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SERMONS

The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 27, 2006

Have you ever noticed that it can sometimes to be difficult to receive a gift?

Sometimes the hardest gifts to receive are those that are free, because there are no strings attached.

One of the difficult gifts that we receive from God is the freedom to make choices. The moral sphere in which we live is not a climate controlled environment; none of us lives in a moral vacuum. We always live within the tug of war of virtue and vice.

A popular message in popular Christianity and popular politics is that only recently have people forgotten their obligations to God; it is only recently that we see the rising of a "Me" generation. It is only with this generation, this generation who is coming along right behind me, just here behind me, that folks have become self-centered.

It will be this generation that steps into the abyss. It will be this generation that will unravel the moral fiber of society.

Impending doom and eminent catastrophe make for fascinating religious and moral discussion - it also sells a lot of books and magazines.

However, as we read Joshua this morning, we see that a "Me" generation is not a recent phenomenon.

Here we see Joshua, having lived his life in the service of God and Israel, placing the burden of freedom, the burden of choice, directly onto the shoulders of the Israelites.

"Choose this day whom you will serve . . . The Lord, of the gods of this land."

Already the people of Israel have followed Moses out of Egypt, through the Wilderness. Already they have followed Joshua into battle to gain the land promised by God to Israel. Israel has accomplished the cherished dream of becoming a landed nation - and this morning we hear Joshua speaking to her landed gentry. As Joshua addresses the leaders of Israel, she is about two or three generations into her independence and prosperity. And so he shares with them the burden of liberty, the gift of "choice."

"Choose this day whom you will serve."

It is a question of loyalty.

Perhaps some in Israel have traded a single-minded loyalty to God for the compromises of a divided heart.

"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."

Joshua is confronting the Me generation of his own day; he is telling the landed gentry, the leaders of Israel, that they cannot have their cake and eat it too. Joshua's message is that in this life, in this world, all things are not equal, all behaviors are not equal, all loyalties are not equal. Our hearts, souls, and minds are not ours to pawn off to the highest cultural bidder.

All the moments of this life are given to us as a gift from God; and these moments are given to us with sole purpose that we might find the joy in choosing to give them back to God, that we might experience joy in choosing well. We are given our lives so that we might choose to give them back to God.

Like the Israelites we might be tempted to construct our own reality, a god who is the figment of our imaginations. We always face the temptation of unholy compromises with illussion's of our own making. Generally we are motivated by fear - a fear of the unknown, a fear of being judged, a fear of being vulnerable and directed. There is also the desire what is often coined the "good life," at the expense of having the life that God is trying to give us.

How are we to be in the world with out simply being of the world?

Joshua is speaking to a people who are struggling with a very heavy burden; it is the burden of trying to carry two worlds, two deities, on its shoulders. It is a burden that would crush each of us, it is too much to bear, trying to serve multiple gods.

There is a story of a modern day Joshua presenting some of God's children with the choice of whom to serve.

Malcolm Muggeridge was a journalist during the 50's and 60's in England. He was elected as Rector of the University of Edinburgh, something like being elected the Chancellor of the University. In January of 1968, Muggeridge resigned his post because he would not agree with the lowering the prohibitions against the buying and selling of marijuana on campus. Muggeridge called a campus wide meeting to announce his resignation. The students were booing and hissing and throwing things at him at the podium. Here is some of what he said:

"The students of this university are the beneficiaries of centuries of selfless scholarship. You are supposed to spearhead progress and carry on the torch of humanity. Speaking for myself there is practically nothing that you could do in a mood of rebellion against our impoverished way of life for which I should not feel some degree of sympathy. But how infinitely sad, how macabre that the form of your rebellion should be a demand for drugs, for the most tenth-rate sort of self indulgence ever known in history. All is prepared for a release of new life. We await great works of art from you, a spirit of courage and adventure, and then what do we get from you? Self-centered folly. You are on a crazy slope. For myself, I always come back to the King, to Jesus, to the Christian notion that all of our efforts to make ourselves happy will fail, but that sacrifice for others will never fail. A person must become a new person, or he is no human being . . . as far as I am concerned it is Christ or nothing . . . Good bye and God bless you."

The room was silent as he left the lectern. There was not a sound or stirring among the entire gathering. And then slowly groups of students here and there began to file out of the auditorium in silence.

You see, Muggeridge had become their Joshua on that day: Choose this day whom you are going to serve. He confronted them with the liberty they so desperately wanted to hold in their own hands.

In our lives as Christians we will all face hard decisions about whom we will serve in our lives. These decisions will test the depths or the shallows of our conviction. Perhaps we have made unholy compromises with the "gods of the land." Perhaps we too like Israel have traded a single-minded devotion to our Creator, for multiple devotions to smaller gods who promise to strengthen our hold on what we call "the good life," rather than preparing us for the life that God would give us.

Joshua's question walks with us all the days of our lives, "Choose this day . . ."

We are given our lives so that we might discover the joy and meaning that "choosing well" brings, that we might use our free gift wisely, and choose to give our lives back to the One from whom they were given.

God desires to make to this an everlasting friendship. You see, we are made in his image, and he has already chosen us. God has chosen to love us, all that follows is for us to allow ourselves to be chosen. We are first loved so that we might love.

As one of our beloved saints has said, St. Augustine, "He who made us without our help, cannot save us without our consent."

My friends, may we choose wisely.