2nd Sunday after Pentecost
My friend, Sarah, recently related to me her experience with having her DNA tested. She did the cheek swab with the elongated Q-tip with the odd foam end on it. She put it in the test tube filled with whatever it’s filled with to preserve the sample and to keep it from drying out. She sent it off to wherever you send it off to. And then she sat back and waited to get the email, notifying her that her sample had been processed and that her results were ready to review.
The day came and she went to the website, knowing already what it was that she would find. She knew all of her immediate relatives. She was more interested in the far-flung distant relatives, the ones resulting from the DNA of past generations spreading throughout the population. When you look at one of these reports on your “DNA Relatives”, they’re sorted in descending fashion by both age and by those with whom you share the most DNA to those with whom you share the least. So, for example, when I look at mine, the first two relatives listed are my Mom and Dad with whom I share 49.99% and 47.39% of my DNA respectively. Next on the list is my mother’s half-sister, with whom I share 13.25% of my DNA. But then there’s my nephew, my oldest sister’s oldest child, who shares 26.37%.
Sarah was the first in her immediate family to submit her DNA for testing, so neither her parents nor her brother were present on the list. The first ones to pop up were some first cousins. In Tennessee. The only problem was that she didn’t have any cousins in Tennessee. Well, at least none that she knew of. Not until she saw the results right in front of her. She felt her stomach drop. Her heart began to race, and she started sweating. What did this mean for her and her understanding of not only who she was, but who her parents were? It was an identity crisis of the deepest sort. She finally worked up the nerve to talk to her mother and father about it. After a long, honest conversation, she learned that the man who had raised her, the man she knew as her father, was not the same man who had donated roughly half of his DNA to her existence. I won’t go into all the details about how this came to be. But I will say that Sarah came away from the conversation with a deeper understanding of and a more abiding love for both her mother and her father.
The identity crisis faced by Israel is not so very different. Here they were, the children of Abraham. Here they were, the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham while he was still a wandering nomadic tribal leader. From those humble roots, they had grown into one of the most formidable political and military powers in the Middle East, just like God had promised (at least in their eyes).
And then, they weren’t. So, what happened? The simplest answer to that is that the Covenant happened. What does that mean? What led to the destruction of Israel? We have only to look to the prophets, who Linda preached about last week!
On the one hand, the sins of the people were personal. In chapt. 4:1 of the book of Amos the prophet writes, “1 Hear this word, you cows of Bashan who are on Mount Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to their husbands, “Bring something to drink!”
The prophet Ezekiel charges, “48 As I live, says the Lord GOD, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. 49 This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:48-49)
Hosea tells us how the Priests had abandoned their responsibilities: “4 Yet let no one contend, and let none accuse, for with you is my contention, O priest. 5 You shall stumble by day; the prophet also shall stumble with you by night, and I will destroy your mother. 6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” (Hosea 4:4-6)
The courts likewise had lost all credibility in God’s eyes: “9 Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, 10 who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong! 11 Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the LORD and say,
“Surely the LORD is with us! No harm shall come upon us.” (Micah 3:9-11)
But the sins were national, as well. The people failed to look to God for their security and their moral compass. Instead, they trusted in their fortifications and weapons to protect them. “14 Israel has forgotten his Maker, and built palaces; and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour his strongholds”, writes Hosea 8:14
They made alliances right and left with surrounding nations. Again it’s Hosea who writes, “11 Ephraim has become like a dove, silly and without sense; they call upon Egypt, they go to Assyria.” (Hosea 7:11)
The powerful made it a practice to exploit the weak and invest in building palatial homes for themselves. Amos rails against them, “10 They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth. 11 Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.” (Amos 5:10-11)
Again, what happened to the people of Israel was the Covenant. God knew what the people were doing. And while the people quickly fell away from the requirements of the Covenant, God did not. In fact, God showed tremendous forbearance for the people, sending prophet after prophet to warn of what was to come; To remind both the people and the leadership of Israel of what was expected of them as the recipients of God’s covenant love. In Deuteronomy 15 God says:
“15 But if you will not obey the LORD your God by diligently observing all his commandments and decrees, which I am commanding you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you: 16 Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. 17 Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 18 Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock. 19 Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. 20 The LORD will send upon you disaster, panic, and frustration in everything you attempt to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me… 25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out against them one way and flee before them seven ways. You shall become an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 Your corpses shall be food for every bird of the air and animal of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away. 27 The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with ulcers, scurvy, and itch, of which you cannot be healed. 28 The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind; 29 you shall grope about at noon as blind people grope in darkness, but you shall be unable to find your way; and you shall be continually abused and robbed, without anyone to help. 30 You shall become engaged to a woman, but another man shall lie with her. You shall build a house, but not live in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but not enjoy its fruit. (Deuteronomy 28:15-20, 25-30)
In a final act of frustration, God permits the covenant curses to go into effect in order to get the people’s attention so that they might be drawn back to God. God’s people had forgotten how good God had been to them. They’d forgotten how God had fed them and cared for them during their time in the wilderness. After they settled in the land of Canaan, their memories of God’s caring love were emptied as fast as they were able to fill their stomachs and the rest of their lives with good things. To get their attention, God would allow their enemies to overtake them. Their fortresses will be flattened, their weapons will be smashed, and their alliances will be torn to shreds. Their expensive houses will be torn down and their expansive vineyards will be torn up. The prophets warn that everything will be turned to rubble.
And?... The people ignore the warnings. The devastation begins to unfold.
In 721 BCE, the Assyrians devastate the Northern Kingdom of Israel and lead her citizens into exile. They are never heard of again. They simply disappear. The commoners were left to work the land and labor. They eventually mixed with the Assyrians who came into the area and eventually became the people known as Samaritans.
In 597 and again in 587 BCE, the Babylonians, under Nebuchadnezzar, devastate Judah, the Southern Kingdom, and cart away the leadership and intelligentsia into exile in Babylon. The common people are left to continue working the fields.
Suddenly, the religious and political leaders of Judah were faced with an identity crisis. What did this mean for them as the people of God? Religious power and political power went hand in hand. Did this mean that their God was not the all-powerful, all-knowing deity they thought God to be? What would God do about the covenant made with David? What did it mean that the Temple, the very seat of the power of God, was destroyed? Did God really exist? Did God really care about Israel? Should they forsake the God they had worshipped in Jerusalem and worship the Babylonian gods?
To add to their disappointment and frustration, when they finally did return to the land and Jerusalem, they discovered that little had been done in terms of repair and restoration since their departure. They returned to a wasteland.
Exile is harsh medicine, and it forced the exile community to evaluate and re-evaluate what had happened. They finally realized that their exile was a result of their having turned their backs on God and God’s covenant. So, they considered what was necessary in order to prevent the same kind of thing from happening again. They devoted themselves to the Temple, its restoration, and the resumption of sacrifices as demanded by the Law. They devoted themselves to studying the Torah and the writings of the prophets, not only so as to discover how this could have befallen them, but also in order to discover how to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. And the priests and the scribes devoted themselves to studying and teaching the law. Unfortunately, adherence to the law was emphasized to such an extreme degree that they began to lose sight of the ideas of covenant and grace. Many people thought that, through obedience, they could manipulate God. Many saw the law codes as a merit system. If they were obedient, they would never again suffer calamities like exile. Additionally, obedience would encourage God to send their Messiah.
It was this ever-deepening attitude towards the law that Jesus sought to correct when he taught and preached about a God personified as love. A God who loves, not because of what have done or not done, but a God who loves simply for the sake of love. A love that leads us and strengthens us to live as God would have us live, and thus fulfilling the law of Love.
AMEN