St. John’s United Church of Christ

June 8, 2008

A Sermon by the Rev. John Krueger

Holy Land; Disputed Land                                              Genesis 12:1-9

On Thursday we returned from a week-long trip to Germany, courtesy of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia.  They are interested in knowing more about Interim Ministry, a concept very new to them.

In Westphalia they have more ministers than places for them to minister, (attention Search Committee!), and that tends to encourage long pastorates, 30 years or longer.  Therefore their need for Interim Ministers has been quite different and they wanted to know what we are learning.

On very short notice, I was asked to lead a workshop, the previously chosen presenter not able to attend.  So we flew into Dusseldorf, stayed in Bielefeld, taught in Schwerte, and now are home again, getting used to this time zone.

The cities of Germany were all badly damaged, destroyed, in World War II.  I marveled at how many of those historic buildings have now been rebuilt, very authentically in many ways, but pictures of the destruction are stark.  That war began as the Nazi regime decided that additional land was worth the lives of soldiers and civilians to get that land.  The German armies marched into the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Russia.  The lust for land, more land, more power, a greater empire prompted this tragic war.

This story in Genesis has been the bone of contention in the Middle East for a long, long time.  Abram is told to leave Haran, in present day Iraq, to follow what he believed was God’s guidance to come to a promised land of God’s choosing.  “…in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram sets out with family and possessions and ends up in what we call The Holy Land.  This special place has some land marks like Shechem, the oak of Moreh, Bethel and Ai, places that would play an important role in the later history of the Hebrew people.  “To your offspring I will give this land,” is the promise, which now forms the basis for the claim for that land by the nation of Israel.

When Israel was created in 1948 it seemed the right thing to do, providing a safe haven and a national home for Jewish people who had suffered so greatly under the genocide of the Nazi regime.  Most of the world had not protested this plan to exterminate the Jewish people.  Six million had been systematically killed, so why not find a place for them to live in peace?  And the logical place was this land promised to Abram, this land of Canaan.

However there are two significant complications.  First, note the interesting detail in the story in verse 6:  “At that time the Canaanites were in the land.”

This is not vacant real estate, empty ground.  There are already people who dwell there, making a living of herding and farming.  Abram doesn’t settle down and build a new town for he is a herder like they are, moving from place to place with his flocks.  They live in tents, not houses, nomads with no permanent roots.

And they live among those Canaanites who were there first, living side by side in sort of an uneasy truce as long as there was enough grass to go around.  Hundreds of years later the truce comes to an end when David finally is able to wrest control from the Canaanites and the surrounding people who contested their national interests.

David creates the Hebrew Kingdom, the glory days of the Hebrews when he captures Jerusalem from the Jebusites and makes that city the seat of his kingdom.

The same thing happens when Israel is created in 1948.  The land is not unoccupied land but has been the homeland for the Palestinians for hundreds and hundreds of years.  Boat loads of Jewish refugees come to Israel to form a new nation, to create new lives for themselves, but the land they are given is land that had been Palestinian property.  Palestinians become the new refugees as they are moved out of their homes, off their land to refugee camps, the grandchildren of some of them living there 60 years later. 

Holy Land; Disputed Land.  Serious efforts are being made to find some peaceful solution, two states, Jewish and Palestinian, both legitimate, both living side by side, and both with bitter memories and fearful futures.

The way forward may be the second complication I talked about.  In verse 7 it says, “To your offspring I will give this land.”  Who are the rightful heirs of Abram?  Certainly the Jewish people, for Abram is one of their primary patriarchs, so Jewish people can and do claim right of succession.  But Muslim people also claim Abram as their spiritual father.  They also trace back a family tree that ends with Abram, so they are also heirs, children of Abram.  And we Christians also say we are the descendants of Abram.  In both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke there is a genealogy of Jesus, tracing back the family tree of Jesus.  In both genealogies you will find Abram, or Abraham.

So we Christians could claim the Holy Land as Christian Land, as the Jews see it as Jewish Land, and the Muslims see it as Muslim Land.  Each of us is an heir of the promise to Abram and his descendants.

I am told this is not prime real estate, this Holy Land, not really.  There is no oil, not much rainfall, and pretty rocky soil, but it is Holy Land.  It is land that has provided space for the great stories of our faith, space for Jewish stories, Muslim stories, and Christian stories.

And each great world faith would like to hold sway there.  The Christians tried in the Crusades of the Middle Ages.  The Muslims have been there, on and off, for 1500 years, and the Jewish people are there for the past 60 years.  Holy Land; Disputed Land.

There is a real estate practice in which land is not owned but rather leased.  I understand that is true of much of the land in Hawaii – you own the house, and you live on a piece of land for which you have a 99 year lease.

In the theology of creation we state that God created the world and everything in it, meaning that it started as God’s property and it remains God’s property.  We have created systems and structures for the dividing and buying and selling of land.  We value land, for land represents stability, and status and a place we can call home.

But the possession of land has created all kinds of grief for the human family, all sorts of mischief.  Do the apples from your apple tree that drop of my side of the fence belong to me?  Am I accountable for the water that drains from my land on your land?  Why don’t you control your dandelions from spoiling my yard?

Small, petty issues, perhaps.  How about a Greater Deutschland, with more territory?  How about the expanded influence of American power?  How about places where people can live in peace, and none will make them afraid?

We have much to learn from Jesus, the Prince of Peace.  He never owned any property, yet the whole world was his.  He always thought about the neighbor, first.      He always pointed to the God who created this world and so loved it that God sent God’s son for it.

All land is Holy Land, special land, holy space.  All land is God’s land, loaned to us for a time, always God’s gift to us, a gift we can give to those who follow us.  May we learn to become better and better stewards of this land, this Holy Land, this gift of a gracious God.  And may our stewardship of the land fulfill God’s desire that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”