Sermon, I Give You This Land, Even More, I give this land to Your Children.
The story of God and Abram starts when God commands Abram to migrate to Canaan. God offers Abram magnanimous promises: he will be a great nation; he will have a great name; God will bless people who bless him and curse the ones who curse him; and through Abram, all the people of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12:1–3).
When God adds a promise of land to Abram’s “seed” promise (Genesis 12:7), we think that Abram is goanna be great. After God tells Abram that his own body will produce children more numerous than the stars, Abram can feel relief.
The story doesn’t end there. God turns from the promise of descendants to the possession of land (Genesis 15:7). Abram asks how he can trust that his descendants will inherit the land (Genesis 15:8). Now that he believes he will have biological heirs, Abram wants reassurance that God will give them all that God promised even after Abram is dead and gone.
In other words, Abram asks where is the land?
In 1845, an unsigned article in a popular American journal, a long-standing Jacksonian publication, the Democratic Review, issued an unmistakable call for American expansionism. Focusing mainly on bringing the Republic of Texas into the union, it declared that expansion represented “the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” Thus, a powerful American slogan was born. “Manifest Destiny” became first and foremost a call and justification for an American form of imperialism, and neatly summarized the goals of the Mexican War. It claimed that America had a destiny, manifest, i.e., self-evident, from God to occupy the North American continent south of Canada (it also claimed the right to the Oregon territory including the Canadian portion).
But Manifest Destiny was not simply a cloak for American imperialism and a justification for America’s territorial ambitions. It also was firmly anchored in a long-standing and deep sense of a special and unique American Destiny, the belief that in the words of historian Conrad Cherry, “America is a nation called to a special destiny by God.”
Yet This was not just an American thing The Doctrine of Discovery established a spiritual, political, and legal justification for colonization and seizure of land not inhabited by Christians. Foundational elements of the Doctrine of Discovery can be found in a series of papal bulls, or decrees, beginning in the 1100s, which included sanctions, enforcements, authorizations, expulsions, admonishments, ex-communications, denunciations, and expressions of territorial sovereignty for Christian monarchs supported by the Catholic Church. While we are hating on Russia we must acknowledge that taking Land in the name of progress is nothing New.
The Church must look at how it has treated Land and Expansion. We must come face to face with what it means to be part of the system of conization.
The General Conference of The United Methodist Church affirms the sacredness of American Indian people, their languages, cultures, and gifts to the church and the world.
We call upon the world, and the people of The United Methodist Church to receive the gifts of Native Americans, including American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians, as people of God. We allow for the work of the Great Spirit/God among our communities and tribes without prejudice. But what do we say about the Land we have taken?
You See, In 1452, the Papal Bull Romanus Pontifex declared war against all non-Christians throughout the world, sanctioned and promoted the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories. In 1453, Spain was given rights of conquest and dominion over one half of the world and Portugal the other half.
In 1823, the Christian Doctrine of Discovery was adopted into law by the US Supreme Court (Johnson v. McIntosh). Chief Justice Marshall observed that Christian European nations had assumed dominion over the lands of America, and upon discovery, Native American Indians had lost their rights to complete sovereignty as independent nations and retained a mere right of occupancy in their lands.
And Even In 2009, President Obama pledged to Native people the United States’ support of the “Declaration of Indigenous Peoples.” The declaration seeks to right historical wrongs through the use of the papal bulls of the Roman Catholic Church that are official decrees by the pope sanctioning the seizing of indigenous lands worldwide.
With All this, we must reflect on Gen 15:18
Our lesson from the Old Testament is not the first occasion in Genesis where God speaks to Abram, but it is the first time that Abraham responds so that a back-and-forth exchange takes place.
In Genesis 12:1-3, the Lord says to Abraham, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
This blessing included land that, at the time the promise was made, belonged to other people.
The land pledged to Abraham was part of God’s provision for the Jewish people. After the Exodus from Egypt, the Jews were given the Promised Land, confirming God’s power to predict the future and fulfill His promises.
Sure, giving the land to Abraham’s descendants was, in part, a judgment on the sinful Canaanites. At the edge of the Promised Land, Moses told the children of Abraham, “It is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you” (Deuteronomy 9:4).
Abraham did not inherit the land immediately because it was not time yet for judgment to fall. God eventually took the land from the idolaters and turned it over to His children.
But we also need to see that Land transfer is not always a God thing.
Desmond Tutu once said, “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.” Tutu describes how many black Africans feel about the Bible. Those white colonialist settlers used the Bible to exploit black South Africans. That the Bible is basically European propaganda.
Is there any truth to Tutu’s quote? Yes. Many white colonialists did use the Bible to exploit black Africans. But we can’t write off the Bible because of them?
As most of us know, the Bible existed well over a thousand years before Jan Van Riebeeck settled in the Cape, in 1652. It was of course originally written in Hebrew and Greek, with a bit of Aramaic. Not English. Or Afrikaans. It’s not a European book. The Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek (the Septuagint or LXX) in Alexandria, Egypt, which is obviously part of Africa. And the Bible (at least parts of it) presumably reached Africa – what is now Ethiopia (see Acts 8:26-40) – before it reached England. Anyone with a basic knowledge of history and a shred of intellectual honesty knows that white settlers did not create the Bible to exploit Africans.
Yet Wesley/Church we need to deal with the Bible and issues of Land. Why did the colonizers twist the Scriptures? It’s fairly obvious. They were driven by greed. Hunger for money. Lust for power. The Lord Jesus of course warned against greed (Luke 12:13-21). And who can deny that greed, that inward desire for more and more, drove the colonialists to do all sorts of evil, just as God, speaking through the Apostle Paul, warned of in 1 Timothy 6:10, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
But I want you to be forced when you leave here today Church to ask the question where is your land?
If You are decedents of Jesus and Dependents of Abraham where is your land?
In 1758, historians briefly write about the history of the Black Church in America. This institution was the first source of land ownership for Black African slaves in America is viewed as the reason and savior of oppressed African people in the United States.
By the early 20th century, the Black Church was practically involved in almost every aspect of Black life; it was essentially a microcosm of the country for the average African American. It had its hands in politics, economics, culture, etc., and functioned as the institutional catalyst for Black individuals who were otherwise restricted access to these life arenas.
Like an I said earlier the church became one of the first forms of land ownership, collective land ownership, and financial support for Blacks in America, promoting the development of their communities in America. They pulled the land together and grew crops for the community and produced income and economy for the community. The church was about more than shouting and dancing it made life work.
So Where is My Promised Land God?
In American theses yet to be the United States the “40 acres and a mule” promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor. The proportion of the United States under black ownership has actually shrunk over the last 100 years or so.
At their peak in 1910, African American farmers made up around 14% of all U.S. farmers, owning 16 million to 19 million acres of land. By 2012, black Americans represented just 1.6% of the farming community, owning 3.6 million acres of land. Another study shows a 98% decline in black farmers between 1920, and 1997. This contrasts sharply with an increase in acres owned by white farmers over the same period.
In a 1998 report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ascribed this decline to a long and “well-documented” history of discrimination against black farmers, ranging from New Deal and USDA discriminatory practices dating from the 1930s to 1950s-era exclusion from the legal, title, and loan resources.
Discriminatory practices have also affected who owns the property as well as land.
In 2017, the racial homeownership gap was at its highest level for 50 years, with 79.1% of white Americans owning a home compared to 41.8% of black Americans.
This gap is even larger than it was when racist housing practices such as redlining — which denied black residents credit to buy or renovate property — were legal.
The opening verses of chapter 15 of Genesis cannot be heard apart from chapters 13 and 14. In chapter 13, Lot and Abram divide the land between them, with Lot taking land that is described in ways similar to that of the Garden of Eden (verse 10); Abram’s parcel is described only as “the land of the Canaanites.”
In chapter 15, the declaration made by Abram in chapter 14 is realized. God promises to be his shield and promises a reward, a reward which Abram assumes refers to an heir. There is no doubt; God promises to secure the future for Abram.
Abram is in fact a prophet for us in the Lenten season. Abram’s commitment to his God, despite all appearances to the contrary, challenges us to ask whether we have in fact believed in the LORD with the kind of belief that should be reckoned as righteousness.
A cursory reading of chapter 15 might appear to substantiate claims of those who preach prosperity gospel in all its manifold forms.
After all, Abram believes, God deems him righteous, and Abram has a multitude of offspring, followed by an abundance of land.
What you might miss is this is not Name it and clam it. This is a theology of reflection and mobilization. If your decedents want the land, they will have to take the land. They Will have to move into the land together. They will have to partner with one another and with God to possess the Land.
But not out of greed but out of the direct will of God. In other words, the question is not where is my Land God? The real question is Are Me and My Children Ready for the Blessing?
Church are You Ready for the Blessing? Are you ready to receive your Land? Are you ready to have the Kind of faith that will enable us to Build wealth, Build community?
I will close with this, Many Call Harriett Tubman the Moses of her time. Well, maybe we should talk more about Fannie Lou Hamer as the Abram of her time. Hamer had a belief in Land ownership for the Black Community. The principles of collective land ownership evolved in post-slavery black America. It was central to civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farms, a cooperative model designed to deliver economic justice to the poorest black farmers in the American South.
In Hamer’s view, the fight for justice in the face of oppression required a measure of independence that could be achieved through owning land and providing resources for the community.
In 1969, Mrs. Hamer founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative with a $10,000 donation from Measure for Measure, a charitable organization based in Wisconsin. The former sharecropper purchased 40 acres of prime Delta land. It was her attempt to empower poor Black farmers and sharecroppers, who, for generations, had been at the mercy of the local white landowners. “The time has come now when we are going to have to get what we need ourselves. We may get a little help, here and there, but in the main, we’re going to have to do it ourselves,” she explained.
She worked tirelessly to develop the Freedom Farm Cooperative. The cost of membership for the co-op was $1 a month. But even at that price, only 30 families could afford membership dues; another 1,500 families belonged to the Freedom Farm in the name. The co-op planted cash crops like soybeans and cotton to pay taxes and administrative expenses. The rest of the land was sowed with vegetables, like cucumbers, peas, beans, squash, and collard greens, all of which were distributed back to those who worked on the co-op.
Unlike many federal and local poverty programs, the Freedom Farm was dedicated to grassroots participation. Mrs. Hamer had learned through years of organizing around the right to vote that change in Mississippi needed to emerge from the bottom-up. “All the qualifications that you have to have to become part of the co-op is you have to be poor,” she explained. “This is the first kind of program that has ever been sponsored in the country in letting local people do their thing themselves.”
Church Like Fannie Lou, Like Abram it’s time for us to allow God to Bless us with the land. It’s time for us to rise up as a nation of God gathered, Jesus following empowered disciples and doing God's Will. This Lent the Question is Where is your Land, where is your power?
