Tag: Israelites

Exposed and Naked: We are Unsafe

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

We are not in control; this bothers us. Further, we are not safe, to others or to ourselves; this angers us. To be out of control is one thing, but to be wildly unsafe, too? Offensive. So, we do whatever we can to create an atmosphere around us that feels safe, that causes us to feel okay, like everything is fine. But it’s not; nothing is fine. As politicians and pundits spin narratives and weave tales causing our attention to be diverted from the real problems plaguing our land and location, we hide behind our own mythologies and cover ourselves up with our various blankets of ignorance. The heavier the blanket, the safer we feel; the taller the myth, the more secure we think we are. We vacillate between having to know increasingly more (the more we know the more we can control) and not wanting to know anything and sticking our heads in the sand (if we can just not know we will regain some sense of safety and maybe even comfort). But this drive to cover up and hide from that which causes us to feel unsafe means that our community with others breaks down: as we hide from and deny the disasters swirling and twirling around us, we—ourselves—become our biggest problem not just to ourselves but especially to our neighbors, the ones fighting for their right to live in this world, the ones most visibly threatened by nationalism and extremism.

So, our lack of control wedded to our being and feeling unsafe makes us feel hopeless. In a world where it feels that World War III is always one strike away, where unstable and erratic egos leave more death in their wake than life, where one’s power and privilege are more valuable than the life of the least of us, our sensations of feeling unsafe surge. Surely, if they are coming for my neighbor…then am I next? In this surging feeling of unsafety, our hypervigilance turns to hyperarousal, and we lash out at anyone and anything. Humans need to feel safe; it’s the fundamental level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The divides and divisions caused by viewer driven news rooms that plague our communities get worse because we must view everyone else as a threat and patch-work some modicum amount of safety no matter how tattered that sense of safety is. But this makes us exceptionally unstable creatures and no mythology (no matter how it glitters and sparkles in the light) will cause use to feel and thus to be safe (to ourselves and to others). We are always just one moment away from complete break-down. We are nuclear weapons charged and ready to go off at any moment. Our lack of control bothers us; our unsafety angers us.

Is there any help for such as these?

Exodus 17:1-7

Moses[ii] begins by telling us of a journey and of a problem, From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink (v1). Being without water is no small issue. Rephidim is the last stop before entering the terrain of Sinai.[iii] Thus, being without water here—about to travel through the terrain of mountains and sand dunes in a climate that is demanding being of high elevation and often cold—is life threatening. In normal circumstances a person can survive 3-5 days without water, add in exertion, a challenging climate, and tough terrain, and that number falls.

The Israelites have every right to be disturbed by this, as Moses tells us, The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink,” (v 2a). Humans without water (assuming they did not have much water to begin with as they embarked on their journey) become easily angered as dehydration sets in; thus, quarreling makes sense as a characteristic of dehydration and the fruit of the fear that is setting in. They feel unsafe and thus they are becoming unsafe to themselves and others. However, Moses appears to be rather unphased by the dire situation. His reply? “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” (v2b). Not the most pastoral response.

So, the people ramp up their complaints against Moses, and it’s understandable. With no foreseeable way to get water, and with a leader who seems to consider their needs to be mere “quarreling” and disobedience to God, the Israelites escalate—which happens when fear and anger are not addressed but exacerbated. As the Israelites feel the impending doom of their being unsafe, they respond from that place of fear and anger and the situation gets worse. As Moses, tells us, But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” (v 3). If Moses doesn’t act now, he’ll be facing a full-on uprising and rightly so. Can we blame the Israelites for their reply of desperation?

Here, Moses senses just how serious the problem is and does what any good leader of God’s people should do (even if a moment delayed): call on God to help. Our text tells us, So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me,” (v4). The narrative doesn’t really give a glimpse of how bad the situation is until Moses mentions to God that the people “are almost ready to stone me.” The community—the people and its divine appointed leader, Moses—are in a tenuous situation. Death threatens to rear his head, anger and fear are the emotional monarchs, and the situation is far from safe; it’s perilous. So, in this moment, Moses throws himself at God’s feet in desperation; he’s failing to deescalate.

Thankfully, God does step in and instructs Moses to cause water to flow,

“Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink. Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called [Rephidim[iv]] Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (vv5-7)

Seems God does not have a problem providing God’s people with water to drink; what if anyone had just asked God? Moses accuses the people of testing God; it seems to me that Moses is the being tested. The people did demand to see that God is present by invoking quarrels with Moses because they were thirsty;[v] thus why Rephidim is then called “Massa and Meribah”, being wordplays on quarreling and trying from v2.[vi] However, the people are also asking a deeper question of Moses: Are you with us? Do you see us? We are about to die of thirst, and do you care? Ignoring and dismissing the needs of the people is not the right way of faithful leadership; it is the slipperiest of slopes to the people devising not only their own solutions and building their case for disbelieving God.[vii] God’s chosen leader must represent God to the people and the people to God; Moses failed this test in this moment. Moses could have heard their cry (the voice of an unsafe situation from people who are scared and angry) and have asked God to help him and them. But now Moses’s leadership is being questioned and doubted. Notice that there are elders to be selected to go with Moses to witness[viii] the striking of the limestone rock that causes the water trapped within to flow;[ix] God is aware that the people need to see (and know) that not only is God with them but God is with Moses thus Moses must be with them. These witnesses will be testament to the reality that both God and Moses are with the Israelites, through thick and thin, in good and bad, when things flow with milk and honey and when water seems scarce.

Conclusion

The Israelites are caught in their fear and anger because the situation they find themselves in is precarious: they are unsafe and they become unsafe to themselves and to others. Fear and anger are born here and cause stones to be lifted to make one’s point known; fear and anger when things are unsafe do not know any limits and boundaries, the rational and reasonable components of the human intellect and mind are bound and gagged. The human being, whether ancient Israelite or post-postmodern person, cannot overcome, on their own without intervention, their anger and fear born from feeling and being unsafe. Trapped in unsafety, the human being will resort to their primal instincts and fight, like any trapped animal would.

As it was for the Israelites, so it is for us.

Lent commands us into a state of being exposed and naked, into an honesty that will peel back our facades and remove our masks, bringing us to a very naked state that will feel like complete and total death. We are brought to our most dreaded confession: we are not in control, and we are unsafe creatures, afraid and angry. But it’s out of this death, this confession, out of this naked and vulnerable place, where God’s word liberates us out of death and into life by God’s love. This word that brings this divine life to dead creatures, God preaches through God’s son, Jesus the Christ; it is this incarnate word that becomes the source of our sure ground when we are at our most unsafe, most exposed, and most naked. It is the very source of our new life, new love, and new liberation. God is coming to clothe God’s own in the righteous garments of divine love, life, and liberation so they can become creatures who have new eyes and ears to see and hear the pain around them, bringing love where there is indifference, life where there is death, and liberation where there is captivity.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Using Moses as the traditional author because it is both easier and makes for more interesting story telling

[iii] Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 142. “Rephidim, the last station before Sinai…and, to judge from v.6, near Sinai.”

[iv] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “The place, Rephidim, not Horeb.”

[v] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Try. i.e. to test, demanding proof that God was present among them and controlling the events.”

[vi] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Massah and Meribah, meaning ‘The Place of Testing and Quarreling.’ These names, playing on the verbs ‘quarrel’ and ‘try’ used in v.2, became by words for Israel’s lack of trust in God.”

[vii] LW 11:55 “For to tempt in the hearts is something else than tempting in words. The children of Israel in the wilderness always doubted that they had been led out by the hand of the Lord indeed, they did not believe it…They came to this unbelief because they argued form a human point of view: ‘If the Lord were with us, and if we had been led out by the hand of the Lord, would we be bothered with hunger and thirst in this way? Would we thus lack everything? If the Lord had done it, we would undoubtedly have everything we want, and we would be in a land flowing with milk and honey, as He promised us. But no, since everything is opposite, it is not true that the lord has led us out, but you have done it.”

[viii] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Moses is to take some of the elders, perhaps as witnesses, and set out for Horeb (Sinai), ‘the mountain of God’ 3.1), to obtain water.”

[ix] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Strike the rock: In the Sinai there are limestone rocks from which small amounts of water drip, and a blow to their soft surface can expose a porous inner layer contained water. A similar but enigmatic episode, with differences suggesting that its an oral variant of this one, appears in Nu. 20.2-13…”

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It Is (in fact) Our Problem

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

NMP. “Not my problem.” Have you heard this phrase before? I’ve use it when I need to draw a line between me and the three human beings born from my own body. Sometimes it’s important for them to (safely) experience their own problems; I already passed 8th grade…it’s your turn. It’s also something I’ve had to learn to whisper in my various occupations, drawing necessary lines in the sand so I don’t lose myself to my job in one way or another. From what I’ve heard through therapy and therapy related news, being able to draw that line in the sand between what is yours to bear and what isn’t is healthy and actualized. So, there’s nothing sinister or contentious about NMP, until there is.

As fleshy, meat creatures working with a gray-matter unfit for our place in post-postmodernity with its technological advancement and emphasis on autonomous existence and identity, we tend to confuse what is and isn’t “my problem.” In other words, we often say NMP where MP would work better and MP where a good solid NMP would. What I’m getting at here is biblical, like Genesis 3 levels of biblical: when we ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we took on the burden of determining—apart from God—what is good and what is evil and history—both spiritual and temporal—have demonstrated that we’re kind of very bad at determining what is good and what is evil. Looking around, I’m not sure we even know if there is a difference between good and evil. And if this is so, I think we’ve also confused what is and what isn’t our problem.

We need to be reoriented in a serious way. We need to be brought back to the source of the knowledge of good and evil: God. And from there we need to walk carefully while navigating the world around us. Why? What does it have to do with you? Everything…absolutely, positively, everything. The earth is sick, people are being threatened and killed because of their religion or the color of their skin or their sexual orientation and identity in the world, and community (in any form) is circling the drain. Once these things go, we’re dead…in the water. We’ve been commanded and exhorted by God through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to love the land and our neighbors and care for them because they are among us and we’re among them. Yet, we refuse in the name of NMP. However, according to Jeremiah, this is very much a “you and me” problem.

Jeremiah 29:4-7

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Jeremiah is speaking to the deported Judeans who are in Babylon.[2] Rather than tell them to refuse to make the best of it, to ignore the things around them because they ain’t your problem, God, through Jeremiah, commands the Judeans to act as if they are home. Home. Exiled yet home.[3] They are to embrace both the fact that they are in this foreign land and are prevented from returning to Jerusalem (home), and embrace the land and the people around them, even the government and the state. Israel would have expected Jeremiah’s exhortation to seek the welfare of the city as an exhortation referring to Jerusalem (home). But it’s not. It’s referring to Babylon, the place that is definitely-not-home but now must-be-home.[4] The Judeans stuck in Babylon for another two generations are to take the issues and problems of Babylon onto themselves because those issues and problems are now their issues and problems. Anachronistically, Jeremiah is asking them to take up their cross and bear it, and that Cross carries the problems of the neighbor and the state. In taking up this “cross” the Judeans will make the issues and problems burdening Babylon and the Babylonians their own; like God, they will identify with the problem, plight, and pain burdening the people.

Why is Jeremiah exhorting the Judeans to bear this “cross”? Because the Judeans are falling prey to false prophets.[5] By exhorting the Judeans to get comfortable, build homes and families, and care for the welfare of the state, Jeremiah was dutifully giving the Judeans hope and encouragement,[6] which was an antidote to the poison the false prophets were offering. While the false prophets were promising easy solutions, quick ends, and creating antagonism between the Judeans and their surroundings, Jeremiah spoke God’s word of comfort and hope into this swirling chaos and tumult: God will come, Judah, so wait peacefully for God.[7] In the meantime… *waves hands around*

You see, for God, thus for Jeremiah, to identify with the burdens and problems of Babylon and its people worked to fortify Judah’s loyalty to God.[8] How So? Because Israel’s mission was to right the wrongs of the world through their faith inspired praxis in the world. How better to do that than to do so when one is in exile. Faith isn’t always focusing one’s eyes on God and refusing to see the problems and issues around you; faith isn’t about letting something burn because it doesn’t involve you because it’s not your land, or your people, or your problem. Faith builds beautiful things wherever it is and you are. And that’s because faith is in you, eager to work itself out in loving deeds everywhere, not just at your preferred home among your preferred people. So, Jeremiah exhorts the Judeans, your call is still valid…even here in Babylon.[9]

Conclusion

Jeremiah graciously reminds us that we’re fellow creatures with other creatures of the earth, especially with our fellow humans; and we are reminded that this link and connection is the very product of God’s love for us and our love for God. So, we must begin to see that the problems of the land, of creation, of those who suffer hunger, thirst, loneliness, isolation, deportation, exile, harm, threat, danger, and death are our problems…even if we don’t feel like we’re home or that we should care because, well, they made their choices so, w/e. So, in honor of Indigenous People’s Day, I want to close with the following Lakota creation myth; I believe it speaks to this exhortation to be and bring the divine love you have received into the world:[10]

There was another world before this one. But the people of that world did not behave themselves. Displeased, the Creating Power set out to make a new world. He sang several songs to bring rain, which poured stronger with each song. As he sang the fourth song, the earth split apart and water gushed up through the many cracks, causing a flood. By the time the rain stopped, all of the people and nearly all of the animals had drowned. Only Kangi the crow survived.

Kangi pleaded with the Creating Power to make him a new place to rest. So the Creating Power decided the time had come to make his new world. From his huge pipe bag, which contained all types of animals and birds, the Creating Power selected four animals known for their ability to remain under water for a long time.

He sent each in turn to retrieve a lump of mud from beneath the floodwaters. First the loon dove deep into the dark waters, but it was unable to reach the bottom. The otter, even with its strong webbed feet, also failed. Next, the beaver used its large flat tail to propel itself deep under the water, but it too brought nothing back. Finally, the Creating Power took the turtle from his pipe bag and urged it to bring back some mud.

Turtle stayed under the water for so long that everyone was sure it had drowned. Then, with a splash, the turtle broke the water’s surface! Mud filled its feet and claws and the cracks between its upper and lower shells. Singing, the Creating Power shaped the mud in his hands and spread it on the water, where it was just big enough for himself and the crow. He then shook two long eagle wing feathers over the mud until earth spread wide and varied, overcoming the waters. Feeling sadness for the dry land, the Creating Power cried tears that became oceans, streams, and lakes. He named the new land Turtle Continent in honor of the turtle who provided the mud from which it was formed.

The Creating Power then took many animals and birds from his great pipe bag and spread them across the Earth. From red, white, black, and yellow earth, he made men and women. The Creating Power gave the people his sacred pipe and told them to live by it. He warned them about the fate of the people who came before them. He promised all would be well if all living things learned to live in harmony. But the world would be destroyed again if they made it bad and ugly.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[2] Marvin A. Sweeney, The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 983.

[3] Sweeney, “Jeremiah”, 983. “Jeremiah’s letter begins with God’s instructions to accept life in Babylonia and to build lives and families there. The activities enumerated in vv. 5-6 are those of establishing a new home, indicating that for at least two generations Babylonia should be treated as home.”

[4] Sweeney, “Jeremiah”, 983. “The rhetoric of this verse is intended to shock—most people would have expected the words ‘And seek the welfare of the city’ to refer to Jerusalem, not to Babylon.”

[5] Sweeney, “Jeremiah”, 984. “The letter raises the issue of false prophets, a major theme of the preceding chs.”

[6] Rabbi Dr. H. Freedman, Jeremiah: with Hebrew text and English Translation, ed. Rev. Dr. A Cohen. Soncino Books of the Bible. 6th Impression (London: Soncino Press, 1970), 188. Jeremiah’s duty is to preach hope and encouragement to the people

[7] Freedman, Jeremiah, 188. “…[Jeremiah] was at the same time realistic, and deemed it his duty to warn the people not to delude themselves into thinking that the exile would come to a speedy end, as some false prophets were assuring them.”

[8] Freedman, Jeremiah, 189. Identifying with the interests of the country and loyal citizenship, “The fact that Jeremiah could urge this doctrine upon the exiles, while at the same time assuring them of their restoration after seventy years, indicates that in his mind no mutually exclusive dual loyalty was involved, but that on the contrary each fortified the other.”

[9] John Bright, Jeremiah: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible, eds. William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman (Garden City: Doubleday, 1965), 211. In this portion “…Jeremiah charges the exiles to disregard the wild promises of their prophets and to settle down for a long stay, pursuing a normal life as peaceable subjects of Babylon, and even praying to Yahweh for that country’s welfare…”

[10] Lakota Star Knowledge: http://www.crystalinks.com/nativeamcreation.html

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