Rev Hugh Perry – February 2019 – St Martins
Readings
Genesis
45:3-11,15
Luke
6: 27-38.
Sermon
Writing
of our Genesis reading in his book The
Old Testament in Aotearoa New Zealand
Maurice Andrew says:
This
is the Joseph story’s version of one of the Bible’s most salient
characteristics: that life for all can emerge from the wrong that
people do to each other. A people can continue when those who have
been wronged look beyond this and go to great lengths to resolve
conflict. God’s role in such a process is revealed in the
experience and interpretation of those most clearly involved.1
Like
the story itself those are wise words to cherish at a time when the
world seems to have its fair share of chaos caused by the wrong that
people do to each other.
It
is also worth reflecting on the reality that it is the genesis of the
Exodus Saga where an alien people are welcomed into the land because
of the skills a member of the family brings. But future generations
of that family will be despised and exploited as slaves. Eventually
they will become so numerous that they will be perceived as a threat
to the ruling elite. Because they were Egyptian born Pharaoh
couldn’t build a wall to keep these surplus aliens out, so he
reverted to infanticide in an attempt to control their numbers. It
wasn’t till they actually left that he realised they had a massive
labour shortage and sent the army to bring them back.
We
face similar dilemmas in our contemporary world. We don’t want
immigrants because we fear they will take our jobs. But without
immigrants Pharaoh didn’t have enough workers to build pyramids and
we don’t have enough workers to harvest crops and build homes for
the homeless.
What
we easily forget is that we are all immigrants or the descendants of
immigrants. That is more apparent in New Zealand with our relatively
short history, but history and anthropology tells us that, with the
possible exception of a few hunter gatherers in Central Africa, all
Homo Sapiens have at one time or another come from somewhere else.
Along that journey and probably for good reason, we learned to be
suspicious of people we did not recognise as ‘us’ and to seek
retribution against those who did us harm.
According
to Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens2
that ‘them and us’ response to others along with a system of
limited retribution for wrongs worked fine while humanity wandered
around in small groups. However, when agriculture drew people into
settled locations and towns and villages replaced temporary camp
sites, people needed the structured organisation and laws that
eventually led to the global community we now live in.
This
formation of cities and empires needed religion to pull diverse
people together and religion was created and supported by stories.
Judaism,
Islam and Christianity were three such religions that provided the
laws and ethics that significantly contributed to the formation of a
global human community. According to Harari Christianity, with its
Pauline evangelistic focus, was the most significant. Our two
readings clearly show the development of ideas that support a wider
community over clan and reconciliation over retribution.
From
Hebrew text we have the story of Joseph’s reunion with his
brothers. That story of reconciliation sets the scene for the Jewish
Jesus to move ethics and empathy to an unexpected level in Luke’s
‘Sermon on the Plain’.
In
his book Harari follows the development of early humanity through the
‘in group’ ‘out group’ response of small family clans. In
that context violence was limited by a retribution systems like the
Maori Utu where revenge was limited to mirroring the violence
committed.
If
your cousin killed a member of another clan that clan is intitled to
kill you, your sibling or another cousin to restore the balance. The
retribution does not have to target the actual killer as long as the
clan suffers a similar loss.
It
does not take much imagination to see how such an arrangement could
escalate into intergenerational vengeance. One reprisal just needs to
be judged excessive for a new reprisal is instigated, which in turn
is deemed to be unjust.
In
her biography of Muhammad renowned religious writer Karen Armstrong
quotes the limitation of tribunal vendettas as one of the motives for
the uniting of the Arab tribes under Islam.
But
that’s not just an ancient Middle East phenomenon. In his
autobiography Drawn Out Tom Scott draws himself into a cartoon of an
Irish Pub where someone is telling him of the atrocities committed
against his family and promises that if he gets the chance, he will
tear their hearts out with his bare hands. The cartoon Scott is
horrified and asks, ‘When did this happen.’ To which his drinking
companion responds, ‘About four hundred years ago’.
We
can laugh about that except that when the sentence is announced after
most high-profile trials the news media hounds those who feel
affected by the crime and asks if they feel ‘that they have
closure.’ The answer is usually ‘no’.
We
still struggle to understand that justice and revenge are not the
same thing. Our society seeks to rehabilitate those who have
committed crimes, but our instincts want retribution.
It
was not until religion created stories like the rehabilitation of
Joseph that convinced people that the divine plan was for people to
reconcile their differences. It was only then that humanity was able
unite clans into tribes and tribes into nations.
The story of Joseph’s reconciliation with his brother might seem obvious, or even trivial in the grander scheme of things. But grudges are still held within families in our time. By the time I was married both my parents had died so my father in law asked my uncle who he knew if he and his wife would stand in for my parents at the wedding. Unfortunately, my other surviving uncle felt that as the older brother he should have stood in for my Dad. Those two brothers had been best mates and regularly visited each other throughout their lives but from that point on they never spoke to each other again. That was a sad but violence free family tiff but if you have ever watched a number of episodes of Midsummer Murders you will understand that most murders occur within the family. Furthermore, New Zealand has an appalling record of violence within intimate relationships.
The
rules spelled out in Leviticus strongly condemn family violence in
line with our reading from Genesis. The classic line quoted in
Jesus’ response to the lawyer in Mark and Matthew is Leviticus
19:18 which states ‘you shall not take vengeance or bare a grudge
against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as
yourself: I am Yahweh your God.
We
can see by that final phrase that this is not recorded as some tribal
rule that can be up for debate. It is a divine command. We should
also note that it is about the way people must treat family and
neighbours because the Hebrew Scripture is full of stories about how
those who are not part of the family or the neighbourhood can be
treated.
In
fact, if we allow our imagination to take us inside the story, I
think Joseph’s brothers were most concerned that, in selling him
into slavery they had cast him out of their family. Therefore, he
was free from any constraint to revenge that family obligation and
the laws of Leviticus might provide.
In
Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount Jesus quotes the tradition of his
time as ‘you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy’
(Matthew 5: 43)
Jesus
then goes on to say, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for
those who persecute you. (Matthew 4:44)
We
are focussed this morning on Luke’s alternative ‘The Sermon on
the Plain’ where, in the opening verse, Jesus repeats the verse
from Matthew and then goes on to command that we are to ‘do good to
those who hate us and bless those who curse us. Then in verse 29 he
suggests that ‘if anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other
also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even
your shirt.’ So not only is retribution out generosity is in.
Much
as these statements from Jesus in Matthew and Luke are revolutionary,
they went a long way to make Christianity important in facilitating
humanity’s move towards the global village we find ourselves in
today. But people spend an awful lot of effort finding their way
around regulations. It is therefore not surprising that we find
lawyers drawing these statements out of Jesus. It is also a lawyer’s
question in chapter 10 that prompts Luke’s Jesus to tell a story,
‘The Good Samaritan’, (Luke 10:25-37) to ground and fill out the
essence of the regulations from our reading.
A
story can always carry much more information and elicit a deeper
response than bland statements or regulations. Furthermore, a story
can be a complete figment of someone’s imagination but it still
produce a response in the imagination of the listener. A response
that changes people’s behaviour for generations to come.
That
is why the gospel writers took the sayings of Jesus and wrote stories
around them. Even today’s reading from Luke, which reads like a
list of instructions, belongs in a story context.
Jesus
went up the mountain and prayed all night and in the morning he
called his disciples together and chose twelve which he also named
apostles. Then he came down the mountain with them to a level place
and a great crowd gathered round him. They came to hear him and to
be healed. They all tried to touch him because power came out of him.
Jesus
then looked at his disciples and began the instructions for Christian
living we have read from.
Framing
these rules within a story gives them a place in the development of
the revolutionary ideas that became Christianity. A religion that
united people and empires across Europe and out into the wider world
with European colonialism. The Christian faith helped build empires
that, for all their brutality, saw it as their duty to not just
conquer diverse peoples but to bring the benefits of empire to the
conquered people.
India were pleased to throw off the yoke of the British Empire but it had united diverse tribes into one nation, and as we have just been reminded they still play cricket with skill and passion.
But
more important than the power of Institutionalised Christianity and
its often-brutal contribution to the development of a global human
community is the contribution of individual Christians.
Throughout
Christianity’s two thousand years history there have been
individual people inspired by the stories that are the foundation of
the faith. The sayings of Jesus, the stories he told and the stories
of Judaism in which Jesus own religious understanding was grounded.
Such people have kept the faith alive in its darkest times and been
true beacons of hope that have contributed not just to the
development of humanity but, a more compassionate and caring
humanity.
It
can be argued that Friedrich Nietzsche’s statement that God is Dead
meant that Christianity was replaced by humanism. But things are
never that simple and humanism was grounded in Christianity.
Furthermore, Christianity exists alongside humanism and as the
influence of humanism fades to be replaced by capitalism, consumerism
and the communication revolution, individual Christians and the
Church still have a part to play.
The
worldwide human community is evolving, and the influence of the
church has certainly diminished within that evolution. But the fact
that Jesus named only twelve apostles reminds us that small can be
good.
We
are still called by the Christ within us to be the salt that flavours
the journey of humanity towards the people we are all divinely called
to be.
1
Maurice Andrew The Old Testament in Aotearoa New Zealand
(Wellington: DEFT 1999)p.80
2
Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
(London: Vintage Books 2011)
