from The Barrel

Sunday April 25, 1993

Key Scripture—I Samuel 15: 1-35



Whatever happened to the Amalekites? What, in heaven’s name is an Amalekite; and who cares? You may well ask. The truth is that we don’t know much about Amalekites, and few, if anyone cares. I have to admit that I have not cared much. They were just part of the Bible stories I learned and they were the bad guys. Just as there were cowboys and Indians, and there was not much doubt as to who were the good guys and who were bad.

The Amalekites were a tribe in Canaan, probably nomadic, who were a problem for Israel since the Exodus. Together with other tribes such as, Amorites, Edomites, Hittites, Hivites, Jebusites, Moabites, Perrizites, they were the native peoples of Palestine. Like the tribe of Edom the Amalekites were probably a more ancient tribe than Israel. During the period that historians call the Conquest and Settlement the Amalekites resisted being pushed off their ancestral lands, and came into bitter conflict with Israel.

Today’s reading in the Old Testament in the Book of Samuel relates a brutal and bloody encounter of the forces of Saul against the Amalekites. As far as we can tell there were no ideological, philosophical, theological or spiritual reasons for the confrontation; at least none are cited. It was just that the Amalekites resisted the settlement of their ancestral lands by Israel.

According to the story Samuel tells Saul that God wants him to go “and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” Saul goes and carries out this bloody massacre, but not to Samuel’s satisfaction. Saul saves king Agag, the Amalekite king, as well as some of the animals. Samuel severely rebukes Saul for this and advises him that as a result of his disobedience the divine endorsement of his sovereignty was hereby revoked. The narrative goes on to say, “And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before God...”

Now, I have serious difficulty with this entire episode; I suspect you may too. I have difficulty believing in a God who is so vengeful that men and women, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass must be destroyed. And all just because they exist and because they are defending their homeland. Yet all my life I have accepted that story thinking that the Amalekites got what was coming to them. And we have perpetuated the notion in our teaching in the church. Is it okay to wipe out a whole tribe just because they are in the way of our progress? I want you to remember that question because we shall return to it.

However, I don’t want to single out the Amalekites. There were other sovereign people in Canaan, as we have mentioned earlier, and they had the same experiences. Their home was invaded and taken away, and all they got in the process was bad press. I just happened to pick the Amalekites as an example. As a matter of fact when I chose them I did not even remember the existence of this story.

Nor do I want to pick on Israel, or to suggest that they were singularly brutal and unjust. The same process has happened throughout the world throughout history and continues to happen today. We became aware in recent times of the Kurds in Iraq, we know about the Palestinians in Israel, Gaza and Jordan. The native peoples of Australia, referred to as aborigines, are not even called by their own names. In India the tribal people are lower than the lowest caste. We are familiar with condition of the Bantu in South Africa. In Central and South America the native peoples, whose blood has watered the soil of their homeland, continue to suffer grave injustice. In North America, in the land of the brave and the home of the free, native people continue to live with an inheritance of injustice and broken promises. We don’t even know them by name, calling them by a borrowed name given to them by a lost European, Columbus, who thought he was in India.

During the past few years it has been my privilege and pleasure to come to know some of these native peoples, and to learn a little of their culture and traditions. My friend Harry Long, who served with me on the General Board of Global Ministries, tells of being ridiculed and beaten at Methodist boarding school for speaking his native Muskogee Creek language. Ironically, these days he is asked to pray at denominational gatherings in that same language. I have learned so much about faith and spirituality from my friends who are Choctaw, with whom Bill Webb identifies, from Utes, Lumbis, Cherokees, Navajos, Senecas, and a Wasco woman I met recently.

These are the people our religious tradition branded as savages. They have been dispossessed and driven from their homelands, some of them in forced marches from the Southeast to the West, and from the north to the south. I recently encountered a group of Kickapoos who ancestral home was in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. They now try to survive in Southern Texas and Mexico under difficult and almost desperate conditions.

As if being dispossessed of their homeland were not enough, they have been forced to abandon their culture, to renounce their spirituality because our Christian missionaries said they were pagan. In the name of God and Christian faith we have stripped them of homeland, culture and their sense of who they are—of the very essence of their being. We have perpetrated an injustice so heinous that what happened to the Amalekites pales in comparison.

The native people of North America were not pagan. They were deeply spiritual people, even as they are today. They lived in well-ordered societies, and were in many ways, kinder, more caring and humane than our culture is today. They cared for their sick and there aged; they shared their life together; and there were no ghettos of deprived and underprivileged. Homosexual persons functioned in their society in the same way that heterosexual persons did at whatever level they were of service to the tribe. They did not even have problems with the ordination of gays as they could be and often were shamans.

If the truth were to be told, in many ways they were less savages and more civilized than we are in our society today. And far from being pagan they were in general a deeply spiritual people who have a great deal to teach those of us who think we know it all. Some of us are beginning to learn from their culture. We are beginning to see in their traditional ways some possibilities for redemption for a greedy, grasping capitalism run amok. In the earthy spirituality of their traditions we are beginning to learn of a healthier way to see ourselves in the world in which we live. Learning to reverence the Earth as our mother may be the first step in moving toward a theological and spiritual environmentalism.

So, coming back to the question raised earlier, Is it okay to wipe out a whole tribe just because they are in the way of our progress? I mourn the Arawaks, who were the native people of Trinidad, and for the Caribs who invaded them. Alas, there are neither Arawaks nor Caribs left in Trinidad. The Spaniards and later the British took care of the Caribs. That is the price of progress, I guess. How many other native peoples have disappeared from the face of the earth forever? And how much have we lost as a result!

The native peoples of North America are not savages. They are not howling, half-naked monsters as they have been portrayed in American lore and literature. They are part of an ancient civilization with their art, religion and culture. Their traditions and rituals have deep spiritual significance. They have suffered much from European civilization: they have been branded savages, their lore has been ridiculed, they have been dispossessed and stripped of their very souls, yet they have much to offer and teach us.

Native people are real people. They don’t walk around in feather headdresses and loincloths, except for ceremonial occasions and tourists—unfortunately we still see them as oddities. They are intelligent and erudite, they are eloquent and some of them are militant, and they live with a deep spirituality at the very core of their beings. Their nations have names like Oneidas, Menominees, Chippewas and Winnebagos, like Seminoles, Apaches, Micmacs, Pasamaquadys and Penobscots. And they have names like Carol, Cynthia, Harry, and Homer. I am pleased to number some of them among my friends and associates.

The United Methodist Church, the Christian tradition and indeed our whole world is richer and better because they exist and because of the wealth they bring with them. And we are poorer and worse off when in the name of progress or of God we seek to dominate or destroy them. On Native American Awareness Sunday I honor my native sisters and brothers, and celebrate their rich and varied traditions.

Whatever happened to the Amalekites? They were not destroyed at God’s command; I in good faith and conscience accept that. It was human sinfulness that mistook human ambition for the will of God and killed them. The Amalekites are my sisters and brothers as are the Arawaks and the Apaches. Today I celebrate them all as legitimate children of God.