|
SERMON
Just before 5 P.M. on April 12, 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
heart stopped – the victim of a cerebral hemorrhage. Within the hour the
news broke around the world: the man who had been President of the
United States for the past twelve years was dead. In Berlin an ecstatic
Joseph Goebbels telephoned Adolf Hitler and proclaimed that this piece
of good news could be the turning point in the war. Many others around
the world worried that such a prediction would be correct.
Suddenly Harry S. Truman was president, but hardly anyone had any idea
who he was. Truman had been vice-president for only eighty-two days
before FDR's sudden death. All that most people knew about Truman was
that he was a largely uneducated former haberdasher from Independence,
Missouri – untried, unknown, untested on the world stage, yet now in
charge of a full-scale war in the Pacific and in Europe.
Truman had no experience in foreign relations. He didn't know Churchill
or Stalin, didn't know his own Secretary of State, had never been told
about the development of the nuclear bomb, and above all he was not
Franklin Roosevelt – and most Americans could not imagine anyone else
occupying the Oval Office. On hearing that the President was dead, a
stunned Harry Truman said to Eleanor Roosevelt, "Is there anything I
can do for you?" Mrs. Roosevelt replied, "Is there anything we
can do for you, for you are the one in trouble now." And so he was.
Looking back, we know Harry Truman did just fine as president. But
imagine how scary and uncertain it all was at first. It was a moment of
high human drama. The Nazi menace was still very real; the war with
Japan was taking a horribly bloody toll. As this unknown man assumed the
presidency, the world held its breath. Now what?
The Book of Joshua opens with the same implied question. Listen again to
how it begins: "After the death of Moses…" Moses was dead! No one
in Israel had ever known another leader. Even the parents and
grandparents of all the Israelites then living had been led by Moses. He
had been God's mouthpiece – at times the one figure who stood between
Israel and God's wrath. He was the one who performed the miracles and
led them out of Egypt, who met personally with God on Mount Sinai, and
who kept them safe throughout those long years in the wilderness.
Now their leader was dead. I'm sure they wondered if God would still
speak to them if Moses weren't around to mediate? Who would promote
Israel's cause? Above all, would the covenant move forward, would
salvation history advance to its next stage, if Moses weren't there to
superintend the whole thing? Those were the kind of questions that must
have vexed the Israelites in those tense days following Moses' death.
I want us to consider first how God encouraged the Israelites
in the midst of their uncertainty immediately following Moses' death.
Second, let's spend a little time pondering what this book
communicated to the people who originally read it. Third, I want
us to deal candidly with the context in which God's encouragement
was given, because it bears an uncomfortable likeness to the
context in which we live today.
1. First, let's see how God reassured the Israelites at
this critical point in their history. The Lord wasted no time in making
it clear that Moses' death had in no way rendered the covenant null and
void. In fact, at verse 2 God said to Joshua, "Moses my servant is
dead." And then he immediately went on, "Now then, you and all
these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River." It's show time!
Then God went on to make it clear that everything he had promised the
people through Moses was still in effect. But most important, in verse 5
God confirmed Joshua as Moses' successor. God told Joshua that he
planned to work through him the same way he had with Moses. And then God
said to Joshua, "I will never leave you or forsake you."
But while there is a message in that for all Israel, God knew that
Joshua was the one who needed reassurance more than anyone. After all,
Joshua was the one in trouble now. He was the leader-apparent of a
people caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Behind them lay
the vast, chaotic wilderness of death. In front of them was Canaan with
its multiple populations of fierce warriors who weren't about to hand
over the Promised Land without a fight. I'm sure Joshua must have
wondered what he was in for.
So God said to Joshua, over and over: "Be strong and courageous!
Follow my ways, hold fast to the designs for life traced out by Moses,
and you will be just fine – I guarantee it." No less than eight
times in the next four verses God told Joshua not to worry, to move
forward with confidence, and to expect success to crown his every
effort.
Joshua got up off his knees and immediately ordered his officers to get
ready to cross the river. After all, the God of the entire universe had
just told him that all would be well. So Joshua took God's promise at
face value. And by the time he finished issuing his first set of
executive orders, the people respond with this pledge of allegiance.
They said to Joshua: "Whatever you say, we'll do. Wherever you send
us, we'll go."
2. So the drama of Israel continued without missing a
beat, even after the death of the greatest leader of all time. Most
scholars believe that Joshua was written sometime during the monarchy
period. That is, the book was composed some centuries after the
conquest of Canaan. Many believe it was written at a time when Israel
again faced some new trials. Faced with various personal, spiritual, and
military challenges, someone wrote Joshua as a way to bolster the faith
of some latter-day Israelites.
It is as though the author of the book was saying, in effect,
"Remember how, when Moses died, God didn't abandon us. When we faced a
challenge as unthinkable as conquering Canaan, God was with us. God
raised up a Joshua and told him, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake
you' – and we won the day. So don't lose heart!"
For the Israelites who first read it, I suspect the book of Joshua was a
great encouragement to those faced with new anxieties and doubts and
fears. In fact, the book of Joshua can be read as a kind of extended
sermon in which God presses his claims on Israel. It reminded them that
God has promised to be faithful to his people, but the people in turn
have to be faithful to God. If they are, things can move forward swiftly
and well, just as they had throughout most of Joshua.
The book can be an encouragement for us as well. God's promise, "I
will never leave you nor forsake you," echoes through the centuries,
giving fresh hope to persecuted believers throughout the world. Those
words can comfort Christians facing an uncertain future in their
careers. It can resonate with those with terminal diseases or pending
diagnoses, or any number of similarly frightening circumstances.
3. The book of Joshua, then, is a great piece of holy
encouragement, a reminder that God promises to stand with us in the
midst of adversity. Unhappily, however, there are some other elements in
Joshua that cloud the picture. The book touches a raw nerve in modern
readers because some read it as though God were condoning violence. Face
it, more than once in this book God is depicted as authorizing a
jihad – a total holy war. In places we read of God expecting the
Israelites to slaughter every man, woman, child, cow, horse, goat, cat,
and dog in Canaan. "Let nothing remain alive!" God roars off the
pages of Joshua. "Woe to the Israelite who spares any person or who
keeps back for himself anything from the land!"
I don't know about you, but I find such words more than chilling. I find
them scandalous to the point of not knowing how to square them with the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. After all, how can the God
whose eye is on the sparrow sanction the slaughter of innocents and
other non-combatants? It would be one thing if, finding herself at war,
Israel begged God for guidance and assistance. If that were the case, we
could understand and sympathize from our own experience. When fighting
the Nazis in World War II, didn't Christians everywhere beg God to help
them win the war and do so as swiftly as possible? We may, none of us,
much like war. But if it must come at times, isn't it proper for
believers to bring their war-concerns to God in prayer?
But in Joshua it is not the case that the Israelites merely sought God's
help in the war. Instead God is depicted as orchestrating the war,
including issuing decrees to slaughter everyone possible. Maybe we've
become so accustomed to this facet of the Old Testament that we pass
over it without batting an eye. But put God's wrath in another context.
Think of how you would react if a Muslim terrorist group, carrying out
the dictates of a jihad, blew an airliner out of the sky with no
regard to the innocent people of all ages whose body parts would be
rained down on the earth. Now, do you think you would react any
differently if, as we were going to war with Iraq, some high-profile
Christian pastor went on television and proclaimed, "God has revealed
to me that we are to bomb Baghdad with as many nuclear warheads as it
will take to kill every person – every child, every baby, every
cockroach, mouse, cat and goat in the city." Would you feel any
differently about that kind of jihad? If so, why?
It may be that these are unfair analogies. Perhaps one shouldn't compare
Joshua's holy war with other wars past or present – like trying to
compare apples and oranges. That may be so. But I confess that I'm not
comfortable picturing God ordering anyone to plunge a sword into
the heart of an infant nursing at its mother's breast. I agree with the
judgment of church history that the teachings of Marcion were heretical.
Marcion declared that the God of the Old Testament is a different God
than the One in the New Testament. That's wrong, of course. But when you
read certain passages in the book of Joshua, you can understand what
jolted Marcion enough to make that claim.
But even without Marcion, there are plenty of other proposed solutions
to relax the tensions about God's character in the early Old Testament.
The more liberal commentators would say that the God we find in Joshua
is simply a projection of the author's ideas. They would say something
like this: "Well of course a loving God couldn't sanction the killing
of children and babies. Unfortunately, some over-zealous Israelite
soldiers did kill them, so the author tried to explain away their
actions by communicating the idea that they were ‘just following
orders.'" Sorry, but that explanation doesn't cut it for me.
More orthodox commentators argue that we need to set the book of Joshua
in its larger, cosmic setting. When we do that, we will realize that, in
the larger scheme of things (in God's plan to accomplish the salvation
of all creation) what happened long ago in Canaan is relatively
unimportant. In other words, if it was for some reason necessary that
God's judgment be expressed in that kind of all-out warfare back then,
then so be it. The larger end of global salvation justifies the means.
Unfortunately, some of us may not be satisfied with that approach
either. And so in the end we're left with an inscrutable biblical
mystery. The fact is that, here and there, the text of Joshua attributes
something to God that most of us find abhorrent. What are we to do with
it?
First, let me tell you what we should not do. We should not try
to define God either as the projection of Israel's will to subjugate the
Canaanites – or as justifiably brutal – or as some sort of cosmic
butcher. Frankly, none of us is in a position either to defend or
condemn God, let alone define him. If we really want to know God's true
character, we are best served by remembering that the definitive
revelation of God is found in Christ Jesus – the one the New Testament
claims is the exact representation of God – the express image of God –
the Son of God who is his Father all over again. What we desperately
need to do is accept Jesus as the final Word on who God is. If we do
that, then we see that in the end – whatever we make of Joshua – God has
taken the violence, the brutality, the suffering, and especially the
death of our world and has taken it on himself. In Jesus Christ, God
shattered the cycle of violence and counter-violence by becoming its
willing victim.
In the end, the first Joshua and the second Joshua – because the name
"Jesus" is the Greek form of "Joshua" – both of them remind us that our
sin and God's redeeming us out of that sin are gravely serious matters.
There is an ongoing tension between the city of God and the city of man.
And the question that constantly confronts us is this: Out of which city
will salvation come? The Tower of Babel taught us that human efforts to
mount up to heaven, to take back the paradise of Eden by force, will
never work.
Only God himself could do what he already promised Adam and Eve he would
do – send his own Messiah who would crush the evil that ruined his
creation; but not before that evil had also bruised the Messiah himself.
Jesus ultimately ascended back to heaven as the victorious conqueror.
But we dare not forget that he returned home with wounds – a pierced,
beat-up, once dead, hell-singed Savior. Overcoming sin is no neat, tidy,
easy task – not even for God. Here is a great biblical mystery: it
appears that the sheer nothingness of the pre-creation void was easier
for God to overcome than the chaos of sin.
Maybe none of this quite succeeds in overcoming the scandal of Joshua.
But perhaps it does remind us that the bloody conflicts of the Old
Testament and the agony of Jesus in the New Testament testify to the
tenacity of evil and the mind-boggling price that even Almighty God had
to expend to root sin out of creation. Salvation must come to us as a
sheer gift of grace. If it did not, if we were left to our own devices
to fend off evil and return to the Garden, we would lose for certain.
The book of Joshua begins at a moment of high human drama: the future of
the world was at stake and the best leader ever was dead. But the book
of Joshua is not even three verses old before we see that God once again
provided what was needed – raising up just the right leader at just the
right time to move salvation forward.
In the long run, of course, that's the message of the whole Bible: God
bringing the right person to the world at the right time. "Be strong
and courageous," God said to the first Joshua. And the first Joshua
remained just that, because he heard and believed God's promise, "I
will never leave you nor forsake you." Jesus, the second Joshua,
promises the same to us. And because he keeps his word, even in the
bloody mess of this fallen world, there's hope.
|
