Psalm
105:7-45 (New International Version)
7 He is the LORD our God; his judgments are in
all the earth. 8 He remembers his covenant forever,
the word he commanded, for a thousand generations, 9 the
covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac. 10 He
confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an
everlasting covenant: 11 "To you I will
give the land of Canaan as the portion you will
inherit." 12When they were but few in number, few indeed, and strangers in it, 13 they
wandered from nation to nation, from one kingdom to
another. 14 He allowed no one to oppress them;
for their sake he rebuked kings: 15 "Do
not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no
harm." 16 He called down famine on
the land and destroyed all their supplies of food; 17 and he
sent a man before them-- Joseph, sold as a slave. 18 They
bruised his feet with shackles, his neck was put in
irons, 19 till what he foretold came to
pass, till the word of the LORD proved him true. 20 The
king sent and released him, the ruler of peoples set him free. 21 He
made him master of his household, ruler over all he possessed, 22 to
instruct his princes as he pleased and teach his elders
wisdom. 23 Then Israel entered Egypt; Jacob lived as an alien in the land of
Ham. 24 The LORD made his people very fruitful;
he made them too numerous for their foes, 25 whose
hearts he turned to hate his people, to conspire against
his servants. 26 He sent Moses his
servant, and Aaron, whom he had chosen. 27 They
performed his miraculous signs among
them, his wonders in the land of Ham. 28 He
sent darkness and made the land dark-- for had they not
rebelled against his words? 29 He turned
their waters into blood, causing their fish to die. 30 Their land teemed with frogs, which
went up into the bedrooms of their rulers. 31 He spoke, and there came swarms of flies, and gnats throughout their country. 32 He turned their
rain into hail, with lightning throughout their land; 33 he
struck down their vines and fig trees and
shattered the trees of their country. 34 He spoke, and
the locusts came, grasshoppers without
number; 35 they ate up every green thing in
their land, ate up the produce of their soil. 36 Then he
struck down all the firstborn in their land, the first fruits of
all their manhood. 37 He brought out Israel, laden with silver
and gold, and from among their tribes no one
faltered. 38 Egypt was glad when they left, because dread of
Israel had fallen on them. 39 He spread
out a cloud as a covering, and a fire to give light at
night. 40 They asked, and
he brought them quail and satisfied them with the bread of
heaven.41 He opened the rock, and
water gushed out; like a river it flowed in the desert. 42 For
he remembered his holy promise given to his servant
Abraham. 43 He brought out his people with rejoicing, his chosen ones with shouts of joy; 44 he
gave them the lands of the nations, and they fell heir to
what others had toiled for-- 45 that they
might keep his precepts and observe his laws. Praise the LORD.
Joshua 24:1-15 (New International Version); The Covenant Renewed
at Shechem
24 Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel
at Shechem. He
summoned the
elders, leaders,
judges and officials of Israel, and
they presented themselves before God.2 Joshua said to all the
people, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says:
‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates
River and worshiped other gods. 3 But I took your father
Abraham from the land beyond the Euphrates and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many
descendants. I gave him Isaac, 4 and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I assigned the hill country
of Seir to Esau, but Jacob and his family went down to Egypt.5 “‘Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I afflicted the
Egyptians by what I did there, and I brought you out. 6 When I brought your people out of Egypt, you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued
them with chariots and horsemen[a] as far as the Red Sea.[b] 7 But they cried to the Lord for help, and he put
darkness between you and the Egyptians; he brought the sea over them and
covered them. You saw with your own eyes what I did to the
Egyptians. Then you lived in the wilderness for a long
time.8 “‘I brought you to the land of the Amorites who lived east of the
Jordan. They fought against you, but I gave them into your hands. I destroyed
them from before you, and you took possession of their land.9 When Balak son of Zippor, the king of Moab, prepared
to fight against Israel, he sent for Balaam son of Beor to put a curse on you. 10 But I would not listen to Balaam, so he blessed you again and again, and I
delivered you out of his hand.11 “‘Then you crossed the
Jordan and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho
fought against you, as did also the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites,
Girgashites, Hivites and Jebusites, but I gave them into your
hands. 12 I sent the hornet ahead of you, which drove
them out before you—also the two Amorite kings. You did not do it with
your own sword and bow. 13 So I gave you a land on which you did not toil
and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and
olive groves that you did not plant.’14 “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all
faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped
beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 But if serving the Lord
seems
undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve,
whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the
Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me
and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Renewing the Covenant
I’ve
been watching a lot of romantic comedies lately. RomComs, I think is what they are called by
the movie reviewers. You know the type –
Nicholas Sparks movies like The Notebook
and The Walk to Remember, silly
movies like 27 Dresses, or Love Actually. They all have basically the same plot line –
2 people meet, 2 people get to know each other, 2 people are surprised as they
fall in love, then there’s an obstacle, and then there’s a reunion… and they
live – you know it – “happily ever after”.
And this is totally true, right?
Now, I’m not married, but I’m old enough to know that this is actually
the beginning of the story, not the end of the story. And I think it’s funny how many movies idolize
the preamble to love, but how very few portray the real stuff of love – the
stuff that comes in the covenant of marriage.
Covenant renewal is what our scripture reading was about
today. The marriage vow is a covenant
between two people and witnessed by their loved ones and God. Covenant is the biblical word for a binding
agreement or contract between people in relationship, or people and the
institutions they relate to, or between people and God. For
instance, I am a Seminary graduate going through the requirements to be
ordained. That process involves a
covenant with me (or an agreement about my responsibilities), a covenant
collectively with the individuals in my sponsoring church to walk with me and
support me in the process, and ultimately, it will require a covenantal
agreement with the church that accepts me to serve them. There are binding agreements,
responsibilities and understandings at each step of the way.
Our God is a
covenant-maker. Our God desires to be in
relationship with humankind, and to show us how that relationship should be
structured – what we have to do to hold up our end of the agreement. The Old
Testament is filled with God’s repeated attempts to be in relationship with us
– first with Adam, then with Noah, then with Abraham, and then through Moses,
and eventually through Jesus. The people in this story are part of the Mosiac
covenant, living after the time of Moses. Last Sunday, we heard about the
covenant agreement in the 10 commandments, brought forth by Moses, which are
intended to protect each member of a community and every opportunity for a good
life. But God’s covenant is not only about what not to do – it also includes
how to be
in relationship and respond to the suffering of others. As members of a
community, we agree to the responsibility of caring for each other and showing
God’s love for the world. We accept the
responsibility to live the covenant in our communities.
In
our scripture today, Joshua calls together the 12 tribes of Israel in a special
place, Schechem, the place where Abraham built an alter to honor the covenant
years ago. Joshua tells them that God is
faithful and asks them to renew the Mosaic covenant. He recalls the promises God made to Abraham to
deliver his descendants and give them land, and God’s request that the descendants
of Abraham trust God. Now, Joshua
reminds them, God has kept his promise. He
calls on the tribes to make a choice to keep their promise. They can worship the Gods of the land that
they now occupy, or they can worship, and serve, the God that brought them to
that land.
This
seems like an easy choice, like a ‘happily ever after’ choice. Like our movie
characters, they were a people without a home, without a match, until they
found the land of their dreams, and now the commitment is a no-brainer. What is not obvious to us, modern day readers,
is the recent history of the Israelites, and unknown future of the tribes
summoned there to make that decision. We
heard it a bit in our psalm today – a recitation of all the pain, suffering and
struggle the Israelites have endured up to that point. They were slaves. They wandered. They were starving, and then they
were fed. They lived through plagues
that brought great death, grief, and destruction to their neighbors, and no
doubt brought fear to everyone. They had
wars, loss, and victory. They are a
traumatized people who are afraid to trust.
And
what is even less obvious is the level of challenges the 12 tribes were
facing. They were a new people, trying
to hold fast to their covenant while integrating themselves into the
established society. They would face
unknown enemy attacks, possible famine, internal squabbles and division and
challenges of creating leadership and a system of laws. The future was unknown. They weren’t facing
‘happily ever after’. As in marriage,
stuff just got real. There would be
failure. And it would get messy.
Biblical
scholarship shows the book of Joshua as a turning point in the Old Testament.
Up until this point, the story of the Israelites has strong, larger-than-life
hero leaders who seemed to have Yahweh on speed-dial. They were protected by the awesome power of
the Lord, who parted the water, fed them in the wilderness, and quashed their
enemies. But from this point forward, it
changes to a much more familiar human type of leadership. It will be up to them. Joshua stands here at
the pivot point – from the legendary history of the Israelites, with divinely
inspired leadership of Moses and Aaron, to the messy, human leadership of the
12 tribes. Joshua gathers the tribes
democratically, and asks them to choose.
Choose to be a community that keeps the covenant of the Lord, holds fast
to the laws of the covenant – to care for the weak, to resist slavery, debt,
and exploiting their neighbor, to resist oppression and remain true to their
identity as people of Yahweh, even anticipating that it will be messy,
complicated and entirely human. Joshua
is actually the first modern man, challenging the community to step into the
covenant and hold fast to the mission despite the trials that will lie ahead.
It
reminds me of the difference between the preamble of romantic comedies and the
reality of life together. While couples celebrating their 40th
wedding anniversary may still enjoy recalling the legend of their love story,
when they look in each other’s eyes, they both know that the real
accomplishment was in the days and months and years they have shared together –
which may not have resembled that love story at all. The achievement comes in knowing you have been
seen not only at your best, but also at your worst. Knowing that someone irritates the heck out
of you, will always irritate the heck out of you, but you tolerate it for the
good stuff. Knowing that you’ve fought, you’ve learned to be vulnerable, you’ve
allowed someone to hurt you or disappoint you, and you’ve been hurt or disappointed…but
you’ve learned to listen, to apologize, to fight more fairly, to forgive, and
to find resolution. And in the end, it means an overriding sense of gratitude
and security to belong to someone and something, despite all the pitfalls that
have arisen in your path.
As
the people of God, in church, our lives together are this messy. A metaphor used for church is family – and
how true is that? We push, we pull, we
argue and we tolerate. How often do we
recommit to love someone who challenges us, frustrates us or creates
anger? In church-family life, we engage
in the very messy work of continuing to hold fast to our covenant to love as
God intended. And sometimes, we struggle
to live into an unknown future, and we brace ourselves to face difficult
decisions as a church body. But every
Sunday, when we return to church, we recommit to renewing the covenant with
God, and with each other. Unlike the
movie love stories, renewing the covenant is an on-going thing.
Has
anyone heard it put this way? “Marriage is a
decision that we make every day.” In a blog called Good Woman, a young writer reflects
on what she was told about marriage, and remarks; “While I want to say that I
wish someone had told me that marriage is a decision, I am
thankful to admit that one person did whisper
that secret the summer my future husband slipped a diamond on that fourth
finger. “Marriage is a decision to make every day,” my aunt
wisely counseled. “Every morning, you wake up
& roll over & decide to love that person, no matter what comes.
Some days it is easy. Other days it is work. But the important
thing is to make the decision.”
Any
covenant is a daily decision. Every day,
God presents us with a choice; continue to love each other as I have loved you,
or let ourselves get overwhelmed by the worries, the insecurity, and the FEAR
to choose another path. A few weeks ago,
Pastor Debbie talked about trusting God in the journey. She talked about Abraham building an alter in
every new place, and how building the alter was a form of prayer to help
connect to God. That prayer, that
alter-building, was Abraham’s demonstration of trust in God. Joshua appeals to
the 12 tribes today, traumatized by recent events, and facing an unknown
future, to demonstrate their trust in God and recommit to the covenant. Just as we do, every morning and every
Sunday, despite what challenges lie ahead.
My favorite romantic
movie quote on marriage comes from Shall
We Dance, a movie with Susan Sarandon and Richard Gere about a man who, in
a mid-life crisis, starts taking dance lessons but can’t bring himself to tell
his wife. She hires a private investigator
to follow him because she suspects he is cheating. In a conversation with the PI, she proclaims
that she is not a romantic who believes in a mushy kind of love. Marriage, she says, is a commitment to bear
witness to another’s life.
She says, ”We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion
people on the planet, what does any one life really mean? But in
a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good
things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all
of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go
unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed
because I will be your witness'."
Covenant means
bearing witness to each other’s lives and all that life entails. The covenant that God desires with us, is to
bear witness to our lives, and for us to be witnesses and workers for God’s
covenant. God says, “I will be
here. I will be with you. I will be beside you through struggle,
through pain, through sickness and through health. I will be here through the difficult
decisions, if you will renew my covenant to live as my people.”
It’s not happily
ever after, but it’s the real stuff. It’s
in the messy love that we remember the covenant. Amen.
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