To Boldly Go

Joshua 1:1-9, Rev. Billie Watts.

Three words have greatly shaped my Christian life:

Love – the depth and breadth of God’s love, its inclusive nature, and the healing power of love.

Grace – a good Methodist word! It’s the kind of grace that goes before you without you even knowing it, a wooing/beckoning grace. It is grace when you realize what God has done for you when you were unaware of God. It is grace when your need for God meets the presence of God, and you want to say, “I wish I’d realized sooner” as aa kind of confession. Receiving that love changes you. There is the grace that continues to shape us as we grow, learn, and experience life with God. Grace allows us to question God and helps us in our “BECOMING” who GOD made us to be.

 

I have received much grace in my life; and when I wasn’t needing it, my kids were. I’ll take grace over judgment any day. When you have received grace like that, you want to dispense that kind of grace. You can’t NOT do it… for you were changed by it, healed by it, and the proper response is gratitude.

 

Lastly, there’s my third word – BOLDNESS. There is a distinction between being bold and being obnoxious. You know the kind – the ones who think boldness means screaming at you that you’d better change your ways or suffer hell…or the ones who walk into the middle of the corner store and corner you to give you a little sermonette when all you want to do it get your coffee. If that is boldness, I don’t want it. So what it is? My own definition began to form in my failure of exhibiting it, an event that deeply affected and shaped me.

 

Her name was Ellie. We were in the 4^th grade together. Ellie was not popular. In fact, she was rather invisible or wished she could be. Her size prevented that, and I’m sure she heard about it. I don’t remember being mean to Ellie, but then, I don’t remember being particularly nice to her either. Ellie’s constant absence from school belied issues of which I was unaware, but I think my mother had an inkling, for one Saturday, she made me go to Ellie’s to play. I emphasize “made” to expose my underdeveloped graciousness in 4^th grade. I don’t remember much about that day, except it was not fun…and Mama never made me do it again. But I do remember what followed.

 

We were in the middle of our weekly dictation test when our principal, Mr. Thomas, drug a sobbing, screaming Ellie into our classroom, followed by her mother. To be fair, Mr. Thomas was probably totally ill-equipped to handle such a situation so, probably out of great frustration turned to rage, he defaulted to the practices of the time.  “Sit down,” (spank)…”Sit down” (spank), “Sit down” (spank)…  Each swat was met with an outburst of sobbing, and I (and my classmates and even teacher) sat frozen and terrified in my chair. I cannot imagine being her mother that day. Part of me wanted to run to her and beg her to just come sit with me, probably motivated mostly by the fact that I just wanted it to stop. I can still feel it today. But I did nothing…for I was too afraid of his anger. I have wondered every day since what difference a simple act of kindness could have made. I don’t remember seeing Ellie after that. I don’t even remember if she sat down. But I do remember that I didn’t help her. My boldness was underdeveloped in 4^th grade. I have tried to find Ellie. Classmates, who think I should let it go, have even looked for her on facebook.  I have a great desire to tell her I’m sorry – sorry that I didn’t help, sorry that I didn’t understand her pain, sorry that I might have contributed to her pain...sorry that I didn’t have the boldness to stand up for her that day.

 

I am drawn to stories of boldness. Who is bold in Scripture? What is its source? How will they use their boldness? What will be the impact on others? I want to learn from Joshua, who is told three times to be strong (a word meaning strong…firm, confident) and to be courageous (bold). I learn that God is with him. He is being recommissioned by God – on mission with God, to boldly go into this long-promised and long awaited promised land. He is told to act in accordance with the law, veer not from it, meditate on it (chew on it over and over). Reminds me of the saying of the rabbi, “Scripture as everything: Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it; and contemplate it and grow grey and old over it and stir not from it” (pirkhe avot v. 22). This is the key to success. Boldness comes from God, rooted in God.

 

I’m in! I love it. I want it this. He’s my hero…what a great message of encouragement for Eric and Valerie, for me, for all of us– a great reminder of the things God has in store for us. If only I’d stopped reading. As it turns out, Joshua is one of the most violent books in Hebrew Scriptures – and this strong courageous talk is a war cry – for holy war. The identity of the Israelites is connected to the land. However, this land being given to them is already full of people, and they are going to take it as if by some divine manifest destiny. Joshua knew about this land, for he’d seen it some 40 years before when he was sent with eleven other “spies” by Moses to check out this land. They reported that it flowed with milk and honey, and don’t you know their mouths watered all those years at the thought of those clusters of grapes served with their manna?

 

The people occupying the land were not just be displaced. They were to be utterly destroyed. Utterly. If something was breathing, they were to kill it. However, they were allowed to keep the booty of gold, silver, bronze, and iron. I get it – it was a dangerous, dog-eat-dog world. Their survival as a tribe was at stake. This is the way the world was. Therefore, this was the way God was understood to be. However, it seems to me that Joshua was a bully – a holy bully, with God on his side…and that is the worst kind.

 

Bob Dylan wrote a song many years ago called “With God On Our Side.” In it, he sang, “you don’t count the bodies when God is on your side.”[1] Boldness, without grace, without love as the motivating force is dangerous. When dominion (tender loving care for creation and all creatures) is confused with domination, we are at risk of being bullies. That is why this part of the story is important to tell lest we get sucked into this mindset.

 

People always want to think that God is on their side, whether it be political issues, theological issues, or war. In World War II, Americans declared God was on our side while at the same time, Germans wore belt buckles stating, “Gott mit uns” (God with us). We catch a glimpse of a better and more redeeming approach – perhaps a moment of self-critique, in Joshua 5:13-15, when Joshua, preparing for battle with Jericho, encounters a man with a drawn sword and asks him on whose side he is. The man says he is on neither side – only God’s. Joshua urgently asks what he should do, only to be told to take off his sandals, for he is standing on holy ground. Perhaps this is our better question – “Are we on God’s side?”

 

How can we tell? How do we know the difference? According to one of my seminary professors, a tool for discernment is to ask that if a particular interpretation or understanding of scripture does not lead to justice, diversity, mercy, and love, then look again – dig deeper.[2] Wrestle with that text. Ask hard questions of it. Turn it and turn it again.

 

We may have to accept that the book of Joshua is an expression of the worldview of that time. It is important to have it in our canon as our REACTION to it helps us to identify who we believe God is – and who we are. Are you shocked and outraged, confused, and angry by the text? Good! You are standing on holy ground. Maybe that is why it is there for it reveals our human nature. We examine it to avoid defaulting to it.

 

Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Catholic Bishop in the 1550’s challenged the conquerors from Spain in their subjugation and exploitation of the Native Americans in the New World and their pursuit of gold, God, and glory. The conquerors called the Native Americans “barbarians” and the Spaniards were to civilize and convert them with the Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. These “barbarians” exposed the real barbarians – the Spaniards. Las Casas wrote to the king and queen of Spain that such treatment of the Indians was an abuse of God’s word and did violence to Scripture. What would people think of Christians when they saw these Christians? The only proper response to such atrocities was to shout as long as necessary, cry with rage and sympathy, for Christ seeks souls, not property.[3]

 

These stories of violence, like Joshua, should not surprise us. It was the way people saw the world. They were matters of life and death, and their survival was at stake. What does surprise us is the in-breaking of God’s way of being in the world. Abraham is stopped from sacrificing his son. The Ninevites repent in the book of Jonah, much to Jonah’s dismay, and God asks, “Should I not be concerned with the great city of Nineveh?”(Jonah 5:11). We cannot limit the work of God. God will not allow it.

 

During this week of celebrating Independence Day, we will hear people chant, “God Bless American.” We pray God DOES bless American with God’s presence, purpose, and passion…but also that God blesses us all. Abraham Heschel, a Polish-born, Jewish American rabbi writes, “Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol…You have all heard the underpinnings of this idolatry: ‘God Bless America,’ which I see as the words of a bankrupt neoliberal theology. In fact, there is something profane in that statement, which worships and calls upon a God that blesses America only.”[4]

 

During my internship at Perkins School of Theology, I served at a church much like Travis Park, an inner city, reconciling church on the edge of downtown Dallas. As a final project, we were to present our theology of ministry, how ministry shaped us and how we would carry it into future ministry. It was during this exercise that my three words: love, grace, and boldness came together. That year, as part of a four-week study on how to move forward with reconciling ministries (same-sex marriage was not yet legal in all states), we hosted a panel of four professors from Perkins. One said that the requirement for change in the hearts of people around gay marriage was bold preaching from the pulpit. This boldness was motivated by love – liberating love – liberating because it freed both the oppressed and the oppressors. Another professor told the story of two brothers, with the older one constantly harassing the younger, until the mother had enough. She told the older brother that she could no longer stand by while he bullied his younger brother, and he must stop it immediately. This mandate, however, was not only for the benefit of the younger brother but for the benefit of the older brother as well – for God made him for more than that.

 

My final project was a floral bouquet with each flower representing an aspect of ministry. In the center, was a big, bold, beautiful hydrangea. It did not shrink from what it was – it just was. Along with its boldness, however, was a sort of graciousness to the flower – a flower no longer just for a grandmother’s garden. This is what I want to be – graciously bold. My theology of ministry is to be graciously bold, bearing witness to God’s radical, inclusive love for the world.

 

How will our story unfold at Travis Park UMC? How will our future look as we boldly go forth into the future? Are we on the right side of history? Are we on God’s side? Let us ask ourselves: Are we on the side of love, diversity, mercy, and justice? Ah – then let us boldly go, and may we GO with gracious boldness, bearing witness to God’s radical, inclusive love for the world so that ALL may live in abundance and prosper.

 

Amen.