"Abraham Part 2: Covenant and Tribalism"

Sermon preached by John C. Hall on August 13, 2006

Text — Genesis 15:7-21

The Middle East is in a huge mess. Even the U.S. generals are admitting now that Iraq is sliding deeper into civil war.  The future of Afghanistan is looking bleaker, after almost five years of U.S. military involvement. Now Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel are fighting like two mad dogs. 

This is happening in the Holy Land.  Nancy Thody raised the question last week when she was leading us in prayer.  Why is a land that’s so full of God, so full of violence?  Which makes us want to ask, “To what extent is the land full of violence because it’s full of God?”  

People often accuse religion of causing wars — I suppose with implication that we should get rid of religion. I’ve heard this many times.  My usual response is. “People are the cause of wars.  Should we get rid of people?  That would make the world more peaceful.”

My point is that religious feelings and commitments are part of being human.  Not all people are equally religious, of course.  But even if we wanted to, we couldn’t stop people from praying any more than we could stop them from dreaming, or writing books, or or talking on cell phones.

But let’s face this charge honestly. Part of the nature of any religious community is to feel a special connection with God. That’s what is going on in this passage about the covenant with Abraham.  The Lord said to Abraham.  “To your descendents I will give this land.”  Abraham will have a son Isaac.  Isaac will have a son Jacob.  Jacob’s name will be changed to Israel; Israel’s twelve sons (notice, all the males) will be the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. Over the years, the covenant with Abraham evolves into a political program — the confederacy of Israel, then the kingdom of Israel, including military campaigns to expand and defend the kingdom. It’s all traced back to God’s covenant with Abraham.

But other people have a special relationship with other people too. Islamist radicals in the Middle East and Iran have a special mission from God — to get rid of the Jews and Israel. The  English Congregationalists who came to New England in the 1600s, who settled Middletown and formed this church, had a special covenant with God. When South Church was organized during the Great Awakening in the 1740s, it was called the Strict Congregational Church.  They had a special relationship with God. At that time, we were known as the “Soft on Sin Congregational Church.”  

It’s the nature of any religious community to have a special relationship with God.  But when these groups come into conflict with each other, such as when money or land or oil is involved, sparks fly, and sometimes a lot of blood is shed. Religion has inflamed and fueled many wars. We can admit that. 

And having admitted that, I’d like to offer some thoughts about the way not only religious people are but all people are. Humans, religious and non-religious, are tribal creatures. We form all kinds of groups.  We form families, cities, political movements, and nations. We get our identity and emotional security, and physical security, from belonging to a larger group — a tribe. There’s safety in numbers.

When our tribe is threatened, people feel a strong fear response.  Our tribal loyalty becomes even more important.  Fear brings us together.  This is why politicians use fear as a tool. Nothing makes people feel closer than having a common enemy.  And since people like to feel close, and need to feel close, there’s a sense in which we like having enemies. People feel invigorated, and comforted, by having some other group to fear and attack.

Another way of putting this is: humans are anxious to begin with.  Our nervous systems are ready to be afraid at all times.  But it’s good to have a focus for that fear, and something to do about it.

We can run away, but that’s not an option for a nation.  Or we can attack. And we can close ranks.  We can get in line and conform. This is the herd mentality.  Going with the crowd, is always a safe strategy.  

And serving all of this is our capacity to deny the humanity and feelings of the enemy. Demonize the enemy; it makes it easier to fight the enemy. But as we know, demonizing the enemy makes it easier to start wars, and wars always bring huge costs and misery and waste.  Wars never go the way the people who start them think they will go.

You can see this tribalism, fear, and attack in the Arab Israeli conflict. You can see it in our nation’s response to September 11. Europe during the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s and 1600s was filled with sectarian violence. People like leaders, and elect leaders, who are tough on the enemy.  That’s why most leaders are tough on the enemy.

All of this is a pessimistic view.  Where is the good news in this? 

Christianity has an anti-tribal or counter-tribal element that shows up best in these verses from St. Paul that I’ll read in a moment.  Until Paul, you had to be a Jew before you became a Christian.  Specifically, you also had to be circumcised, which meant that only males could be full members of the church. There was a big argument about in the early days, and Paul won the argument. Paul opened the church to non-Jews, and to women.  

So instead of circumcision, baptism became the way into the church, and anyone who affirmed his or her faith in Jesus Christ could be baptized  This is at the core of our passage, and it’s remarkable because no one had ever said anything like this before.

26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.  27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. 

You may have noticed that that’s also sort of tribal in the sense that it’s defining another group, the church, as God’s special group. But this tribe is different because it’s open.  You don’t have to have certain parents, you don’t have to be born into a particular clan.  You don’t have to be male.  You don’t have to belong to any ethnic group.  You can even be a slave.

This was a huge breakthrough in western civilization.  It was revolutionary, and not everyone liked it, and not everyone likes it even now.

And there’s another anti-tribal element in Christianity that both Jesus and Paul talked about — the admission that we’re all sinners. We don’t have a special relationship to God because of how good we are.  We all need God’s mercy.  Jesus himself was accused of being soft on sin. And the logic follows: If God loves us, then God loves sinners, and if God loves sinners, then God must love our enemies too.

No nation has ever taken that logic seriously, but this is what Christians are called to teach. In the deepest sense, we’re all in the same tribe — the tribe of weak, afraid, and fallen creatures. That’s the core of any Christian peace program — just admitting that we’re tribal, prone to attack, and inclined to demonize each other.

Why is that so hard to get?  What would happen if international dialog began with that proposition?

In the war against Islamic terrorism, and in the Arab-Israeli war, maybe our role is to be at least one religious voice saying that all special relationships with God, all claims to have God on one’s side, are part of tradition. They are understandable. They help people endure hardship.  They give people strength.  They are also dangerous, and sometimes disastrous.

If that voice could get out there, and be embraced on the world stage, that would be revolutionary.