Joshua’s Most Famous Sermon Text

Joshua 24:14–18 (NET)

¹⁴ Now obey the Lord and worship him with integrity and loyalty. Put aside the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates and in Egypt and worship the Lord. ¹⁵ If you have no desire to worship the Lord, choose today whom you will worship, whether it be the gods whom your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But I and my family will worship the Lord!”

¹⁶ The people responded, “Far be it from us to abandon the Lord so we can worship other gods! ¹⁷ For the Lord our God took us and our fathers out of slavery in the land of Egypt and performed these awesome miracles before our very eyes. He continually protected us as we traveled and when we passed through nations.¹⁸ The Lord drove out from before us all the nations, including the Amorites who lived in the land. So we too will worship the Lord, for he is our God!”

Preachers love this text because it draws a clear line and asks people to choose which side they wish to stand.

The problem with people is that in some moments things look so clear, and we make big decisions and declarations, only later on to have a change of heart, and wander over someplace else.

“Nones” in America

We like to imagine who these “nones” are. I’m sure most of us know some, some of us know a lot. Maybe some of us are “nones”.

We might imagine that these are people who grew up in nominal Christian homes, but it never “took”. I’m sure some are. But some are people who had at one time a very strong belief and profession.

To flesh this out I’ll draw your attention to two stories, one a young white woman and the other a middle aged African American woman. Both testify to strong belief at one time. One was raised in the church, the other converted in her teen years.

Goldie still attends church now and then, but has doubts anyone is listening despite appreciating the strong faith her aunt possessed.

I still believe in God, just not the kind I was raised on. I never told Aunt Gerry or even my mother, because I know it would break their hearts to know that I no longer share their brand of faith. I am not an atheist, per se. I simply do not know what holds the world together, if anything at all. I tell you this, because I am afraid we might lose her now.

But letting go of Jesus was the hardest part. I cannot point to the day or the hour that it happened, but the notion that there is someone—a man, no less—who loves me without condition or border, is now difficult to embrace. I have earnestly tried to lead a good life, but I suppose it was soothing to believe that a mystical creature had “paid” for my many foibles and saw the best in me when others would or could not.

As a black woman living in America, who knows well the spiritual legacy of slavery, to walk away from those traditions has been nothing short of traumatic. Was heaven not accessible before we were chained and dragged to these shores, our bodies plundered and sold as chattel? Had this God ordained and anointed the Middle Passage? Are the children who now live in war-ravaged Sudan, walking miles for water each day, not worthy of His grace and mercy? Are there no gay or lesbian people in this heaven? Where do transgendered people go when they die? If I plant crops side-by-side or wear garments of mixed threads, who will be in charge of the stoning?

While questions about morality are common, about the church’s hypocrisy, it’s traditional sexual ethic, Jessica really liked herself as a believer.

But my secret is this: Even though I staked my life on an arbitrary historical document for six years, I liked who I was when I was born-again. I woke up each day determined to conquer my “sinful nature,” i.e., my id that was prone to thinking only about myself, and determined to put others first. I was more selfless. I was a more caring and giving friend back then; I listened deeply, instead of waiting for my turn to talk. I prayed for people and made care packages and wrote nice letters and volunteered. With a divine outlet compelling me to focus on something besides self-preservation, I felt free from the prison of ego.

Which isn’t to say that I can’t do any of these things now. Today I can go to beautiful and inspiring concerts instead of worship service. I can join a weekly book club instead of Bible study to find community. I can still volunteer at the same homeless shelters and make the same damn care packages. I want, desperately and intellectually, to believe that you can feel those selfless feelings and be this others-focused person in secular minds and realms. But that omnipresent inner light or whatever it was that compelled Christian me, as Jesus says in Luke, to “deny myself daily” has long flickered out.

I know — I think — that Christianity isn’t real, but I miss believing it was real. When I got confused in my career, or hurt by a broken relationship, fellow Christians assured me that it was all part of God’s plan to lead me to the right calling or the right person, something that made me calmer and more willing to take risks. Now when things don’t go the way I want, I cling to a vague “everything happens for a reason” sentiment or confront the fact that shit, maybe life IS meaningless, because now I can’t view trauma as just a rolling ball in some cosmic Rube Goldberg machine.

No-Gods Land

While we hear a lot from the nones about what they think of Joshua and his people, we might be surprised by what would strike Joshua and his people about the nones. Joshua and his people would be incredulous about the notion today that you could check “none of the above” when it came to a deity. It was simply inconceivable that a small, weak human being would attempt to make their way in this world without a god.

To this the modern none would say that they didn’t need a god. They have a story about how they came to be without a god. Gods don’t provide anything for them that the modern state and technology don’t provide, and that what they most dearly cherish is their notion of autonomy, that they be able to determine the shape of their life and be able to control it’s outcomes. These are the things they struggle over, not how some “guy in the sky” feels about them.

The modern none feels that the world has been de-mythologized. Ancients needed a relationship with a god to make life work. Moderns believe that mechanisms of nature keep us alive, mechanism which science and technology give us the ability to control, to a degree, so what we really need is power, and with this power we can “make life work”.

A very sharp ancient might observe, “well then you are your own god”.

Even religious people in the West buy into these assumptions and embrace what is called “Moralistic, therapeutic deism” where if one embraces a god it is for that little something extra when their power fails to deliver on arranging the world to meet their expectations.

Moralities in Conflict

It is interesting to compare the testimony of these two women. Jessica noticed that not only did her faith give her comfort in times of adversity but it also made her more generous. It took her eyes off herself and empowered her to live not just to satisfy herself but to serve others.

Both note that part of their motivation to shelve Christianity was a moral crisis. Certain issues made them feel that Christianity, or at least some forms of it were not loving or fair to certain classes of people and that some Christians in history justified terrible things with their faith. I think both would read Joshua 23 and 24 as something that aligned with their image of an “unloving” or “dangerous” deity who rewarded allegiance while not playing fair or recognizing the life and liberty of human beings who did not serve him.

Joshua and Religious Tribalism

If you read the text you may in fact seem to arrive at the same conclusion. The text seems to quite clearly indicate a contract stating that if they decide to be faithful to Yhwh then everything will be dandy, but if they turn against him and serve other gods then everything will go to crap.

This offends us. I think it is hard for us to confess why it offends us. I think it offends us because we are in the same historical culture as the nones and we have a deep and abiding self-interest. We want the gods to serve us, and to the degree that we serve them we hope and demand that we are repaid for this service in good fortune and secure welfare.

Not too much thought would help us to see that if in fact this moralism is the whole deal and that if this is what this god is aiming at and if he could deliver on it then we imagine it would be a winning strategy. We imagine that people are the kinds of logical, straight forward creatures that perform well in a Skinner box.

First we might ask, if God rewards worship and faithfulness why would anyone be unfaithful?

Next we posit the challenge of Satan to God in Job. Satan tells God that Job only serves him because Job is the faithful rat in the Skinner box. Such operant conditioning surely cannot be called “good”.

Next we should realize something about us. People who “always get what they want” seldom just settled into their world of secure pleasures. They either develop dissatisfaction with that world or they intentionally sabotage it. Haven’t you ever noticed this before about us?

We might be tempted to understand Joshua and God’s relationship to Israel, and God’s relationship to us in these simple terms, but does Joshua?

Look at the two illustration of the women who have walked away from the faith. Neither declare that somehow they were abused or mistreated. Both are nostalgic about what they are or have walked away from, yet walk away they do.

You won’t believe what Joshua says next…

Joshua 24:19–24 (NET)

¹⁹ Joshua warned the people, “You will not keep worshiping the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God who will not forgive your rebellion or your sins. ²⁰ If you abandon the Lord and worship foreign gods, he will turn against you; he will bring disaster on you and destroy you, though he once treated you well.” ²¹ The people said to Joshua, “No! We really will worship the Lord!” ²² Joshua said to the people, “Do you agree to be witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to worship the Lord?” They replied, “We are witnesses!”²³ Joshua said, “Now put aside the foreign gods that are among you and submit to the Lord God of Israel.” ²⁴ The people said to Joshua, “We will worship the Lord our God and obey him.”

Suddenly this clear, idyllic, clean picture gets complicated. Joshua says “you can’t serve God. He will destroy you for your rebellion and sin. He won’t forgive you.

The people protest, “no we can do it.”

Joshua then throws down the challenge “throw out your foreign gods…”

Now pause. They have foreign gods, yet they’re all standing there making this audacious commitment?

Pope Francis and 9/11

Religious and secular authors have been commenting on the visit of Pope Francis. It does seem strange that in an increasingly secular age a visit from Pope Francis dominates the news. Why? There are lots of theories.

• The pope has made remarks that pacify the left
• the Roman Catholic church is old
• The pageantry
• the iconographic images of embracing the children and the infirm

Good money is that this is a fad that will die away. While some hope that this “bump” in religiosity will improve attendance and giving at Roman Catholic churches, I have my doubts.

After 9/11 church attendance spiked for a couple of weeks, especially on the east coast and then went back to pre-attack levels in most cases. Why? We are, in a way, like rats in a Skinner box.

Joshua’s crowd was moved in the moment, by the ceremony, by the speech, to pledge undying allegiance to God, but Joshua actually knew them better than that. He had been with their parents in the desert. He knew how we are, full of enthusiasm and sometimes good intentions, but weak on faithfulness and follow through.

Weddings and Faithfulness

The dynamic isn’t much different from the difference between weddings and faithfulness. In the moment the couple pledges love and fidelity and in many cases not too many years later the glow may be gone and in some case replaced by resentment, anger or even violence. Promises are easy to make and hard to keep.

Misery: The Story of the Old Testament and Jesus

The Old Testament is in fact a story of failure. It is a story of Israel’s inability to “serve the LORD”, her inability to keep the promise made to Joshua and to God. Jesus is not the reward given to her for good behavior, but the remedy given to us for our inability to be faithful.

Deliverance

The story of Jesus is in fact the story of God’s singular faithfulness in the midst of our faithlessness. If you read the gospels you’ll see that although you find people around Jesus who show glimpses of generosity and goodness that Jesus often points out, most of those people do so in unexpected ways, even to themselves. The “normal” state for us is mediocre and half-hearted obedience with devastating failures all along the way. This is why Jesus is called a “savior” because he rescues us from ourselves. He is not a “rewarded” or a “life coach”. He comes to do for us what we are not faithful enough to do for God or for each other.

Gratitude

Once receiving his salvation, our hard work begins. How can we learn faithfulness?

Any successfully married person will likely confess two things: gratitude because they will attribute the good fortune of their marriage to the grace of their partner and perhaps the good fortune of having their partner which they can’t attribute to themselves. The second thing will be the hard work. The hard work of forgiveness and the hard work of staying. The truth is that the Skinner box is always greener on the other side.

Faithfulness is, as Satan notes in the book of Job, a work against our Skinner box instincts. It is doing right even when it doesn’t pay. It is forgiving wrongs that have been done. It is putting ourselves, our time, our money into something that we sometimes wonder whether it will pan out. It is more like being married than it is like having a wedding.

This is of course what Joshua is calling the people to. It is based on gratitude, not greed and looks a lot like endurance rather than enthusiasm. It is the work of God’s Spirit and it is ultimately a gift from God himself.

It does begin often with a big decision, but is followed up by a lot of small decisions. Going to church when you don’t feel like it. Paying attention when you want to leave. Being reliable when you want to be selfish. Doing for others when all you feel is “I want some ME time.” Any parent will tell you that this is what it takes to raise a child. This is also what it takes to become a parent.

So, what will you choose to do?