Joshua 4-6
February 24, 2019
First Presbyterian Church, Sterling IL
Christina Berry
Last week we heard the story of how two Israelites, sent by Joshua, spied in the city of Jericho, aided by Rahab the prostitute. God had told them to be strong and courageous, and that they would soon enter into the promised land, ending their time of wandering in the wilderness.
Now in these selections from Chapters 4, 5, and 6 from Joshua, we hear how they crossed the Jordan and conquered the city of Jericho. Like last week, this reading from Joshua is full of moral ambiguity, with questions that contemporary Christians may not be able to answer. There is violence and conquest, and there will be more.
We are left to struggle with some challenging questions about what the Israelites understood about God, and their covenant, and how to interpret the Biblical account in light of our own understanding of God in Jesus Christ. So let’s listen with questioning and critical ears for the word of God to us today in Joshua 4, 5, and 6.
Chapter 4 Crossing the River Jordan
The priests who bore the ark remained standing in the middle of the Jordan, until everything was finished that the Lord commanded Joshua to tell the people, according to all that Moses had commanded Joshua. The people crossed over in haste.
As soon as all the people had finished crossing over, the ark of the Lord, and the priests, crossed over in front of the people. About forty thousand armed for war crossed over before the Lord to the plains of Jericho for battle.
When the priests bearing the ark of the covenant of the Lord came up from the middle of the Jordan, and the soles of the priests’ feet touched dry ground, the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and overflowed all its banks, as before.
The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and they camped in Gilgal on the east border of Jericho. Those twelve stones, which they had taken out of the Jordan, Joshua set up in Gilgal, saying to the Israelites,
“When your children ask their parents in time to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel crossed over the Jordan here on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you crossed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we crossed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, and so that you may fear the Lord your God forever.”
Chapter 5
Once when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” He replied, “Neither; but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and he said to him, “What do you command your servant, my lord?” The commander of the army of the Lord said to Joshua, “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy.” And Joshua did so.
Chapter 6: The Battle of Jericho
The Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have handed Jericho over to you, along with its king and soldiers. You shall march around the city, all the warriors circling the city once. Thus you shall do for six days, with seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, the priests blowing the trumpets. When they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and all the people shall charge straight ahead.”
So Joshua son of Nun summoned the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant, and have seven priests carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark of the Lord.”
To the people he said, “Go forward and march around the city; have the armed men pass on before the ark of the Lord.”
On the seventh day they rose early, at dawn, and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. It was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times. So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it,
Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys. They burned down the city, and everything in it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.
But Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, Joshua spared. Her family has lived in Israel ever since. For she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.
So ends the reading.
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
If you have ever set yourself a challenge that you later asked yourself, “Why am I doing this?” You know how I’m feeling right now. The challenge, of course, is preaching the book of Joshua, and it got even more challenging when we lost a Sunday because we had to cancel due to weather.
So, not only are we faced with trying to understand the book of Joshua, we’re trying to do it in the space of three sermons. I’m not sure how I’m going to do that in three 15 minute blocks!
Last week, after Bible Study, someone sent me a cartoon. It showed a preacher getting arrested in the pulpit, and the arresting officer says, "You were preaching a 45 minute sermon in a 25 minute zone, Pastor. I'm going to need to see your license and ordination." I think I might get arrested today for preaching a 25 in a 15. But I don’t entirely regret the effort to preach on the book of Joshua, because this is an important book. It’s important, particularly now, that we expand our understanding of the book of Joshua beyond singing “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho.”
The story starts off in a beautiful, almost poetic vein.
The Israelites gather at the banks of the river Jordan,
eagerly anticipating the moment when they will enter Canaan.
For forty years, they’ve been wandering,
unable to claim a permanent home, unsettled,
living on the manna that God provided each day.
Now, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant, the very presence of God, step into the waters of the river. As they step into the Jordan, the waters recede, and they stand in the middle as all the people cross over on dry land. When all the people have crossed over, but before the ark is moved again, Joshua directs them to take twelve stones from the river bed and set them up at Gilgal as a monument to the event. Then they camp at Gilgal and celebrate the Passover, the annual religious ritual commanded by God that commemorates how God delivered them from slavery in Egypt.
Part of the chapter you didn’t hear today describes how they also circumcised everyone, in accordance with God’s command. So they’ve done what God told them to do:
crossed the river Jordan,
circumcised the males,
observed the Passover.
They preserved and observed the rituals that defined their culture.
Whoever wrote the book of Joshua, and whoever edited it, wanted future readers to see that it depicts the obedient people of God doing what God commanded and receiving what God had promised. Inside that logic, what comes next makes sense: following God’s precise instructions, they march around the city of Jericho until the walls come tumblin’ down.
So far, so good, right?
But then, events take a serious turn. Then we come up against the theological and moral wall that does not crumble so easily as the walls of Jericho.
Did God really tell them to slaughter every living being within those walls?
Do we worship a God that would order genocide?
It’s a question we’ll address again next week, as the Israelites conquer Canaan and claim the Promised Land.
Last week we talked about two ethical philosophies that might be applied to these stories: the ethic of duty, and the ethic of virtue. The ethic of duty would tell us that the Israelites acted in an ethical way: God told them what to do, and they did it. They did their duty, no matter how horrible it seemed. The ethic of virtue would suggest that the destruction of Jericho ran counter to the character of God – a god of steadfast love and mercy, and it was the opposite of the expected virtue of the Israelites.
This puts us in a quandary: would God order genocide?
If we know God through the love and mercy demonstrated in Jesus Christ,
how do we make any sense at all of these stories?
Methodist pastor theologian Adam Hamilton offers some possible answers. Hamilton wrote a book called Making Sense of the Bible, in which he helps Christians consider difficult questions like this. He offers three ways to look at this story and others like it:
One is that God really did order that all Canaanites must die,
because they were horrible wicked people. Hamilton writes
“If we understand the Bible as having been essentially dictated by God, then yes, we have no choice but to accept what is written as accurately describing God’s actions and God’s will. But if we recognize the Bible’s humanity—that it was written by human beings whose understanding and experience of God was shaped by their culture, their theological assumptions, and the time in which they lived—then we might be able to say, ‘In this case, the biblical authors were representing what they believed about God rather than what God actually inspired them to say.’”[1]
A second perspective is that
“passages about violence and war … tell us more about the people who wrote them and the times they were living in than about the God in whose name they claimed authority to do these things.”[2]
Finally, Hamilton suggests that these stories, like the legends of William Wallace in Scotland, or the frontier stories of the Old West, were written long after the fact to “demonstrate courage, resolve, and faith and to inspire later generations still struggling against their own enemies.”[3]
Each one of us has to determine our own understanding of these stories.
We make that determination through the witness not only of the written words,
but through the witness of the living word, Jesus.
If we truly embrace the message Jesus spoke and lived: love of enemies, blessing those who curse us, turning the other cheek, then we would do well to consider interpreting these stories as simply that: stories, and not history – stories written for a purpose, but written by humans, not by God.
Hamilton suggests that “perhaps the most important reason for reading Joshua is to remind us of how easy it is for people of faith to invoke God’s name in pursuit of violence, bloodshed, and war. The Crusaders marched into battle in Jerusalem in the name of Christ. Colonists from the Old World arrived in the New World, Bibles and weapons in hand, to claim America for Christ. Nazi belt buckles proclaimed, ‘Gott Mit Uns’—God is with us— as they sought the extermination of Jews and other ‘undesirables.’ ‘Christian’ nations have often gone to war invoking God in their efforts.[4]
Everyone wants to believe that their violence is justified.
But as Anne Lamott says, if God hates all the same people you hate,
you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image.
If we understand these stories in Joshua as justification for all kinds of violence – verbal, political, economic, racial, and military- we are then stuck trying to explain how we can worship a God who not only approves of, but commands, genocide.
So here’s a thought.
It’s a “what if” kind of thought.
Just a thought.
What if the story is a way for us to imagine a different way of being?
What if we conceived a new kind of story in which the Israelites crossed the Jordan, carrying their culture and traditions with them, remembering the law of God that said to welcome and honor the stranger?
It isn’t impossible to imagine how they, and how we, could honor God’s law by living out the same steadfast love and mercy that we have been given. It isn’t even all that difficult to imagine that instead of building walls to keep other people away from us that we might build bridges and houses and schools to welcome them.
As I’ve mentioned before, Christianity – worldwide, nationally, and right here in Sterling, in our own congregation, Christianity is facing a new kind of world. Where the Israelites wandered and then became settled people, we who have been settled and comfortable are facing a future that is uncertain. We don’t know where God is leading us, but we know that it will look nothing like where we have been.
We don’t know how Christianity -- and this congregation - will evolve in the generations that are to come, but we know that God will be with us wherever we go.
When we cross our own Jordan rivers into new ways of being,
when we encounter those whose ways are strange,
whose beliefs are not ours,
whose language and culture are alien to us,
we carry our own religion and culture and ritual with us.
And we can decide then how we will engage with others.
Imagine meeting strangers – whether locally or globally,
with a heartfelt desire to develop relationships and hospitality.
Imagine opening our hearts to the God of love in such a way
that whenever we encounter those outside our experience,
that we remember that we are made in the image of God,
and that remember that all people are made in the image of God.
Imagine that whenever we meet new experiences,
whenever we face changes,
whenever we are fearful,
we remember that we are made in the image of love.
And let the walls come tumblin’ down.
Amen.
[1] https://www.adamhamilton.com/blog/gods-violence-in-the-old-testament-part-2-possible-solutions#.XHGVGehKjIV
[2] ibid
[3] https://www.adamhamilton.com/blog/gods-violence-in-the-old-testament-part-3-possible-solutions#.XHGFC-hKjIX
[4] ibid
“If we understand the Bible as having been essentially dictated by God, then yes, we have no choice but to accept what is written as accurately describing God’s actions and God’s will. But if we recognize the Bible’s humanity—that it was written by human beings whose understanding and experience of God was shaped by their culture, their theological assumptions, and the time in which they lived—then we might be able to say, ‘In this case, the biblical authors were representing what they believed about God rather than what God actually inspired them to say.’”[1]
A second perspective is that
“passages about violence and war … tell us more about the people who wrote them and the times they were living in than about the God in whose name they claimed authority to do these things.”[2]
Finally, Hamilton suggests that these stories, like the legends of William Wallace in Scotland, or the frontier stories of the Old West, were written long after the fact to “demonstrate courage, resolve, and faith and to inspire later generations still struggling against their own enemies.”[3]
Each one of us has to determine our own understanding of these stories.
We make that determination through the witness not only of the written words,
but through the witness of the living word, Jesus.
If we truly embrace the message Jesus spoke and lived: love of enemies, blessing those who curse us, turning the other cheek, then we would do well to consider interpreting these stories as simply that: stories, and not history – stories written for a purpose, but written by humans, not by God.
Hamilton suggests that “perhaps the most important reason for reading Joshua is to remind us of how easy it is for people of faith to invoke God’s name in pursuit of violence, bloodshed, and war. The Crusaders marched into battle in Jerusalem in the name of Christ. Colonists from the Old World arrived in the New World, Bibles and weapons in hand, to claim America for Christ. Nazi belt buckles proclaimed, ‘Gott Mit Uns’—God is with us— as they sought the extermination of Jews and other ‘undesirables.’ ‘Christian’ nations have often gone to war invoking God in their efforts.[4]
Everyone wants to believe that their violence is justified.
But as Anne Lamott says, if God hates all the same people you hate,
you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image.
If we understand these stories in Joshua as justification for all kinds of violence – verbal, political, economic, racial, and military- we are then stuck trying to explain how we can worship a God who not only approves of, but commands, genocide.
So here’s a thought.
It’s a “what if” kind of thought.
Just a thought.
What if the story is a way for us to imagine a different way of being?
What if we conceived a new kind of story in which the Israelites crossed the Jordan, carrying their culture and traditions with them, remembering the law of God that said to welcome and honor the stranger?
It isn’t impossible to imagine how they, and how we, could honor God’s law by living out the same steadfast love and mercy that we have been given. It isn’t even all that difficult to imagine that instead of building walls to keep other people away from us that we might build bridges and houses and schools to welcome them.
As I’ve mentioned before, Christianity – worldwide, nationally, and right here in Sterling, in our own congregation, Christianity is facing a new kind of world. Where the Israelites wandered and then became settled people, we who have been settled and comfortable are facing a future that is uncertain. We don’t know where God is leading us, but we know that it will look nothing like where we have been.
We don’t know how Christianity -- and this congregation - will evolve in the generations that are to come, but we know that God will be with us wherever we go.
When we cross our own Jordan rivers into new ways of being,
when we encounter those whose ways are strange,
whose beliefs are not ours,
whose language and culture are alien to us,
we carry our own religion and culture and ritual with us.
And we can decide then how we will engage with others.
Imagine meeting strangers – whether locally or globally,
with a heartfelt desire to develop relationships and hospitality.
Imagine opening our hearts to the God of love in such a way
that whenever we encounter those outside our experience,
that we remember that we are made in the image of God,
and that remember that all people are made in the image of God.
Imagine that whenever we meet new experiences,
whenever we face changes,
whenever we are fearful,
we remember that we are made in the image of love.
And let the walls come tumblin’ down.
Amen.
[1] https://www.adamhamilton.com/blog/gods-violence-in-the-old-testament-part-2-possible-solutions#.XHGVGehKjIV
[2] ibid
[3] https://www.adamhamilton.com/blog/gods-violence-in-the-old-testament-part-3-possible-solutions#.XHGFC-hKjIX
[4] ibid
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