A History of the Samaritans: A Reflection on the attack on Emanuel AME Church

A History of the Samaritans: A Reflection on the attack on Emanuel AME Church

(Please understand this is written in the same vein as “Paul’s Letter to American Christians”)

This morning I woke up, and found a first century non-sectarian scroll entitled, “A History of the Samaritans” on my kitchen table. This is the translation. If it sounds more Halversonian than Hebraic, I am to blame. The brackets are portions of the text that are missing and I have restored.

A History of the Samaritans

            After today’s [at]tack on the Samaritan Temple, it’s worth considering their history and our own.

            [Th]ey did not come here escaping Phar[aoh]—seeking a promised land. In fact, their journey here is quite the reverse. They came from the nations of the East, drug here in chains by the Assyrians after their own cities were conquered, just as the 10 northern tribes were conquered and dispersed. On that journey from there to here, that MiddlePassage, many of them died, all of them were devastated. They were placed on foreign soil so they would be away from their gods and their land, familiesspit up, nothing familiar, rendered helpless so that they might be used in the fields.

            [They soon] converted to a form of Judaism. They did this for their safety; lions were eating them and they believed these attacks were the work of the god of this land. So they called upon him in their distress and were saved. For this conversion under pressure, we called them “Lion Jews,” those Samaritans. We claim their priests are deficient, their traditions insufficient, their religion suspect. But, I wonder, if we do so out of jealousy. Essene, Sadducee, and Pharisee all agree that they are more pious than us. They lack the history and tradition going way back (though some say they too were monotheists, some even go so far as to say they too were Jewish, like us. They claim we simply didn’t listen to them when they arrived, that their otherness began with our rejection of them—rejection of our siblings of the faith), but the Spirit is with them in ways that it seems we can only pick up second hand. Perhaps many of us lack the existential level of trust in the LORD that comes from being saved from Lions and finding temple as the last safe space in a world that is rarely safe.

            [The thi]ngs we did to them in the Maccabean period, LORD, have mercy. The slightest interaction between Jew andSamaritan brought torture and death. Accusations of rape led to so many of them hanging on trees, accu[rsed.] Their temples attacked, worshippers attacked.

            [These days w]e say those strugglesare done. These days we say with Rome’s boot upon our necks, those differences are secondary. We say these things until radicals push us. Radicals like that the Pharisee, Jesus, who told stories about Samaritans, saying they and we are neighbors, and spent time with them. Then again there are rumors he and hisfollowers were Samaritans, he was from Galilee after all. They all have at least one drop of Samaritan in them, and for most that’s still enough.

            [For that] matter, we say it’s “all good” between Jew and Samaritan, but the things they say about Herod the Half Jew, our leader. The ways the Zealots talk about “taking our country back.” It’s not “all good.”

            Again, I think about the attack of yesterday. This man, flesh of my flesh, of the same faith as I, did this thing—killing those 9 Samaritans. It’s not an event that materialized out of thin air.

            Think of it. That particular templehad been attacked in the Macc[abean] period too. There is a long history of violence on our part against the Samaritans. He accused them of rape—pointing back to the Judas Maccabeus and his band. He talked of taking his country back. If you stand on any street corner in Jerusalem you can hear someone saying it “take our country back.” It’s a watchword, so common we don’t even hear it, even when it comes out of our own mouths.

            Even if the man who did this deed was possessed by a demon, that demon fed on our past and present, which we refuse to acknowledge or address.

            Over these things I weep,

            My eyes gush with tears upon tears.

            My soul and my belly and my bones,

            All cry out with sorrow.

            Oh Comforter, be not far from the mourners

            Oh Merciful LORD, draw near those in deepest need.

            Look not on our iniquities

            Make us look upon them

            Turn us in our tears

            Turn us from our sins

            They are many and great

            As the stars are many

            As the deep is great

            So is the depths of all of this

            Cleanse us with the most hyssop

            Allow us to rebuild the walls

            That all may be inside

            Comfort O Comfort my people

            He is Defender of the lowly

            Our LORD, Caretaker of the widow and orphan

            My soul fails

            My heart is distressed

            All people groan

            All cry for mercy

            All cry “Lord, how long?”

Sermon: The Self-Binding God

        In light of the recent beheading of 21 Coptic Christians and the rumors of organ harvesting coming out of the region controlled by Daesh, commonly called ISIS here in the states.

         In light of the attacks on cartoonists and Jews now in two different countries, France and Denmark.

         In light of Daesh burning a Jordanian pilot alive.

         In light of the thousands slaughtered in Iraq and Syria.

         In light of the attempted Genocide of the Yazidi.

         In light of the beheading of Journalists and other foreigners.

         In light of the kidnapping of the two Bishops from Aleppo, now nearly 2 years ago.

          In light of all that, it’s worth considering again how these kind of things can be done in the name of God.

         Let us pray.

         When I first was reading the Bible on my own as a young kid, before I was firmly connected with a Church community or tradition, at night when I was supposed to be asleep, I would just randomly open up the Bible and read—this is how I rebelled against my parents as a 8 year old.

         Often times I ran into cool stories, Jesus getting the best of some Religious stick in the mud, or I ran into a cool proverbs that really made me think—it was great fun…

but sometimes I ran into some totally creepy stuff—The Book of Revelation, rules about menstrual blood, descriptions of situations when it is advisable to stone a person to death

—and the one that gave me nightmares for a good long time, was about the practice of Haram, the act of sacred destruction. When you conquer a village, take everything in it, both things and people, and put them to the flame.

Now, I would have read right past it, except it goes on and gives an example of when a soldier took some things and didn’t utterly destroy them. God gets mad at the people until the soldier is punished by joining the objects in the flames.

         And, if we get past the cute children’s story version of events we have about Noah—you know all those children’s arks with cute little Giraffes and Elephants and smiling Noah and family

—if you get past all that, the flood story is another one of those stories that could give a kid nightmares.

         Angels are boinking humans, humans are killing one another left, right, and center, so God flushes the whole experiment down the toilet.

         It must be stated that the first 12 chapters of Genesis are written as pre-history—essentially, “you’ve heard all these explanations of the world from other peoples, here’s a faithful reading of them, in light of the God we know.”

So, for example, “you’ve heard it said the god Marduke created earth by tearing apart a chaos dragon, well I say to you God isn’t a fighting God, God creates simply with his words.”

Likewise, as in today’s reading, “You’ve heard it said in the Epic of Gilgemesh, and elsewhere, that the gods were grumpy because humans are loud, so they tried to drown us all, and it was only because a human seduced a goddess that humans survived, but I say to you, the wickedness of humans brought about a just response, yet God was merciful and started again with a new covenant, a new relationship, with humans and the earth—God doesn’t give up on us.”

         So, when you read vast swaths of scripture it’s worth noting what they’re being written in response to… None the less, it’s gruesome, “all flesh cut off,” the deadly bow of God.

         And as you all know there are plenty of times when the faithful have not put down the bow.

         Because I believe it might be a useful analogy to help us understand what’s currently going on in the Middle East, I would like us to think back for a few moments to the period during, and immediately after, Luther’s Reformation.

         Before Luther, Jan Hus was burnt at the stake for offering his parishioners both bread and wine at communion.

         If Luther hadn’t been taken into hiding after his famous declaration at his trial, “Here, I stand, I can do no other, God help me. Amen,” that would have been his fate as well. Some early Lutherans were in fact killed in just such a fashion.

         John Calvin, the founder of Presbyterianism, burnt Michael Servetus alive for not believing in the Trinity or in child baptism.

         Lutherans carried out the persecution of Mennonites.

         In general, Christians of all sorts took up the Sacred Bow against one another,

The Faithful were used by secular governments to further national ends,

and likewise, the religious used secular governments to further their religious ends.

         From 1555, when the Peace of Augsburg claimed to settle the question of religious persecution, until 1648 at the Peace of Westphalia, almost 100 years—inter-religious war depopulated Germany, and killed, by some estimates, 12 million Europeans.

All in the name of God.

         For that matter, it wasn’t for another 200 years that, at the 1^st Vatican Council in 1870, the Pope gave up his claim to secular power.

        

         Now this is just me talking, but it seems like one of the big questions for “The West” and all those governing authorities in our country, since the Iranian Revolution in ‘79, or perhaps the Lockerbie Bombing ‘88, or maybe the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, is this:

         “How do you navigate, and/or contain, the Islamic equivalent of the European Wars of Religion, in an Era of Globalization, Mass Immigration, the Internet, and Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

         Obviously I do not have a set of answers for you all, it’s way above my pay grade…

This is why we pray for those who govern nations, especially our own; they have an unenviable job.

         All of these acts of violence and destruction in the name of God, ought to be Anathema—denounced, condemned, and cursed.

         Because God puts down the bow. God binds God’s-self with a vow, that never again will God destroy the world, never again will God take up that bow.

Think of that, God limiting God’s self!

         This is the true story of the faith, it is the hope always on the lips of those who preach the Gospel

—that God favors mercy over justice. God limit’s God’s self, for our sake.

         During the season of Lent we’ll see this again and again in the readings from the Hebrew Scriptures. God will say:

“Okay, I renewed all of creation after the flood… and that didn’t work for you all, so I’ll work through Abraham and his family.”

“Okay, you guys screwed that up too… I’ll lay down 10 basic rules for you all.”

“Okay, you’re still complaining in the wilderness… I’ll create a batch of miracles to save you from yourselves.”

“Okay, this still isn’t working… I’ll jam my covenant into your hearts, so you can’t find it to break it.”

And even then, it continues, until God sends Jesus, his son, who continually forgives us.

Even then, we kill him.

And even then, God provides for us, taking the death of Jesus as payment for all of our sins!

         And surely that would be enough, but God continues this trajectory of mercy over justice, as we read in that weird bit in 1^st Peter.

         Christ descends to hell, preaching even to the Spirits bound in chains there! Jesus ripping apart hell itself! That’s the power of the Word of God.

         Think of it. If God tries to convert Djinns and Demons in the depths of hell, surely we can pray for the redemption of Daesh.

         In fact, a good place to start, might be to remind them, and us, of Noah’s words, as recorded in the Quran, the 71^st chapter: “Ask forgiveness of your LORD. Indeed, He is ever a Perpetual Forgiver.”

        

         Yes, there is much violence done in the name of God.

Violence committed because God’s mercy is being ignored.

Yet truly, for the faithful, this is an impossible thing they do—to ignore God’s mercy,

Because God’s merciful acts are the linchpin of the entire story of Scripture.

God, merciful to Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jeremiah.

God’s mercy shown in total, in Jesus’ righteous actions and words.

Jesus’ death, the ultimate act of self-limiting on God’s part.

Jesus’ descent to the dead to Harrow Hell and pull from the pit a people imprisoned.

And of course, that amazing act of God we prepare for, this Lenten season

—the Resurrection, which is God’s ultimate promise of mercy to us. Amen.

Channeling Ezekiel

I was born during a time of great hope:

the Assyrian menace was receding.

King Josiah brought Judah back to the ways of God.

He even “found” the book of Deuteronomy,

So we could know more fully how to be God’s people.

My priestly family was overjoyed.

          But, that didn’t last. By the time I was a man, a new Empire arose and annexed Assyria and threatened us all. The Babylonians butted up against the walls of Jerusalem, and eventually we submitted.

The royal family and the priestly houses, including my own, were taken away, kidnapped…

At the age of 25 I was kidnapped, taken from the temple along with its wealth, taken as Ransom—taken away to Babylon.

          Babylon.

          Babylon, that mighty city.

          That mighty city where our captors tormented us

          Asking us to play them a song:

          “Sing us one of those songs of your mighty Zion,” they’d say to us.

          How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

          Could we even remember Jerusalem?

          Could we speak of the Joy of the LORD, so far off?

          And after a time, these taunts and our responses to them, grew darker—new Exiles came to join us,

They told of the complete destruction of Jerusalem, and the destruction of God’s house,

my Home,

the Temple

—destroyed.

          When our captors laughed, “Sing us a song.”

          All we could do was remember the pain of Jerusalem’s destruction.

          How it was torn down,

          That the walls fell

          The devastation by Babylon was total.

          All we could do was seek revenge,

          Yearn for pay back

          Even as we were captive in Babylon

          Locked away in the belly of the beast.

          We captives couldn’t sleep, it cut us so deeply, cut us to the core. We fought amongst ourselves, the first group of captives and the second, blaming one another, calling each other apostates.

          We’d wake up numb, or in cold sweats, from dreams of the death and destruction, hearts racing.

          The fetters they’d bound us with for the journey from our home to this hell never really left us, there was iron in our soul and we felt the captivity in our bones.

          We felt the captivity in our bones and believed God could not cross the desert to be with us.

          Then God responded.

Let us pray.

          When we first entered Babylon we were overawed by the giant Lamassus that guard the gates—a giant clay figure, a mix of Bull, Lion, Eagle, and Man, a sort of Babylonian Sphinx—it made us cower at our captor’s power.

          God responded by giving me a vision—Four Lamassus came in the night—tethered with invisible tethers.

Tethered as we were tethered on our trek from Jerusalem to Babylon,

as we were still tethered, our psychological bondage

—they were tethered like horses to a chariot—

What a chariot!

—the Temple itself,

my temple

—the place where God’s fullness, God’s heaviness, God’s glory resides

—the temple was the chariot—God followed us—on His inexpressible throne, followed us from Jerusalem to Babylon—God was with us, even then. God’s glory was mobile,

God’s throne had wheels.

         

          And that vision began a new chapter in my life—

God took those feverish dreams of destruction and replaced them with visions from heaven!

          And I want to tell you about one of them today.

          I was plucked up by the hand of God and put down amongst the slaughtered masses of our sisters and brothers—those killed by the Babylonians—the wrecked remains of our nation—mass graves.

          I saw the dusty remains of uncles and aunts, all picked clean by birds and by time—by the decades since our separation.

          They were so dry—they’d been dead for so long

—we’d been separated from the Promised Land and the Temple of God for so long.

          “Can these bones live?” Asked God.

          “You know,” I responded.

         

          “Prophecy to them.”

          Imagine that

—say what you never got to say

—speak to the dead,

speak to the horror we experienced,

speak to the loss.

          And I spoke.

          A rattling so loud it spoke to the wideness of our anguish came up echoing in that valley. They were united together again, bone to bone, then muscle to muscle, tendon to tendon, flesh and skin together all of it.

          There they were.

          A mass of our relatives

—the very people of God

—there in front of me.

          Yet they just stood there

—inanimate,

 unanimated,

without spirit.

          It was then it hit me, they were us too

—here in Babylon, separated, a mass of men with eyes gone dead,

the wholesome spark of life snuffed out by sorrow.

just standing, but cut off from the breath of God.

We’d become just like them here in Babylon, tired inanimate corpses.

          But then I prophesied again, to the wind from every time and place,

To the breath of God that has been with us from the beginning,

To the Spirit that hovered over the deep

I prophesied saying, “breathe upon these slain, that they may live, that we may live.”

          And the LORD God said to me,

“This is the whole house of Israel—the people of God

They may say that their innermost being is dried up and has went away

They may say that their hope is lost,

They may say that they are cut off from the land and from my promises

Well Mortal, say this to them:

“I’m going to open your graves,

I’m going to bring you up from your graves.

You are my people!

My people, I will bring you back to the land that appears lost.

And you shall know that I am the LORD,

Because I, and I alone, am the one who opens graves

I, and I alone, bring up from Sheol

O my people.

My people, I will put my spirit within you.

My people I will enliven you.

My people I will plant you back in your native soil

Then, my people, you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken

And that I, the LORD, shall act.”    Amen.

Some Thoughts on the Noah Film (SPOILER ALERT)

There are better reviews of the movie out there, so I’ll just touch on a few pieces of the movie that interested me.

It was Enochian

Within 2^nd Temple Judaism there is a strain that focuses on Genesis 6 as a fruitful starting point for sin—sin came through the Sons of God having sex with the Daughters of Man and bore Nephilim and the mighty men of old. In this version of Judaism these Sons of God give a variety of cultural gifts to humanity—make up, weapons, etc… which the humans use badly. These Sons of God and their descendents function very similarly to the Titan Prometheus in Greek Mythology, and in some versions of this strain of speculative Judaism they are in fact treated similarly to Prometheus—they are bound (check out Jude 1:6 sometime).

The stories of these angels/Nephilim/etc (sometimes called Watchers) is told through the eyes of Enoch, who as Genesis says “was took by God.” So, he’s an obvious choice for narrator, a human (though some traditions have him translate into the angel Metatron) who communicate the heavenly things to us, his earthy siblings.

The Noah movie makes a pretty big deal about the Watchers, who in its version landed on Earth and were literally captured by the earth, engulfed in mud and sealed up as crippled ash creatures… who (again SPOILER ALERT) are eventually redeemed and return to heaven by martyring themselves against the humans who wish to board Noah’s Ark. These Watchers are able to return to the spiritual realm, no longer cursed with the mud of flesh… it actually felt like a rather Gnostic take on their existence. (As a side note one version of the Watcher narrative has them all drown in the flood and then haunt the earth as Evil Spirits).

It interacts indirectly with my favorite topic, Akedah Isaac

Genesis chapter 22, as you all know, is one of my hobbyhorses. I wrote my M.Phil. Thesis on it, I’ve preached on its connection to religiously motivated violence, it’s my bag. So, no surprise I see allusions to it where they might not actually exist sometimes… However, the Noah Movie makes a very obvious connection to it.

In the movie’s version of events, Noah decides that God wants every human dead, including his family. So, when two granddaughters are born to him on the Ark, Noah decides to commit infanticide in the name of God. But (this is the last time I’ll say it SPOILER ALERT), as he prepares to do the deed he recognizes he feels nothing except love in his heart toward the two little twins, and in that moment realizes the human capacity for both the evil he has seen in his generation, as well as the good of parental love. Just so you know I think that is a lovely solution to the problems posed by Genesis 22.

It engages with source criticism

If you read scripture carefully… or even not so carefully really… you’ll start to notice seams in the text—places that repeat, or contradict, or refer to times that within the story shouldn’t be known.

What most scholar say is happening is we are seeing where different traditions are being stitched together—where early traditions from the Northern and Southern tribes, as well as later traditions from the era of King Josiah, and from priests captured in Babylon, are weaved together.

The most famous (likely because it is often the first thing people read in the Bible and therefore is quite familiar) of these seams comes between Genesis 2:3 and 2:4… this is where the first account of creation is separated from the 2^nd… the first, which is rather cosmic in scale refers to the Creator as God, the second is much earthier and in a sense smaller refers to the Creator as the LORD God.

In the Noah movie there is an origin to these sources. A majority of the first account is credited to Noah—he tells it to his family while they are on the ark. His telling of this account puts humans within the animal kingdom. But there is another source, the villain Tubal-Cain, who tells Ham that humans were created to subdue the earth, that we are little lower than Gods, as well as points to humanity being cursed by God.

I thought this was a creative re-working of source criticism, acknowledging the sins of Scripture (or at least their sinful use) by attributing them to the line of Cain (and Ham… ).

Noah is a fanatic

I really liked the fanatical devotion and the anguish that accompanies such devotion, that Russell Crowe portrayed. Sometimes we’ve dealt with so many Sunday School retellings and battered felt figures that we forget how scary (and scared) Noah and his ilk are portrayed.

In fact, there was an interesting line in the movie—at one point a family member says to Noah “I thought God chose you because you were a good man in a generation of evil men,” to which Noah replies, “No, God chose me because I am able to finish the job.”

Why is this intriguing to me, because the Rabbis read the line in Genesis that says Noah was “the best of his generation,” and point out his generation was a bunch of people so horrible God slaughtered them all… so perhaps Noah was just the least bad guy.

All that to say Noah is more than a felt figure, he might even be a fanatic.

It was an entirely white cast

First off, for a fuller account of this aspect of the movie check out Dr. Gafney’s post.

If you know the interpretation history of the flood story you know that Noah’s three sons become the fathers of the three known continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe. This is later used to justify the enslavement of Africans. Ham, for “uncovering Noah’s nakedness” is cursed, “Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.” Canaanites are equated with Africans, and the Slave Holding Religion is off and running.

So, back to the casting of the movie—they are all white… now Tolkein’s Middle Earth being all white is one thing (and there was some uproad when a British person of African Descent was rejected as a Hobbit because of their skin-colour)—but when the characters are so fraught with real world consequences writing non-whites out of the picture is dangerous.

That said, they did better than the Noah Production at Sight and Sound Theater, which seemed to include multi-culturalism in the list of wickedness of Noah’s generation (on the other hand there were non-white characters).

In sum, I thought it was a very interesting movie, and the Akedah moments are worth the price of admission.

Finally, some movement on Darfur

Leading Darfur Advocacy Groups Call on Sudanese Authorities to Comply with ICC Decision
Groups: ‘The Government of Sudan will be held responsible for any preemptive or retaliatory actions against civilians, humanitarian aid workers, or peacekeeping forces'
WASHINGTON – The Save Darfur Coalition - in coordination with the Enough Project, Genocide Intervention Network, Refugees International, Physicians for Human Rights, Stop Genocide Now, Africa Action and American Jewish World Service - today released a statement on the reported decision by the International Criminal Court judges to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President al-Bashir. The organizations urged Sudanese authorities to comply with their obligation to cooperate with the court. The organizations also urged the U.S., the U.N., and the international community to take all necessary steps to ensure the protection of civilians, aid workers and peacekeepers in Darfur, and to focus renewed diplomatic efforts on building a lasting and inclusive peace for all of Sudan.


Go to the link to read the whole thing.

Save Darfur!