“If they had been thinking of the land they left behind, they would have had reason to return, but as it was they desired a better country, a more heavenly one,”…a place with foundations, whose architect and builder was God.” (Heb. 11:10, 15-16)
For those among you that call America home, having fled persecution in hopes of finding a better place, you were much like the children of Abraham, in that you sought the promise by faith. But, in securing that promised land, your lot was cast with that of the Indigenous peoples of this land. And in light of what you suffered in past and the hope you placed in America, you might well consider the fate of “the Red Man” that came before you, who like Esau, was left with but little option, but to relinquish e his natural birthright in exchange for a meal; saying, “Look, I am dying from hunger, what good will this birthright be to me if I’m dead?” (Gen. 25:32)
The loss of a birthright has been and continues to be an all-to-common theme, not only for Native Americans, but for others, who for survival’s sake placed their hope in the future, only to have it deferred. Unfortunately, many of those same people may soon find themselves at the end of a political noose, realizing that they have more in common with Native Americans than they ever thought possible. And considering that possibility, Thomas Jefferson had this to say: “Dependency begets subservience, and venality suffocates the germ of virtue, preparing fit tools for the designs of ambition.”
Yet, there remains an alternative outcome, as an offshoot and “a living branch” continues to exist within Native America itself. For “…If you, as believers, have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted in to a cultivated olive tree, how much more then will these natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree” (Rom. 11:24). While the introductory passage is commonly referenced in regard to Gentile converts and their being grafted into a covenant relationship with Israel, through Christ, the closing verse is given little consideration–“…How much more then will these natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?” What natural branches and and what olive tree? While it may be in reference to the lost sheep of Israel, it could also be applied to remnant population which had remained faithful to the earlier Noahic Covenant. And “God has not rejected the people he foreknew,” (Rom. 11:2) If that is the case, then Native Americans may actually be the inheritors of “a double promise,” the Noahic Covenant, in addition to “a new and living way” (Heb. 10:20 NIV). Accordingly, if and when the Indigenous peoples of the Americans finally realize that their earlier covenant with Creator has been ratified, contractually, through the willing sacrifice of Christ, they will rise to proclaim: “Yet, my God is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.” (Psalms 74:12)
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CoupStick Chaplain 