2022.10.16 | Knowing has an Effect on Doing
“Knowing has an Effect on Doing”
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Preached by
Marvin Lance Wiser
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, CA
16 October 2022
Jer 31:34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Good morning, Church. I’ve got a quick question for us as I begin: how many of you know Steph Curry? Can I get a show of hands? Okay, now how many of you have shared a meal with him? Where’d all the hands go? I thought you said you knew him? I guess what we meant was that we know of him. To know someone is a little more intimate than to know of someone, wouldn’t you agree?
How many of you remember taking Spanish grammar? Spanish language makes this linguistic distinction more concrete in using two different words for our English, “to know,” Saber and Conocer. The former has a more superficial knowledge of something, while the latter’s semantic domain is more narrow and intimate and applies to places and people.
Our text this morning has God stating that Israel and Judah will not just know of God, but will know God. Think conocer. They will have the Torah within them; written on their hearts.
I want to talk to you today about what effect this transition has for us, from knowing of someone or something to knowing someone or something; having an experience that etches something upon your heart.
In the Bible as it has come to us today, God has always had a divine objective of peoples knowing the divine. If we remember back to the plagues of Egypt, there exists a refrain within the narrative, “so that they shall know that I am LORD” (Ex 7:5; cf. Ex 14:18). From the Exodus narrative, it would appear that right actions were contingent upon a certain intimate knowledge. So if you truly know someone, you’re going to do right by them--God included.
But it need not be solely knowledge of the divine. We are not told the name of the Pharaoh who presided over the Exodus, though many concur that events described would have occurred around the time of Rameses II. Rather, the Pharaoh is introduced only as “a new king who did not know Joseph” (Ex 1:8).
Joseph, of course, the boy with a coat of many colors, represented the asylum-seeking Hebrews, searching for refuge from famine in the fertile delta of the Nile. But the new ruler did not know this group of people. Sure he knew of them, they were making him mud bricks! But he had never broken bread with them, much less knew of Joseph’s loyalty to committing his people to the wellbeing of the society and to thrive within Egypt their new home. Because of this lack of more intimate knowledge, the Hebrews would ultimately be seen as but an expendable workforce, to be used and abused by and for the state for building projects driven by taskmasters devoid of desire to know their neighbor.
As we see here, knowing has an effect on doing, and Pharoah’s not knowing Joseph not only had adverse effects on the Hebrews, but proved disastrous results for God’s creation, if we understand the plagues to be ecological disasters predicated on broken relationships, or the lack of not knowing one another.
Even today, we keep calling such disasters “natural,” but was the recent flooding in Pakistan or the increasingly intensifying complex fires in California natural? I know insurance companies would like to blame many disasters on God, but I don’t think the root cause for the increasing intensity of these acts are divine in origin. Science points back to us. The knowledge that we partner in the stewardship of all creation would help to mitigate these unnatural disasters, just as knowing immigrant groups would deter their translation into subservient labor for empire as was the case with the ancient Hebrews.
Leviticus 19:33-34 reads, “When an immigrant resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The immigrant residing among you must be to you as a fellow citizen. And love them as yourself, for you were immigrants in the land of Egypt. I am YHWH your God.”
The command here in Leviticus of “do not mistreat immigrants,” is motivated by the collective memory of Israelite subjugation as enslaved Hebrew migrant workers at the hand of the unnamed Pharaoh. The ethic of hospitality and accommodation to and right treatment of neighbor and their ultimate integration into society is one based in experience, in memory, in intimate knowledge, based not in sympathy, but empathy, lived experience. Knowing has an effect on doing.
What experience, collective memories, might we call upon to produce such an ethic ourselves?
Indigenous People’s Day was celebrated this past Monday. President Biden became the first president to officially recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2021. It falls on the same day as Columbus Day, which was established in part as a way to acknowledge the mistreatment of Italian Americans. The date of Indigenous People’s Day is reactionary to the celebration of Columbus, who while lauded by many as a so-called “discoverer” of the Americas, in 1495 in the name of the Holy Trinity, initiated slave trading of the Arawaks, which would begin their ultimate genocide. Hundreds of thousands of indigenous would die at the hand of European discovery even before conquistador Hernán Cortés would march on Tenochtitlán, modern-day Mexico City, nearly a quarter of a century later.
Anglo society seeks to differentiate its founding myths in the Americas from those of the Hispanic variety. The Spanish colonies were set-up forcefully by empire and its violent agents, los conquistadores, and the Catholic church with its inquisitors. Meanwhile, in the north anglo settlers were pious religious refugees, pilgrims. The very ancestors of our own faith tradition, congregational separatists. This distinction has led to the proliferation of an often used liberal myth, that we are a nation of immigrants. In many ways this is true, and in many ways it is not.
Ugandan anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani in his 2020 book, Neither Settler nor Native, states that “If Europeans in the United States were immigrants, they would have joined the existing societies in the New World. Instead, they destroyed the existing societies and built a new one that was reinforced by later waves of settlement.” In actuality, our collective past, informed by the Doctrines of Discovery and Manifest Destiny, has much more in common with that of our southern neighbors, informed by conquest, than we have cared to remember.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortíz in her 2021 book Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion, pleas for a shift of our collective memory to understand our Anglo ancestors as not immigrants but settler colonists. She argues that the liberal ideological myth that the U.S. is a “nation of immigrants,” masks a more complex history of slavery, genocide, settler colonialism, and white supremacy. Indeed, we worship this morning on land stolen from Ohlone, Muwekma, Chochenyo, and Lisjan native peoples.
With this recognition, let us endeavor to remember further. The story of pious puritans and penitent pilgrims has been the cultural memory that White American culture has passed on, but given the sins of genocide, we know that this memory was not the dominant story. Consequently, we remember Tisquantum of Patuxet, anglicized as “Squanto,” and his sharing of corn, but we forget his enslavement. We remember the 1621 Thanksgiving feast with the Wampanoag of modern-day Massachusetts, but we have been made to forget the subsequent Thanksgivings referred to by John Winthrop in 1637, giving thanks for defeat of and the slaughter of the Pequot peoples. For their descendents, Thanksgiving is remembered as a National Day of Mourning.
Imagine with me for a moment, what if our Anglo ancestors really had been immigrants? What if they had joined the existing societies in the New World, instead of destroying them? What if we had known our neighbors, rather than known of them?
What happens when we get to know others? Knowing has an effect on doing. We are made vulnerable to transformation. Degrees of separation may be diminished. Systems of oppression may be interrupted. Had Pharaoh known Joseph, Moses might not have had to exclaim, “Let my People go!”
Jeremiah depicts God as saying that the Judahites would finally know the divine. If the Judahites were to know God, they would cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow, and not mistreat immigrants.
If we were to know those who trim our grass and roof our houses, then perhaps we would not balk at construction prices.
If we were to know the families who harvest grapes and coffee, then perhaps we would be more inclined to pay a just price.
If we were . . . to get to know our neighbors.
This past week Eden Church’s Vaccination Team, which is a partnership with Alameda County Public Health and Healthcare Services, joined staff from other organizations in our coalition for Community Resiliency: La Famillia, Resources for Community Development, My Eden Voice, Regional Pacific Islander Task Force, and Umoja Health. We canvassed in Ashland between 162nd and 167th avenues between E. 14th and 580, which happens to be part of the census tract with unincorporated Alameda county’s lowest COVID vaccination rate. We were able to reach 294 doors, and many with whom we spoke were open to receiving the new bivalent booster, they simply had never heard about it. While many are hesitant, some are resistant, there are many more who just need to be known. Not as a statistic, but as a neighbor, who can be part of the collective solution.
What if we were to get to know our neighbors before disasters strike? What if we were to take proactive approaches to getting to know one another, rather than reactive ones as in the event of an earthquake, hurricane, or pandemic? The most vulnerable and the historically disenfranchised then would not simply be a bar on a graph, but those with whom we partner at the beginning of crises and before they even occur, creating equitable opportunities and pathways toward recovery for all.
Getting to know others, as our canvassers last week learned and experienced, often requires the 80/20 rule: We listen 80% of the time. Our neighbors have stories to tell, and they might diverge from the collective memories that we ourselves have inherited. That’s okay. We are an inclusive covenant people, bound by unity not uniformity. May we learn what we have been made to forget as we get to know others, may these new knowledges affect our being in the world, and may God forgive us our collective iniquities. May knowing also have an effect on our doing. Amen.
Blessing:
Lift up your hearts, to receive a blessing: Today, we have the opportunity to get to know our settled neighbors and our displaced neighbors. The gospel is relational. Let our Koinonia, our communion, etch each other upon our hearts so that in fulfilling God’s Torah, we work toward the well-being of all, not just some. Go in peace to listen, to learn, and be transformed. Amen.