Well, Whom WILL You Serve?

There’re lots of options out there.  More than ever, in this “adulterous and crooked generation”, the Church needs to name the God who is over all other gods.  We dream brave dreams about speaking Truth to Power; and sometimes we do.  Readings for this present weekend, though, are aimed at the community of professing believers:  many church-hoppers are hoping for feel-good messages which allow them to worship materialism, patriotism & family along with a passing nod to Yahweh.  Several sources present the uniqueness of our “jealous God” and this God’s claim on our entire being…

Joshua (24:1-2a, 14-18) has called together the leaders of the Hebrews at Shechem, a neutral city in the middle of the Promised Land.  They’re on the brink of establishing communities in this new place, and Joshua’s speech is a pretty good locker room pep-talk:  “Go get ’em!”  It’s a holy-history of God’s covenant with the People, and moves them from yesterday to the present.  Now that Yahweh has brought them triumphantly this far, will they go back to the gods of the ancestors?  “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.”  How we long for the gods of the Good Old Days, when June & Ward Cleaver raised a happy family in a nice white neighborhood behind a picket fence…  What are the names of the ancestral gods which Made America Great?  What will happen to our “security” if we cast our lot solely with Yahweh?

If we can get past Paul’s contradictory self-armament (Ephesians 6:10-20, an unfortunate condoning of conflict),  we might look more thoroughly at the powers & principalities.  Here once again are the old gods of the ancestors, dressed in economic contracts for the military and stock in companies which exploit human vices and the environment!  Martin L. Smith reminds us that “It is not enough to imagine that we are immune from their power.  Only actual spiritual practices…have any value in sustaining our distinct identity as members of Christ’s body and pioneers of God’s future.”  (SOJOURNERS, August 2018, page 45)

The Gospel (John 6:56-69) acknowledges that there were many disciples who fell away from Jesus over the difficulty of consuming Body & Blood.  Evidently the gods of the ancestors weren’t as demanding and counter-cultural.  ‘Course, they didn’t provide any eternal benefit, either.  These looooong passages about Jesus being the bread of heaven served to impress John’s readers then & now that it is “MY” body and “MY” blood which differentiates the Christian experience from all others.  Peter provided the necessary affirmation:  “We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

It’s good to realize that God continually seeks relationships with the People, both individually and within community.  None of these lections ends with a brow- beating for abandoning the Yahweh ethic so quickly.  Rather there is a note of commendation for those who stay the course, those who dare the vision of what may yet happen.

God Bless Us, Every One                       Horace Brown King

My thoughts about scripture passages assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com