Rituals of Grace
Joshua renews the Covenant at Shehem, Andrea Andreani, Chiaroscuro woodcut on paper, 1608, Royal Collection Trust, London, https://www.rct.uk/collection/853689, public domain
Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 17, Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
“Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” –Joshua 24:15
Today, our journey “Through the Bible” arrives at the Book of Joshua. Joshua was a protégé of Moses, who rose to become his successor. The book that bears his name is similar to Deuteronomy linguistically and thematically.[1] Some Bible scholars group Joshua with the first five books of the Bible, calling this group of six the “Hexateuch.” They argue that without Joshua, the story of a Promised Land is incomplete.[2]
In the story Joshua completes, the roundabout journey of the ancient Hebrews loops them around and into the Promised Land from east to west. In the early days of their conquest, the region around Jericho is a major focus. Thirty years ago, I visited ancient Jericho, considered the world’s oldest inhabited city. Archaeologists believe that permanent homes were established at Jericho more than 10,000 years ago. I learned that Jericho’s warm climate and water for irrigation made possible year-round agriculture, and encouraged early settlers to give up their nomadic ways.
Anthropologists tell us that the transition to a settled life dependent upon agriculture contributed to the rise of fertility religions. You can imagine how primitive people, whose existence depended on the fruit of the earth, might rely on good luck rituals and magic charms to ensure a bountiful harvest. In time, the rituals become religions, and the charms become gods. When you read the Old Testament, they have names like Baal and Asherah.
When Joshua and people of Israel crossed the Jordan River, they were entering a risky religious realm. This was country in which worship of false gods was firmly entrenched. As time passed, Joshua observed the ways in which the culture stemming from worship of false gods compromised the values and priorities of his people. Years later, when Joshua gathered the people at Shechem for a farewell assembly, he understood the temptations people faced to relax their allegiance to the Lord, and adopt native practices.
In the larger context of our reading, Joshua reviews history through a sacred lens. Joshua’s project is described simply and elegantly by Bible scholar H.W. Hertzberg, who says, “Many things are taken here in a vertical dimension, where at first sight they give the impression of having happened in a horizontal dimension ….”[3] Then, as now, in the rush of daily activities and the struggle to survive, it’s easy for life to become a series of disjointed “horizontal” episodes taking place on a human plane, with no reference to God’s purpose or plan for history. With no overarching theology to provide coherence, we are reduced to attributing success to a magical private ritual, and failure to forgetting our favorite good-luck charm. Joshua calls the people to the “vertical” dimension, to remember that God is writing a sacred story with their lives, through their collective mission and ministry.
I’ve preached on a Joshua text seven times in 30+ years, but this eighth time gained a new appreciation for one of its features. I tend to think of the early part of the Bible as a combination of poetry, history, and law. This time, I was impressed by the way the Book of Joshua, like Deuteronomy, preserves the form and content of worship services. In this part of the Bible, what we might call the “recitation of sacred history” has influenced Christian worship up to the present day. Our Presbyterian Book of Common Worship contains similar language in its “Great Prayer of Thanksgiving,” parts of which you hear modified for eucharistic prayer at each communion service. When we share in communion, the restatement of past history shapes present identity in what we might call a ritual of grace.
I took the phrase “rituals of grace” as a title for my sermon after reading one of the daily devotionals sent out via e-mail by Donna C. In this one, Pastor Glenn MacDonald quoted from a book by Craig Barnes, President of Princeton Seminary. MacDonald recalls that Barnes, “defines a ritual as ‘a way of rehearsing our identity.’ They help us remember who we are.”
MacDonald summarizes some familiar scripts that are rehearsed often in some workplaces. “Work harder than the competition. Stay late at the office. If someone tries to push you around, push back. Blame your failures on others. Excel at impression management. Keep reminding yourself that you’re on your own, (only) strong people survive.”
“Meanwhile,” he writes, “the practices of the Jesus-following life – the rituals of grace – are fundamentally different. They begin at dawn. Every morning we awaken to a world we did not create and do not deserve. We choose to express gratitude: ‘Thank-you, Lord.’ Barnes observes, ‘The thing that distinguishes us in this life is not that some of us are in shambles while others are doing okay. No, the thing that distinguishes us is that some of us are thankful while others are not’.”[4]
We know that the choice the Israelites made that day worshiping with Joshua at Shechem was not a once-for-all decision. When we read the rest of the Hebrew Testament story, we know that there were periods of ungrateful apathy and disobedience followed by periods of gratitude, repentance, and renewal. Like them, the rituals of each new week will determine our course, whether we worship with gratitude the Omnipresent, Almighty God, with a capital “G,” rather than all our limited personal gods, with a lower-case “g.”
Presbyterian minister Julie Adkins says, “The other gods still pursue us. I don’t mean the gods of the Hittites and the Amorites and all of those. I mean the gods that are the particular temptations of our day and time. Gods of success and/or wealth. Gods of physical health and good looks. Gods of national security, of job security. Gods of comfort that just happens to come at someone else’s expense. Gods of favored political and economic ideologies. We are surrounded by things that are good which tempt us to lift them to the status of the things that are ultimate.”[5]
In daily devotional and weekly worship, we have opportunity to engage in rituals of grace that pose a choice:
Will my schedule and priorities be informed by reflective prayer or will I try to make my way through each day with no guidance from or even reference to God?
Will I entrust to God a portion of what I have been given, or, in a constant state of high anxiety, will I hoard it all away?
Will I let old hurts taint my responses to those around me, or will I choose to act kindly and compassionately?
Will I work for the common good, or will I draw back in fear that I might offend someone who is concerned only about the good of a particular family, clan, or sub-cultural tribe?
The final thought I share today is informed by a fresh look at the history of interpretation surrounding Joshua.[6] The events recorded here go back to the 13th century B.C.E. But the record appears to have been re-shaped and re-edited in the 8th century and 6th century B.C.E. Each time, the leaders of God’s people felt their nation to be in a time of terrible crisis brought on by lapsing loyalty to God and lax moral standards. Each time, they also firmly believed that God’s promises about a land flowing with milk and honey remained in effect. If only God’s people would listen, repent, and behave as they should, then they could move into the future with hope that God would heal their land.
In the spirit of Joshua and his later interpreters, the good news is that if we respond to the challenge, then a hopeful future is possible. Each week and every day, we make a series of little decisions about how to respond to the challenge, “Choose this day whom you will serve.” When our decisions are tallied, may they express our commitment in ways as powerful as Joshua’s words: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
NOTES
[1] Gordon J. Wenham, “The Deuteronomic Theology of the Book of Joshua,” Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 90, No. 2 (Jun. 1971), pp. 140-148.
[2] Prof. Marc Zvi Brettler, “Is the Torah a Pentateuch or Hexateuch?” https://www.thetorah.com/article/is-the-torah-a-pentateuch-or-hexateuch accessed 2 Feb. 2022.
[3] H.W. Hertzberg, quoted in J. Alberto Soggin’s Joshua: A Commentary, volume in The Old Testament Library, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1972, p. 6.
[4] MacDonald’s meditation makes use of M. Craig Barnes’s book Hustling God: Why we work so hard for what God wants to give, in “Rituals of Grace,” Glenn MacDonald, morning reflection for January 26, 2022, https://glennsreflections.com , accessed 01 Feb. 2022.
[5] Julie Adkins, “Choose This Day …” a sermon preached at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Dallas, TX, 6 Nov. 2005, www.trinitydallas.org
[6] For example, see “The Book of Joshua in the Context of the Biblical Message,” J. Alberto Soggin, Joshua: A Commentary, volume in The Old Testament Library, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1972, pp. 19-22.
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