From only studying the Bible, we can be led to believe that Israelites and their kings were the most important and feared of all nations in the Ancient Near East. Also from the Bible, the future of the entire world would appear to pivot on the words of kings and prophets. God does act through ‘his’ people chosen to prepare the entire earth and all its creatures for salvation. But it’s also a misleading perspective failing to grasp the highly improbable enormity of its truth.
The history of the Ancient Near East is the story of the rise and fall of empires competing for mastery of the entire region. Sumerian and Acadians fought over control about the time Abraham left the powerful city of Ur, journeying to the land of the Canaanites. Hittites and Assyrians battled as the era of Judges ended and Israel began to form. Assyrians and Babylonians did the same as the northern kingdom of Israel ceased to exist. Judah struggled on until Babylon won it all, deporting Judean elites to Babylon. There they remained until the Persians conquered everything and Cyrus authorized Jerusalem’s temple to be rebuilt. Alexander the Great rolled over the Persians and his successors imposed Greek culture on the entire region. It inspired the Maccabean revolt and with the help of the Romans, gave Judea and Galilee a measure of independence. We know how that turned out.
Throughout the two thousand years between Abraham and Jesus, the great empires paid as little attention as necessary to Israelites, their puny kingdoms, and their weird worship of an unnamed, invisible god. Israelites were to them a trouble making irritation whose only value was its convenience as a strategically important trade route. Frequent rebellions were easily put down. The self-styled chosen people were pests who, truth be told, were ferocious warriors who needed to be subdued with massive force, distracting from larger, more powerful enemies but it had to be done.
Ancient empires rose and fell, not one of them exists today, but the people of God, God’s prophets and the Word of God remained. They stumbled, sinned, fell, were exiled yet rose to rebuild and carry on. Scattered to the ends of empire, they became the seed bed that would yield the good news of God in Christ Jesus for the whole of humanity. The prologue to John’s gospel proclaims that Jesus, the incarnate Christ, is a light that the darkness could not extinguish. From Abraham to Jesus, the people of God were the collective light that the darkness could not extinguish no matter how faintly it burned in the worst of times. A smoldering wick, the beacon they had so long cared for burst into the flame of eternal light in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that embraced the whole of humanity.
Descendants of ancient Israelites are still here, still small in number, still bearing the holy story. Through them Christians have received the light of Christ as theirs to carry in all places for the healing of the nations. Our having gone down many blind alleys and violated God’s most sacred commandments, the light ofChrist remains ours to carry, the light that darkness cannot extinguish. The body of Christ is not the conquering church triumphant. It is the faithful servant bearing God’s good news without prejudice or discrimination, respecting the dignity of every human being no matter their belief or condition in life.
A portion of the church in America has gone down one of the blind alleys that turns against the way of God to embrace the way of empire. Christian nationalism with its affection for authoritarian government, easy relationship with White supremacy, and extreme right wing politics has rejected the way of godly love. Confronted by demons of their own creation, they will get the same response others got recorded in Acts 19. The demon said “Paul I know and Jesus I know, but who are you?”
A tiny people of a sliver of land on the shore of the Eastern Mediterranean bore the flickering light that neither empire nor darkness could extinguish. It can’t be extinguished now even as parts of the church err badly.