Wilderness to Godly Kinship

 

I have just finished a book that I read through Black History Month, A Matter of Equality: The Life’s Work of Senator Don Oliver. Do you know who he is? Don is an African Nova Scotian – the first Black man to be a Canadian Senator: a lawyer, a speaker, a diversity advocate, policy maker; his work earned him 5 honourary Doctorates. He is a mentor, a hero.

March the 10^th is the commemoration day of two African Americans – Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. Two women who were born into slavery and lived through the abolishment of slavery. Harriet is known for her work with the Underground Railroad – helping 300 or so people escape before slavery was abolished; and her home was a centre for women’s rights and serving the aged and poor. Sojourner Truth became a preacher and was a popular speaker who spoke against slavery and for women’s rights.

 

Reflecting on the bible passage from Numbers, a story where the people are in the wilderness surrounded by snakes- Sundays and Seasons resource says: “to survive a wilderness journey, sometimes we need a sign to follow. A bronze snake was raised high to counteract the poison of earthly snakes on the Israelites’ journey from slavery into freedom.” The resource draws a connection between the wilderness and Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.

Harriet spent much time in a geographical wilderness, journeying South to North moving slaves to freedom.

Both women spent time in other wilderness landscapes: political, social, spiritual wildernesses where promises to Black people and women were not kept. The women remained witnesses – holding high liberating truth.

 

This resonated with me. The idea of wilderness beyond geographical wilderness. Through Don Oliver’s life’s work, he journeyed through many wildernesses and bore witness to Canadians, that the country, our systems, our politics, our laws, our society were, and in many cases still are, wilderness – where promises of equity, diversity, and inclusion are not being lived.

 

“to survive a wilderness journey, sometimes we need a sign to follow. A bronze snake was raised high to counteract the poison of earthly snakes on the Israelites’ journey from slavery into freedom.”

Lent is the season of the church year when we take time to reflect on the journey to the cross. The scriptures read are to help us wrestle with what hinders our relationship with God and gets in the way of living the way of the cross. We pause to address those things that bind us and keep us in bondage to sin. Perhaps what imprisons us is the poisonous snakes of: holding on to grudges, allowing actions to be fueled by anger, wanting revenge, believing negative self-talk, lacking courage to act or speak, failing to love our neighbour. The letter to the Ephesians describes the bondage as being, Dead through trespasses and sins … following the course of this world.

 

Don Oliver reflected that his presence in Canada’s parliamentary system was a constant reminder to him of the wilderness of inequity. He was a sign to follow in that wilderness. He put himself in a spot to address, talk about, bring to the forefront matters of injustice. He was a pillar of diversity, equality, and inclusion. Others in the system looked to him as a beacon drawing people away from the snakes and to keep the focus on working towards freedom; liberation – to lead people to a different way of being.

There have been many who have been signs in the wilderness, who teach, preach, and work to move people from slavery to freedom; whether that is individual movement or that of a whole people. These signs bring healing and life to all involved.

Today I wish, I pray, for a sign in the wilderness, a direction to focus on so that healing and life become reality.

 

The peoples of the world are surrounded by wilderness – war, tyranny, poverty, famine, systemic racism, climate crisis, loneliness. The wilderness seems to encroach on the hope and life that is in the world and in response humanity wraps themselves in fear, doubt, and complaints. These being a natural place for snakes to appear, all because humans get lost in the wilderness. Humans get wrapped up the situation and in self-preservation. Humans turn inward, protective; their energy is consumed surviving with none left for relationship with neighbour; they become suspicious of the other; the snakes are greedy; nasty; hopeless; they loss the bigger picture; become disconnected. The snakes multiply as people’s sense of being lost grows.

 

Numbers 21 shows a people in this wilderness spiral; where snakes multiply. The people complain to God – a God who parted the Sea before their very eyes, a God who took them out of slavery, a God who they see veiled in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night; a God who sends manna every day; a God who has delivered quail, and brought water from a rock-  they complain, “why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness: for there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Their complaints are unfounded; in fact, there is a lie in this complaint ‘there is no food,’ in the same breath they admit there is they just don’t like it. The people are tired of the journey through the wilderness. They are losing sight of what could be, the promise of life, of a new way of being. They have stopped dreaming of freedom.

It is hard work, and at times seemingly impossible, for humanity to move from slavery to freedom; from human ways to God ways; from individual living to commonwealth living. The first part of the journey leaving slavery happens – slavery is abolished, and then starts the work of moving towards freedom – living it completely… but the journey (the work) gets stuck wandering in a wilderness where sometimes it is simply easier to forget about freedom and return to slavery.

 

At the heart of today’s scripture is the question: do we prefer to identify as slaves rather than people of God?

Are we so comfortable being in bondage that living into freedom is beyond us?

 

Lent is the season when the wilderness in which we find ourselves, the wilderness we encounter in the world, is disrupted by a sign to follow. The cross is placed front and centre as a focus to draw us away from the snakes and point us to healing and the possibility of life. The cross set in the wilderness is a beacon to encourage the continued movement from slavery to freedom.

 

The letter from Ephesians describes the movement: slavery, wilderness, freedom – and all of it though the power of the cross.  But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ …  by grace you have been saved, through faith and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God.

For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

 

Because of the cross. Because of the love we have received. Because of God’s relationship with us … even though we continue to walk around in the wilderness, choose to be poisoned by snakes growing out of fear, and continually return to slavery and bondage; God set a sign of the cross in the midst of the current wilderness; and calls us to move to freedom that is already present if we simply shake off the snakes; look up, refocus and live the freedom already gifted to us.

 

As a people let us live in the freedom of the cross – let us proclaim the liberated truth by living God’s kindom into reality. Together I know this can be so.

 

Sojourner Truth said: Let…individuals make the most of what God has given them, have their neighbours do the same, and then do all they can to serve each other. There is no use in one [person], or one nation, to try to do or be everything. It is a good thing to be dependent on each other for something, it makes us civil and peaceable.

May we live into this freedom: freedom from slavery and bondage to sin through dependence on each other; Godly kinship.