23rd Sunday after Pentecost
November 12, 2017
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
There’s
a curious phenomenon on ESPN that’s been going on for several years now. The channel that originally was the
“Entertainment and Sports Programming Network” and became synonymous with sports,
also shows poker games. Poker is a game,
like a basketball game or a football game, but it certainly lacks the physical
athleticism that we associate with sports.
Yet there must be people who watch poker on TV, because otherwise ESPN
wouldn’t air so many games and tournaments.
I’ve never watched for very long, because the players are usually all
covered up with hats and sunglasses so that they can’t give anything away when
they bluff. I don’t find it very
interesting to watch someone stare at cards.
But I’m told that at the end of a game, when a player goes “all in,”
they push their chips in to the table, take off their sunglasses, and stand
up. When they’re ready to risk it all,
they do so dramatically.
This
morning’s Old Testament reading comes at the end of Joshua’s life. He has led
the people for as long as it was his turn to do so. Israel entered the Promised
Land and settled down into houses and started farming, quite a different
lifestyle from their forty years of wondering in the wilderness. Unfortunately, they also took up some of the
habits of their new neighbors and started to forget what God had taught them
during those forty years when they relied on him for their daily survival. And so Joshua gives them a reality check. He reminds them of their history, going back
to the father of Abraham, of all that God has done for them so far, how God
kept them safe during tough times and delivered them. However, now that life is settled again and
easier, some of them have turned to other gods and so Joshua tells them to
choose this day whom you will serve. The
people all know that the right answer is God, and so Joshua really pushes them
to make sure they’re not just saying they’ll serve God but will actually do
it. He makes them promise three
times. It’s easy to give lip-service and
say you’ll do something, but to follow through, to put away the false gods and
to pledge their allegiance to God. 100%
allegiance to God means that we give everything to God, it means that God has
our undivided loyalty, it means that we go “all in.”
The first thing Joshua reminded the
people was of all that God had done for them. In seminary, this was called their “salvation
history.” How God saved them time and
again over the course of their history as a people. Joshua starts off with Abraham,
father Abraham, and yet doesn’t talk about Abraham “as a venerable leader
chosen to become a blessing for all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:3),
nor [Abraham] as a steadfast believer whose trust in the LORD's promises was
reckoned as righteousness (Genesis 15:6), but simply as an outsider brought
from Ur of the Chaldeans.”[1]
Joshua starts off with Abraham’s origin
story, how God “took your father Abraham from the land beyond the Euphrates
and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants,” including Isaac,
and to Isaac was given Jacob and Esau.[2]
All those middle verses that we skipped in the middle of that chapter, those
were all Joshua retelling Israel’s history back to them, reminding them of all
that God has done for them, the history of their salvation.
I
expect each one of us has a similar story. How God took someone in our family,
parent, grandparent, or farther up the line. How that person settled in this
place, or another. Or perhaps they were a wanderer, or a traveling salesman, or
a sailor. And whoever you’re thinking of, trace that lineage down to you, here,
in this time and this place. What’s the story of how God brought you to live
where you are today? And over the course of your life, start to name some of
the different times when you know God had his hand on you, when God kept you
safe, when you’d have been a goner if not for God. Consider some of the
different people, whether saints or not, who formed you, who influenced you,
for good or bad, and how their influence brought you to this place, to worship
God here. What is your salvation
history? It may involve surgeries, deployments, moves, divorce, heartbreak,
heart restored again. We each have a salvation history, as does the church,
God’s family. Our individual stories weave together to form part of the larger
story of God saving his people, God saving his family. It is important to
remember what God has done for you. When you start to forget, then you start to
hold back some of those poker chips, you start to bluff, instead of giving
everything to God.
The second thing Joshua reminds the
people is that there are consequences for breaking the covenant with God. There are consequences if you fail. There are
consequences when you go all in, and you don’t have the cards to back up your
move. So remember, and keep, your promise to God. There are probably quite a
few promises you’ve made to God along the way. Vows made when you were
baptized, which, granted, may have been made for you, in which case, there are
your confirmation vows. We make marriage vows in front of God and witnesses. We
make promises when we join the church, to uphold it and participate in the
ministries of the church through our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our
service, and our witness. And every time someone is baptized or becomes a
church member, we renew those membership vows.
What
other promises have you made to God? I remember one I made that scared me,
because I didn’t consciously make it or think it through beforehand. I babysat a lot in high school, and one
night, when I was babysitting for a new family, the power went out. The kids
were already in bed and asleep. I had just been watching TV until the parents
got home. When the lights went out, it was dark.
The only light in the entire neighborhood was from a streetlight about three
houses down the street. I had no idea where flashlights or candles were kept; I
was not familiar with this house. So, I went to go check on the kids. As I went
up the stairs, the thought I had, the prayer I had, was God, if you let anything happen to these kids, I will never believe in
you again. And that prayer scared me, that something in me was willing to
risk my faith in keeping those kids safe. Now, obviously, thankfully, the kids
were just fine. I very well might not be in a pulpit today, otherwise. But I’ve
never forgotten that spur of the moment yet very serious vow. It was a promise
of going “all in.” And I was going to hold God to it.
Yet,
it’s not ever God who breaks a promise, is it? It’s us. That’s why Joshua is
reminding the people that there are consequences when you make a promise to God
and don’t keep it. Now, I will never advocate staying in a bad marriage or
other unhealthy situation. My parents are divorced, my in-laws are divorced, my
stepparents were each divorced before marrying my parents. I get it and this is
not that sermon about when to break vows. The vows the people make at Shechem
with Joshua are a covenant to serve the Lord their God. This is a promise to
obey God and to not forsake him, which is to say to not abandon God, or leave
him or disown him, like I threatened to do as a teenager. Yet even we who are
Christians sometimes forget God, sometimes don’t trust God, sometimes believe
in the myth of individualism and think we can do it all ourselves. Did you know
that’s why the official Methodist line is against gambling? To gamble, to play
poker or any other game for money, implies that you don’t believe that God will
provide for you, that you don’t have enough, that you have to provide for
yourself in some other way, like through betting. To truly “go all in” with God
means you trust and depend on him. To serve God means you take care of the
things he’s given you, like relationships and money and jobs and houses and
time and our very selves. It means that when we get a $200 check in the mail,
we don’t say, “Hey, cool beans, I’m going to use to go buy that TV I’ve had my
eye on.” But rather, we say, “Hey,
thanks God, now, how do you want me to use it?”
It means that we put God first, in our homes, in our work, and try to
honor him with everything we say and do.
Not deciding I’m going to do this, and then ask God to bless my action,
but praying first, God, what would you have me do about this, and then doing
it. It means keeping his commandments,
some of which are easier, like do not murder, than others, like don’t want what
belongs to someone else.
When
you give to God, do you give out of your leftovers, or after you make sure you
have enough for you? Or do you give
generously, and write the check before you look at your bills? Giving everything to God is recognizing that
everything we have is not our own, we are merely the stewards, or caretakers,
or what we have. It’s on loan from God
and one day he’s going to ask how we took care of it. This church building, how well did we take
care of it? Your car, how well do you
take care of it? Your health? Your finances? Your family?
When you go all in, it means you don’t serve other gods first but you
give your best to God, not your leftovers. It can be scary to do that, to
decide what you’re going to give the church before you look at the rest of your
bills. But going all in, after they push
the chips to the middle of the table, these players on ESPN then take off their
sunglasses. No more worrying about
revealing their “tell.” Nothing left to
do but to trust that Lady Luck, one of those false gods, will see them
through. They stop hiding. They face their fear that they might lose it
all. It’s a leap of faith to give it all
to God, and that’s why Jesus and the angels and the prophets say so many times
throughout the Bible, “Don’t be afraid!”
Do not fear! Trust God to take
care of you.
It
can be hard, and that’s why, after remembering all that God has done for them
and remembering that there are consequences for breaking the covenant, Joshua has the people renew their covenant
with God again. Joshua says, “Choose, today, again, who you are going to
serve,” whether all those false gods of wealth and security or God. Renew your
vows to God. Make a conscious, intentional choice to continue to serve God.
Remember that there is a cost to that choice, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “cost of
discipleship,” “when Christ bids a man come, he bids him come and die.” We saw
that again with the news this past week out of Sutherland Springs, Texas. It
can be a risky thing to follow Christ. It can be dangerous to serve God, not
just for when we fail, but for when we succeed and it costs us our life. And yet here we are again, choosing again to
continue to serve God, just like ancient Israel. Because we know that only
Christ has the words of life.
In
the Gospel of John, things get a little dicey in chapter 6, after Jesus has fed
the thousands and walked on water, then he says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever
comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be
thirsty… I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this
bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life
of the world.”[3]
This teaching was too much for some of his followers, and John says that “many
disciples turned back and no longer followed Jesus.”[4]
Jesus asked Peter if he wanted to leave, too, and Peter says, “Lord, to whom
shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to
know that you are the Holy One of God.”[5]
Things get dicey sometimes. Sometimes it’s hard to trust, hard to believe, hard
to keep going, hard to participate in the life of our church family for one
reason or another. Yet each day we continue to choose again and again to serve
God, to be part of his family. “It is not enough to promise and make a
covenant. We also must be watchful and keep awake,” like those bridesmaids we
read about in our Gospel reading, “so that we can be ready to meet God, and in
so doing, continue to choose again and again to serve God.”[6]
You see, each choice is a “continuous opportunity for every faithful person in
daily living”[7] to
serve God, to keep your vow to him, to remember and honor what God has done for
you so far and believe he will continue to watch over you in all your ways,
both “your going out and your coming in, forevermore.”[8]
Amen.
