First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Joshua 24

“No Other Gods”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

November 9, 2008

Joshua was there from the beginning. He was one of the twelve spies who were sent into the Promise Land after God spoke to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Joshua and Caleb were part of the minority report. There were ten spies who said woe to us that we have left Egypt; there are giants in the land; we are doomed. Joshua and Caleb said, If God has given us the land, it doesn’t matter if there are giants. Our God will prevail.

Joshua was with Moses after the Israelites were banished to wander the desert for forty years. Joshua saw the people struggle for a generation. He saw them be tempted with joining other peoples; he knew their strengths and their weaknesses. Joshua saw the whole thing.

And then Moses died. It must have been bitter sweet when God said to him, I will be with you as I was with Moses and now you will lead the people. It was sweet in that Joshua saw the day finally arrive when the people entered the promise land; it was bitter because Joshua knew what he was getting into. Moses was not allowed to enter the promise land because he stopped loving the people.

Most of what we know of Joshua is purely administrative. We know he oversaw the land allotments given to the twelve tribes and did so without a civil war. Such a war would break out soon after him, but at least as long as he was in charge, the lid was kept on tribal feuds and fights.

Perhaps the most telling picture of Joshua though is the one we read today. This is his farewell speech; his last recorded words. Soon after this Joshua would die and they would bury him on Mount Gaash. Knowing it is his final words helps to uncover the tension in the text. The tension is that Joshua makes a pledge, then asks the Israelites to make the same pledge; they do so; and then, Joshua doesn’t believe them. He chastises them for doing what he asked them to do.

Joshua gives the great charge: for me and my family we will choose to serve the Lord. And then he says, what say you, and the people say, heaven forbid us to forsake the Lord. Given all that he has done for us and it is so clear; we will serve the Lord for he is our God. But then Joshua balks; he doesn’t believe them.

It’s as if he says, “No really, guys, I am not kidding. What are you going to choose? Don’t just mock me or give me lip service.” In essence Joshua says, hey, I know you. Lets’ try that again because I am not joking here; if you make a vow today, breaking it is going to hurt. The land flowing with milk and honey can easily become a place of hunger and wrath; make the vow with care. And so they say it again.

The tension of the passage is that even this doesn’t convince him. He dares them. Okay, all right, you are still serious, then prove it: put away your idols. Come on! Let’s see how serious you are. You can almost see him say, no I mean it. Pass 'em up. I know you are all carrying your amulets and in your cloaks are figures and statues you pray to instead of our God. Come on, pass 'em up. Let’s see how serious you are. In my mind he is like a tired teacher close to retirement demanding all the fifth graders empty their pockets.

It’s fair to say that Joshua has become a wee bit cynical. Twice he asked them to take a vow; twice they make the vow; twice he is just not convinced. He knows them too well; he knows how likely it is they are going to change; he knows too much.

A number of years ago I sat with two different pastors, on two different occasions, and they told me terrible stories. Well, let me qualify that, they told me stories that frightened me. Each one had reached a point in ministry that was not positive. Although they didn’t mean it to be they became a kind of cautionary tale.

The first one was a pastor who had been in a church more than twenty years. He grew it from a small fledgling country parish to an up growing concern; it was now a suburban church with the capital campaigns and mortgages to prove it. Over lunch he shared a great deal of how this had come about and where he had found success and what he had done with failure.

The frightening part came when I asked him how he balanced all of that with visitation, being with people. I said, “How do you find time to visit people?” He screwed up his face and said, “I don’t visit people.” And then he said with all seriousness, “I have to tell you, I don’t like people anymore. I mean I like certain people, but people as a whole, no. Not anymore.”

He talked for a while longer, but all I could hear were those words over and over again. I don’t like people anymore. A part of me wanted to say, hey, this is just burn out; this happens to a lot of people in positions where they deal with personal problems, or when you are not well insulated from bad behavior. Yet, no matter the rationalization I kept hearing the cavalier quality of his voice and the lack of any sense that this might be big problem.

The second one was a pastor who left a parish to take an executive job. He described 15 years in a successful ministry that came to an end one Sunday. He said, I knew too much. I knew everyone’s stories and secrets and sins; I knew them all. And when I looked out from the pulpit that was all I could see; I couldn’t see the people anymore. I resigned the next day, he said.

Believe it or not it’s this one that bothers me the most. The pastor who didn’t like people could be countered with all the pastors I know who have run the gauntlet of conflict in ministry and were not so dismissive of people. He might even be redeemed by simply getting beyond the weight of too many building campaigns. But the one who couldn’t see, help but see a congregation as their sin, or the duplicity of their soul, that has always greatly bothered me.

I cannot separate Joshua from Moses and in Joshua’s farewell speech I cannot help but hear the bitterness of Moses on repeat. Things didn’t seem to end well for either of them. Like the pastor become exec it is almost as if Joshua cannot see the people being good anymore. And there was a time when he could. But not anymore. They take the vow; he can only see them breaking it. They pledge to forsake their idols; he goads them to prove it. The depth of cynicism is profound and should give us pause. What does it mean to be reach a place where all you can hear is falsity, where all you can see is failure? And even if you know there is more, all you can see and hear is incarcerated in cynicism.

It’s become a kind of annual event for me, not cynicism that is, but reading a book on resisting it. I read a book that tries to answer this question for pastors and explores how to abide in a congregation without experiencing the words, “I just don’t like people anymore.” The surprising part of the book is that is doesn’t answer challenge of cynicism with the current self-help psychology, the litany of good advice like get a hobby, be more intentional with your time, or just about anything Dr. Phil would say. The interesting thing is that it says, if you want to be freed from the weight of cynicism then take a vow to have no other gods. Do it, it says, and mean it.

I can remember the first time I read the book, thinking, well, thanks for that. A vow to resist idolatry: two hundred pages with some good stories was helpful, but such a vow doesn’t really hit me where I live.

The author’s name is Eugene Peterson and to his credit he tries to show the significance of such a vow. He does this by showing how St. Benedict, a sixth century Italian monk, how he made the brothers who followed him take four vows in order to live as part of his community. They were asked to take a vow of obedience, poverty, chastity and stability.

The vow of stability was the one to forsake idols. It actually makes a lot of sense when you find how Benedict had a group of people around him who believed the next spiritual challenge, the next great epiphany in life, was still out there; their lives were a kind of roaming, prayerful adventure. They were all spiritual vagabonds. He said, if you join me take a vow to stay with me; take a vow of stability, so will you find the strength to face the greatest spiritual challenge. Benedict said, the real spiritual challenge lies within. It’s not in some remote cave; it’s in your heart. And you only see this when you’ve been in a place long enough the luster has worn off; when you can’t fake it and you have to be the person God created. He said, now that is a challenge.

Each year when I read this book the vow of stability, the vow to forsake the idols of careerism and self-fulfillment grows more convincing. I am still not sure if just staying in one place forever has magical powers, but I am intrigued by the idea St. Benedict put forward. At first it seemed to be a vow to leave your ambition, your wanderlust, your sense of adventure aside. Yet as the years have gone by I have begun to see the vow as not really interested in such lesser gods like Ulysses chased; the vow is chasing after the cynicism that creeps inside of all of us. To take the vow of stability is to hand over the idol of your very self. And that is a god who competes with our God every day- the god, the idol of the self.

I stayed up to watch the speeches on Tuesday and I am glad I did. John McCain gave, as the pundits pointed out the irony, the best speech of his campaign in his concession. And President Elect Barak Obama gave a subdued, gracious pause. He paused for the generation of African Americans who ate in colored sections and drank from colored fountains; he paused for a world that is still wondering what had happened to America and its dreams; he paused to take a breath given the profound level of crisis and confusion that exists in too many homes in our country.

And then he spoke the words that caused me to react like Joshua. I was with him until he started to talk to the people in spiritual terms. He spoke of sacrificing the sense of self and thinking about more than yourself; he said we need to be one people and all live as such. As the applause went up from hundreds of thousands gathered in Chicago I could hear myself saying, “no, no, no. You are asking us to put aside the idols of the self; to live as if we are communities, as if we are a people who see the other as more important than ourselves. You are not asking for political change, but spiritual change.”

Years of ministry with three congregations made me pause here. What he was asking for demanded more than applause. To seek a bi-partisan coalition to stabilize the economy is one thing, but to ask the people to give up their sense of self for others, that is really asking for a vow of stability. I wanted to say to him, its one thing to ask for a vote, it is quite another to ask us for a vow.

What if though, our greatest obstacle facing our nation today is not the economy, or health care, or a new foreign policy, what if our greatest challenge is that we spiritually bankrupt? What if we are simply do not have the spiritual depth to sacrifice for others to be a community? What if we simply lack the faith to put aside our idols?

I got to tell you, being like Joshua, hearing my voice commingle with his at the end of his life is not something that makes me happy. It’s cynicism. But it is also something else.

I recognize that our nation is facing difficult economic times, that fighting the war on terror has created enormous difficulties here and abroad, and there is a litany of setbacks that have sobered us. But the greatest challenge facing America was in place long before Lehman Brothers, the greatest challenge is that we no longer seem to have a sense of being a people, being something greater than each individual. As a people we are each chasing our own dreams. We have no common vision. It is as if we are a people needing to take a vow of stability, to leave aside the idol of the self. But can we?

Not too long ago a local businessman complained to me about another businessman in town. He talked about the man as not really caring for the community, how little his business practices were for others, and how this is not how a community should be. He inferred that the poor practice of the one who angered him hurt his business. We need to be a better community than that, he said.

I agreed with him and then suggested something that sounds like Joshua: what you are saying is true but what if we all live these lives of anonymity, selfish lives of what we want, when we want it; what if we seclude ourselves from the public, from people because they are not exactly what we want or need, but then when we need to get married, buried, baptized, educated or be aided through a crisis, what if it is only then that we leave our private lives, what if we leave this aside only when we need community. But as we leave our castles of self-fulfillment we are shocked to find the community we thought should be there is no more? The businessman agreed, but the conversation changed.

Even though I can hear my voice commingle with Joshua’s it is not the same voice. I can see much more than sin; I can hear much more than falsity. I still believe we can lay aside the idol of the self. When Joshua stood before the people that was no longer the case. Yet, we are not there. We can become a people again. We can have a life together that is more than the sum of our net assets. We can have a life that hopes to be good in the eyes of the Lord; a life that is well run and rests in the abiding hope of the resurrection.

I have cynicism, but I also abide in hope. As I hope I long for the day when people come to church believing it’s not for them, but for others. It is not to make them better, but to make us a better people. I long for the time when our neighbor’s success and their happiness is not our curiosity, but is borne of our sacrifice. Then we are the people without idols. This is the change we need. Amen.