Untitled - St.Francis Magazine

St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 2 | April 2012 accepted this identity of liminality or “the situation of being in between two or more worlds” including being “located at the periphery or edge of a society.” 86 Jacob told Pharaoh that “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years (Gen 47:9) and the Psalmist said, “….I am a stranger and a sojourner with thee, as all my fathers were” (Ps 39.12). The Jewish scholar Cohn described the sojourn of the Israelites in-­between Egypt and Canaan by the title of his article: “Liminality in the Wilderness”. 87 This setting, gave rise to the title of the book of Numbers [Heb. bĕmidbar] “in the wilderness,” but it is a book a lot less about geography than, as we shall see, about the relationship of the covenant people of Israel and YHWH. 88 As much as Walter Brueggemann would like to think this people is “not going anywhere” and deserve the pejorative title “wanderers” over sojourners and pilgrims, we will take exception to this as suffering from a lack of a divine perspective. 89 Jesus left his heavenly throne and joined all the ignominies of human existence and it was said that “He came to 86 Sang Hyun Lee. From a Liminal Place: An Asian American Theology. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), p. x. Lee, uses the work of the anthropologist Victor Turner quite extensively in examining the Asian American condition and talks of the stages of separation, transition or liminality, and incorporation. The term liminality has its roots in the Latin word limina, meaning "on the margins"/ "threshold" or “doorway.” When standing on the threshold, one is by definition neither in nor out of the house and so one is “in between” the distinct realms of inside the house or outside the house. . 87 Robert L. Cohn, “Liminality in the Wilderness” pp. 7-­‐23 in his The Shape of Sacred Space. (American Academy of Religion Studies in Religion; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981) 88 David W Baker, “Wilderness” S. 893ff in, T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker eds: Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch. (Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 2003) 89 Walter Brueggemann. The Land: Place As Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002), p. 7. 228