The Promised Land: Dr John Patrick January 9 2011

Text: Matthew 2: 19-21 “But when King Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child's life‘. And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.”

Lands and their rulers, occupiers and refugees, ordinary people seeking security: the very stuff of geo-politics. That’s what the bible is about.

Many of you will remember the services here led by Jan Pickard last November. She brought a first-hand report of the indignities and oppression suffered by the West Bank Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis who have a built a tall thick wall of separation around their illegally-occupied settlements among the Palestinians farms and orchards.

Many of you will have sent or received Christmas cards with images of Bethlehem: indeed some of these will have been Bible Lands Cards. Some of you, like us, will have been to the Holy Land, where much of the action in the biblical narratives was located.

The land of Israel is of central religious importance for Christians and Muslims. Jerusalem, its ancient capital, is the birthplace of Christianity and the third-holiest city to Islam. But tonight I want to focus on Israel as the “promised land” of the Jews. I will take a biblical approach that has important relevance for the politics of our world today.

Covenant promise: Abraham and Moses

The first 11 chapters of Genesis, compiled and edited into the form in which we presently know them in translation from the Hebrew, are a striking and memorable series of myths. Myths about the creation of the world, about clashes of culture and language, and about a dawning understanding of the nature of a God who protects and favours his people, while both demanding loyalty but also punishing disobedience. The characters of these storybook people of God – from Adam, through Cain and Abel, to Noah and his sons – are personifications of the earliest human response to Yahweh’s reaching out to his creatures.

But when we get to chapter 12 in the Book of Genesis, we are beginning to get into the realm of history: pre-history at least, with vague and distorted memories of ancient patriarchs and warriors who had been actual tribal leaders in the far-distant past. At the very least, the narrative is being told as if it were history. Abram is probably the earliest actual person represented in the Jewish Bible, and he had lived far away in Mesopotamia. But our reading from Genesis 12 relates the germ of the idea that the destiny of Abram’s family was to be fulfilled neither in Ur of the Chaldees, nor in Haran in modern Turkey, but in Canaan – the Holy Land. The story tells of a call from God to Abram to “go forth to a land that I will show you, where I will make you a great nation, and where you will be a blessing.[1]” Abram obeyed his God and “it was reckoned to him as righteousness[2]”. He uprooted his whole family with all their possessions and all their slaves. They went south to Canaan, and there God said, “To you and your descendants I will give this land[3]”. The land that God had promised: the Promised Land.

Could Abram rely on this promise? He needed to be sure, because it wasn’t going to be easy to lay claim to this fertile land that was already settled by half a dozen other tribes who weren’t going to give it up lightly. So Abram asked God for confirmation of the promise. The story relates[4] that God (who had already made a rainbow covenant with Noah) made a Covenant with Abram in a ceremony over a smoking fire-pot and sacrificial animals saying, "To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite." No matter who was here before you, it will all be yours, as far as the eye can see: nay further. From the Nile to the Euphrates, virtually the whole of the known world. What a story; what a promise: what a covenant! Their own land as a gift from God.

In fact, Abram didn’t stay long in Canaan. He continued south to Egypt and prospered there before returning with Lot his nephew. The two of them soon realise that with all their flocks and herds and tents there are now too many of them to occupy the same territory. They decide to separate. Abram generously gives Lot the first choice, and Lot chooses the fertile land beyond the Jordan leaving Abram with the dust of Canaan. Abraham’s descendants became the Jews, while Lot’s became the Arabs. With the benefit of hindsight, Lot chose the oilfields and Abraham was left with the sand. But at least it was their promised land.

The rest of Genesis is mostly about Abram’s son Isaac and his sons Esau and Jacob, and Jacob’s son Joseph who also went down to Egypt. The Hebrew nation spent years there and suffered oppression and slavery, and it fell to Moses to bring about their great deliverance in the Exodus. As another holy book puts it: ‘Moses said unto his people, 'O my people, go into the Holy Land, which Allah hath ordained for you. [5]'‘ So again they came out of Egypt and towards the Promised Land in Canaan which was still occupied by Canaanites and other tribes. After years of wandering and fighting, years of quarrelling and disobedience, and further covenants with God, Moses and his people finally approached their land of milk and honey from the east, from beyond the Jordan.

From Pisgah’s height, Moses could see it all stretched before him across the river. But he was not permitted to march them all in. Great leader though he was, Moses’ lack of faith was punished by God and he died just short of the Promised Land and was buried in an unmarked grave. God had made them no easy promise!

Occupation and Loss

Moses had commissioned Joshua to be his successor. "Be strong and courageous, for you shall bring the sons of Israel into the land which I swore to them, and I will be with you.[6]" But Joshua had to battle for years to establish the Hebrews amongst the Canaanites: despite the promise, they didn’t have easy ride! But they were successful, and after many battles and adventures a flourishing nation was established under King David who acceded to the new throne in 1000 BC. That was the only time they got anywhere near to occupying an area of land approaching the ancient promise of boundaries at the Nile and the Euphrates. The covenants that God made with David were not to do with land but with the ark and with the temple: it looked as though the ancient promise to Abram had been now kept and the land was indeed secure.

But no, it was not to be. David’s successors quarrelled amongst themselves and the kingdom was divided in 925 BC: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Some rulers were righteous-and-just, but many others like Ahaz “did not do what was right in the sight of the LORD his God, as his father David had done[7]”. They were not keeping their side of the covenant, and they lost their Promised Land. First Israel and then Judah were overwhelmed by the Assyrians, and the Jews were finally taken captive in Babylon in 586 BC: their homes and temple destroyed, their land gone. Their chief lament was,”How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land[8]?”

But their exile was not to last for long. While the Jews were in Babylon, the Assyrians themselves were conquered by the Persians, and it was Cyrus the Persian King who came to their rescue. “The LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, ²³Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.[9]” So in 538 BC they returned to their land, and to Jerusalem; and under their leaders Ezra and Nehemiah they rebuilt the walls and they rebuilt the temple. They were back home, back in possession of the Promised Land again. But would the promise last?

Alas, not for long. Judah had a succession of occupations over the next 500 years: Persians, Greeks, and then Seleucids. Under the Maccabeans they enjoyed a brief spell of semi-independence but then in 63 BC the Roman Emperor Pompey marched in and took over, and a mere hundred and thirty-three years after that Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed in the Roman-Jewish war. Two thousand years of history from the promise to Abram to the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the Jews. And so then for the almost next 2000 years the Promised Land was neither occupied nor controlled by the Jewish people: they were dispersed throughout the world. Christian churches were built in Jerusalem from the 2^nd century, and in the 7^th century it became instead one of the holy cities of Islam. In the 12^th and 13^th centuries the Crusades were fought unsuccessfully to restore Christian control of the Holy Land and eventually Palestine came under the control of the Ottoman Empire. No longer a great Jewish nation. No longer a blessing to the world. A covenant given but not kept. A promise made but a promise lost.

Contemporary restoration

We’ll fast-forward now to 1917 when a major decisive change in the fortunes of the Jews occurred. Another promise was made and another covenant signed.

Arthur James Balfour had been Conservative Prime Minister from 1902-1905, and was Foreign Secretary in David Lloyd George’s coalition government during WW1. His eponymous declaration is his main claim to fame: and it has indeed changed world history. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, Britain was awarded a mandate over Palestine and was therefore able to bring Balfour’s bold plan to fruition. Another Cyrus?

And so the State of Israel was inaugurated on 14 May 1948. A homeland for a million dispersed Jews was created, and once again millions of Palestinians were displaced to make way for them. Was this the final return to the Promised Land? Can the Genesis story of God’s promise to Abram be used in our generation to justify the consequences of this radical political action? Can we deny the Jewish claim that they have a divine right to that land?

The New Jerusalem

If you take a simple view of the OT as being the literal truth, then that claim is valid and the contemporary consequences are justifiable. God promised the land to the Jews; they took it by force originally from the Canaanites and no-one complained; they have got back the land after losing it and should now use every means to retain their rightful inheritance because it is God-given. That’s what the United Torah Judaism Party in the Knesset believes, and what many religious Jews believe. Do we? Is it as simple as that?

Could it be that Abram, Moses and Joshua got the wrong idea? Did the later writers and editors of the OT chronicles re-write the oral history of the Jews and invent stories about a promise to show their predecessors in a better light? Or, on the other hand, are we wrong to quibble at the apparent immorality of both ancient and modern Jewish peoples in forcibly occupying the lands belonging to other groups who were living there already?

Let’s look briefly at what the NT has to say about it all. How many times do we find references to “Promised Land” or “Holy Land” there? Very few indeed: the emphasis is rather on distancing the Christian gospel from the actions and attitudes of the Jews of old, like our Gospel reading from Matthew[10] which seems to challenge the Jews’ behaviour as tenants of God’s land. And tonight’s Epistle[11] re-interprets Abraham’s wandering as a search for a city whose foundations, design and builder are God’s. His faith was indeed commended, but it is made clear that he and his descendants after him never received the real land that was promised. The author of Hebrews believed that the focus of God’s promise was not an earthly city at all, nor a geographical land, but rather a heavenly country in which an eternal city has been prepared for them.

So when Christians, seeking to gain God’s Promised Land, follow in Moses’ steps and view their Canaan from Pisgah’s height, what they see is not a territory to be fought over and conquered, not a land to be plundered and settled, but a land of pure delight, a veritable heaven. Life’s pilgrimage will be hard, perilous and tiring but the promise of God will sustain us till we reach the eternal shore, landing safe on Canaan’s side.

Let’s conclude with the words of Charles Wesley’s hymn[12] with which we started this service. It talks of a new Jerusalem. It puts a new light on the Promised Land; a light that comes from the love of God and from our life in Christ:

“Zion’s God is all our own/ who on his love rely;

We his pardoning love have known/ and live to Christ and die.

To the new Jerusalem/ he our faithful guide shall be.

Him we claim, and rest in him/ through all eternity.” Amen