The Promised Land: the Shadow Side of the Story Preached on November 8th, 2020 For Wollaston Congregational Church Scripture: Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25 In our culture today, religion and politics are two separate entities. Each is almost equally taboo for polite conversation. And, yet, there is no real separation between these spheres, and the equally important topics of ethics and morality. They overlap, each informs and impacts the other. If we are true to our Christian faith, we will put God first and allow our faith to inform our politics. When we’re attempting to interpret the events of our time, we’ll reach for our Bibles before the newspaper. We will read both, because we serve God, who is intimately engaged with all that goes in in our world. In this nation we have an appropriate separation of church or religion and state. This is for the purpose of avoiding restrictions on the religious freedom of citizens. It allows the freedom for individuals to observe their own religious faith, or to opt out of religion entirely. The separation is necessary because of the tendency of dominant groups to impose values and beliefs on others. Our scripture passage for today comes from the book of Joshua. It is set in an ancient time when there was no separation of religions, politics, ethics or morality. All were one. Disputes between tribes hinged on which God or gods were worshiped. The dominant groups felt empowered to overcome neighboring tribes and seize their land, in the name of their deity. Imposing values and beliefs on others was the objective. I have to admit, Joshua is not my favorite book of the Bible. Some years ago I was preparing for my “Ecclesiastical Council”, the public test I would take to confirm my call to ministry. I had prepared myself for the question: which books of the Old and New Testaments would you least like to preach on? My choice from the Old Testament was a tie between the consecutive books Joshua and Judges. These books document warfare, ethnic cleansing, rape, plunder, and the seizing of land. All this is attributed to the name of God. This follows the story of the Israelites peacefully wandering the wilderness for 40 years under the leadership of Moses. When Joshua takes over after Moses’ death, things change. According to the narrative of the scriptures, the people are finally led into the elusive Promised Land. The problem is that it is already occupied. Joshua is instructed by God to militarize, strategize and overcome the existing occupants. These are small tribes much like the 12 small tribes that comprise the Israelites. According to the text, God enables Joshua to claim victory after victory. This story is the meaning that was made from whatever really happened in the land of Canaan. The narrative has been embellished and exaggerated in favor of a mighty Israelite victory. History tells us that there were skirmishes between tribes in the land for many years. The other ethnicities were not wiped out and appear again in much later books of the Bible. Ultimately, the people of Israel are responsible for ushering in a time of increased cooperation between peoples, respect for the stranger and the neighbor, the equitable distribution of land, and a more merciful approach to criminal justice. But we might ask, do the ends justify the means? These books, Joshua and Judges, tell a dark history of the people of Israel. Perhaps not much has changed. There is a shadow side to the stories of every nation, every culture, every religion, every political movement. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is famous for the Serenity Prayer used widely by addiction recovery groups. But Niebuhr also wrote extensively on moral and ethical issues impacting society in his time. In 1932 Niebuhr wrote the book “Moral Man, Immoral Society.” In this book, Niebuhr observes that human sinfulness is magnified, rather than eliminated, by institutions that subscribe to high ideals. The Encyclopedia Britannica states that Niebuhr “stressed the egoism and the pride and hypocrisy of nations and classes … He emphasized the tendency for sin … to appear on every level of human achievement, especially where claims to perfection were made, either in religious or political terms.” [1] Paul Elie, authored an article on Niebuhr in the November 2007 issue of The Atlantic, saying “While the individual ‘moral man’ can check his natural selfishness through conscience, self-discipline, and love, social groups—tribes, movements, nations—look out for their own and strive to dominate other groups.” [2] And so, how do we reconcile the shadow side of the history of our nation with our patriotism or citizenship? I have to confess that I am squeamish about patriotism in a way you may not understand. I’ve been wrestling with this for a while. I’ve wondered why I’m put off pride in nation, either for my birthplace, the United Kingdom, or the place of my citizenship, the United States. For me citizenship is a more palatable term, it emphasizes participation, engagement, and community. In my mind, citizenship acknowledges the shadow side of culture in a way that patriotism does not. Citizenship calls us to work toward a greater good. I think my unease comes from a feeling that at some stage in my life I was bamboozled by patriotism. Not by my family, we are not particularly patriotic folk, but perhaps by the narrative of the culture, and my schooling. The remnants of a triumphalistic Christian faith, coopted by the British Empire, were hanging on when I was a child. The patriotic song, “Rule Britannia”, is sung with gusto and much flag waving at the annual proms. These are concerts broadcast by the BBC from the Royal Albert Hall in London. One line sounds grotesque to my ears. “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.” I hope that they shall not be slaves, but what else does this mean? That it is alright for others to be slaves? Some years ago I had a work colleague who had come from Germany to the United States. She had allowed her teenaged daughter to learn an instrument at school, maybe the trombone, or the clarinet. But then she was quite horrified when the girl was recruited for the school’s marching band. She explained that marching bands were out of the question in Germany, following World War II, because they raised the specter of Nazism. This all to say that the way that patriotism, nationalism or citizenship hits us will depend very much on our upbringing and life experience. And so we return to our scripture for today.While we may find most of the book of Joshua objectionable, the passage we read today is acceptable and applies to our times. The Revised Common Lectionary – the selection of readings for each week of the church year - has been carefully edited that way. Today’s scene comes at the end of the book. The violence is over and supposedly the Israelites have taken possession of the land. A new chapter is dawning. Joshua gathers all the tribes of Israel and they present themselves to God. Joshua recalls the history of their ancestors, remembering as far back as Abraham, the first to be led into Canaan by the one-God. Joshua questions the tribes’ loyalty to the God of Israel, reminding them that serving God in sincerity and faithfulness is not easy. He provides them with another option: they can choose other deities, they can align themselves with the Amorites whose land they live in. If they choose the God of Israel, then the Lord must be first in their lives. Their loyalty to God must be above loyalty to all else, including family and tribe. It will take them a while to learn this. And it will take us a while to learn this too. Then Joshua clearly states his intent: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” The tribes insist that they will serve the Lord too, but Joshua is not convinced. They’d better not commit, he warns them, if they cannot follow through. If they are tempted to wander away, to turn to the foreign deities, they will regret this day. Let them be a witness against themselves. And so, all the people of Israel assure him that they will serve their one-God. And standing here, in what will be the Promised Land for them and their children, they make a new covenant with the Lord. For the Israelites listening to Joshua’s call, this means a renewal of the covenant revealed through Moses. And for us Christians, this means a renewal of our covenant to follow Jesus Christ. The tentative question of Joshua is a question for us today: Are we up to it? On the dawn of the next chapter in American leadership, will we look back realistically and learn from 400 years of history? And will we, here, in the faith community, re-up our commitment to Jesus Christ? Our calling, in the end, is to be the best citizens that we can be, in this imperfect world, this imperfect culture, this imperfect nation. The Promised Land remains elusive. If Christ is first, above all else, at least for us, our vision of that land may be just a little clearer. May all God’s people say, Amen [1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Reinhold-Niebuhr#ref121323 [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-man-for-all-reasons/306337/
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