Proper 26
Joshua 37 The Lord said to Joshua, ‘This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses. 8You are the one who shall command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, “When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.” ’ 9Joshua then said to the Israelites, ‘Draw near and hear the words of the Lord your God.’ 10Joshua said, ‘By this you shall know that among you is the living God who without fail will drive out from before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites: 11the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is going to pass before you into the Jordan. 12So now select twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. 13When the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan flowing from above shall be cut off; they shall stand in a single heap.’
It was a perfect pilgrimage day as we walked the ridge overlooking the Roman ruin that was once Beit She’an. There, nestled in the Jordan valley, is the partially reconstructed town that is a must-see on any tour of Israel-Palestine. The town itself was destroyed by an earthquake in the eighth century. And this event, and the depopulation that followed, created a sort of time capsule. Now, as the excavation continues, archeologists are uncovering marvels of an earlier age.
The most striking is the main street. Once under centuries of sand, it is now a near-perfect example of Roman engineering. So too is the amphitheater, unearthed in the hillside, with acoustics that allow a voice on stage to be heard to the farthest row.
Later in that near-perfect day, our guide veered off her usual narrative and added this aside: “Oh yes, I should mention that in addition to all the pot shards littering this path, someone found a gold coin. You should keep an eye out.” We never looked up again. Imagine forty pastors, heads down, waiting to find Caesar’s lost treasure there in the ancient near-eastern hinterland. My memories of the day are something like vista, streetscape, ruins, dirt, dirt, dirt. I wanted to be Indiana Jones, and I ended up with no treasure. I have a clear mental picture of dusty shoes, but no gold.
The lesson of “the parable of the foolish pastors” is beware of hyperbole. Hyperbole is that literary device we all use when we want to emphasize something in a fanciful way. The next time you tell someone you could eat a horse, they will likely go away with the impression that you are really hungry, not that you have an appetite for Black Beauty. Our guide was not suggesting that every observant pilgrim gets a gold coin, only that the land is filled with undiscovered treasure. Hyperbole.
Today, in our first reading, we rejoin the story of the Israelites as they are set to enter the Promised Land. Moses has died, and the mantle of leadership has passed to Joshua. This, then, is a succession narrative, a description of continuity that is important as the faithful seek some kind of divine authorization as they inhabit the land. This, we will see, leads to a host of issues, but for now we are concerned with the new Moses in the shape of Joshua:
The Lord said to Joshua, ‘This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses. 8You are the one who shall command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant.
Already Joshua has assumed the same form of relationship with God that Moses enjoyed. God is concerned with credibility, and the extent to which the people will follow Joshua now that the great leader is gone. Think of Joshua as the John Turner of Israelite history: Big shoes that can never really be filled, but an incomplete journey that must continue.
So we come to the edge of the river. This is the symbolic end, as a border between wilderness wondering and the new land promised by God. The text is careful to note that this is spring, the time of the first harvest, when the Jordan overflows her banks with runoff from the snows of Mt. Hermon and the Golan Heights. A symbolic end, then, becomes the perfect occasion for a symbolic transfer of leadership.
Joshua is given his own “Red Sea moment” and the swollen river is halted, standing “in a single heap” and allowing the nation to pass through. At the front of the column is the ark of the covenant, the symbolic presence of God, carried but twelve men, each symbolizing a tribe of Israel, stepping through the riverbed, symbolic of the completion of the exodus, and without water, to symbolize the greatest Cecil B. DeMille moment of the entire story, crossing the Red Sea.
Somewhere back in time, maybe grade six or seven, some teacher told you about symbolism. They told you that symbols are clues in the text that point to some other idea and create deeper meaning in what we read. Symbols add layers or dimensions to a story, so that it is not simply about lions and tin men or scarecrows but courage and heart and intelligence. Symbols, however, are a staple of fiction, and so we are lift with a conundrum. In fact, we are left with a few.
Before we make of list of conundrums, something that is a lot of fun to say, I want to share with an important bit of wisdom that informs my approach to scripture. Somewhere, long ago, a First Nations elder was recounting part of his tradition and said “I don’t know if it happened this way or not, but I know it’s true.” To our modern mind, this statement takes a minute to compute, attuned as we are to seek out the factual, the genuine, the undisputed truth. Our understanding of truthful has become mixed up with factual, and I don’t think they were never meant to be fused. They may live on the same street, but they were never meant to shack up together.
Long ago, before school ruined us, we understood the difference between truthful and factual. We understood that we were at the centre of a little universe and didn’t need proof for every bit of information that passed by. Tell a child they are a lucky little boy or girl and they are unlikely to say “well, that has yet to be independently verified and so I can’t say for certain.” Children have an easier time establishing the truth of a matter long before they consult the facts on the ground.
All of this is to say we need not get caught up in the facts of Joshua 3, looking instead to the truth of fulfillment and divine authority as the Israelites enter the Promised Land. But this too is filled with peril. There, in the passage, is a particular bit of history that edges closer to ideology:
9Joshua then said to the Israelites, ‘Draw near and hear the words of the Lord your God.’ 10Joshua said, ‘By this you shall know that among you is the living God who without fail will drive out from before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites.
I can relate to this passage because I’m a Mount Albertite, and so I grew up thinking maybe we were some sort of lost tribe, stuck in East Gwillimbury. More seriously, the list is one of those passages cited when people want to play politics with the text, claiming divine authority for inhabiting a formerly occupied land. And here is a place where it is helpful to get factual, whenever people begin to misuse a text for political ends.
Archeologists can find no compelling evidence of large scale conquest in Israel-Palestine, no obvious moment when indigenous tribes were driven out or overthrown. Nor can they find evidence of any mass influx of newcomers, all of which leads me to believe that there is an issue of scale here. There were, no doubt, escaped slaves moving from Egypt to Israel, but likely numbered in the dozens rather than the thousands. Again, truthful, but not necessarily factual.
And while the great sin of authors may be hyperbole, the great sin of readers is using a text to further some cause or agenda. Since the first moment we receive sacred text, there is an innate capacity to read ourselves in, find proof of something, or turn the text into a weapon. When we look beyond the truthfulness of biblical themes, and begin to press the facts into some personal need, we head down a dangerous path.
***
The first great theme of the bible is liberation. The story of the exodus – God’s ear tuned to the suffering of God’s people, the hesitation of Moses, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, the desert wandering filled with trials and complaints – the story of the exodus becomes a template that informs our experience of being human. God takes sides. We live with the knowledge that God stands with the enslaved and the suffering and seeks their release. This is the truth that is never eclipsed by facts. This is the truth that comes to Bethlehem and begins to show us the ways of God on earth. This is the truth that heals the sick and releases the possessed and stands with the sinner and raises the dead. This is the truth that endures the cross and dies for us that we too can be free.
Liberation is God’s truth. Kingdoms rise and fall, entire worlds may pass away, but the God given desire for release is eternal. The desire to be free from oppression, to be free from captivity, to be free from sin: these desires spring from a divine well of compassion and action. God wants us to be free. God sends Moses and Joshua and Jesus to direct human activity toward the freedom we claim as children of God.
This is Good News for us today, thanks be to God.
posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 2:39 AM
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