After Pentecost Devotional - Day 43

“When runaway slaves from other countries come to Israel and ask for protection, you must not hand them back to their owners. Instead, you must let them choose which one of your towns they want to live in. Don’t be cruel to runaway slaves.” Deuteronomy 23:15-16

There is so much to unpack in these two verses. While the text does not rule out slavery as we might want it to do, it deals with issues of justice, mercy, and redemption in the midst of economic structures that include slavery. It also registers that Yahweh did not want Israel to treat runaway slaves according to the societal norms of the day. They were to be accepted into the nation alongside the descendants of Abraham and apparently on equal footing.

We think of Israelite religion as exclusionist. Indeed it was under the influence of Ezra and Nehemiah. It was so in Jesus' day. The Torah is much more accepting of outsiders, however, even as Jesus and the early church were. We find that not only escaped foreign slaves were to be granted sanctuary, but other immigrants were likewise to share in the blessings of Yahweh. Repeatedly we find injunctions to welcome strangers and include broad swaths of people within the circle of Israelite faith.

Israel was constantly being reminded of its origins as an oppressed people in Egypt. They were being called on to treat others with the very same measure of grace in redemption that Yahweh had showered upon them. We find here the very same principle Jesus would later espouse in the terms of “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” The Deuteronomist casts this in terms of reaching out to others who have escaped lives of oppression and bondage, granting them the same freedom.

Yahweh, after all, is the God of the oppressed. Yahweh the God who listens to the cries of those cast aside by polite society. Yahweh is the God of widows, orphans, immigrants, lepers, and the infertile. Yahweh is the God who cares for the desperate, offering water in desert places, food to the hungry, and release to the captives.

As Yahweh treated Israel, so Israel was to treat others. They were to live up to the ways in which God offered freedom and redemption. They were to share not only the bounty of the land but also include outsiders within the structures of the nation. They were to offer a welcome and belonging to those seeking refuge within the land.

Escaped slaves were to be looked upon, not as prospects for further oppression, easy victims to ensnare. They were to be offer sanctuary and belonging within the ranks of Israel, a nation founded by escaped slaves with no hope beyond Yahweh's intervention.

Grace, redemption, refuge, safety, and belonging were Yahweh's tools, symbols of the identity of Israel's God and Israel itself. The charge to the nation was to live up to the character of their Redeemer. Israel was to follow the example God had set before them. They were to shift from becoming the redeemed to becoming redeemers. They were to become more than the recipients of grace, mercy, and justice. They were to enact those same principles before the nations around them.

How does your life need to change in the process of becoming more like God?


"Lord, grant me the courage to become an emissary of your redemption and grace."

—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
My latest books can be found here on amazon

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