Genesis
34:1-31
Presented
in North Carolina February 27, 2013
The
Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry
Note: This
sermon was written for my clergy study group.
I owe a great
deal to them
for the courage to preach a text like this this way.
There is nothing redeemable about
this story.
Nothing.
I could try to stand up here and
read some Good News into these words; to stretch and contort the text to make
it make sense, however that would be a lie and lying is not really a winning
homiletical strategy.
This is not Good News. In fact, this story is bad news. It is a story about greed, violence,
cowardice, avarice and, despite the best linguistic attempts to tame the text,
rape.
This is a story about rape; the rape
of Dinah to be precise and there is no
escaping that fact.
Dinah is the child of Leah and Jacob
and her story is pretty simple. One day,
wanting to meet some new people, Dinah left home for the countryside. While out on her walk, she encountered
Shechem, son of Hamor who, to be perfectly blunt, raped her on the roadside.
As I was working on this sermon, I
was amazed at the amount of work that commentators and publishers put into this
text given the fact that it is so disagreeable and never appears in the
lectionary. Paragraphs and, in some
cases, pages were devoted to two things: 1) arguing for the use of any word
other than rape to describe what happens to Dinah and 2) emphasizing that in
the end Hamor tries to “do the right thing” or “make things right” by marrying
Dinah.
Such conclusions are offensive to the text and do violence to it. Nothing sets this right.
Scripture is not meant to be pulled and plyed
like silly-putty shaped into whatever form satisfies our whimsy. It must be interpreted if it is to be comprehended,
but interpretation does not mean theological remodeling into the spiritual home
we might desire. Sometimes scripture
says uncomfortable even intolerable things and we, as faithful children of God,
must be willing to contend with it as is.
In our Reformed tradition there is a
theology of biblical interpretation, a hermeneutic, that is helpful with a text
like this. Our tradition holds that
scripture should be interpreted in light of and even by scripture. In other words, this particular story or
account of events does not happen in a vacuum, it happens in the context of the
unfolding salvation history revealed in scripture and we should read it in just
that light. Even with a text like this,
the overarching story of God’s saving history is the backdrop of our
interpretation.
Where then does the story of the
rape of Dinah fit into salvation history?
Where can violent rape possibly fit into God’s unfolding plan for
creation?
The short answer is; it
doesn’t.
It doesn’t.
There is simply nothing about this story that
has anything to say about God’s unfolding salvation history. Nothing in this tale bears witness to
salvation, grace, covenant or God. It is
counter to all that God is in the world.
And that is our entry point. Recognizing that, in the context of scripture
as a whole, this story has no affirming witness to bear is precisely how we
might find some theological purchase in this place.
The rape of Dinah bears witness to
the salvation of God precisely by being counter-witness. This story and its characters are everything
that God is not.
Hamor is violent and abusive; God
hung humbly on the cross.
Jacob is quivering and cowardly, God
stood firm against the adversary for 40 days in the wilderness.
Levi and Simeon were vengeful and
merciless, God said, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The central events of the story are
a rape and a needless slaughter; two central events of God’s life in the world
were the restoration of human dignity and the command to put away the sword of
vengeance.
This story is everything that God is
not. It is counter-witness.
No wonder the writer leaves out one important
character- God. It is almost as if God
is written out of the story to show just how distant this story is from the
truth of God.
Still, that truth about this story
and what is contained in it does not stop some misguided thinkers from trying
to write God into the story; to give the story some measure of positive witness
to the goodness of God.
Maybe God’s goodness comes in the
form of Hamor trying to “do the right thing” and marry Dinah.
Maybe God’s goodness comes in the
form of Jacob being patient before acting in anger.
Maybe God’s goodness comes in the form of the
brothers exacting revenge on the Hivites.
Maybe, one commentator actually argued, God’s
goodness comes in the form of so many people being grafted onto the promise by
circumcision and presumed faith in God.
There is just one problem with those
conclusions. They all make an incorrect
assumption about the way the goodness of God enters and is known in the world.
The goodness of God does
not come into the world through the violent abuse of a child of
God. The goodness of God does
not come into the world through the indignity of a child of God, the
abhorrent slaughter of whole peoples, vengeance or passive inattention to the
suffering of a loved one. There is nothing
good to find here.
There is no Good News here.
There is no moral, pastoral or theological
way to say, “Dinah, you were violated in the most profound and violent way
possible, you were demeaned and debased, but rest assured it was for the
greater good of the people of God.”
God does not work this way.
To claim that the glory, goodness
and grace of God come into the world through the wanton abuse of a child of
God; to say the vehicle for showing God’s goodness is the rape of an innocent
young woman, sells short the gospel, does violence to its message and
fundamentally misunderstands the fullness of the witness to God in scripture.
Why then do we even bother with a
text like this? Why not leave it on the
rubbish pile of biblical history and ignore it like we do so many other
difficult bits of scripture?
One
reason. We must take up this text to
remind us not just of Dinah of old, but of every Dinah who walks among us
today.
Yes,
today.
What
happened to Dinah so many millennia ago, is happening to women across the
nation and the world through our political systems.
The
violation of women, especially poor young women, at the hands of politicians
may not be the physical violation endured by Dinah, but it is every bit as much
a violation of their dignity, humanity and worth as a child of God.
I
should stop here and share a personal point of view. I am pro-life. I believe abortion is a morally questionable
act and deserves the deepest prayerful discernment and should be avoided
whenever reasonably possible. I also
believe that sometimes it is the least bad of two bad options. Sometimes the only remotely moral choice is
to choose the lesser of two evils and far too many women are faced with that
distressing choice. For them, I believe,
we must preserve a way for women, their families and their doctors to make
informed prayerful choices in their own circumstances. To do anything less would be barbaric, cruel and
unChristian.
In
other words, I am pro-life but I am not 100% anti-abortion.
I
mention that because it is on the political front of our national debate on
abortion that I believe this story speaks to us.
In
this story, Hamor takes what he wants from Dinah; Jacob ignores what has
happened to preserve himself and his own possessions; the brothers seek
vengeance not so much to defend Dinah but to restore their family honor- to
comport things to their own way.
Dinah
is used and discarded in multiple ways and on multiple levels in this
story. Her dignity is inconsequential to
the men who want what they want and are willing to use her, even passively, to
get it.
Much
of the public policy happening in this nation is being built on the backs of
Dinahs- young women whose only offense in this life is being young, relatively
powerless and in the way of a powerful man’s agenda.
Like
Hamor who threw Dinah violently to the ground, too many of our public officials
see women’s bodies as little more than the means to satisfy their political
ends.
Like
the brothers who sought vengeance, not for Dinah’s sake but for their own
personal sense of honor, to many of our public officials see women’s freedom as
an inconvenience to the construction of the world in their narrow image.
Like
the father who ignored her plight, too few of our public officials have the
courage and fortitude to stand up for the Dinah’s in our midst and stand
against those who would use them or demean them.
From
debates on Planned Parenthood funding for breast exams to misguided comments
about “legitimate” rape to attempts to block abortion in any form under any
circumstance even to save a woman’s life, politicians throughout the country
are going on television and claiming that we need this public policy not to
remedy a pervasive national problem but to bear witness to the morality of God.
Is
there anything but theological bankruptcy in their efforts?
The
morality of God is built on the backs of young poor women?
The
morality of God is dependent upon the imposition of a trans-vaginal ultrasound
on a scared young woman?
The
morality of God is ushered into the world at the expense of women’s lives and
dignity?
Not
so says Genesis 34.
God
is nowhere near such things. God and the
Good News of God are nowhere in such a story.
Degradation
and violence against a daughter of God is counter to the witness of God.
Using
a daughter of God to advance a personal or political desire is counter to the
witness of God.
We read and study and engage and
preach a text like this precisely because it bears witness to what is NOT the
will and way of God. The opportunistic
craven political culture may be claiming to do the work of God by building
their political towers of Babel on the backs of the Dinah’s in our midst. But scripture is clear: this is not who God is
and this is not how God works.
And
by all that is holy it is the responsibility of the church to say so.
And
thanks be to God for that! Amen.
