“My father was a wandering Aramean”. That’s how Moses describes himself on behalf of the Israelites (Dt 26:4-10). He wanted them to be tied to their history, to their origins.
You may be fascinated by your personal history. It seems a lot of people are. I confess I’m a fan of the show ”Finding Your Roots”, even if my own family history has never interested me very much. The Jewish people were, and I believe still are, very conscious of their history, both individually and as a ’people’. That sense of being a people, a group with shared history and thus a common identity, is familiar in many places. It’s certainly a key element of national consciousness. But maybe it’s not so strong within the Christian community?
However our identification with other Christians, not just in our own time and place, but on a larger scale, is very important. Our faith derives from a historical event and a single individual – more so even than Moses did from Abraham. Our faith is “catholic and apostolic” – catholic because it is (or is supposed to be) all inclusive, and apostolic because it is linked, bishop by bishop, back to the Apostles and thus to Jesus. If our faith does not have that historical link, that historical foundation, then it is floating free without any foundation.
The Israelites maintained a consciousness of themselves as poor and enslaved, people who had been rescued. Our consciousness is more likely to be of those who were successful, who claimed exceptional power, those who are in control. There are those among us who also have the consciousness of slavery, of poverty, but that is not our dominant view of ourselves. As Americans, or Europeans, even as Christians or Catholics, we are the successful ones. We don’t feel a strong need to be rescued, or descended from people who were rescued. Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t come naturally to us to do as Moses commanded the Israelites – to give our first achievements back to God, to bow down and acknowledge that what we have comes from Him.
But we can be tempted to bow down. Jesus refused to bow down to the temptation of power and control (Lk 4:1-13). We would be foolish to imagine that we cannot be tempted by these evils. Our Church certainly has been. Our history as a people has many examples of horrendous failures from succumbing to that temptation. It also has amazing examples of people who stood up against those forces aiming to dominate and subjugate. Being aware of our history can be uncomfortable, but it can also be a source of great strength. And in the end it links us back to the one truth, to the one God, before whom we worship and say thanks for what we have been given.