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Destroying Them Utterly
A sermon in The Other Six Days series
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
October 29, 2006
Deuteronomy 7:1-6; Revelation 20:7-15

Deuteronomy 7:1-6 When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you--the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you-- and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for that would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. But this is how you must deal with them: break down their altars, smash their pillars, hew down their sacred poles, and burn their idols with fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

Revelation 20:7-15 When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, in order to gather them for battle; they are as numerous as the sands of the sea. They marched up over the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from heaven and consumed them. And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Our community has a strong commitment to social justice.   As part of that commitment, every month we highlight an issue of moral or ethical concern, and we address that issue in terms of education, service, and worship.   In October, we address genocide, and so tonight, our worship is focused on the issue of genocide and the response of the Christian to it.

I. GENOCIDE

The term "genocide" was coined in 1944 by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin who sought to respond to Winston Churchill's declaration that in the prosecution of World War II the Allies were witnessing a "crime without a name". [1]   The current definition of genocide comes from Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

Article 2. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. [2]

It is fair to say, however, that long before Mr. Lemkin coined the term, and the United Nations defined it, genocide had been an all-too frequent part of human history.   The review of the history of the violence of one population against another was almost overwhelming.   History is replete with examples of one population seeking the extermination, eradication, forcible resettlement, or cultural annihilation of another population:

• In the ancient world, the Scythians drove the Cimmerians out of their homeland.   The fleeing Cimmerians later displaced the Phrygians, but were then later conquered by the Assyrians. [3]
• The Assyrians waged a war against the Northern Kingdom of Israel that resulted in complete destruction of the Northern Kingdom, mass deportations of its populations, forced intermarriage, and eventually the eradication of the "Lost Tribes" of Israel. [4]
• Under Julius Caesar, the Romans waged a brutal war against the Gauls that over the course of eight years killed over one million Gauls, one-sixth of the population. [5]
• Over the course of colonization of the Americas, tens of millions of indigenous people were killed over the ensuing centuries.   In central Mexico, prior to the Conquest, a population of 25 million people was reduced just over a million a century later.   In the first U.S. census, only a few thousand Indians were left in the northeastern states. Many natives died as a result of disease, displacement, and the shattering of communal life and a way of life that had provided for them prior to colonization.   But a good many would fall victim to policies designed to drive them from their lands, by force if necessary, to give way for the nation's expansion and continuing settlement of the West.
• In the nineteenth century, Czarist Russia waged a genocidal war against the Circassians.
• At the beginning of the Twentieth Century the Ottoman Turks displaced 2,000,000 Armenians, 1,500,000 of whom were killed, and the remainder deported from a homeland they had occupied for over 2,500 years. [6]
• During the Second World War, Croatians committed acts of genocide killing nearly 500,000 Serbs, as well as Jews and others.
• In one of the most famously horrific examples of genocide, Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews as part of its "final solution" to the "Jewish Question".   In addition, the Nazis exterminated 6 million others, including gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and others found to be inconsistent with the ideals of "racial purity" of the Reich.   (This on top of the 20 million Russians who died during the war in the East).
• In the 1980's the Iraqi Government committed acts of genocide against the Kurds residing in Northern Iraq.
• In the 1990's, Serbian forces launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo of Bosnians, killing 8,000 at Srebrenica alone, and displacing as many as 1,000,000.  
• During a period of 100 days in Rwanda in 1994, nearly 1,000,000 Tutsis were murdered by the Hutu dominated government.  
• Today in Darfur, Sudan, nearly 400,000 Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa people have been killed and another 2,000,000 have been displaced as a result of a government supported genocidal campaign against those populations. [7]

And this list is an incomplete list.

Over human history, millions upon millions have died as the result of genocide. The horror and shock the world felt when the truth of the Holocaust was learned after World War II has not translated into a cessation of acts of brutality and systematic murder.

As Christians, perhaps the most depressing thing beyond the sheer human toll is how often Christians have been a part of genocide.   The Europeans who conquered the Americas and the colonists after them, the Russians who killed the Circassians, the Croats who killed the Serbs, the Serbs who killed the Croats and Bosnians, the Germans who killed the Jews, the Hutus who killed the Tutsis:   Christians.

To make matters worse, it is not simply a problem of Christian participation in genocide; it is the problem of Christian support for genocide.   For there are passages of scripture that have been used to defend and to justify genocidal 'holy' wars.

II. CHRISTIANS AND GENOCIDE

The passage we read from Deuteronomy earlier is one of those.   Listen again to the words read earlier:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you--the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you-- and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.

One commentator notes: "It is the most uncompromising demand for genocide, based on religious principles, that could possibly be expressed." [8]

Indeed, it is a disturbing image.   "Destroy them utterly".   The very language of destruction utilizes a word that also pertains to sacrifice--to dedicate something to God by destroying it in fire.   Consuming it.   It is not a half-measure.   It is a total measure.   The peoples of the land are to be given no quarter, no peace treaty.   They are to be driven from the land and utterly destroyed.

Many have read this passage and seen in it a warrant for the complete destruction of the enemies of God--who usually wind up being the same people as our enemies.

A. Revelation and the Destruction of God's Enemies

For they have looked at texts like that in Deuteronomy, and the accounts in the book of Joshua about the Conquest of the Land, and passages in the book of Revelation as scriptural permission for violence to further the purposes of the people of God.

The text of Revelation conceives of a final battle at the end of history where the forces of evil are destroyed by fire and the beast is cast into the lake of fire.   Many have sought to rush the timetable and begin that battle now, and often view the eradication of their enemies by fire as part of that cleansing process, and part of the plan of God.

B. The Reformation and the Thirty Years War

This kind of thinking has not been limited to purging outsiders of the church.   Today is Reformation Sunday, a Sunday on which we commemorate the reformation that was launched on October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. Not only would a period of great religious development and expression begin with this act, but nearly a century and a half of bitter and devastating religious conflict.   Catholics would massacre Protestants.   Protestants would massacre Protestants.   Both groups would massacre the Anabaptists.   War, division, and the slaughtering of peoples based on religious convictions would dominate the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Troublesome passages from scripture have not been skeletons in our closet; they have often been brought out into the light of day to justify the worst violence against one another that we can conceive.

III. THE INTERPRETIVE LENS

But there is a problem with our reliance on these texts to justify this idea of total 'holy' war:  they cannot support that interpretation.

Both Deuteronomy containing the instructions and the book of Joshua which contains the execution of the instructions to ethnically cleanse Canaan were written centuries after the events they portray.   Deuteronomy was written at a time when Israel--now in the land--would continue to struggle with idolatry and the worship of gods and idols of the surrounding peoples.   The instruction to destroy the peoples utterly speaks more to the requirement that Israel remove the temptation posed by the religious activities of these people.   It is a requirement of eradication that does not reconcile easily with what we know about the actual course of Israel's settlement of the land, which did not completely eradicate the other peoples of the land--some of whom we continue to read about more than 1,400 years later in the Gospel of Matthew. [9]  In fact, the fact that the very next commandment forbids intermarriage with these people, it can be assumed that in spite of the command to annihilate them, these peoples would still be around to intermarry with.

Furthermore, the author of the book of Joshua was reflecting theologically on these distant events, interpreting them as confirmation of God's sovereignty, and as confirmation of the fact that Israel remains solely dependent on God's protection and deliverance, and that Israel must protect itself from the corrupting influences of idolatrous neighbors. [10]   The events in Deuteronomy and Joshua are backward-looking, not forward looking.   They are reflective not prescriptive.   As one commentator notes:

"Since these wars had already occurred, the writer was not trying to inspire the readers of the book of Joshua to march for the to make war in the name of the Lord.   Therefore, as modern readers and interpreters, we cannot use the book of Joshua as a justification for war and genocide." [11]

It should also be noted, that there has long been in the tradition a counterweighing voice alongside the depictions of destruction of others.   In the rabbinic literature, there is a compelling story about the reaction in heaven to the destruction of the Egyptians at the Red Sea during the Exodus:

At the time Israel crossed the sea, the ministering angels were about to chant their daily song before the Holy One. But the Holy One said to them: The works of My hands are drowning in the sea, and you would chant song before Me? (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 39b)

The message is clear--God does not rejoice over our violence against one another, even at the deaths that are caused in the liberation of one people from the oppression of another.   An ancient tradition in the Passover seder, the meal commemorating the liberation from bondage in Egypt, reminds the participants not to rejoice over the destruction of the Egyptians.   As the names of the Ten Plagues are read, a drop of wine is taken from each cup for each plague, to diminish the joy of the full cup with a reminder of the suffering of the Egyptians.

Even if we wanted to ignore the historical context of the writing of Deuteronomy and Joshua, we could not ignore the fact that God does not rejoice in the death of anyone, nor should we rejoice in--much less seek--the death and annihilation of other peoples.

IV. PRECEDENT FOR ACTION

As difficult as these passages of scripture are for us, they are not without precedent in terms of their impact on the life of Christians.   This is not, of course, the first time that we have been faced with an egregious wrong that could be justified by an appeal to scripture.

A. Slavery

In the 17 th and 18 th Century, frequent appeal was made to scripture to defend the institution of slavery.   Pro-slavery apologists pointed to the frequent references to 'slaves' in scripture.   They pointed to passages like the 'curse of Ham' who would be a slave to his brothers.   They pointed to Paul's advice that 'slaves obey their masters' (while, ignoring Paul's subversive advice to Philemon about freeing the slave Onesimus).   The pointed to a whole host of scriptural referents.

But the existence of scriptural warrant did not deter those who were convinced that Christian faith and slavery were fundamentally inconsistent.

B. Wesley

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was one such individual.   He was hardly dissuaded by the forces of slavery in the 18 th century. He condemned slavery in some of the strongest language permitted a clergyman.   He published a text challenging slavery, in which he graphically described slaves' capture, branding, and sale. [12]   He described their passage where as many as thirty thousand died--or as Wesley maintained, were murdered.   He made alliances with others hoping to end slavery. He organized a fast each Friday so that God would remember those poor outcasts. [13]

C. Our Response

We, too, are capable of action.   We, too, can forge alliances with organizations committed to ending genocide.   We, too, can spread vital and needed knowledge about genocides around the world.   We, too, can remain committed to justice for all.   And we, too, can offer prayers on behalf of those afflicted by genocide, and can organize fasts that those suffering might be remembered.

V. END

We are capable of taking a vision and helping to put it into action.    For we have a vision of a world at peace, a vision of a world reconciled to God and one another.   In passages other than the ones read tonight, the book of Revelation brings a message of hope and peace.   It is a book that presents a vision of the world redeemed and restored to the perfection it was at the creation.   It is a vision of a world redeemed from violence and pain, from suffering and oppression, even from death itself.  

It is this vision that shapes the faith of the Christian.   In the Resurrection of Jesus we see the foretaste of this restoration of the whole world.   We see our own resurrection and the redemption of the creation itself in that amazing demonstration of God's grace.

Christ calls us to share that vision with all the world.   And this sharing involves our living out the vision of reality we have seen.   It involves our committing ourselves to peace, to reconciliation.   It requires us speaking out against injustice and oppression.   It requires us to speak out with a loud voice on behalf of those whom others would seek to eradicate.   Those, like the persecuted multitudes in Darfur, or Rwanda, or Bosnia, require our voice in order that the world may hear.   To truly live out the love of Christ for all the world's people, it is not enough for us to be disturbed or shocked by genocide.   It is not enough for us to lament.   We must speak out.   We must witness.   It is the only way that the scourge of genocide can itself be "utterly destroyed."

 

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Notes
[1] http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/history/
[2] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Approved and proposed for signature and ratification or accession by General Assembly resolution 260 A (III) of 9 December 1948; entry into force 12 January 1951, in accordance with article XIII (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm)
[3] "Scythians," World Book Encyclopedia
[4] See, e.g., 2 Kings 17
[5] http://www.livius.org/caa-can/caesar/caesar05.html
[6] http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html
[7] http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/background
[8] New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. II, p. 349
[9] New Interpreter's Study Bible, p. 256., see also , Matthew 15:21-28
[10] Ibid. , p. 314.
[11] Ibid.
[12] "Unholy Alliances," by Bill Wylie-Kellerman, Christian Social Action
[13] Ibid .

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Copyright © 2006. Mark A. Schaefer.

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