History Will Not Be Kind ?

 

 

In the news this week from the floor of the House of Commons in Ottawa it was stated, “history will not be kind to New Democrats who choose to support the Liberal governments decision to trigger the Emergencies Measures Act.”  It is not the first time in recent months that the phase ‘history will not be kind’ has been applied to Canadian politics. In Nov. 2021 for example, the Toronto Star ran an opinion piece titled, “history will not be kind to Justin Trudeau,” that article was in relation to differing agendas with big oil.

 

History will not be kind.

That all depends on who writes the history. And which histories are told, taught, remembered, which are forgotten, which are rediscovered, uncovered, or recovered.

 

February is black history month. The purpose of the month is to devote time to honour Black histories, beyond stories of racism, to focus on Black achievement. In past years, I have shared the story of Black Lutheran Pastors, churches, and schools. This year I would like to share this resource.

A number of years ago, The Original African Heritage Study Bible, came across my desk. The purpose of the edition is “to interpret the Bible as it relates specifically to persons of African descent and thereby to foster an appreciation of the multiculturalism inherent in the Bible.” It articulates a “viewpoint of racial pluralism and inclusiveness.” I have appreciated this new-to-me perspective of scripture.

 

History will not be kind.

That all depends on who writes the history. And who interprets the history.

In recent years school curriculums are changing how history is taught. World History for Us All  is an organization that developed a curriculum with a starting point that history is intense, complicated, diverse relationships.  History and cultural literacy are global in nature. History is a collective enterprise.

You will likely have noticed a shift in Indigenous land acknowledgements. A change has been made from identifying the land and its people to now including a phrase ‘we are all treaty people.’ Although more than one history – one perspective and story of history- the history is collective. Treaties require at least two parties for the treaty to be a thing.

 

History will not be kind.

Because of that one phrase in the House of Commons, Black History month, the change of land acknowledgements, I came to the Genesis reading and the whole story of Joseph starting in chapter 37, with a new curiosity. Whose history is being told in the Joseph story?

 

I bet most of you will be happy that I am not going to wait and ask you to answer the question aloud. The Joseph narrative is an intense, complicated, and diverse relational history.

 

 

The story of Joseph is that of an Afro-Asiatic family fathered by Jacob and mothered by either Leah, Rachel, or their maids Bilhah and Zilpah. The story of 12 black brothers is a history where each became a patriarch of an Afro-Asiatic Israelite tribe, with offspring reaching remote parts of the African continent; the Fantu, the Yoruba, the Sudanese, and the Bantu.

The story has Joseph, the youngest and favoured one, being thrown in a pit and sold by his brothers, brothers Rueben and Judah being mentioned specifically; to Midianites, black arabs, who draw Joseph out of the well and sell him to Ishmaelites, North Africans from Egypt. As a young man Joseph gets thrown in prison and later rises to a governor position in the court of the Great African Pharoah.

By the end of the book of Genesis, 70 or so of Joseph’s Afro-asiatic Israelite family settle in the Land of Goshen (Northern Egypt in the delta).  The family settles into life and culture; there is prosperity for a time, until with changes of Pharaohs eventually they are enslaved.  There are 43 years of North African living before the Exodus – there is intermingling with other cultures coming to Egypt for bread and being brought to Egypt as labour. When Moses comes on the scene and the Exodus occurs, the mixed multitude leaving Egypt are called Hebrews; Israelites, and a host of others like the Ashanti peoples from West Africa (their culture specifically mentioned by the ritual of sprinkling blood on door posts).

 

So, whose history is being told?

The history of 12 Afro-asiatic patriarchs? The politics and relationships of one family, one tribe? Is it Egyptian history? The Great African Pharoah history? African history? Is it just Joseph history? And what about the Midianites, the Ishmaelites?

 

There is something rather beautiful about the book of Genesis -although often interpreted as one story, one history- it is a book that was written over a long period of time drawing on a variety of historical perspectives:

The early prehistory material like the creation, the flood, are similar to or borrowed from the tales found in universal traditions of other cultural myths, tales written for instance in the Mesopotamian Atrahasis epic which was put together a 100 years before the beginning of Genesis;

Then there are two distinct Israelite histories – a history articulated by the South, who referred to God as YHWH written in the time of King Solomon, 970 BCE;

A century or two later the Northern people’s history relates other stories and refers to God as Elohim;

Added too were Pre-exile stand-alone stories from independent documents and oral traditions, stories of Jacob and Joseph in particular, including one from Eygptian folklore; stories from a Rueben stream, a separate Judah collection;

The book of Genesis went through a post-exilic priestly editor after 538 BCE.

So whose history is it?

Are people articulating history, reporting history, recovering history, rediscovering history, writing self into history, being truer to history, trying to present inclusive history?

And do readers – do we- when reading the story, the history of Afro-asiatic Joseph do we interpret the complexity and the diversity of the history, histories, presented?

 

History will not be kind.

This doesn’t have to be true! I think that is my take-away from my reflection this week.

The story of Joseph includes lots of ‘unkindness;’ there is boosting, and ego, favouritism, jealousy, lying, conniving, tricking, testing.

There is also a depth to the story that comes by the contributions from the addition of diverse perspectives; a willingness to articulate in writing … history… as intense, complicated, diverse relationships.

The combination of stories illustrates a biblical record of inclusivism and multiculturalism – not that it has always been interpreted as such.

 

Where we ended the Joseph story this morning, we read that Joseph made a choice when coming face-to-face with his history in the faces of his brothers.  There was a chance that history would not be kind, Joseph could have simply sent his brothers away, or worse had them imprisoned, indentured, killed. Joseph decided in this moment to step forward – history in his hands – history in the making! And chose an act of reconciliation.  He kissed his brothers.

…it was then, and only then, that the brothers talked with Joseph. The course of history was reset.

 

We have that choice.

We stand face-to-face with history: personal history, family history, Christian history, Jewish history, Western interpretive history, Black history, biblical history, Indigenous history, Lutheran history, this faith community’s history, Canadian history, Halifax history – history is in our hands – history in the making!

Will history be kind?

It depends on who is writing the history.

History is in our hands – history in the making! And we choose –

…I pray we choose to follow Joseph’s example in this moment; so that history is kind and remembers that we, as a collective, a community, chose to move forward and reset history with an act (or two) of reconciliation.