‘When your children ask in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the covenant of the Lord. So these stones shall be to the Israelites a memorial forever.’ (Joshua 4:6-7)
What do these stones mean? This has really been our question all Fall as we have lived with the rich and complex stories of Genesis and Exodus. On that very first Gathering Sunday in September, with the calling of Abram and Sarai to leave their familiar home, they built an altar, and so did we, piling up stones. Each Sunday we added stones, for the Biblical characters and for us as we saw ourselves in their struggles and very humanness – and our altar grew in stature and significance, as more and more layers of stones and meaning and nuance were added. As we finished the arc of the Genesis stories with Joseph and his family reconciling, we all came forward in the sanctuary in a ritual of adding the stones from our lives to this living altar – Here by the water, I’ll build an altar to praise you, knowing you can make them holy. The Exodus stories of midwives and plagues and deliverance and wilderness, and the struggles and callings of Moses added stones coming from the River, from the waters, from the Nile to the Jordan. All fall we have named these stones, this altar, as a track record of God’s faithfulness in our lives. We have also named how complicated these stories are, and truly asked what all the back stories have been, the pain, the unfaithfulness, the power dynamics, the family systems and patterns, and the very human struggles that mark all our lives just as they mark the Biblical story.
So what do these stones mean? It really is about how we tell our stories. When we pick up a stone and place it on an altar, we make decisions about how we tell the story. What do we give significance and air time to? What parts of the story are left out or ignored? What subversive voices and alternative tellings sneak through despite ourselves? What values come through in our telling? And what kind of God is revealed? Is it a God of judgement and revenge, demanding a sacrifice, or is it the God of Compassion and Love and Grace that is able to use the fragments of our stories and our lives to be a part of God’s upside down kingdom? – the question Don asked so powerfully 2 Sundays ago with the plagues. All these questions come to the fore in our story for today, the crossing of the people of Israel into the Promised Land, where they pause, pick up 12 stones from the River Jordan and ask what do these stones mean? How will they tell this story to their children, to the generations to come?
Several things strike me about how the story is told. The river looms large. Crossing the river will be a huge transition. The people have been wandering in the desert for 40 years after their escape from Egypt. They have been living by promise, by trust, by hope in an unknown future, utterly reliant on God. Now they will become landed – secure, well off – with all the temptations that involves – to live by power, to rely on their own strength, to ignore the poor and dispossessed, to turn to violence, to forget their history, to forget what has been a gift. But first they have to cross a river, cross the waters. This is a big deal. Remember, back in Egypt the river was where they hid their babies from Pharaoh; the river was what stood in front of them as the armies chased them down, before they miraculously parted; the river stands in front of them now – with its own fears of drowning; the river contains their fears and their grief. For God to part the waters once again, now on the Jordan River, was a sign of God’s compassion – ‘I know the waters are scary for you, but I will be with you.’ They had been told 3 times at the start of this story to be strong and courageous. Is this a war cry or does it acknowledge how scared the people are – their fears of the water, of what a new life will do them, of how crossing the river will change them? No wonder they pick up 12 stones from the dry river bed to create an altar in an act of worship.
So it would be easy to just leave this story at that – God opening up the waters to allow the people to cross into the Promised Land and a new life, worthy of building an altar. But we know the book of Joshua continues, and that the land they enter is already occupied; that the city of Jericho will tumble and fall and they will devote to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city; that battles will ensue throughout the book with so much utterly destroyed that by the end of chapter 11 it says ‘Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses; … And (then) the land had rest from war.’ (Joshua 11:23) We know that in subsequent history, this conquest story has been drawn upon to justify many wars, the takeover of peoples, the colonization of Indigenous land, and so on. We are currently witnessing war over land in Israel and Gaza and this drive to utterly destroy the other. No matter what the war, so often people have claimed God is on their side. There is an easy painting of who is evil and good, who it a terrorist and a war hero, who needs to be destroyed, who is justified. The stories of war get told in ways that mask its utter horror. We use euphemisms – there were some incursions with unintended civilian casualties, collateral damage, targeted shootings, boots on the ground, Collective punishment for a greater good, so many ‘wounded’ and so on. We don’t speak the truth in plain language that hostages are real people who get imprisoned and live through hell, and hospitals get bombed with real people dying and suffering life altering injuries and physical pain, and damaged infrastructure are leveled irreparable homes where people once lived productive lives, and water and power and food and communication get cut off with their real consequences of human suffering, disease and starvation, and real people suffer the permanent damage of watching neighbours, family and children die agonizing deaths, and soldiers return from the battlefield with PTSD and lose so much of their humanity. There are no winners in war. How we tell these stories make a difference. What does this signify with how we tell our stories – whether collective or personal? What do we do with how the story is written up in Joshua? What euphemisms get used in our telling? What do these stones mean?
The late Rachel Held Evans, in her book ‘Inspired’ (Nelson Books, 2018) struggles with the Bible’s war stories. The question of God’s character haunts these scenes. (Ibid, p.64) Was God really the main actor in these horrific stories of destruction and texts of terror? She asks about the fall of Jericho – ‘Was it the shouts of a holy army, the guttural drone of seven shofars, the weight of God in the marking of human feet against a mighty empire’s fortress? Or a ragtag gang of mercenaries, hungry for plunder, who talked a prostitute (Rahab) into betraying her people and unlocking the door? It depends on who tells the story.’ (Ibid, p.59) We could wonder too what the story would sound like from the perspective of the Canaanites.
Why did the Bible, the author of Joshua, the people of Israel, tell the story the way it is told? Some scholars have speculated that the crossing into the Promised Land was historically more a slow assimilation, infiltration and migration, rather than violent confrontation. Was it so important to tell the story in a way to be seen as that strong and courageous people that could defeat the enemy? To claim strength and victory? To claim God on their side? Much of the story reads this way. At the same time, there are these subversive aspects to the story that sound different than your standard war story. They start to chip away at the dominant narrative. Rather than a mighty army, there is this strange marching around the city 7 times and blowing of trumpets and shouting – not your standard war strategy. The people of Israel are told over and over again to not rely on their own strength or on military preparedness or strategy. Do not be like the nations and armies around you. There is the story of Rahab – this unclean foreign woman who shows mercy on the Israelite spies and then is shown mercy herself, later becoming a part of the genealogy of Jesus. What might mercy look like? Then there is this short little passage just before the story of Jericho – at the end of chapter 5. (5:13-15) Joshua has a vision and sees a man, an angel?, with a drawn sword and Joshua demands ‘Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?’ In other words, are you for us or against us? The answer – ‘Neither…. remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy.’ God is not standing on one side or the other. God is beyond our control or understanding. You cannot invoke my name for your purposes. And yet the people still do when they tell their story… and yet we still do. There are enough blips in this story telling that set a different alternative trajectory.
I am not sure if I have a totally satisfactory answer to the question of war and destruction in Joshua or other places in the Bible. There are enough cautions within the narrative itself to make one pause and not take at face value the claim of God being on the side of the victors. What is clear to me is that this story shows the horror of war and its very real human cost and that this story cannot be used to justify our own use of violence or war, or the claiming of God on our side for war. I like what Rachel Held Evans writes after struggling with these same stories and how they get told: ‘If the God of the Bible is true, and if God became flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ… then God would rather die by violence than commit it. The cross makes this plain. On the cross, Christ not only bore the brunt of human cruelty and bloodlust and fear, he remained faithful to the nonviolence he taught and modeled throughout his ministry… On the cross, Jesus chose to align himself with victims of suffering rather than the inflictors of it.’ (Ibid, p.77) It is how Jesus lived and taught and died that informs how I read even a book like Joshua.
What do these stones mean? How do we tell our stories? Last weekend Rachel and I were able to visit our daughter Lorena and Hannah in Ottawa, our first time seeing them since their wedding in June. We explored all over the city and surrounding area, and saw the school where Lorena is teaching. On the Sunday morning we worshipped at Ottawa Mennonite Church and it happened to be the installation service and celebration for Hannah’s father Andy Brubacher Kaethler as pastor there – so wonderful fortuitous timing. He started in September at Ottawa Mennonite after 20 years teaching at AMBS, our Mennonite seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. The surprise event of the weekend, was that Ottawa Mennonite was hosting a Steve Bell concert on Saturday night – so we got a concert to boot out of the weekend. Steve Bell is a well known and respected musical artist from Southern Manitoba. The second song he sang was the song that has become a kind of theme song this for us this fall – Here by the Water. While not the composer, Steve Bell was the one who popularized that song for many and it was great to hear him sing it live. He followed it immediately by his Palm Sunday favourite that made Voices Together – ‘Holy, Holy, Holy Lord – God of Power and Might. Heaven and earth of your glory are full, Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest.’ (VT 314). What I so appreciated were his comments after these 2 songs. Over time, he has felt almost sheepish about this ‘power and might’ image of God in his song. How can one sing that image in light of current world conflicts? More and more he sees the example of Jesus, and that Jesus came in vulnerability as an infant human, in weakness – showing us the self sacrificial non violent way of the cross. On Palm Sunday he came in riding a donkey rather than a war horse – and that is the connection he made – this is how God shows power and might – through vulnerability. His comments helped me re-frame a passage like we have had today in Joshua – who is this God of power and might, but the very same one who says that strength comes through weakness, and power and might through love and mercy and grace.
And it helps me think about the altars we make and what these stones mean for us? Can we be honest about our own vulnerabilities and weaknesses? Can we tell the stories of our lives and the people we love that acknowledge their complexities and nuances? Can we lament and name the things going on in our world that disturb us? Can we tell our stories without using euphemisms or code phrases? Can we name when have seen God at work in our lives, in our very humanness – and name that it is God working through us that can allow us to be strong and courageous, grounded in God’s love and grace? This is what these stones mean?
In a few minutes we are going to light our Eternity Sunday candles and remember losses and remember loved ones who have died. One of the images often used for death has been ‘crossing the river’ or ‘crossing into the Promised Land.’ It captures that sense of mystery and struggle and crossing into the unknown we find in our story for today. It captures that hope for new life. God parts the waters of our fears, our questions, our vulnerabilities, our anxieties, our hopes and our dreams. This image and this story allow us to speak honestly about death too, and speak honestly about the people we remember – in both their imperfection and their beloved-ness.
In our candle lighting, we will take our time and leave space for prayer, silence, and memory. We will leave space for the God who parts the waters before us, bids up to pick up the stones we see and build an altar, knowing God can make them holy, and who invites us and our world into God’s extravagant love and grace. What do these stones mean? Amen.