It's been awhile since I have posted some preaching. I'm not even sure why, since I have been preaching with reasonable regularity. The Holy Spirit has been poking at me again, though, so here it is: the message I gave at Peace Covenant Church yesterday, November 12, 2023.
Peace Covenant is in a time of discernment so you will read some things that are specific to their situation but most of it applies just as easily to my life and work. I hope it is helpful to your life and work, too.
The text from the Bible is Joshua 24:1-3a, 13-25
And here is the message:
Today’s text includes one of those “famous” scriptures. The second half of verse 15 is the kind of thing you will see on plaques and t-shirts and memes and all the places that people like to put their faith on very public display:
“but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Unfortunately all those plaques, t-shirts, memes, and other very public proclamation places leave out many, many verses before and quite a few verses after. But those verses are really important to understand what this text is saying
Remember who Joshua was?
The young man who started his career as a major figure in the Bible when he was one of the spies – one of only two who was not afraid of the REALLY BIG STUFF of the Promised Land. Then he became Moses’ main assistant, and ended up leading the people into the Promised Land.
But Joshua got old, and things changed. He was about to die and he was giving his farewell to the people of Israel. Today’s verses are the culmination of that farewell conversation sermon.
Joshua reminds them that they are part of a loooong history. He is reminding the people that thething happening in that particular “today” is not the central focus of their relationship with God but is just a moment in a story that started a long time ago.
We get a glimpse of the larger picture in the first three verses but it actually goes back a few chapters and continues for 10 more verses. We don’t have to read the details to get the idea, though: this moment in time is just that. A moment.
Peace Covenant Church, and the United States, and the global community across all the continents have a lot going on and we are tempted to reach back a few years, or maybe a few decades, or maybe even a few centuries to decide what should be. But the fact is, even centuries are just a moment in the same story that Joshua is telling. We are part of something that goes far beyond anything we know. Far beyond any ancestors that we could identify knew. This story goes wayyyyyy back.
There is a verse – verse 13 – that is not included in the lectionary (which is the part you read). When I was getting the slides ready for Valerie I thought it was fine, the verses that were left out weren’t that important to the story. But the more I studied the more I noticed this verse 13:
I gave you a land on which you had not labored and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant.
Joshua was getting ready to die and was about to ask the people to make a really important decision. He did not want them to forget what had come before – not in their direct memory, or but in their story as a people. He did not want them to forget who they are, or how they got where they were.
And in that last verse he was reminding them that God did not give them the very nice lives they had because they deserved it. Nor was it because of their own planning or work. Where they were living, with all those vineyards and oliveyards and cities, was what God had promised to them, and God kept that promise. All that good stuff was God keeping a promise.
And we see once again that the people were not particularly good at remembering.
Have you been in that situation?
In a time when there was some circumstance that pointed to the possibility that something you have known and loved,
Something that has been so good to and for you
Something that came out of a long and robust history
was a gift from God, and not because of your work or because you deserve it?
That maybe the thing you hold so dear have served their purpose and God is about to give you something else, something undoubtedly more wonderful, because God does not give junk?
Can you identify with knowing that things are changing, and that it could go so many ways?
Are you experiencing anything like that right now?
Does it feel at all like something is dying, but also not dying?
I do. I feel it every time I hear a news story, every time I go to work and wonder if the money and people will show up, every time I walk into a large church sanctuary that has 50 pews and 40 people in it.
Joshua gives the Israelites some advice:
· Remember the faithfulness of God
· Put away the stuff you learned from the culture around you
And out of empathy for Joshua I wonder if he were talking to us today, might he say
· Remember the faithfulness of God
· Put away Christian nationalism and the idolization of money or politics or the other things of the culture around you that are not of God
· Put away prioritizing your personal experience over following a God who has a long, long history of loving God’s children in creative and surprising ways.
Which brings us to the famous line:
As for me and my household we will serve the Lord
But there is a line that doesn’t make it on the t-shirts:
· IF YOU ARE UNWILLING TO SERVE THE LORD (it’s an option – he is not afraid of the options)
· DECIDE WHO YOU WILL SERVE – will it be the gods of the culture around you? Around us?
Or will it be the Lord?
It’s a dramatic moment and the people answer
Of course we will serve the Lord! God did all sorts of great stuff for us! God has preserved us!
In the scripture it appears, however, that Joshua wasn’t buying it. He keeps probing. Are you sure? Can you REALLY do this?
And the people keep insisting.
Which makes me wonder if Joshua was insisting because he wanted them to stop, to think, to understand what they were saying.
Because this is not a cheap and easy decision, this decision to serve the Lord.
This is not a decision that can be done with a business-as-usual attitude.
Joshua knows because Joshua has lived all the ways that God can put impossible things before us. But they are not impossible because God will always make a way. As some of my seminary friends are fond of saying… won’t God do it?
It’s so easy to say oh yes of course! We want to worship God. We want to remain faithful. We want to be the harbingers of God’s love, the ones to share with people, the ones to live out faith.
But sometimes God asks us to do stuff that we think we are not prepared to do.
Sometimes we are part of a congregation that is brave and courageous and small and mighty and we want that community to continue,
to be able to continue to love and serve God as we have done so well,
but then things change and denominations make decisions we have thought were impossible, and pandemics reduce our numbers and it is not at all clear that things can keep going as they have been. In the ways we have loved for so long.
Notice that Joshua did not say “will you keep serving God in the ways of your ancestors” or “will you serve God in a <fill in some particular way>?
He just says “knowing all you know about God – including that God simply will not stand for sharing the God-spotlight, the God-position, that God will not let anyone else do what is only God’s to do – knowing all that, are you sure you want to serve the Lord?
I do not know if Joshua was particularly hopeful.
I do not know if Joshua actually believed that the people would, in fact, serve the Lord. He asked over and over.
But when the people insisted, he said…
OK. So be it. If you are sure you are up for this, then let’s make statutes and ordinances and figure out what that will look like.
Peace Covenant Church of the Brethren is standing at a crossroads, a time when you are being called to declare that you will serve the Lord – and once you have done that, to decide how that will happen, what it will look like, who, when, and where will be emphasized.
You are in a time of discernment right now, and I believe that you are being faithful. I believe you have begun listening to each other, are willing to take the time it takes to search your souls and decide if you are really up for doing whatever it is that God is asking of you right now, in this time and place.
So I offer you this hope: you are part of a long, long, long history of God guiding and loving and caring for the whole world via people who often do not do a good job of it, but who have committed to following the Lord.
If you will be one of those people groups, if you will decide to follow the Lord, if you will mean it, if you are prepared to do whatever it is that God is asking of you next then it may be a strange, exhilarating, scary, exciting, disappointing, radical, and more than a little weird landscape…
But you cannot fail, because God will not fail you.
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