What Has Heritage To Do With Anything

The last battle had been fought, the final obstacle demolished; the land that was once promised was now land possessed. Joshua called together all the tribes of Israel and standing upon the foreign ground of freedom he announced to all the people: "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods. But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the River and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants... Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I afflicted the Egyptians by what I did there, and I brought you out.... You saw with your own eyes what I did to the Egyptians. Then you lived in the desert for a long time'" Joshua 24: 2-3,5,7

Goethe once penned, "What you have as heritage, take now as task; for thus you will make it your own." Having fought hard to possess the land God had promised, the Israelites now stood before Joshua looking forward to the life God had promised. On this momentous day, they were given instruction from God in the form of history. The vast majority of the people listening had not personally lived through the miraculous events in Egypt. As the Red Sea was parted and the Egyptians swallowed by sea, they were not standing on dry ground watching with their own eyes as it all happened. And yet, the impact of this history and the continual (and commanded) retelling of the story made it possible for the LORD to say it as such: With your own eyes you have seen almost a millennium of landless slavery redeemed by God's promise, transformed at God's own hands.

God continued to speak through Joshua, moving from Israel's early history into days the crowd would remember first hand: "'Then you crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho.  The citizens of Jericho fought against you, as did also the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites and Jebusites, but I gave them into your hands.... You did not do it with your own sword and bow. I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant'" 24:11,13).

His words told of current events and familiar scenery, while warning against forgetting it was God presently and historically who brought them there. God reminded the battle-weary Israelites that what happened at the crossing of the Red Sea with Moses was as imperative to their story as the crossing of the Jordan with Joshua. God's hand throughout their history was to be God's assurance of his plans to give them a hope and a future.

Bill, are you just reading this without comprehending what God is saying to you? Are you recongnizing the fact that Jehovah saves even on this day, in every one of your dark valleys, in each trying situation? In doing so, you are remembering the story of God in its entirety. God saved His people from Egypt; from God's hand came each victory across the Jordan.  By God's presence a nation was led into the Promised Land; by the blood of His Beloved the curse of sin and death was stopped. You are to take capture the thought that your worldview is a historical memory alive in you in this very moment. That is: today God saves because yesterday God saved.

I do remember the words in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, Life Together, where he states emphatically, "It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to his Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today.... I find no salvation in my life history but only in the history of Jesus Christ." When Bonhoeffer was leading the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, he was moveing by the presence of God in the history of Israel, the promise of God in his crucified Son, such that he chose to believe in God's salvation even unto death in a concentration camp. Bill, you need to confess of your petty complaint. 

You need to firmly get a hold of the fact: it is God's word to his people on that day of promise, when Joshua declared, "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served 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." Out of the history of God with the people of Israel comes a story that instructs my own, a rescuer born and wounded for my sin. With Isaiah I hear God's plea, "Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done."

Father, God, thank You for the insight into the fact of Your people being led into the Promised Land with a leader whose very name confesses "Jehovah saves." Also, that it is not coincidental that the same word marks the name of Jesus, who offered his life that, insignificant me along with the entire world, might be fully led into Your story.  Thank You for Bonhoeffer and his life story.  Amen

What's The Point?

I ran across an interesting story concerning the philosopher Mortimer Adler who happened to co-edit the fifty-five volume series for Encyclopedia Britannica  titled The Great Books of the Western World. (time for nostalgia, Bill - do you remember the enjoyment of paging thru; grabbing new insight and conjuring up mystical adventures of a world ourside your own when you were young? What about mom and dad putting a down payment on the set and payments, monthly so you and your sisters could further your knowledge?) Overseeing a staff of ninety, the editors created a diverse index of topics containing selections from many of the finest thinkers in the history of Western Civilization. Upon completion, Adler was asked why the work included more pages under the subject of God than any other topic. He replied matter-of-factly that it was because more consequences for life and action follow from the affirmation or denial of God than from any other basic question.

After puzzling on it, more than ever, I'm convinced that what I do with the subject of God is a far-reaching choice, defining my life, informing my death, shaping everything about me. Admittedly, I am speculating, but my observation is; that the person who lives as though there is no God lives quite differently than myself: living life in confidence that there is a God. I’m pondering that it is a subject of consequence because I see that it seems to reach everything and everyone; whether mindfully or indifferently, a decision is always made.

The Psalms helps me through the avenues of every one of my emotions, and over and over again making it clear to me the astounding claim that God not only exists, but that He is present and can be found if I but look. In victory and defeat, illness and poverty, health and prosperity, the psalmist maintains that it is God who gives all of my life meaning, that God alone answers the deepest and darkest questions of my life whether in the deepest depths or from the highest of heights.

I wonder: might it be the chaplain or pastoral side of me oozing out when I want to emphasize to every child and adult that the psalmist crosses every line of status and allegiance, pleading for care regarding a subject that concerns them. I believe the psalmist makes it clear in Psalm 49:4 that what is being communicated is of consequence. “Listen, all who live in this world, both low and high, rich and poor together… I will incline my ear to a proverb; I will solve my riddle to the music of the harp.” I believe the riddle the psalmist desires to bring to my attention is a riddle forever before humankind. It is a riddle to which I must diligently attend, but too many times ignore. Fittingly, the Hebrew word for “riddle” has also been translated “dark saying” or “difficult question.”

The psalmist continues, “When we look at the wise, they die; fool and dolt perish together and leave their wealth to others. Their graves are their homes for ever, their dwelling-places to all generations, though they named lands their own. Mortals cannot abide in their pomp; they are like the animals that perish.”

Haven't I found it easy these past seventy three years, at various times, easy going, "doing life," as if I knew what I was doing? But the other day, walking with the psalmist, he stopped and turned to me, asking: "what is the point of it all?" Again, I ask myself: am I here to accumulate wealth, or remain in adequacy, to live well physically or in pain? Am I not destined for the grave. As we parted ways, he turned, waved and admitted that it is all a dark riddle. What is the point of it all?

I’ve noticed, as I’ve become more aware of myself and a plethora of relationships, that solving the riddles of life and death, like religion and politics at a social gathering, means, for most of my aquaintances, changing the subject. As Woody Allen once quipped, “It’s not that I am afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” But since turning another year older a few days ago, I realize that my life is fleeting and I'm experiencing an awakening to a sense of urgency, a sense of inquiry. That life is fleeting, though inarguably full of meaning, is indeed either a peculiar contradiction or a hint that creation is being made new, both now and in what is coming.

This is not to say that death, for me, is not a mystery. I know that death is the last great door through which I must walk. Yep, the mark of a broken world. Yet I know also that through death God has declared the end of that broken hold on my life, that the I lose my life I will save it, and that by Christ’s death the Spirit works Christ’s life in me even now. As C.S. Lewis once said of the Christian, “Of all men, we hope most of death; yet nothing will reconcile us to…its ‘unnaturalness.’ We know that we were not made for it; we know how it crept into our destiny as an intruder; and we know Who has defeated it.”

Father, God, thank You for helping me these days, especially after burring my last parent, and memorializing the lives of so many of my life-long friends and acquaintances.  So much of Your mysterious help and guidance has come thru the psalmist’s expounding on the riddle of life and death. Thank You, this morning, for his expounding of this particular one of Your actions , “But God will ransom my soul from the power of the grave, for he will receive me.” Amen