Pasture-lands . . .

Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-182 Sunday 21 Oct 2001

Reading: PSALM 83 – WHOSE ARE THE WORLD’S PASTURE-LANDS?

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

‘Lord, truth incarnate, let thy Spirit overshadow us in reading thy Word, that learning of thee with honest hearts we may be rooted and built up in thee’ (William Bright, 1824).

What can this seemingly angry, out spoken song say to us today? It’s so local, so specific to one people’s history (vs 5-11). Two insights may help us, one Christian, one secular.

In Interpretation and Obedience (Augsburg Fortress, 1991), American scholar Walter Brueggemann reflects on what he understands as the relevance for his community today of the Old Testament theme of land and the reiterated question of its ownership: ‘We are deeply enmeshed in the dispute over land, for our economy and foreign policy largely concern the cynical management of other peoples’ land’.

Brueggemann’s critique of his own society surely applies wherever human power structures operate autonomously, seeking to stamp out evidence of God (v 4). In the experience of Israel, the God-denying power of urban Egypt had been replaced by the God denying Caananite confederations (vs 6,7) and the looming threat of the Assyrian super power (v 8). While Israel’s confession was ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and every thing in it’ (Ps 24:1), the surrounding nations claimed the land as theirs (v 12). (See Gen 47:20; Ezek 29:3,9) The Old Testament prophets record the struggle to retain among God’s people an utterly distinctive understanding of God’s lordship of all.(See Mic 2:1-5; Isa 5:8-12)

Some rare people still treat the world’s pasture lands as God’s. Brueggemann tells of the Christian manager of a bank in a farming community who extends the mortgages, interest free, of farmers struggling to keep going. ‘The banker was practising the Jubilee, though he did not call it that.’ Meanwhile UK economist Will Hutton writes in the Guardian newspaper of the ‘biblical proof and moral imagination of religion’ as inspiration for the Jubilee 2000 campaign which seeks the cancellation of unrepayable debt by the world’s poorest countries.

‘Lord, wake us to the opportunities of living “jubilee” lives that reflect your grace and generosity.’

– Pauline Hoggarth

Copyright Scripture Union, 2001