St. Andrew’s Pictou, October 30^th 2005    Reformation Sunday

 

The Presence of Enemies

 

Joshua 3:7-17

Matthew 23:1-15

 

It is a guaranteed fact of human experience that there are times in our lives when we have to face people who we would rather not have to face.

 

We can try to sidestep them. We can cross the street, avoid certain functions, stay away from certain places, and like it or not, we just have to face those people and those realities that threaten our safety; could be a person, could be an organization, or it could be a thing.

 

There was a woman in a hospital that had breast cancer, but she just couldn’t face it. She delayed seeing her doctor for far too long. She just ignored it to the point that when she arrived in hospital, her breast had turned black. Cancer was her enemy and she just couldn’t face it.

 

Her healer was the woman patient in the next bed who had dealt with cancer in the past. She climbed right up on the bed with her, put her arms around her, and said gently and with love, after saying her name, and adding, “… just say the word, Cancer.”

 

It takes a lot of courage to face your enemy. Whether it is a soldier in Iraq facing insurgents, a patient facing diagnosis, Martin Luther facing the pope, or for some people even getting up in the morning to face the day, it takes a great deal of courage to face your enemy.

 

Moses had lead the people for 40 years through the wilderness, to the Promised Land, but the mantle was now being passed to his junior, Joshua who had to finish the job: Joshua had to take possession of the land; firstly they had to cross the Jordan River.

 

The people of God were going to have to face a litany of enemies: the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, and the Girgashites.

 

Now crossing the river was not a simple event; the crossing of the Jordan River had great significance on several levels:

-it was leaving the desert behind and entering a new place,

-it was leaving the reign of Moses and embracing the rule of Joshua,

-it was leaving the old ways, the old habits, and the old customs, and embracing the new ways,

-it was leaving safety for the unsettling threat of battle.

 

So to make such a great change, it had to be a grand ritual, and so it was.

 

The Word of God for today tells us that the preparation of facing the enemy was a process: Not a moment, not a gut reaction, not an instantaneous surge, but a planned and deliberate, process.

 

1 God affirms Joshua as the new leader: “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses.”

 

2 God tells Joshua to direct the priests who bear the Ark of the Covenant and to take it to the waters of the Jordan.

 

3 Joshua speaks to the people and directs them in a way so that they will know that God will be with them in facing their enemies in claiming the Promised Land: Joshua is thereby expressing his power as leader.

 

4 He instructs the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, to be taken to the Jordan River.

 

5 He instructs 12 representatives to be chosen: one from each of the 12 tribes of Israel to participate in the leadership process.

 

6 The ark of the Lord (symbolizing the power and presence of God) is carried by the priests into the Jordan and the water recedes, so that the entire nation can pass over to the other side on dry land.

 

So we have a six step process to face the enemies where Joshua is shown to be leader, that God is with them, both in presence and power, and the subsequent actions come out of this process in moving the people towards their goal. (Church and state were all one in this scheme.)

 

In the reading from Matthew, Jesus faces another kind of enemy: religious beurocracy.

 

He is decidedly bold and clear in how he describes how the people are to relate to them:

“do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.”

 

Jesus says that not only do they create problems for other people, but they will not lift a finger to help them with their problems:

-they like to be seen in their robes, to sit at places of honour at banquets and at worship, and to be worshipped by people on the streets. They liked to be called rabbi.

 

Jesus turns all of their expectations and practices upside down by saying that, “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

 

Jesus Christ did not like religious leaders who do not practice what they preach, and he favoured a kind of leadership that serves the people. Jesus preached “servant leadership.”

 

Not only did he not like self-serving leadership in religious leaders, he even condemned them:

“… woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them… For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”

 

Do you think that the scribes and Pharisees could consider themselves told off?

 

Jesus continues telling them off to the end of the chapter. We stopped at vs. 15, but Jesus goes on telling them off right to the end of the chapter, vs. 36.

 

Jesus Christ attacked his enemies with lusty, righteous, full bodied, anger.

 

This is Reformation Sunday. 500 years ago, reformers like John Knox, John Calvin, and Martin Luther, fought the religious beurocracy of the Roman Catholic Church which was lead by people who would not listen. You can decide for yourself as to what has changed in that church or in our church over the last 500 years. Their enemy was the church leaders, much in the same way as Jesus did in today’s text.

 

It has been agreed that Joshua and his people arrived in Palestine from 1250-1225 BC. 1200 years later Jesus Christ encountered his enemies; 500 years ago the Reformers fought the pope, and even today, the experience of being human means that we will still encounter enemies.

 

We do and always will live in the presence of enemies.

 

Given the deaths of two girls this week, are ATV’s the enemy of children?

 

In the church of today we still encounter authentic enemies: apathy, denial, entertainment religion, negative thinking, and sport fundamentalism.

 

Personally people have to deal with enemies: gossip, lies, self doubt and self hatred, poor parenting, misunderstandings, betrayal, sickness, shame, and misadventure.

 

Probably one of the most important things that we can do is admit that there are enemies to face, no matter who we are or when and where we live. Do we admit that there are enemies to face and do we teach our children that there are enemies they must face?

 

I remember another boy trying to fight with me when I was coming home from school one day. I might not have been much of a fighter, but was very strong, so I just picked him up and dumped him in the snow bank, which cooled him off. When I told my father about it, he said, “The guy thought that he was a big wheel,” and Dad asked me if I knew what dogs do to wheels? I did.

 

We have these two stories about Joshua and Jesus. “Joshua” is the Hebrew form of “Jesus.” They are the same name, and they both mean, “He will save his people.”

 

Both Joshua and Jesus believed in the Lord, and so they fought their enemies with the Lord as their guide, as we must fight our enemies with the Lord’s instruction.

 

It is clear that both Joshua and Jesus both confronted and didn’t shy away from their enemies; remember that they each had their support systems, so they weren’t loaners.

 

It is clear that their fight was grounded in their faith; their fight was grounded in their faith.

 

We also must not lose sight that the notion for Joshua and for Jesus was that God was there to serve the best interests of the people. Those who were not interested in the best interests of the people were not on God’s side.

 

Before fighting a battle, one of Abraham Lincoln’s general’s suggested that they pray that God be on their side. Lincoln strongly objected. To the contrary, he said that we must pray that we are on God’s Side.

 

The same is true for us: is all of life’s battles and the enemies we must certainly and continually face, let us not pray that God is on our side, but rather, that we are on God’s side.

 

AMEN                    Rev. Alan Stewart