I suspect it’s been a minute since you’ve heard a sermon on Numbers 27. It does not appear in the three year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary, nor is it even included in the more expansive narrative lectionary series some of you might be familiar with.

And yet, Numbers 27 is a text well worth paying attention to, especially in the highly polarized moment we find ourselves in today. For in this ancient text, we encounter a group of women, the five daughters of a man named Zelophehad, who teach us something about what it means to remain together in community, in spite of significant points of disagreement.

As we arrive at Numbers 27, the Israelites are nearing the end of 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. These years were marked by discord and uncertainty, but now a new generation had come of age, and the Israelites are making their final preparations for entering into the land of promise.

It is at this point that we first meet the daughters of a man named Zelophehad. Their names are: Makhlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. We know little about them other than the fact that their father had died without having any sons. And this is an important detail because in the ancient world when a father died his land would pass to his sons, not his daughters. And if the father died without sons, the land would go to his brothers. And if the man died with neither sons or brothers, the land would go to his uncles.

This male-to-male transfer of inheritance was put in place to assure that land would remain within a given family and tribe from generation to generation. However, it would have put the daughters of Zelophehad and other women like them in a precarious situation.

In a largely agrarian society, not having access to land often meant being without recourse to the basic needs of life. So, simply based on their gender, these 5 daughters were facing a life of poverty and a future existence on the margins of society.

Faced with these prospects, the daughters of Zelophehad make a bold move. They approach Moses, Eleazar the high priest, and the leaders of the congregation and they ask for a share of their father’s inheritance. In making this request, the daughters are not only asking to be treated as sons, but they are calling for a re-interpretation of a biblical tradition that they feel is unjust.

The text here is stingy on details, and we are left to wonder: Was this brave request the culmination of a long process of conversation and discernment? Had there been townhall meetings on the topic? Did these 5 women work on their own or were they representatives of a larger grassroots movement for equal inheritance rights?

And what about the men of the community? Did any of them join their cause in a show of solidarity? Or did they actively oppose the daughters, perhaps out of fear that this request marked the end of Israelite family values, or worse, that it put the community on a slippery slope that would lead to questioning other laws, or even the authority of the Torah itself?

We simply don’t know. But one thing is for certain: On the verge of entering the promised land, becoming a unified nation, a controversy surrounding justice threatened to divide and fracture the Israelites.

Today, there are no shortage of controversial issues that threaten to divide and fracture the church and our communities. Views on Immigration or the war in Gaza. How to navigate questions about diversity, equity, and inclusion. The inclusion of people who are gay or transgender and virtually everything related to politics.

In response to such issues, I find that more and more of us are retreating into habits and habitats that are ideologically homogeneous. Blue neighborhoods are getting bluer, and red ones are getting redder. Same with churches, book clubs, dinner parties, tennis teams, and just about everything else. Even our selection of podcasts, blogs, and news outlets can have the effect of ensuring that we only encounter perspectives that reinforce our existing commitments and conclusions.

It is almost as if we have come to see ideological and theological difference in the way the Old Testament sees ritual impurity: It is a type of contagion that can be spread by contact. If touched, it renders us unfit to enter holy spaces and so therefore it must be contained and avoided at all costs.

Ideologically homogeneous environments can provide safe space for recovery from hurt and for needed affirmation of core parts of who we are. And that’s really good. Even so, such communities are often counterproductive.

They act as self-affirming echo chambers in which our viewpoints are never challenged, stretched, or subjected to the sort of dialogical questioning that is the engine of knowledge production and innovation. In our self-righteous silos, honest feedback and even the gentlest forms of constructive criticism are received as assaults on our personhood and as evidence that the other person is not a true fill in the blank: Christian, advocate for justice, colleague, friend, pastor. Worse still, these bubbles tend to put a stranglehold on empathy and compassion as those outside our bubble are seen as little more than two-dimensional caricatures that are hardly worth knowing or trusting.

As a result, we cease having meaningful and honest conversations together about the bible and its interpretation. The church cannot flourish friends if we retreat into echo chambers, if we hunker down in bright red in bright blue enclosures. The church cannot flourish if we refuse to wrestle with this strange and wondrous text that we call Scripture.

Numbers 27 presents a healthier model of what it looks like for a community of faith to wrestle with Scripture and with one another. There are several things I think we can learn from this passage.

First, the women don’t walk away from their community or from Scripture.

Yes, the daughters of Zelophehad faced an unjust system. And yes, the biblical tradition did not seem to be on their side. And yet instead of disengaging, instead of leaving the tradition completely behind, their impulse is to approach the tent of meeting.

Now the tent was the precursor to the temple, it was the place where God’s presence and glory was thought to dwell. And it was from the entrance of the tent, that God gave Moses many of the laws that governed Israelite’s life during this period of wilderness wandering.

There, these women enter a daring but faith-filled space. In boldness they question a biblical tradition about land inheritance, but they do so facing God and facing Moses all the while. While we don’t know the specifics of their conversation, I suspect their words might have sounded a lot like what we hear in Psalm 82, one of the lectionary texts for this Sunday:

“How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality? Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

Friends these are not easy words – they are words of protest, they are words that demand inclusion and denounce injustice. But importantly, the daughters don’t simply speak these words to one another, or even just to their supporters. They speak these words to the very parties they disagree with. They stay in conversation and refuse to retreat into their echo chambers. Let me be clear – this was a risky move. They did not know where the conversation would go. They were not guaranteed a favorable outcome. Others in the community might have interpreted their willingness to engage Moses as an indication that they lacked passion or commitment to the cause. Nevertheless, they persist and refuse to turn their back on Scripture or Moses.

Now the second thing to note is how Moses responds.

He could have easily interpreted the women’s request as a form of rebellion. After all, there were plenty of rebellions happening during Israel’s wilderness wandering. Or Moses could have nipped their question in the bud by simply repeating back to them the traditional view of land inheritance – the Bible says it, that settles it! But instead, Moses takes their request seriously.

Even though God had spoken to him face to face on Mount Sinai, even though God had given him the ten commandments, Moses remained open to understanding the biblical tradition in a new way. And he knew their request warranted a conversation with God.

When he brings the case before the LORD, God says something remarkable: “The daughters of Zelophehad are right in what they are saying; you shall indeed let them possess an inheritance among their father’s brothers and pass the inheritance of their father on to them.”

How extraordinary a story this is.The bible itself bears witness to a process of re-thinking biblical tradition out of a concern for justice. Doing so is not a liberal or progressive move away from Scripture. It’s a way of following the lead of tradition itself.

Rather than silencing the women, Moses kept the conversation going. And no doubt he walked away a changed leader, and, I suspect, a changed reader of Scripture.

Now the third thing to note is that the story of the Daughters of Zelophehad does not end in Numbers 27.

Nine chapters later the male leaders of Manasseh, Zelophehad’s tribe, approach Moses with a concern of their own. They say, if the land is given to these women, and they marry into another tribe, then the land of Manasseh would be permanently transferred to that other tribe. This was an issue of justice as well.

In response, Moses says, look, I’ve already adjusted the tradition once, I'm not going back to God again. Forget it.

NO! That’s not at all what happens. Moses once again takes their concern seriously. He amends the law a second time, this time by saying that the women should still receive the inheritance but they should marry within the tribe of Manasseh so as to preserve the tribe's land in perpetuity.

You see the tradition continues to evolve and once again it evolves in the direction of fostering fairness and justice across the entire community, not just for some.

In Numbers 27 and 36, there are no simplistic proof texts. There’s no outright rejection of the tradition. No echo chambers are formed. The claims of both the daughters of Zelophehad and the men of their tribe are both treated seriously. The center holds, and unity of the tribe is maintained.

In the midst of controversies that threaten to divide us, this unfamiliar text teaches us that wrestling with Scripture is a sign of faith, not a lack of it. It reminds us that when we remain open to understanding the Bible in new ways, we are not calling into question biblical authority, but rather following an example Scripture sets before us.

What we see in this text is a community that refuses to retreat into theologically homogenous echo chambers. The community sticks together and continues talking despite what were serious disagreements. What kept them together was something more than just a willingness to “agree to disagree.” It seems that there was a belief that the presence of theological heterogeneity strengthened the body, made it more nuanced, adaptive, and resilient. Then as now a chorus of varied voices produces better music than an echo chamber.

Ideological purity was not a guiding value for ancient Israel—nor should it be for us today. It’s time we start popping the self-righteous bubbles we have created. Doing so I think would stretch us theologically and it just might help us connect more deeply with the humanity of those we disagree with.

Amen.