Lenten Reflection 1a: Deut 26.1-11

In an effort at Lenten discipline I have decided to try to offer reflections on the readings from the revised common lectionary. I have attempted this for several years in a row and rarely make it past the second Sunday in Lent. We'll see what happens this year.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
26:1 When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it,
26:2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.
26:3 You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us."
26:4 When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God,
26:5 you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.
26:6 When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us,
26:7 we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.
26:8 The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders;
26:9 and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
26:10 So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me." You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God.
26:11 Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.

Comment
1.The first thing: abundance is not something to be spurned or denounced, but received and used in a certain way – abundance is a gift. The abundance that Israel experiences in Canaan is an inheritance, a gift from God; not a gift received in symmetry to an act – like produce to labour – but a gift that exceeds calculable reciprocity. There is a proportionality characteristic of covenant: an act of faithfulness was required of each party – this is the fundamental nature of a covenant (theological or juridical). However, this is a radically disproportionate proportionality. Israel’s obedience to the word of God, as difficult as it is, does not approximate the gift that is received in return: a new life in a new land as a great nation.

2. In order that historical memory not fail and the gratuitousness of a gift not be confused with what is due, a liturgical act is instituted. In this act the economy of the gift is continued: Israel gives back to God. In this gesture the excess of God’s initial gift is symbolically reciprocated: the first fruits are given. Before Israel can enjoy the produce of the land they must sacrifice it; offer it up to the one who has given it to them. Materially the sacrifice does not diminish the abundance, enjoyment is allowed, even if it is deferred. The scriptural significance of offering what is first has a precedent in the story of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4). It seems that the preference God shows to Abel has to do with the fact that he offered the “firstlings of his flock” (v.4) while Cain simply brought “an offering of the fruit of the ground” (v.3). Cain did not offer the premier fruit, his offering was not primordial or originary enough – the exigency of “fundamental ontology”—the demand for the more originary – is here prefigured as a theological exigency (is ontotheology overcome?)

3. The instituted liturgical act is fundamentally a repetition. It is the perpetual reiteration of the founding gesture of divine gift – as an exodus from Egypt (and a violence inflicted) and an entrance into the land of the Canaanites (and a violence inflicted) – in the form of autobiography or etiology: “a wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” Israel lives the new as the constant iteration of the old. Life in Canaan is a double life: it is lived in both the promised land and the desert at the same time. The comfort and abundance of life in the promised land is perforated by the memory of the privation of the desert – perhaps this is why Derrida calls both the desert and the promised land “aporetic places.”

4. The identity of this people does not coincide with itself. First of all Israel qua Israel is only constituted in this liturgical repetition. It is this practice that prevents the people of God from becoming “like the other nations.” This will be the recurring problem for Israel in Canaan, primarily in terms of its desire for a King (cf. Deut 17.14). Israel is distinguished from the Canaanites not by virtue of ethnicity but by way of its relation to it itself by way of its relation to God. Second, the story that is repeated – “a wandering Aramean…” – points to a heterogeneous origin in terms of ethnicity, but more importantly in terms of the indefiniteness of wandering. Finally, even Israel present in the land, bound together through a collective subjectivation, is not permitted to settle into a fixed identity: the “alien among you” will be a full participant in the liturgical life of this people – and in this way be an originary “member” of the community.