A publication deadline sometimes determines what a writer writes, when he’s writing for a date long after his column is due. Writing for Lent in Advent is a challenge. Events at the time of writing can also influence an author.
I’m reflecting on our reading from Deuteronomy within days of the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report. It’s hard to read a text that sets a liturgy of thanksgiving for a people who believe God has given them someone else’s land. It’s hard to read Israel’s holy history without thinking of Canada’s unholy history. It’s one thing to come into a new place as refugees from oppression. It’s quite another thing to come and drive out most of the people who already live there. Conquest in God’s name is still violence and theft.
There’s an old saying: “History is written by winners.” Holy history is written by people who believe God gave them the victory. It doesn’t even take a generation before the victors believe the land was always theirs by right. Let’s give Deuteronomy its due. Written long after the conquest, Deuteronomy calls descendants of the winners to remember the whole story. OK, their side of the story. And be humble. Recall their humble origins and give thanks to God. “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…”
There’s also a thread of hope in Deuteronomy. At least by the time it was written the population of the Promised Land was more diverse than other Old Testament writings would lead us to believe. The instructions for celebration include “the aliens who reside among you.” The people must share the story, and all the bounty that God has given them and their households. The neighbours are still called “aliens,” as if they don’t have as much right to live there as the Israelites do. They are “other than,” after all.
Back in June the church partners, including the Presbyterian Church in Canada, responded to the TRC’s Findings and Calls to Action with a statement that began, “It is with gratitude and humility that we are here today… .” In December, Moderator Karen Horst responded to the TRC final report with mixed emotions. “Along with ongoing sadness and shame at what we now know about this legacy and the part our church played in it, I am also encouraged and hopeful.” Now that so much more of the truth has been told, so many stories that were not heard before, that could not be told because of the pain throbbing within them, there is hope.
On the First Sunday in Lent are you still looking for a Lenten challenge? How about this? Through prayer and discipline seek to live more humbly, with more gratitude, on land that you may own but isn’t really yours. Your ancestors may have come to it, as mine did, through some mighty acts of deliverance. Remember that story. Recover the gratitude of past generations, but lament their complicity in conquest. If you and your family have come more recently, gratitude is still fresh and the story isn’t forgotten. You are no longer aliens, despite the efforts of so many of your neighbours to label you and “other” you out of the celebration of God’s goodness to all. Even Deuteronomy admits you belong.
The call to live together on the land, humbly and thankfully, is more than an invitation. It’s an imperative. Deuteronomy is driven by that imperative. It’s a version of holy history for people who need to work at remembering who they are and whose they are. It’s about following God’s Law in humility, living in gratitude for the covenant. It’s still a one-sided story and an exclusive covenant. We must wrestle with that. But the imperative remains.
