Baptismal Courage

Matthew 23:1-12

Joshua 3:7-17

The lectionary calls for readings from the book of Joshua this week and next.  So what is the book of Joshua about?  It’s about Joshua, kind of.  He’s Moses’ understudy and successor.  It begins with Joshua assuming leadership of Israel.  And it ends with Joshua’s death.

But it’s not really about Joshua’s life.  It’s not a biography.  We learn virtually nothing about Joshua himself.  Did he have a wife and children?  Don’t know.  What about his personality, or his friendships?  Don’t know. 

Joshua’s task was to help Israel cross the Jordan river into the land promised them by God.  During Joshua’s lifetime, Israel shifted from a nomadic, wandering people to a people settled into geographic place.  They were no longer exiles.  They finally lived in land with borders.  And not just external borders.  There were internal boundaries as well, marking the areas settled by the twelve tribes of Israel. (The middle of the book of Joshua is given over to an extremely boring recounting of just which tribes got just which areas of the promised land.)

But there are some great stories in Joshua:

Rahab the prostitute from Jericho is a hero (ch. 2).  She gets a starring role in the story!  I wish I had some more complex things to say about her.  But she’s a prostitute and she’s a star.  Come to think of it, prostitutes got pretty good press in the gospel accounts too.  It’s a great story.  And it reminds me that people who think church is kind of stuffy should read all the stuff in here about prostitutes.

The Israelites wandering for 40 years in the wilderness had forgotten a sacred ritual between God and everyone related to Abraham – circumcision (ch. 5).  There just wasn’t time for minor surgery while traveling through the wilderness.  So right before they crossed the Jordan into the promised land, they had to backtrack.  They had to get all the new generation circumcised.  So they did.  And there wasn’t anesthesia back then.  And I’m sure it was kind of traumatic.  So anyway, they had to wait around to heal up for a few days.  THEN they crossed the river.

There’s the story of the priests and people marching around the city of Jericho, yelling and blowing trumpets.  Six days they did this.  Then the seventh day they marched seven times, then blew the horns and the walls came crashing down (Ch. 6).  That’s a pretty visually dramatic story.  It’s a favorite for Sunday School and VBS.  The kids love it.  They like to color pictures of that scene at Jericho.  Thank goodness we don’t tell them the whole story: “They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it – men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys” (6:21).  Sheesh.

In chapter 10, we read that God rained down hail on the Amorites, killing them right and left with ice balls from the sky.  The Amorites must have not been wearing helmets.  And Joshua prayed for a longer day to complete the battle, so he prayed and the sun stayed still for 24 hours.  Yep, the whole planetary rotation thing just up and stopped, like someone hit freeze frame.  These kinds of stories raise interesting questions for what kind of thing we’re reading.  I think it’s pretty clear that we’re invited to read these stories rather poetically.  Stories about hail and the sun standing still are Israel’s way of confessing that God was on their side, that all that happened was the result of God’s benevolent care and awesome power. 

To be honest, I should also tell you that Joshua is also the most relentlessly violent books in all of Scripture. 

I’ve always shuddered at Achilles’ dragging of dead Hector behind his chariot at the end of Homer’s Illiad.  Achilles was a rage filled killing machine.  It wasn’t enough to defeat Hector and win the battle.  He wanted to dehumanize and dishonor his opponent.  He wanted to mutilate him in way that would threaten and terrorize any others from ever opposing him again.  This kind of terrorizing violence is pretty frequent in the book of Joshua. 

When a guy named Achan stole a robe, and some bars of silver and gold from a city they had conquered, Joshua kind of went bonkers.  Joshua gathered the man, his poor wife and kids, and all the animals he owned.  The community bashed their heads in with rocks, then lit them on fire (7:24-26).

Every time they conquered a city, the report notes that they killed everything with breath – not just the men fighting, but the disabled, the old, the women, the children and babies, and all the livestock.  The report also makes clear that this was violence sanctioned and blessed by God.  It was God who instructed Joshua, we’re told, to exterminate all living things without mercy  (10:22-26; 11:10-11; *11:20).

This might be a good time to point out that Presbyterians read Scripture differently than some other parts of the Christian tradition.  Part of being Presbyterian means learning to read the Bible seriously but not literally. 

Most conservative churches teach people that the only way to take the Bible seriously is to take it literally.  God inspired every word and every thought in it.  The creation story of Genesis 1-2 is to be read literally, as if it’s on the scene, factual reporting of what happened.  We read the creation story as a powerfully poetic true story that God is the Creative Love responsible for all that exists. 

Conservatives argue that we’re to receive every bit of Scripture as coming straight from the mouth of God.  We’re never to think critically or ask questions.  We’re not to ask whether those ancient peoples writing and editing the stories shaped them in particular ways.  Or whether their prejudices or blind spots might be woven into their confession that they belong to God.

In our reading from Matthew 23:1-12 today, Jesus teaches us how to relate to religious authorities.  We’re to respect them and pay them the attention they deserve, but we’re to think critically and creatively about which parts of their lives we want to emulate.  We might be able to hear in this teaching a model for how we’re to relate to Scripture as well.   We are to honor and esteem Scripture as a powerful gift from God, keeping alive the good news of Jesus Christ and ordering our lives by God’s wisdom.  But we also ought to live with it critically and creatively.  We ought to keep thinking as we listen for God’s Word in it. 

Presbyterians are people who’ve been shaped by a part of the Christian tradition we call “Reformed.”  No time for a theological genealogy right now.  But for shorthand you can think of this Reformed heritage as being anchored in theologians like John Calvin and Karl Barth.  One important piece of this tradition is that we use the phrase “Word of God” to refer first of all to Jesus Christ.  Scripture is the “Word of God” only when and if it expresses clearly, and points us toward, Jesus Christ.

Now with that in mind, we can say a couple of things about all the violence in Joshua.

First, both the later Prophets and Jesus himself teach us that violence towards outsiders was never part of God’s plan for the world.  Prophets like Amos make it very clear that Israel was elected not because God loved them more and wanted them to have special privileges.  Rather, they were elected to serve and bless all others who do not yet know the One True God.  And Jesus comes among us as one whose life mission was to put to an end cycles of violence and revenge.  He resisted his fellow Jews who wanted all Jews to arm themselves for war with the Roman Empire.  In the garden where he was arrested, Peter pulled out a sword and Jesus told him to put it away.

So paying attention to the Prophets and to our Lord Jesus Christ helps us learn to read the violence of Joshua with a critical eye.  Though the violence is likely exaggerated for effect, it is still portrayed as sanctioned and blessed by God.  The picture of violence against outsiders is pictured as what God wanted.  And I invite you to resist that part of the story.  Read in a literal and wooden way – that is, read apart from it’s connection to Jesus Christ - it’s not true.

Even within the book of Joshua itself there is a better way of reading the story.  In the introduction to the book God speaks these words to Joshua (1:6-9):

“Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.  Be strong and very courageous.  Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.  Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.  Then you will be prosperous and successful.  Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

So it’s a sacred text that is primarily about courage that comes from trusting God.  And our story today is about the people crossing through a river, which has always been read as Christians as a picture of our baptism.  So enough with the violence.  Let’s explore the connections between our baptism and our courage.

Our story today recounts how Israel crossed the Jordan River.  The Priests are carrying the “ark of the covenant” into the waters ahead of the people.  This was the ark containing the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments given by God at Mount Sinai.  And just as God’s living presence accompanied Israel during their escape in pillar of cloud and fire, God now accompanies them in a living way by dwelling in this sacred ark, which was always veiled and no one could see directly.

The story unfolds with the walling off of water in a way that calls to mind the crossing of the Red Sea (see 4:23).  Reading this story as people belonging to Jesus, it also reminds us of Jesus’ baptism in that same Jordan River.  But here these echoes take on a specific tone: we’re saved through the waters of baptism for something, not just from something.  We’re baptized through water for a life of courage.  Israel lived with courage.  Jesus lived with courage.  Christians have through the centuries learned to live with courage.  In all kinds of difficult circumstances, God’s people have trusted God in the face of difficulty, threat and resistance. 

Has your baptism made you more courageous?  Has your baptism shaped you into the kind of person who fights for what you believe in, fights for what’s right, fights for the kind of person you want to be, fights for the kind of community you want to be a part of? 

It is important to have a story, a story that anchors you to the past, a story that can be shared with children and grandchildren to make sense of life.  But that’s not enough.  There has to be a fresh experience of power and meaning in our own lives.  The point of storytelling isn’t to turn us backwards nostalgically to some previous era.  Rather, stories are told to help us pay attention to what’s going on right now.  Our God is a living God.  The crucified Christ is risen, and is here in our midst.  The challenges, the need for creativity, the exciting adventure, the risk taking – it’s before us right now. 

I haven’t done that many courageous things.  I did once.  I went on strike as a graduate teaching assistant.  In this particular case of labor negotiations between the University and the janitorial and clerical union – I felt strongly that these lower level employees ought to have decent jobs and benefits.  So I told the professor I worked for that I was going on strike to be in solidarity with the janitors and office workers.  He thought that was a bad idea.  He also didn’t like it that he’d have to teach my two sections of students on Thursdays and Fridays.  I think I made about $14,000 a year at that time for teaching.  I knew I might lose my little salary.  And I didn’t end up losing it.  But I could have.  And so I marched and picketed with lots of other friends and colleagues all over campus until things got resolved.  And Henry was two at the time.  It was cold.  And I had him bundled up in his stroller with a sign about justice sticking out of his stroller.  We tell our kids these stories.  We hope these stories make a difference in their lives.  But the truth is, your parents’ stories aren’t good enough.  My kids will need their own stories.  We all do.

The most courageous story I’ve heard in awhile is the story of Malala Yousafzi – the young Pakistani Muslim girl shot by the Taliban for trying to go to school and get an education.  Her story is incredible and inspiring.  She deserves the Nobel prize she won.  But I can’t live by her story.  You can’t either.  We need our own fresh stories of courage in the face of threat.

We all need courage.  But because I’m raising kids, I pray for courage for our young people especially.  It takes courage to resist the frequent use of ethnic and gay slurs as a way of demeaning others.  It takes courage to resist the pressure to live your whole life through social media.  It takes courage to resist the voices of parents and educators who tell you that your career completely defines you.  It takes courage to resist the temptation to live your faith second-hand from your parents rather than claiming it as your own.

Jaroslav Pelikan taught Church History and Theology at Yale for over 30 years.  A prolific writer, he is famous for one particularly playful quip about tradition:

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”

Traditionalism, I think, is a set of dead routines, dead stories, mindless habits carried on because we’ve done them for a long time.  It’s living by someone else’s story.  It’s rehashing the Red Sea story but never crossing the Jordan river into your own new reality.  Tradition, on the other hand, is the living faith handed down to you by generations of faithful people.  And what they’ve handed down to you is that the “living God” is in your midst.  The Christ they crucified has been raised, and lives with us as baptized people in ways that free us to live with courage.