Exodus From Hunger (9 page)
Read Exodus From Hunger Online
Authors: David Beckmann
Tags: #Religion, #Christian Life, #Social Issues, #Christianity, #General
Also part of this great transformation is cultural change, including profound shifts in what people believe and how they live their lives.
This movement in history is immensely complex, beyond our understanding, and wonderful. I think of it as a movement of God in the world.
This chapter looks back at what the Bible says about God moving in history and about justice toward poor and vulnerable people. It discusses what it means to say that God is moving in our time to overcome hunger and poverty. Finally, the chapter argues that work for justice is a way to connect to God—that we are invited to be part of what God is doing in the world.
Previous chapters of this book were about poverty and policies. This chapter is about the Bible and God. We shift from an understanding of poverty to the imperative to overcome it.
Christians, Muslims, Jews, and many people from other religions or no specific religion look to the Bible as a source of spiritual insight. For many of us, the Bible story is the definitive revelation of God.
According to the Bible, God acts in history. Here is a summary of some of the main twists and turns of Bible history. The dates below are not exact, but I find it helpful to remember that some of the major events took place at intervals of roughly five hundred years:
1. God creates the cosmos, the abundant earth, and human beings. Again and again, people act sinfully and suffer for it. Yet the Lord finds a way to help them.
2. In about 2000 BCE, God calls Abraham and Sarah to leave their home in what is now Iraq, travel to a land of promise, and live there as nomads. Their great-grandson Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. God rescues Joseph, but his descendants fall back into slavery.
3. In about 1500 BCE, God calls Moses to lead the people of Israel to freedom and gives them his law in the Sinai desert. It’s not clear why the Lord “heard the groaning” (Exodus 2:24) of the slaves when he did and not before. The people wandered in the desert for forty years before they entered the promised land of Israel, a land “flowing with milk and honey.”
4. In about 1000 BCE, Israel crowns a king: David. The Lord at first objects to centralized power, but later promises to establish David’s throne in perpetuity. Under subsequent kings, the nation falls into idolatry and neglect of poor people, and the Lord punishes them with division, conquest, and exile.
5. In about 500 BCE, the Lord brings some of the exiles back to Jerusalem. This is the second great exodus in their history. They have visions of a radically better future, led by the messiah, a great king in David’s line.
6. Yet another five hundred years pass, and Jesus Christ appears on the scene—healing the sick, forgiving sinners, and announcing that God’s kingdom is at hand. Jesus is crucified, forgiving his enemies from the cross. His disciples later see and believe that God has raised Jesus from the dead.
7. Jesus’ resurrection convinces the disciples that he is the Messiah and that his forgiving death is God’s offer of forgiveness and new life to everyone. They take that message to the ends of the known world, establishing a global community of people who believe that Jesus lives in them and look for Jesus to establish God’s kingdom on earth.
Clearly, the God of the Bible is engaged in human history. The Bible offers doctrines about God, but they grow out of messy, historical experience—a history just as confusing and contradictory as the recent history of China, Mozambique, or the United States. God’s plans are often frustrated; God suffers. Yet God repeatedly finds new ways forward toward a better, more blessed future for humanity. God’s involvement in the world continues, now and to the end of time.
The personality of the Lord is consistent over the biblical millennia—patient and forgiving, insistent on morality (especially justice toward people in need), and intolerant of phony gods. Yet the Lord of the Bible is full of surprises. When the Jews are exiles in Babylon, the Lord sends a savior to allow them to return to Jerusalem. But who is that savior? Cyrus, the Persian emperor! The Persians conquered Babylon, and the Persians have a more tolerant policy toward conquered peoples. The prophet Isaiah sees the Lord calling Cyrus to be his servant: “I call you … though you do not know me” (Isaiah 45:4). God’s movement in history is not limited to the efforts of people who believe in God.
Every section of the Bible is clear about our obligation to poor people and about the political dimension of justice for poor people.
The primary revelation of God in the Old Testament is the exodus from Egypt. Moses’ message was political and radical: “Let the slaves go free!”
The law God gave to the Hebrews through Moses includes many protections for people in need. For example, it was against the law for a farmer to harvest all the grain from his field, as some grain should be left for poor people to glean. It was against the law to make your servants work every day. Immigrant servants must be allowed to rest on the Sabbath.
Moses taught that idolatry and immorality would lead to violence and loss of the land, while faithfulness to the Lord would lead to blessings in this world:
The LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors, when you obey the LORD your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in this book of the law, because you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
— Deuteronomy 30:9–10
As the Old Testament is usually arranged, the books of Moses (Genesis through Deuteronomy) are followed by historical books (Joshua through Chronicles). The theme of the historical books is that the people turned away from God and God’s law. When kings were faithful and led the nation in obedience, the Lord blessed them. But this faithfulness was the exception rather than the rule.
The kingdom of David broke into two nations, Israel and Judah. People in the ruling class pursued their own interests. Coups and countercoups among them set the stage for military defeats. Most of the prophets lived in this period of decline.
The books of the prophets (Isaiah through Malachi) are a third section of the Old Testament. The prophets called on the people to give up idols and obey the law. They went especially to the kings (the government) to demand justice in the land.
In ancient Israel and Judah, shrines and temples were often set up in groves of trees on the tops of hills. The worship of idols was typically festive, with dancing and sometimes intercourse with temple prostitutes. People prayed for abundant harvests and other blessings. In some cases, the services used the same names for God and some of the same religious language that the prophets used, but what most clearly distinguished the worship of the real God from the worship of idols was an insistence on morality, especially concern about poor people.
The prophets repeatedly insisted that the way to national security and prosperity was to worship the real God and establish justice for poor and needy people. Hear these great pronouncements from the prophet Isaiah:
Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees,
who write oppressive statutes,
to turn aside the needy from justice
and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be your spoil,
and that you may make the orphans your prey!
What will you do on the day of punishment,
in the calamity that will come from far away?
To whom will you flee for help,
and where will you leave your wealth?
— Isaiah 10:1–3
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house …?
If you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
— Isaiah 58:6–7, 10–12
The Old Testament also includes the Psalms and books on the theme of wisdom. The Lord’s special concern for poor people and people in trouble also pervades these books. Proverbs stresses how individual obedience to the law often contributes to an abundant life, while the book of Job struggles with the fact that righteous people sometimes suffer. The main conclusion of the book of Job is that human beings do not know why God allows disease and calamity.
The book of Ruth, a jewel of wisdom, is set in the midst of famine. A poor gentile woman, Ruth more than obeys the law of the Lord. She sacrifices to take care of her needy mother-in-law. Boaz, a prosperous farmer, more than obeys the law about leaving grain for poor people to glean. Ruth and Boaz marry, and the Lord blesses them for their faithfulness.
The New Testament begins with the gospels, four different accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus announces himself as the embodiment of God’s messianic promises, including justice for people in need: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). Jesus’ concern for the poor is emphasized in Luke’s gospel, which includes the parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of the rich man and Lazarus.
The story of Jesus feeding the hungry crowd is repeated five times in the four gospels, more than any other miracle:
Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.” The disciples said to him, “Where are we to get enough bread in this desert to feed so great a crowd?” Jesus asked them, “How many loaves have you?” They said, “Seven, and a few small fish.” Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Those who had eaten were four thousand men, besides women and children.
— Matthew 15:32–38
When Jesus envisions the final judgment, he says that our worth will be assessed according to whether we have helped people in need:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’”
—Matthew 25:31–40
The primary revelation of God in the New Testament is the death and resurrection of Jesus. For Christians, Jesus’ death and resurrection have cosmic and personal significance. In that event, God broke through sin and death to connect with humanity—and with each of us.
Jesus’ death and resurrection also have a political meaning. Marcus Borg’s book
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time
helped me understand Jesus’ challenge to laws and political authorities.
1
In Jesus’ time, church and state were less separate than in our society. The religious authority (the Sanhedrin) was connected to the national and imperial authorities (King Herod and Pontius Pilate). Jesus disobeyed and taught people to disobey laws that stood in the way of healing or that marginalized people. He healed diseased people on the Sabbath day, teaching that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). He broke purity rules to reach out to lepers, public sinners, and women. The rules that Jesus challenged were not just religious teachings. They were also the law of the land. That is why the Sanhedrin was able to get the Roman authorities to crucify Jesus.