as we go forward. “Economy” is the
managing of the household.
Our Biblical creation myth is a derivative of a
Mesopotamian myth written sometime earlier than the one we have in
Genesis. The parable of the lost tree of
immortality is found in both the Mesopotamian myth and the Biblical myth teaching
that humankind’s striving after immortality is a delusion. In the Biblical story, that impossibility of
immortality is replaced by the necessity of conscience. In the end, that is all human has for its
future: conscience.
You
will forever hear me relate this factoid shared by Biblical scholar John
Dominic Crossan. Contrary to popular
teaching, the word “sin” first appears in the Bible not with the story of Adam
and Eve but with the story of their two children in Genesis, Chapter 4,
humankind’s transition from a role as nomadic shepherd to settled gardener. In a departure from the Mesopotamian story,
the Biblical story is not decided peacefully.
Rather, the word “sin” is introduced and the advent of civilization begins,
when Cain kills his brother Abel. Cain
then goes off to build a city and the violence increases exponentially. God declares that whoever kills Cain will
suffer sevenfold vengeance. Lamech
declares that he has killed a young man for wounding him, and whoever kills him
will be avenged greater than one who would kill Cain, seventy-seven fold.
Crossan
therefore says, that escalatory, retributive violence is humankind’s original
sin, laced within our primal myth as to how we build and keep civilization. It comes with a warning: “Sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you; you must master
it.” Genesis, chapter 4, verse 9. The teaching in the story says that this
original sin is innate and unavoidable but a free choice. It is not a matter of God sanctioning this
violence which makes the violence escalate.
Rather, violence escalates due to human consequences. All humankind has for its future is
conscience.
What
one tradition in the Bible teaches is, that human civilization does not
necessarily need to be built by violence and violence is not necessarily woven
into our human nature.[2] As a Christian, Crossan believes Jesus looked
deep into his tradition to counter the idea that retributive, escalatory
violence is necessary. Retributive,
escalatory violence is necessary to protect me and my own, to get the jump on
you who will harm me, to show my armor and weaponry superior to yours, there is
a need to go bigger, to exact more damage so that civilization might be secured
and peace might be achieved. In
contrast, Jesus taught: we belong to
each other.
Crossan
outlines this whole argument in his most recent book, Is God Violent? How to Read the Christian Bible and Still be a
Christian. Against this normalcy of
retributive, escalatory violence in human civilization meted out by those who
believe they are doing justice, Crossan believes, is the Radicality of God
found in distributive justice. Two
traditions, one Bible. Which one will
carry the day?
For
example, the Radicality of God says, “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity,
for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.” (Leviticus
25:23). In contrast, the normalcy of
violence through civilization building says, “All right, but I can still make
loans with land as collateral. That is
not buying and selling but about loaning and foreclosing.”[3] Hear the violence that happened to so many
American families, our family included, in the recent debt and mortgage
crisis. Hear within that the idea that I
outlined a couple weeks ago, “The king takes away as a spiritual practice
that normalizes the violence of civilization.”
The
normalcy of civilization’s violence over and against the Radicality of God is
what is at issue in the David and Goliath story. Shall Israel be shaped by normalizing the
violence of civilization or shall it be shaped by the Radicality of God? In a critique of the sin to go bigger, get
the jump, and show my weaponry and armor superior to yours, David pushes aside
the armor offered to him by King Saul and goes to meet Goliath in the valley
between the two armies.
And Goliath
is the epitome of armed-to-the-teeth violence—a culture and civilization driven
and operating by its value that violence and all of its
trappings—triumphs. Not only is Goliath
an impressive physical specimen, we learn that the Philistines are far more
technologically advanced than the Israelites.
The Philistines drive chariots, Goliath wears a helmet of bronze, armor
of bronze upon his chest and legs, and holds a spear that is an impressive
weight of iron. Goliath walks out into
what we have come to proverbially refer to as “No-Man’s Land”, the space
between two warring armies. Scripture
literally refers to Goliath as “The Man In Between” or the one who walks into
inhuman country.[4] For, inevitably, as we normalize civilization
with our violence, escalate that violence to maintain and keep civilization,
this is who we become over the long haul.
We become inhuman.
The
very caution of this story begins way back at the beginning of Israel Israel
So
who are we? David or Goliath?
As
Rev. Dr. Samuel Wells has said, we are a nation of 300 million people, and we
all have one thing in common. We all
like to think that we are the little guy.
We talk about standing up for the little guy. And in the reading of this story, 99% of us
identify with David and not Goliath. We
want the inspiring movie where the little guy wins out over the mighty
giant. But then we spend the rest of our
lives amassing our armor to become more like Goliath. It’s quaint that David, pushed aside Saul’s
armor, but look at the degree, look at the job, look at the car, look at the
house, look at the country! We have
stockpiled so many spears and helmets and breastplates and swords that we
cannot even imagine life with a sling. And then we spend so much money on
safety and security devices and procedures, that we can hardly move around in
them.
The
story is a caution to human nature which likes its underdog stories but seems
to act with the character of Goliath. And
it happens in the Biblical story. David
became Goliath. David became a
bully. David raped Bathsheba. David killed her husband. David became a merciless military power
broker. David became a ruthless
acquisitor of pleasure and advantage. David became the overblown beached whale
he had begun his career by destroying.[5]
He did it all with a sense that God’s
chosen have full license to do as they will, outside the character of God,
because they are the ones who maintain civilization’s boundary between what it
means to be human and inhuman.
Two
weeks ago I also reminded us that we continue to be a country at war. We order our household through the most
escalatory violent means possible—war. We
live in a war economy. And through two
prolific incidents this past week, we were reminded how deeply rooted that
economics of violence is in our country.
With
the killing of 9 people gathered for Bible study, including the pastor and
State Senator, Clementa Pinckney, at historic Mother Emanuel AME Church in
Charleston, South Carolina, we cannot keep pretending the room in our household
is absent of racism. Mother Emanuel AME
is a church bubbling with God’s historic work in the liberation from the sin of
slavery and the freedom of slaves. Charleston is a place where Denmark Vesey,
in the 1820s, a class leader in Mother Emanuel, planned a slave revolt. That revolt was discovered and Vesey and
other leaders of the movement lynched. From
our faith tradition, how can we possibly not see these lynchings of African
American folk as the equivalent of the crucifixion of Christ? Why does that not register in our
conscience?
Pastor
and State Senator Pinckney once shared that the military college of South
Carolina, The Citadel, once trained its guns on the homes of members of Mother
Emanuel Church in case there was another slave revolt.[6]
We
cannot keep pretending the room in our household is absent of racism. Indeed, when the flag that flies over the
capitol building in Charleston is the Confederate flag and the streets are
named after Confederate generals, we can assume that the young white man got
the message when his room is literally wallpapered with racism. In
the not so distant history, a little over two months ago, in North Charleston,
South Carolina, not too far from the place where this recent terrorist attack
on nine African-American church members took place, Walter Scott was shot
several times in the back as he fled from police on foot, posing no immediate
threat.[7] Eric Liu, former White House speech writer and CNN
editorialist wrote,
There is a sickness in our society, as
Senator Rand Paul said, that is about violence and mental illness. But there is
a deeper sickness -- race hatred -- which is "weaponized" by such easy
access to guns. And underlying that is a deeper sickness still: the American
penchant for avoiding the past and its meaning.[8]
What we continue to do is normalize the
violence done against people of color in our country pretending that what we do
is protect and hedge against the inhuman Goliaths who seek to bring down
civilization. The survivors of the young
man’s massacre at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. said that he responded to pleas to stop
by saying, “No, you've raped our women, and you are taking over the country . .
. I have to do what I have to do."[9] That is iconic racist rhetoric stated as a
person who believes he has to get the jump, escalate violence, weaponize and
arm his people, to protect against the coming barbarians.[10] Did he read it in a book? Was it taught to him by his parents? Did he belong to a wider group that repeated
that so much it was part of his bloodstream?
Or was it just that thick in the culture?
In the media, we protect that notion of
civilization by stating that young white men are mentally ill and young black
men are thugs. We know who the real
Goliaths are—the inhuman giants and beasts.
So we rob the common, deprive, lynch, circle the wagons, to
protect the civilization we know out of fear that inhuman creatures will rob us
of our “culture.” We institutionalize
our violence and point out any violence in response to our violence as
barbaric.
I listened as Fox News’ Sean Hannity tried to
do his level best on Thursday to talk about the violence in Charleston, South
Carolina, and somehow differentiate violence from racism. It was an impossible task and he ducked and
bobbed and wove around the points made by his guests because racism is in and
of itself, not prejudice, but institutionalized violence.
Though our church has a beautiful, wonderful
history to be told, we should also be honest, as people of faith who are
forever being born anew, about how this area of the world was settled by many
of our ancestors: the bodies split open,
the children ripped from their families and “civilized” in our schools and
churches, and the land confiscated and ravaged.
Layer upon layer of our history
has normalized violence against our Native American sisters and brothers and
labelled it as bringing civilization in the form of severing almost every
connection they might have to meaning. And
we belong to each other.
Canadian doctor Gabor Maté, a
specialist in addiction, stress, and childhood development, has made an amazing
discovery as to the causes of addiction.
It is not as liberals assume, a disease taking place in a chemically
hijacked brain, or as conservatives assume, the result of too much hedonistic
partying. Rather, addiction is about the
loss of connection. Addicts have often
led terribly difficult lives, in their early childhood, perhaps very lonely and
sometimes brutally abused, many times highly stressed. They develop a “hungry ghost” persona, always
seeking to fill their empty bellies from something on the outside.[11] So
imagine what it would mean if whole communities of people were severed from
connection and meaning, how addiction rates for a whole people would soar. What is need, at the root are policies and
programs that build community, create opportunities for early childhood
development and well-being, and provide for early health. Those forms of connection are the best
antidotes against later addiction.
But we seem to be addicted
to severing connections to keep the barbarians at bay, a form of
institutionalized violence, in this continuing economy of war, so that we might
keep “civilization” as we know it.
The other prolific incident
was the release of the papal encyclical on climate change. Again, remember that ecology comes from that
same root word as economy, the ordering of the household. And Pope Francis makes it clear that economic
growth and technology will not save us from the coming devastation to our household. Our armor will not protect us. We order our household, create an economy,
that runs against the wisdom of the household, our ecology. Rather, our present policies amount to a war
on not only the environment but a war on the poor of the world. What does Pope Francis recommend, broadly? A
turn from our individualism to a building of community to care for the diverse
color of the coral reefs as well as a connection with the poorest of our
sisters and brothers. Ecologist Bill
McKibben hopes this will be a return to a rethinking of what it means to be
human.[12] The very function of violence and war is to
view our opponent as inhuman so that we might justify inhuman acts and
behaviors. We are at war with each other
and at war with God’s creation to maintain “our civilization.” We must turn from our addiction to this war
economy.
Today we baptized Lucas
Robert Page. We baptized him with the
earliest baptismal formula of the Christian Church: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor
free, male nor female in Christ Jesus.”
No ethnic difference, political or social standing, gender
identification shall keep us separate, apart, or unconnected from one
another. We promise to live into this
reality on his behalf, to build community and connection, so that he might live
in a world not dependent on a war economy.
We want him to know his full humanity among a Christian community that
is coming into its full humanity. We
want him to know: we belong to each
other across ethnicity, social standing, or gender identity. We belong to each other.
At the time of Paul, Jews
and Greeks hated one another and took turns slaughtering each other during the
social events within the Roman Empire.
Christians . . . Christians sought to imagine a different world, a world
shaped by the economy, community, connection, and Radicality of God.
Today we said we will engage
with Lucas Robert Page to welcome the Radicality of God. We will engage this war economy to welcome
something wholly different. We will
engage and re-connect with the earth and our Native American and African
American sisters and brothers to so that this institutionalized violence we
call civilization might come to an end. No
more circling the wagons.
Indigenous activist, Audrey
Siegl, standing up bravely with her ceremonial drum, the heartbeat of all
creation, raised in protest to Shell’s monster oil rig, this week, said, “When we unite, become one and move with open minds and
hearts, we are unstoppable. When we connect and stand as an indivisible and
determined force for good, we can only succeed."[13]
Today we
baptized Lucas Robert Page. May we live
out that radical baptismal formula by engaging our African-American and Native
American sisters and brothers anew, living out the creed of St.
Francis’ Canticle of the Sun. We belong
to each other. May we, as Billings First
Church, both historically and prophetically, welcome Lucas into the Radicality,
the economy, the household of God.
Amen.
[1] oikos (oikos) is
the Greek word. For a more detailed discussion of how these
words develop from Greek to English see Letty Russell’s book, Household of Freedom: Authority in Feminist Theology (Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectures,
1986). See also, M. Douglas Meeks, God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1989).
[2] John Dominic Crossan, “The Character of the
Covenantal God: Toward a Christian Theology of the Christian Bible,” Transforming
Christian Theology: Shaping the Future
of the Church, June 18, 2013, Lecture 1.
[3] John Dominic Crossan, “Christianity’s
Criterion: Historical Jesus Christ or
Biblical Jesus Christ,” Transforming
Christian Theology: Shaping the Future
of the Church, June 20, 2013, Lecture 4.
[4] Everett
[5] Samuel Wells, “Five Smooth Stones,” Faith and Leadership: Where Christian Leaders Reflect, Connect, and
Learn. http://www.faithandleadership.com/sermons/five-smooth-stones?page=0,0, May 14, 2010, Duke University Chapel, Duke
University Baccalaureate.
[6] “Massacre at
South Carolina’s Emanuel AME an Attack
on Historic Landmark of African-American Freedom,” Democracy Now! June 19,
2015. http://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/19/massacre_at_south_carolinas_emanuel_ame.
[7] Lawrence Brown, “This is American
terrorism: White supremacy’s brutal, centuries-long campaign of violence,” Salon, June 19, 2015. http://www.salon.com/2015/06/19/this_is_american_terrorism_white_supremacys_brutal_centuries_long_campaign_of_violence/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow.
[8] Eric Liu, “Race Hatred Is a Deep Sickness in
American Society,” CNN, June 18,
2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/18/opinions/liu-charleston-shooting/index.html
[9] Greg Botelho and Ed Payne, “Charleston church
shooting: Suspect confesses, says he sought race war,” CNN http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/charleston-church-shooting-main/index.html
[10] James H. Cone relates what an iconic statement it
is in his book, written four years ago, The
Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 2011)
[11] Johann Hari, “The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered and It
Is Not What You Think,” HuffPost Politics,
January 20, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html. See also “Dr. Gabor Maté on
the Stress-Disease Connection, Addiction and the Destruction of American
Childhood,” Democracy Now! December 25, 2012. http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/25/dr_gabor_mat_on_the_stress
[12] Bill McKibben, “The Cry of the Earth,” The New York Review of Books, June 18,
2015. http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jun/18/pope-francis-encyclical-cry-of-earth/
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