Title: “Who Do You Serve?”
Scripture: Joshua 24:1-3, 14-25
11/6/05 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
We have recently finished re-watching the Harry Potter movies in our home at Gabe's request. The last one included a scene when Harry and Herminie, (two of the main characters) with the help of a magic necklace were able to travel back in time and make a different choice than they had just hours earlier. It was up to them to figure out which of the many choices they had originally made that would need to be changed in order for two lives to be saved.
How many times have you wished that you could have gone back in time and made a different choice?
As I have re-watched these Potter movies I see two young persons growing physically and spiritually. As Harry and Herminie grow taller, they also begin to understand what “the good” is and the ability and power they have to participate in “the good” to help “it” overpower “the evil”.
Isn't this what we all want for our children? To grow in their ability to distinguish between the good and the bad - even when it is not always easy to tell the difference? (Perhaps especially then!) We want our children to grow in their understanding of how they participate in increasing the goodness in the world by the choices they make. It is of course one of the most vulnerable aspects of parenting too - recognizing our children's freedom to make choices yet wanting to keep them safe from harm -we sometimes wish they did not have choices or that we could make them all for them.
But of course the answer is not to take children's choices away but to give them tools of discernment that will help them find their way.
Choice is an awesome gift and an awesome responsibility. We make choices every day - big and small. Most of our daily choices do not impact someone's living or dying - as it did for Herminie and Harry, but then again, perhaps our choices have larger impacts than we are often aware of.
Today's reading from Joshua is about an amazing moment of choice in the life of the early Hebrew people. Moses had helped them escape from Egypt and led them through the wilderness towards the Promised Land but died before they arrived. Joshua stepped in to lead the people at Moses' death and after making choices that impacted the life and death of many people - (Joshua and his soldiers have killed or driven many people away- “ugh!” But that's another sermon!) and conquered the Promised Land and divided it among the twelve tribes of Israel. Joshua himself is now near the end of his life and he has gathered all the tribes around him in order to speak to them. He asks them if they will commit themselves to follow Yahweh or if they will follow the gods their ancestors served before they knew otherwise?
I cannot deny that the manner in which Joshua asks the people is quite threatening (but that too is another sermon!)- But, it is still a choice, their choice - and that is the heart of the matter. Where will your loyalty lie, he asks, with the one God that freed you from slavery and has brought you to this Promised Land? Or now that you have arrived safely, will you say your nightly prayers to all the other gods that seek your attention?
Theologian and Old Testament Scholar, Walter Brueggman believes that the other gods were gods of scarcity. They were the gods you bowed to out of fear that there won't be enough while the one God, the God that loved the universe into being and brought the Hebrews safely thus far, was the God of abundance, the God of “there is enough for all”.
This is not the first time that the early Hebrew people were asked to make a choice as to who they would be loyal to - who they would serve, and it wouldn't be their last. Joshua was smart enough to know that they would be loyal to some god, or god's - but what he longed for - was for them to honestly choose to be loyal to the one God, the God that had delivered them and would continue to care for them.
I can't help but think of Bob Dylan's song, “Who Do You Serve?” Dylan's life was changed after he discovered God and the way of Christ. You could really hear that change in the words of this song -
You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble; you may like to dance.
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed.
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Who are you gonna serve? Joshua asks the twelve tribes of Israel. Who are you going to serve?
So often I hear people complain that the Old Testament is too full of an angry God for them to read it, but this piece from Joshua jumps out at me and lands right down in the midst of our American culture with pertinence and challenge. We are a society of choices. Everywhere we turn we have a choice to make. From the trivial to the sublime to choices that impact the planet we live on and the air we breathe. Our children grow up with an array of choices in front of them practically from the moment they pop into the world.
Now I could happily do without the 15,000 types of hair products we have to choose from. But since choice is obviously a significant part of our existence - I am more interested in helping us see how our choices reflect our commitments. Joshua cannot take away the choices, but he knows how important those choices are. Consciously or unconsciously, our choices reflect who or what “we serve”. “Everybody has to serve somebody, who you gonna serve?”
Being a part of a faith community helps us at all stages of our lives; it helps our children and youth ask that question over and over again. It is an interesting paradox, that even though a faith community is built around the choice to serve God, an authentic faith community does not tell us what to choose. It gives us tools - mentors - guidance - challenges and examples to help us not only answer the question but then try and live it out as faithfully as we can, day by day.
On this All Saints Day Sunday I am particularly grateful for the Saints of the United Church of Christ that have been asking the question, “Who do you serve?” from its formation when its founders came over from England and landed at Plymouth Rock. They were a people who knew that choices were part of being human and that faith was meant to be a tool to help us face and make all kinds of choices, from the most difficult to the most complicated - throughout our lives.
“Who will you serve?” Joshua asked all the people that had come so far - from slavery to freedom, from no land to the Promised Land. The God of abundance that loved all creation into being or the gods of fear and scarcity? The God of Love or the gods of prejudice and jealousy?
That is a question that echoes through the ages and falls upon the ears of all of us - every day. Who will I serve? Who will you serve? And how will our choices - large or small - reflect our answer? Amen.