Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
August 18, 2019
Scripture:
Joshua 6:1-27
Preacher:
Kate Jones
Our exploration of
favourite Sunday School Stories continues this week with the Battle of
Jericho. This is a story that is
probably more familiar because of the song I just played and VBS re-enactments
than it is from sermons. Did you know
that in the Revised Common Lectionary, the 3-year cycle of readings that we
usually follow on Sunday morning, the book of Joshua only appears three times
in the whole three year cycle, and the story that we just read is not included?
And what a story it
is! Can you imagine the Sunday School or
VBS re-enactment of it? Half of the army
marching towards the city, followed 7 priests blowing trumpets, followed by more
priests carrying the ark of the covenant – that gold and jewel-encrusted box
which was the home of God, followed by the other half of the army. On the first day, they process around the
city once. On the second day, they
process around the city again. On the
third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days, they process around the city once a day,
all those people and the trumpets blowing all of the time.
I don’t know if anyone
else is a soccer fan, but I’m imagining that it must have sounded something
like the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with all of the vuvuzelas blowing!
And then on the
seventh day, the Sabbath day, they process around the city seven times in total
beginning at sunrise, and slowly circling around again and again. And after the seventh time around is
finished, Joshua gives the signal, all of the people begin to shout, those
thousands of voices; and at the sound of the shouting, the city walls of
Jericho fall to the ground.
It is a pretty
dramatic and memorable story on its own; but let’s take a step back from it
just for a minute to see how it fits into the overall story arc of the Old
Testament.
Two weeks ago, we read
about how the Israelite people ended up in Egypt following a drought and
famine; then last week, we read about how the descendants of Jacob, the
Israelite people ended up in slavery in Egypt, and we read about the birth of
Moses. Well, that baby who was born in
last week’s story would grow up to hear God speaking to him from a burning
bush, he would go to Pharaoh and demand that he release the people from
slavery. Eventually, the Israelite people
were able to escape, Moses parts the waters of the Red Sea for them to pass
through to safety, and then Moses led the people for 40 years as they wandered
through the desert wilderness.
Eventually, the people
reach the banks of the Jordan River, but before they could cross over into the
land that God had promised to them and to their families, Moses died at the
ripe old age of 120, and, as we’re told at the end of the book of Deuteronomy,
“his sight was unimpaired and his vigour had not abated.” (Deut. 34:7)
Enter Joshua. He had been Moses’ apprentice, and he became
the leader of the Israelite people after Moses’ death – the “New Moses” so to
speak. And so Joshua leads the people across
the Jordan River and into the land of the Canaanites, and the waters of the
river parted in front of Joshua and the people, just as the waters of the sea
had parted in front of Moses and the people.
Jericho was the first
city on the western side of the river that they would have encountered. Joshua sent out spies to scope it out, and
they collaborated with Rahab, mentioned in today’s reading, who helped them get
in and out of the city. And then all of
the Israelite people marched around the city walls, and the walls came tumbling
down. And then the Israelite people
killed all of the Canaanite people and livestock living in the city. And then they would go on to attack and take
over the other cities in the region, and kill all of their inhabitants too.
Which makes this a
very challenging reading if you go beyond the surface pageantry. There is more than one side to every story;
and as my father always told us, “History is written by the winners.” What if we were to tell this story from the
perspective of the Canaanite people?
From the perspective
of the people who were already living in Jericho, it becomes a story of
invaders coming from afar, convinced that God was giving them a new land. From the perspective of the Indigenous people
of Canaan, they are quietly living their lives, not attacking, not being the
aggressor, when all of a sudden this foreign army comes in, razes the city, and
kills all of the inhabitants.
And this story is a
story that was used by European colonizers crossing the Atlantic to the New
World. They were convinced that God was
giving them a new land, just as the Israelite people were convinced. They crossed the water, just as the Israelite
people had crossed the water. They were
convinced that God was with them and on their side, just as the Israelite people
were. And they killed and oppressed the
people that they found living there, and stole the resources of the land, just
as the Israelite people had.
Which makes this a
very troubling story indeed. Because I
don’t think that I can worship a God who collaborates with people to kill
people and destroy a city. My
understanding is that God is love, and I have trouble reconciling this story
with my understanding of love.
And yet here I am this
week, trying to craft a sermon out of a story that gives me so much
difficulty. Where can I find the good
news in this story? Where is the good news?
And this story raises
deeper questions too. How do we
understand the nature of God? Do we
believe that God sides with the powerful oppressors? And how do we understand scripture? First Timothy tells us that all scripture is inspired
by God, is “God-breathed” but what do we mean when we say “inspired by
God”? Did God dictate the bible, and the
people who wrote it down were like scribes or typewriters, transcribing what
they heard? Or do we mean something
different? And what happens when we come
across parts of scripture that contradict each other? God is love on one hand / God destroys a city
on the other.
Personally, when I
think of scripture being inspired by God, I think of all of the men (and
probably some women too) who were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write down
their experiences of God through generations and generations. As we say each Sunday after our scripture
reading, “this is the witness, the testimony, of God’s people.” And as they wrote of their experiences of
God, their human biases were also able to slip in. And so if a person believed that God does
choose sides, that God does give victory in battle, then that person might
write that belief into their story.
And so whenever we are
reading scripture, it is important for us to know what lens we are looking at
it through. What lens are we using to
interpret scripture, to figure out what it might mean? For me, my lens for reading and interpreting
scripture is Jesus’ summary of all of the teachings: that we are to love God with our whole
selves, and we are to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Looking through that lens, I can try to
figure out the rest of scripture, even when it seems to contradict itself.
And so getting back to
today’s story, I have trouble finding the good news in this story to preach
about. The more “traditional”
interpretation of this story is that it is about obedience – that the Israelite
people were obedient to God, and so God gave them victory over Jericho. But that doesn’t sit well with me because, as
I said earlier, I don’t think that I can worship a God who collaborates to
bring about death and destruction.
And so finally I had
to conclude that there is no good news in today’s scripture story. I have to read it as a story of violence and
destruction, rather than a story about the God who is love.
In order to find good
news this week, I had to look outside of our scripture story; I had to look
forward through time to the cross of Jesus.
In the person of Jesus, God became human, the second person of the
Trinity. In the person of Jesus, God
chose to embrace love, and to embrace the vulnerability that comes with
love. In the person of Jesus, God chose
to embrace vulnerability, and the risk of suffering. And in the person of Jesus, God suffered pain
and abandonment and rejection and death.
And so God is with everyone who suffers, because God has been there
before.
In the Jewish
tradition, there exists a practice called “Midrash” which is the practice of
telling stories to interpret the stories that we find in scripture. There is a Midrash that goes, not with this
story of Jericho, but with the story of Moses parting the waters of the Sea and
leading the Israelite people to safety on the other side, when the water rushed
back and drowned all of their Egyptian pursuers.
And this Midrash says
that when the people reached the safety of the other side, and when Miriam had
taken out her drum to lead the people in a song and dance of celebration, that
the angels up in heaven joined in. And
in the middle of the celebration they looked over and noticed that God wasn’t
joining in to the celebration. And one of
the angels asked God, “Why aren’t you celebrating? After all, your children have reached safety
and freedom on the other side of the sea!”
And God replied, “How can I celebrate when my children have been drowned
in the sea?”
God is with us when we
suffer; God is present in suffering; God weeps with us when we weep; God was
with the people of Jericho in their suffering as they were killed; God is with
all people in the world, suffering with us through oppression and violence and
fear. God is a God who chooses the path
of love and vulnerability and compassion.
Thanks be to God.
"White Crucifixion" - Marc Chagall
God is present in all suffering
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