August 23, 2015
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
When I was in college in North Carolina, a friend and I spent my senior year exploring churches. I think we hit every major denomination and some very off-the-beaten-track spots plus a good number of megachurches. I’ll never forget the morning we sat near the back of a non-denominational Bible church. We’d sung to music up on the big screen, listened to a pretty long and fiery sermon that required us to flip through the Bibles provided on the pew backs in front of us, signed our names in the book that was passed down the row, added a few dollars to the velvet bag. And then came something I was not at all prepared for: the altar call. The minister talked about how much Jesus loved us and wanted us to let Him into our hearts, talked about the sin that was keeping us from really knowing that love, and invited anyone who felt a stirring in their heart to make the choice for Jesus today and join him in the front. As a cradle Episcopalian unused to such public displays of faith, I froze, panicked, as my friend stood up to walk down the aisle. The tone and theology of that church didn’t speak to me particularly, and I was scared she might make eye contact with me and want me to join her. But I was also a little envious of her certainty and self-proclamation in making that move.
Our story this morning from Joshua reminds me a little bit of that moment.
Imagine the assembly gathered before Joshua, Moses’ successor. All of the tribes of Israel — the elders of the families, the heads of tribes, the judges, the officers. It must have been a huge horde of people.
Here they are, on the cusp of the Promised Land, just about to claim their inheritance in the land of Canaan that they have been schlepping towards ever since God called Abraham and Sarah away from everyone and everything they knew into a life of nomadic wandering.
And Joshua (imagine his booming, slightly eerie, prophetic voice) again goes through the litany of what they have been through as a people and all that God has done for them:
- God led Abraham and made his offspring many.
- God brought the people safely out of slavery in Egypt across the sea into freedom
- God helped the people survive in the wilderness for generations
- God helped the people take possession of the land that now lies before them
God has been present with the people, and with their ancestors, all along the way. Their God has traveled with them, accompanying them wherever they were and with them no matter what happened. The people gathered before Joshua have been grafted into their ancestors’ story as the people of God.
But now their circumstances have shifted almost beyond imagination. If Abraham and Sarah could see them now! Now they are on the threshold of the Promised Land. This wilderness generation that has never known stability and has always wandered — unsettled, homeless, and unknown — is about to settle down in a land of plenty.
And so Joshua tells them that they have a decision to make. Will they pledge themselves to God as they begin this next segment of their lives? Will they put away their foreign gods and give their hearts to God alone? Or will this new land of abundance seduce them into straying from the God who has always been with them in their wandering? Will their new circumstances tempt them from living into their identity as the People of God?
You can imagine the music beginning to play, starting softly and then getting louder and more insistent, as Joshua asks them to choose this day whom they will serve.
Will they stumble toward the altar and fall on their knees before Joshua, or stay where they are in embarrassed stillness, avoiding Joshua’s gaze?
Amazingly, the entire assembly stands, stirring themselves for their humble walk to the front. They recount their own version of the story of God’s saving presence with them on their journey, owning for themselves a living and continued relationship with the God of their ancestors. And then they promise triumphantly: “We also will serve the Lord, for he is our God!”
It sounds like be the perfect ending for a revival. The assembly would come forward, have hands laid on them, prayers said for them, tears shed over them. This would be considered a most definite rousing success by the preacher I witnessed in North Carolina.
But I wonder what this story might look like for us. Suppose we were all assembled and Joshua threw out this challenge at us.
The Israelites were on the cusp of claiming the Promised Land, which would entirely change their way of living and being. What are you on the threshold of? Maybe a personal change - a new relationship or a birth or something job-related. Maybe a big decision or a move. Maybe some loss or grief. Maybe some new way of understanding yourself or someone you love or something you hold dear. It may not be as monumental a threshold as the Israelites faced, but there is always something shifting what we think is the status quo.
After Joshua made his choice, the Israelites shared their own profound reasons for making theirs based on their own story with God. How would you recount your own story? How would God fit into your story? Looking back, can you see where God has been with you in times of wilderness and times of plenty? How often do you take the time to think about God’s presence in the important moments of your life? Do you ever share those stories with others?
If called to make this choice that Joshua offers, what would you do? Would you affirmatively make God a part of the next step of your journey? Would you own your identity as part of the people of God?
What would be the foreign “gods” you would need to get rid of in order to give yourself fully to God? What are the competing allegiances that draw you away from God? Love of wealth or security, fears and uncertainties, self-interest and independence, worries about what others think?
But the story of Joshua and the Israelites isn’t over. There is still what Paul Harvey used to call The Rest of the Story.
The Israelites’ rousing promise isn’t the end of Joshua’s come-to-God revival. When they announce in unison, with zeal and certainty, “We also will serve the Lord, for he is our God,” Joshua isn’t convinced. Our reading ends too soon for us to see Joshua’s doubt in the people’s promise. They’ve been here before, making covenants with God, only to turn away as soon as something shiny enters their peripheral vision - a new land, a new god, a golden calf. Joshua sees how tenuous and fragile is the faith and devotion of the Israelites.
And so Joshua challenges them, warning them to get rid of their foreign gods and worship God alone. He cautions them that a decision for God is not something to take lightly. God doesn’t want a one-time casual pledge but a life-changing commitment that will affect not only the way they worship God but the way they conduct business, maintain relationships, steward the earth, and care for the community. Three times, Joshua and the people do this back-and-forth question-and-promise thing, until finally Joshua writes up their covenant in the book of the law of God and sets up a large stone to be a witness of the covenant.
It turns out Joshua was right to be dubious, of course. Because the truth is, the people gathered with Joshua don’t measure up to their promises to God any more than their ancestors before them. They have the best of intentions, as always, and they hang in there for a little while, but their promise is doomed. It isn’t long before the next shiny thing distracts them. Not two chapters into the book of Judges, in fact.
Scholars think this experience captured in this piece from Joshua memorialized a ritual that was reenacted by the people of Israel whereby the people would periodically reaffirm and re-appropriate for themselves the covenant of God with their ancestors. Maybe something like our reaffirmation of baptismal vows.
The truth is, we need reminding. We need periodic pushes to discover how tenuous or lazy or half-hearted our devotion to God has become. We need to be continually re-considering our identity, our loyalties, our defining passions. We need chances to reaffirm, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!” Or maybe, the more realistic Episcopal version, which would probably sound something more like this, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord “with God’s help.” And thanks be to God, every day, every moment is a new opportunity to reaffirm and refresh our relationship with God. It doesn’t have to be an assembly with the elders and judges, or the penitential Lenten season, or New Year’s Day. It doesn’t have to be in front of a crowd of people or a response to a fiery preacher. God is present in all that life brings — in birth and death, health and sickness, heartache and joy, seeking and finding. And so we have opportunities all the time, in big ways and small, to choose to be God’s people in the world. With God’s help. Amen.
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