Dear friends in Christ at Peace and Grue,
The thin layer of soil which surrounds the earth forms a bridge between life and death, food and famine, the present and the future. Wherever such issues are involved, God is sure to be there. This newsletter summaries four elements of that involvement found in Genesis 12:1-3: 1) the land as God’s gift, 2) the land and the family, 3) the land and the world, and 4) the land and the future.
In Genesis 12, God commands Abraham and Sarah to leave their secure inheritance in Mesopotamia for the sake of a promised piece of real estate in some distant place called Canaan. A land that God would give them as a free undeserved gift. God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah comes at the end of a series of stories involving land. In the story of creation God gives humans “dominion over creation” which means careful stewardship not selfish exploitation. Humankind is created from the soil of the earth and intimately tied to it. In other words, God takes the earthling named Adam, slaps a hoe in his hand, and sets him to work caring for the land from which he himself was created.
The first promise God makes to Abraham is the gift of land, but the promise of land means nothing without the next part of the promise: “I will make of you a great nation.” God promises Abraham not just land but land and children, not just a farm but a family farm. This basic principle is applied in a biblical “Homestead Act” where each family received a portion of the promised land. The location of each parcel determined by lot, another way of saying that God is the one who actually divides and gives the land. This notion of the “family farm” continued until the rise of the monarchy. Many of the kings came to believe they were above God’s law and sought to concentrate more power by concentrating more land in their own hands (1 Kings 21). When the basic structure of the family farm is threatened, warns God’s prophets, judgment is sure to follow (Micah 2).
God gives land and family to Abraham and Sarah not as an end in itself but as a means to bless the world: “By you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” (Case in point is the grain reserve initiated by Joseph, Pharaoh’s secretary of agriculture in Genesis 41.) Sadly this is not always the case. While the earth produces in abundance, many still go hungry directing us back to the promise and the future that promise creates.
We do not know what shape God’s future will take. Abraham lived his long life without the promised land ever really being his. Abraham had to learn the hard task of living in hope and with patience, working with and trusting God and God’s promises for the future. For people of the land, that means walking by faith and not by sight. It requires prayer and hope and not caving into despair. It requires dying to self and rising in trust of God. As earthlings in Christ, we are freed from any illusions that we are anything but earth bound creatures and servants of God. As such we are called to yearn for and work towards the fulfillment of the biblical vision of the land, a land without which we cannot live and to which we will all one day return.
Enjoy your summer, especially those of you who are called to care for the land, and those of us who enjoy it’s fruits.
Pastor Dan