Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (PR. 16)
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18; John 6:56-69; Ephesians 6:10-20
Our nest is empty again. A little over a week ago we made the trip so many parents make this time of year as we packed off the youngest to college. As Jonathan enters his Junior year he has decided to move into a house off campus with three other buddies. We have been through this routine with two other sons so we pretty much knew what to expect. We borrowed older brother's pickup, hooked up a 16 foot trailer to it and began loading box spring, mattress, chairs, couches, television, amp, sub woofer and 8 speakers, various boxes of CD's, DVD's, bedding, cloths, laptop and books--I was relieved to see at least a few books. We filled the trailer with rummage sale deals and everything we could move out of our basement and crawl space. The final items packed were the "treasures". Those special objects, pictures and memorabilia that connect his past with the present. The totems of his life, if you will. I noticed at the college house Jon moved into that each of his roommates had similar items positioned in special ways around their rooms almost as shrines to past activities and meaningful moments.
And at the end of the first week, as we always try to do each week the boys are away, we called him to see how he was doing. And here the routine also quickly repeated the ritual of previous years as one of the first questions his mother asked him was, "Did you go to church today?" Our sons all know the question is coming and the youngest has been well coached by older brothers which means he almost always answers laughing with the words, "Of course" to which his mother who was not born yesterday replies, "What was the lesson about?" and our theologically trained and well coached son replies, "Jesus". I guess we should take some satisfaction that he travels with a God he knows. About an hour north of the city of Kara in northern Togo, West Africa there is the valley of the Tambermas. In the 16 th century the Tambermas came to the Koutammakou Valley and began building their unique houses called "tatas". African historians have determined that the Tambermas came to the valley seeking a place of refuge from other African slave traders who kidnapped whole families, marched them to the coast and sold them to European ships for transport to the Americas. For five hundred years the tatas have been built the same way rising from the middle of sorghum fields. The structures look like miniature European castles with circular two story towers linked by thick walls made from clay and cow dun covered by the sap of a 'nere' tree. The walls have no windows but are marked by small openings designed to allow those within to shoot arrows at attackers. The lower level's grand room houses livestock in the rainy season while interior passages lead to upper levels of inner rooms, kitchen, cereal drying surfaces and log ladders to the granaries or storehouses which are towers accessed from the top balconies. When we were in Togo we toured the Tamberma chief's tata. As we prepared to enter the structure we passed by the family altar with hillocks or mounds that served, we were told, as guardians or protectors of the family members against evil spirits. You could tell how many people lived in the tata by the number of totems around the altar. And you could gauge each family members relative importance by the size of the totem. We noticed that the chief's totem was easily 8 feet tall towering over the other totems. We were allowed to film and photograph the exterior but were warned that the gods of the totems within the house loathed sunlight and cameras. Our only light as we passed through the first floor room stepping carefully around sheep and lambs housed there, came from the embers of a cooking fire that filled the room with smoke. There were shelves molded into the walls holding various totems of what appeared to be animal bones, feathers and clay shapes. Our guide, a member of the Tamberma community, explained that his ancestors were a very violent people which causes them to still live in fear of the enemies and evils they resisted long ago. Their gods protect them, or at least have protected them, for the past 500 years. Now the United Nations has recognized the uniqueness of this continuing culture by designating the Tamberma castles (or tatas) as a UNESCO World Heritage architectural sight. The world has chosen to preserve the totem gods of the Koutammakou Valley.
Most of us living in the modern world of the 21 st century Americas generally do not think in terms of the gods of the world. We are spiritual descendents of the great monotheistic religions and when exploring our most inclusive interfaith concerns we will attempt some consensus position that at least seems to imply that Allah, Yahweh and Jesus are but various linguistic manifestations of the same God. It is most often asked as a question but we know what is being said, "We all worship the same God, don't we? The honest answer of course is that the world is filled with gods, totems that we choose to erect to mark the places of our fears and our desires for power and meaning in life.
Our lessons for today are driven by this question of discerning, from all the gods in our world and the many things we can believe or not believe, the God that we are called to confess. The first lesson is from the final chapter of the book of Joshua. As the story of Israel's successful entry into the Promised Land draws to a close, Joshua gathers the people at the holy altar at Shechem and calls upon the elders, leaders, judges and officers of Israel to choose the God they will follow. In the verses missing from our lesson Joshua recounts the whole of Israel's patriarchal history from the time of Abraham's father in Terah through the succession of Abraham's son Isaac, and Isaac's two sons Jacob and Esau. Then Joshua recalls the journey into Egypt and the delivery from Egypt by Moses and Aaron. The story is filled with encounters not only with the God Yahweh but battles with the many gods of Egypt, and the gods of the Canaanites, Moabites and Amorites. Finally Joshua declares that he is leaving behind the gods of the ancestors to embrace the God who leads him into a new land and future. To our modern mind this does not seem like such a difficult decision to make since the God Joshua is embracing is the God who had delivered Israel out of slavery, out of the wilderness, and given it victory over the nations of what we would call today Palestine. Everyone likes to back a winning team. The God of Israel was a winning choice according to holy history. But that is where today's text gets interesting because most scholars do not think it was written at the time of Joshua's conquest when Israel was on a winning streak, rather this chronicle of holy history was probably written centuries later, Maybe even after the great reign of Israel's kings. The great Kingdom of David and the wealth and power of Solomon were but a memory when the history of Joshua was completed with today's final chapter that questioned where Israel's faith would abide. Our text suggests, especially with historical perspective, that Joshua's listeners were very familiar with and could easily discriminate the true God (Yahweh) from the other gods who had claims on their ancestors. The Israelites knew the power the gods of Canaan and the Amorites had claimed in the lives of people. The temptations to embrace wealth, power, position and possessions had been a constant struggle. All the forces that claimed priority over lives, that defined the directions of life, were a threat to the future faith of the people. Human nature has not changed all that much when it comes to the gods of our lives. We are still just as tempted. It is even easier to be drawn into addictive life styles be it drugs, alcohol, food, gambling or sex. Joshua reminded the people that the gods of this world are all around us. The question this morning is which god will we allow to embrace us with the promise and hope of the future.
We have just spent 5 weeks listening to Jesus teach his disciples about the bread of life. We began this series of Gospel lessons looking at the simple metaphor that makes Jesus as basic to our faith as bread is fundamental to life itself. We witnessed the miracle of feeding 5,000 and heard again and again the "bread of life" passages. But as the weeks progressed the teachings of Jesus moved from metaphor to reality. The reality is that only if Jesus truly is the Son of God, not just some symbolic bread and wine, that our lives can be changed. Life is real, not symbolic or metaphoric. The cancer cell is real and deadly. The terrorist will actually end lives. The hungry are fed by bread not promises. The AIDS pandemic will be stopped only through real preventive and responsible sexual behavior. The road to peace does not require more soldiers and weapons. Jesus finally gets 100% real and declares flat out that "those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them." And with that, we are told many of his disciples found this teaching difficult. They were offended.
The offense is the reality that what we believe matters. The gods we carry with us really do make a difference in our lives. The acts of faith that we live out are not just symbolic. The water we use to baptize is real water. The wine is wine and the bread real bread. More important, those who are washed and eat and drink enter into the real presence of God. More important, God enters into them. A child baptized this morning will probably not remember this moment but she will be remembered by God and this community of faith again and again in the coming years. There will be moments when the Spirit will stir in her life provoking the questions of faith. Questions about life and death, body and soul, meaning and purpose. These will be real questions seeking real answers in the midst of doubts and surrounded by a world of gods all inviting her to embrace and worship them. When she is packed off to college it will be not only with a trailer filled with items for her dorm room but a faith that will define her priorities, her values and ultimately her life.
In our Gospel lesson for today we find that the popular bread king who could feed thousands is becoming offensive and unattractive. As many of his own disciples left him, Jesus turned to the twelve and asked, "Do you also wish to go away?" It is then, in a moment that would have made Joshua proud, that Simon Peter made his declaration of faith, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life." Life makes us choose. In her autobiography entitled "Daybreak" the singer and peace activist Joan Baez observes, "You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You only decide how you're going to live. Now!"
Jesus asks his closest disciples what their choice is. Peter's answer is a courageous faith declaration. Faith is the gift of the Spirit given to each of us in our baptism. It is a gift that needs to be nurtured and strengthened. It is a gift that takes courage. The courage of parents who let the child question, courage of self to face the doubts and explore the unexpected answers. It takes courage to follow the words of eternal life. It takes life long courage. Anne Sexton, in her book of poems, The Awful Rowing After God has a poem entitled "Courage". She describes in the poem a series of courageous moments. The courage of a child's first steps; the courage of an older child facing for the first time someone calling her or him names; the courage of a young soldier facing war; the courage to survive deep personal anguish. And then she concludes with a final act of courage; "Later," she writes, "when you face old age and its natural conclusion
Your courage will still be shown in the little ways
...and at the last moment when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers and stride out."
Nourished by the body and blood of a risen Christ, strengthened by a life of service to our God, we have the courage to leave other gods behind and walk boldly into the promise of eternal life. We leave the other gods behind and choose life. We have come to believe and know the one who is the Holy One of God.
Amen