Hebrew Scripture Reading-Joshua 1: 1-11
Dwight D. Eisenhower was not yet a general when his father died only four months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He worked a desk job “fifteen hours a day, seven days a week.”[i] Unable to go to his father’s funeral, he soldiered on without taking a day off of work. According to one source, “To his family and fellow officers, he showed little emotion.”[ii] Years later, however, when his diaries were published, one caught a more revealing glimpse of Eisenhower wrestling with his grief.
His first entry was short: “Father died this morning. Nothing I can do but send a wire.”[iii] The next day he began to open up a little more. He begins, “I have felt terribly. I should like so much to be with my Mother these few days. But we’re at war. And war is not soft, it has no time to indulge even the deepest and most sacred emotions. I loved my Dad.”[iv] On the day his father was buried, he wrote even more. He tells of how he “shut off all business and visitors for thirty minutes, to have that much time” by himself to think of his father. In that entry, he goes on to write about the details of his father’s life, his outstanding qualities, and how proud he was of him. He closes by saying, “My only regret is that it was always so difficult to let him know the great depth of my affection for him.”[v]
For historians, diaries can provide a more intimate glimpse into the past than one can get simply from reading newspaper accounts or interviewing people many years after the fact. Diaries give you all the juicy tid bits about romance. They also give one a window into a person’s soul: its joys, torments, and sorrows. Often one finds a private dimension to a person that the public never knew existed. I wish our Bible included the diaries of Joshua. Our account of Moses’s death seems to be utterly lacking in capturing any of the grief that must have been felt. God announces that Moses is dead and then proceeds to give Joshua a pep talk on finishing what Moses started. Without saying a word in response to God, Joshua turns to his officers and tells them to start getting the people ready to cross the Jordan River and lay claim to the promised land.
In the Bible’s account, Joshua doesn’t stop to grieve. He doesn’t have a breakdown or ask for a few days off. He doesn’t process or express his feelings. He is the quintessential stoic male. He doesn’t cry. He soldiers on. He appears to be a lot like Eisenhower. Indeed, the opening of the book of Joshua from which I read is full of military language and exhortations. Joshua had been Moses’ Lieutenant. Joshua has officers beneath him. God speaks to Joshua using phrases a general would have used in getting his troops ready for battle.
As we wait for the day when archeologists find the lost diary of Joshua, I have taken the liberty of speculating as to what such a diary might have said. Somewhere between God’s pep talk and Joshua’s order to the Israelites to start packing for the promised land, I am pretty certain that Joshua might have written in his diary something along the following lines:
Dear God, I am not exactly in the mood for your marching orders right now. What made you ever think that now would be a good time to take Moses? We are about to finally accomplish that dream you’ve been dangling in front of us for the past forty years, and what do you do? You take our leader. I don’t know if I should be more angry about what you’ve done to Moses or what you’ve done to us. I mean what did you tell Moses, “Hey there Moses, I know I have talked about the promised land being full of milk and honey, and I know you’ve worked hard to get there with the whole slavery thing and all this time in the wilderness, but I’ve decided maybe you won’t get to taste that milk and honey after all. Don’t get me wrong! Your people will still get there, but it just won’t be with you.” Hello God, don’t you remember that Moses was the one who always stuck by you even when his people didn’t? We even wanted to stone him once for going along with your plan. Yeah, we weren’t always real faithful to you. I mean we picked a golden calf over you. If my wife left me for calf, I think I’d be a little upset regardless of what it was made out of. Don’t you remember these things? Don’t you think Moses deserved to reach the promised land a little more than the rest of us?
And, then, what precisely are the rest of us going to do? Here, we have been completely dependent upon Moses all these years, and you decide that now is the time for us to grow up and live life on our own. And, oh yeah, you forgot to mention something to us: that land of milk and honey. Someone else happens to live there already. I guess we missed reading that in the fine print.
You know your pep talk wasn’t super-inspiring today. You told me you would be with me just like you were with Moses. Does that mean you promise me a big reward and then let me die just before I can get it? Of course, God, I realize you told Moses all this would happen. I remember when Moses called me that one day. He told me to “be strong and bold,” because I was going to be the one who would take our people into the promised land. He even said you would be with me. All of that sounded grand at the time, but I now wish I had declined the promotion. Really, as the Supreme Being in charge of this outfit, I think it would be wise of you to bring Moses back from his forced retirement. Otherwise, that golden calf might start to look real attractive to some of us.
In case you haven’t noticed God, I am bit angry at you. I assume you’re big enough to take it. I know Moses used your name in vain a few times. I suppose that’s how you came up with that one commandment. But I tell you God. I just can’t help feeling angry. I guess I’d rather be angry than feel the pain. All of us loved Moses so much. How could we not be angry now that he’s gone? You can’t lose what you love and not be angry. Well, I hope you don’t mind the fact that I am going to stay angry at you for a while.
Honestly, the only thing that keeps me going is thinking that finally getting to the promised land is the best way we can honor Moses. I still manage to find strength and courage in that. I don’t want all his hard work to get us there to be for nothing. I also want him to look down from heaven and know that we finally became the people he wanted us to become. I want him to know we live according to the teachings he passed onto us. We keep alive the traditions and festivals. We keep alive the memories of our escape from Egypt and our journey through the wilderness. We even try to keep alive his faith.
You know, God, I have been thinking about how Moses might have handled this situation. I remember the time we all wanted to stone him to death because there was no water to drink. We were convinced that he had brought us out of Egypt only to kill us and our children. It was then that Moses got angry with you. He wanted to know what he should do. You told him to take his staff and go strike the rock at Horeb. He did and water came gushing out. Finally, we could drink, and, finally, we could believe you were truly with us.
Well, God, Moses is no longer with us to break open any rocks. I guess now it is up to the rest of us to follow his example, to grab our staffs, and pound at whatever rocks we see. We’ll call it rock therapy. We’ll let those rocks have it. We’ll keep striking them until one day, hopefully, water springs forth.
I wish the water could bring back Moses, but I guess I will just settle for it bringing back the faith of Moses. Can you do that? Can you bring back the faith that led us out of Egypt and through the wilderness? Can you bring back the faith that all of us need? In the meantime, I’ll pray that you be with me in my anger, in my doubt, and in my pain. Be with me like you were with Moses. Amen.
[i] Niel Chethik, Fatherloss: How Sons of All Ages Come to Terms with the Deaths of their Dads, (New York: Hyperion, 2001), 130.
[ii] Ibid., 129.
[iii] Dwight David Eisenhower, The Eisenhower Diaries, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 50.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid., 51.
