Everyone Included (8)
Lectionary, Year C, Lent 1
Christopher B. Harbin
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Whom is it for? It's a question we don't always voice, even when we should. Ownership is a concept we teach our children at an early age. Perhaps it is because of that early teaching that we don't often talk about ownership as adults. We have ingrained concepts about ownership and use that are passed down to us on an almost emotional level, such that we often don't address them openly. As a result, growing up amid a mix of cultures, I find that I have at times embraced competing notions about ownership and fair use that are not shared by all. Perhaps it is because of my particular standing that I find myself included at times in ways others are not. For whom are the blessings and bounty around us? Who is invited to partake and participate?
I grew up with the notion that wooded land was common property. It was somehow unclaimed as though I were living in western frontier lands with Daniel Boone. No one told me an empty lot did not belong to anyone. I just applied the notions I gathered from shows about the Old West and American Frontiersmen to my own surroundings. No one bothered to tell me that any different. The woods were there. I played in them, and I somehow took ownership of them until someone finished construction of a house in one of my play areas. Even as construction workers erected a new house, no one begrudged my exploring its depths. It was there; I was there; no one excluded me.
Today's passage in Deuteronomy presents this a little differently. The land had been given to the Hebrew people as an inheritance. They were to settle it and take possession of it. They were to collect the produce of the land and bring a portion of that bounty before Yahweh, as though they were simply caretakers of the land, serving akin to share-croppers. The land would produce a bounty not simply to provide for the well-being of those tending the fields, but for everyone e ...
Lectionary, Year C, Lent 1
Christopher B. Harbin
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Whom is it for? It's a question we don't always voice, even when we should. Ownership is a concept we teach our children at an early age. Perhaps it is because of that early teaching that we don't often talk about ownership as adults. We have ingrained concepts about ownership and use that are passed down to us on an almost emotional level, such that we often don't address them openly. As a result, growing up amid a mix of cultures, I find that I have at times embraced competing notions about ownership and fair use that are not shared by all. Perhaps it is because of my particular standing that I find myself included at times in ways others are not. For whom are the blessings and bounty around us? Who is invited to partake and participate?
I grew up with the notion that wooded land was common property. It was somehow unclaimed as though I were living in western frontier lands with Daniel Boone. No one told me an empty lot did not belong to anyone. I just applied the notions I gathered from shows about the Old West and American Frontiersmen to my own surroundings. No one bothered to tell me that any different. The woods were there. I played in them, and I somehow took ownership of them until someone finished construction of a house in one of my play areas. Even as construction workers erected a new house, no one begrudged my exploring its depths. It was there; I was there; no one excluded me.
Today's passage in Deuteronomy presents this a little differently. The land had been given to the Hebrew people as an inheritance. They were to settle it and take possession of it. They were to collect the produce of the land and bring a portion of that bounty before Yahweh, as though they were simply caretakers of the land, serving akin to share-croppers. The land would produce a bounty not simply to provide for the well-being of those tending the fields, but for everyone e ...
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