“My kingdom is not of this world and those who worship God, worship in spirit and truth for God is spirit,” to paraphrase a couple of quotes by a very prominent early first century rabbi,

(The son of humanity has nowhere to lay his head.)

which meant simply that political power exerted through a reign of oppression and terror and colonialism was not his way and that land had to do with stewardship and not at all with ownership or even

(This land was made for you and me.)

the kind of “gift-ship” which can be turned into “owner-ship” and often is, as in “God gave it to us and not to you so get the hell out or we will kill you.”  And here’s the rub: That Jesus’ kingdom is not a worldly

(The son of humanity has nowhere to lay his head.)

kingdom is what most American Christians have affirmed from the days when life was so bad for some Christians they sang, “This world is not my home; I’m just a passin’ through,” to those who just wish

(This land was made for you and me.)

to worship in the spirit-land of justice, mercy, self-sacrificial love and peace lived out, of course, on terra firma (where else?) rather than some misguided, misunderstood, pre-ordained

(The son of humanity has nowhere to lay his head.)

territorial imperative (in a West Michigan town populated mostly by conservative Christians, home owners don’t want people stepping on their property. Even a toe on the grass is trespassing.), and that is just it

(This land was made for you and me.)

for a small minority of evangelicals who still think of real estate as God’s great gift to some in the Middle-East and, for sure, not others who have been inhabiting those parts nonstop for a couple

(The son of humanity has nowhere to lay his head.)

thousand years or so, a notion which is causing hell on terra firma and not much heaven there.  And these Christians sit around in their comfortable homes on their tidy plots of land they think

(This land was made for you and me.)

they own far away from harm waiting for Armageddon in that hell hole of holy land they helped create while they wait for their Jesus, the conqueror king, to descend, bless certain tribes by his great dispensation and

(The son of humanity has nowhere to lay his head.)

arbitrary meanness. Lord, have mercy on such thinking which makes God into an authoritarian, critical, judgmental and, over all, nasty tribal deity with a small “d,”  for sure very small “d,” if even that.

(And this land was made for you and me.)