August 26, 2018
Joshua 24: 1-2a, 14-18
By Jennifer Brownell
This week in the grocery story I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed: “bad choices make good stories.” I sure wanted to follow that guy around and see what he put in his cart. Every now and then, someone asks me what the Bible is really about. As I considered this week’s scripture and that t-shirt, I wondered: could this be it? “Bad choices make good stories.”
The people have gathered at Shechem (sanctuary city, also the place where the gods of the past have been buried)
Joshua, Moses’ protégé, offers the people a choice – to follow Yaweh or the old gods.
In our reading today, the choice seems clear, but the lectionary reading takes a big chunk out of the middle – it leaves out both the past (a history of darkness and destruction) and the future (they will disobey Yaweh so badly that Yaweh will not be able to forgive them).[1]
The reading leaves out those parts to allow us as readers to focus on this moment in time. As a group, they must make a decision and they must make it right here, right now.
Last week, I asked you think about the best decision you’ve ever made, and you laughed! Yet, you make decisions for yourself every day, and we do as a community too.
The “Unofficial History of the United Church of Christ” has this to say about how we make decisions in a UCC group.
“In a congregational polity like ours, each part of the church…makes its own decisions…This work is done in meetings where (people) vote. If you just glance at it, this can look like democracy. Look closer, and you’ll see it’s something else.
In a democracy, each person votes their own conscience.
In a congregational vote, each person tries to vote GOD’s conscience.
In a democracy, each person has a vote because of a notion of intrinsic worth.
In a congregational vote, each person has a vote because everyone has access to the mind of God.
In a democracy, the majority rules and the losers suck it up.
In a congregational vote, we take unanimity or near unanimity as a sign of the Spirit’s blessing.
Democracy only works if a spirit of tolerance is present.
The congregational way only works if the Holy Spirit is present.”
We have made so many decisions in the past 28 months, we might feel weary of them. But the Holy Spirit will call us into many more decisions in the months ahead.
I was wondering with one of my mentors this week where the Holy Spirit might be calling us as a community and he shared this story with me:[2]
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves, they went out day or night tirelessly searching for the lost.
Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding areas, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew.
As they grew, some of the members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea.
They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in an enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they redecorated it beautifully.
Less of the members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired life boat crews to do this work.
The mission of lifesaving was still given lip-service but most were too busy or lacked the necessary commitment to take part in the lifesaving activities personally.
About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet and half-drowned people.
They were dirty and sick, some had skin of a different color, some spoke a strange language, and the beautiful new building was considerably messed up. They quickly had a shower house built outside the main gathering place where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.
At the next meeting, there was a split. Some wanted to stop lifesaving as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal pattern of other activities.
Others insisted that lifesaving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station.
Right now, right here – the lifesaving station is called to a moment of decision and choice. What will they choose? We don’t know. We do know that the week of May 25, 2016 we had a decision.
- abandon the building
- restore it exactly as it had been
- -re-imagine it, keeping the best of what had been along with envisioning a building for the future.
So we chose.
But the decision does not end there.
Professor Anathea Portier-Young says Joshua has called us to a moment of decision:
Like our ancestors long ago, we have gathered here on sacred ground, this spot where God has kept God’s promises.
Like our ancestors long ago, we can choose now the old gods, buried all around us like landmines, or we can choose the One God, the God of Life.
There is only this moment, the present.
What will we be: A mausoleum or a community center? A museum or a laboratory? A lifesaving station or an exclusive club?
We know who the old gods were. At least, we know the first fruits of propriety and prosperity they demanded. But we have crossed the river, and we are no longer in the land of our ancestors. Here and now we will choose. And what will we say? Will we be able to say as for me and my household we will choose the LORD?
Amen.
[1] This idea, as well as many others in this sermon, owes much to Anathea Portier-Young’s commentary on Joshua at workingpreacher.org. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3751
[2] Adapted from this story: http://www.bible.ca/evangelism/e-parable-life-saving.htm