QUARANTINE BLOG # 654 – SPECIAL

January 20, 2022

We interrupt your regularly scheduled email with a special announcement.  Yesterday, at a news conference, President Joe Biden gave a confused statement about the U.S. and NATO’s position concerning Russia and Ukraine.  Shortly after the news conference White House officials “rushed to clarify the U.S. position after Mr. Biden’s comments.  ‘If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our Allies,’” Press Secretary Jen Psaki said (that quote from the BBC).

You knew all of that, and that Vladimir Putin wishes to return to the old Soviet plan of world domination, but what is interesting is my devotional reading for today from Gift and Task by Walter Brueggemann (published in 2017).

The Scripture readings were from Genesis and John:

Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:1-4).

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:7-14).

And now Brueggemann’s daily reflection:

The story of the tower of Babel is an early account of globalization, a strategy of universal control by powerful people who aim to control all the money and to impose uniformity on all parts of the world population. It is clear in the story that the impetus for such a strategy is insecurity (fear of being scattered), and the aim is to become powerful in all the earth.

The threat of such a strategy of globalization is that it will evoke a prideful authority that need not and will not stop at anything in trying to achieve the impossible. This is reported in the text as a threat to the rule of God. Not stated in the text but clearly an outcome of such a strategy is that “lesser people” get lost in the shuffle as the powerful assert control. The “scattering” and “confusion” wrought by God is to assure that no assertive power can gain ultimate control and emerge as the single superpower.

The Gospel reading takes place, by contrast, in very small scale, a Jewish teacher and a Samaritan supplicant. The interaction between the two is a negotiation about national and ethnic difference and the shared agenda of water and “living water.” Jesus, the Jew, reaches across ethnic lines, that is, he mobilizes and transcends his Jewishness to minister to one from an “enemy” people. The narrative attests the singularity of Jesus in his ministry beyond ethnic boundaries. By contrast to the practice of globalization, his “living water” is free. Globalization characteristically commodifies everything, and so water must be bought and sold. This water for life, however, has no price. We might ponder the life of Jesus as alternative to the stridency of globalization.

And then this prayer concludes the devotion:

God of all nations, deliver us from assertion of national or ethnic pride and the hunger for domination. Open us to your free gifts offered to us all. In His name. Amen.

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