Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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"…choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua's words came at a pivotal moment in Hebrew history. After six centuries of promises from God, the Jews finally had their own land. They had crossed the Jordan and conquered it. Joshua, their aging general, military mastermind of their victory, called the leaders of the various tribes and clans together at Shechem, an ancient shrine even then, and laid before them a choice, a choice that would echo down through the ages. His words were a trumpet call to loyalty - a line in the sand, as it were, between the polytheists (worshippers of many gods), represented at that time by all the rest of the world, and the monotheists (worshippers of one god) represented only by this odd little tribe of people called Hebrews. You can't have it both ways, he said. Choose whom ye will serve.

Joshua began by reviewing the long record of God's loyalty to his people, for loyalty is tested in experience over the long term. How God had called Abraham and led him to the holy land. How he had given Abraham and Sarah a child in their old age. How he had saved his people from famine in Egypt, sending Joseph ahead to pave the way. How he had sent Moses to deliver the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery and lead them through the Red Sea. How he had sustained them with manna in the wilderness for forty years. And how he had recently brought them across the Jordan, into this wonderful place, given them fields they didn't plow, houses they didn't build, wells they didn't dig, and vineyards they didn't plant. "Not by your sword or by your bow" did you receive these things, the old warrior insists, but by the hand of God and his faithfulness. And now you must be faithful to him. You have a choice: you can worship the gods your ancestors worshipped "beyond the flood," or "the river," presumably the Euphrates, in the Fertile Crescent, where Abraham had been born. (Don't tell me some of those ancient gods were still hanging around. False gods have a long shelf-life.) Or you can worship Egyptian gods, which some of you picked up during the five hundred years we spent there. Or you can worship the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are now living. But I'm going to worship Yahweh, the Lord, and with him it's all or nothing.

And that was always the rub. I mean, it seemed so unreasonable. What would be the harm if, for example, my crops were failing, and my wife's people had a god they always prayed to for a good harvest, and it seemed to work for them - what would be the harm if I asked that god, that specialist god, to bless my fields? And still worshipped the Lord…as god above all gods. No, Joshua said, you had to foreswear all other gods if you were to worship the Lord. That was the deal. Yahweh is jealous. His claims upon us are exclusive. He has been good to us, and we must be good to him - and stop flirting with other gods.

As the Jewish leaders stood before Joshua that day at Shecem, realizing that they had turned a fateful page and entered a new chapter of Jewish history, and realizing that their beloved general would soon die, they listened closely as he laid out before them the eternal and inescapable moral truth: there is no fence sitting. Not really. Here are the choices, Joshua said: you can serve Mesopotamian gods, or Egyptian gods, or Amorite gods, or the Lord. You cannot serve the Lord in combination with any of the others. And you cannot not serve something. That's not an option. Life doesn't work that way. The great moral conceit, then as well as now, is to believe that we can live life without serving anything or anyone. It's perverse notion of freedom. And it's a lie. Not to choose is to choose. When the last ding dong rings (if anyone is interested) some angel with a mammoth calculator will be able to add up where all our energy actually went, where all our money actually went, where our time went, what we thought most about, what we wanted most - and that will be our god, that will be who or what we served. And the book on our life will be closed. One person's page might say, "His god was golf." Or, "Her god was her family" Or, "He served money." Or it might be cars, or women, or drugs, or power, or other people's praise. But the calculation will be there and no one will be able to escape it. We will have served something, when all is said and done. Like the grocery store receipt: God's judgement will say very clearly what we bought, or bought into, while we were in the store.

Maybe, instead of calling this Commitment Sunday we should call it "Choice Sunday," for the whole purpose of all this talk about giving is to remind people that they do have a choice, an important choice to make, about where their money goes. It can go to other gods, but it can't go nowhere. There will be, in fact, an accurate record as to how we spent it or invested it.. And that's crucial because, in this world, we vote on what we think is important with our dollars.

One of the most effective methods for getting people to eat less is simply to have them write down everything that goes into their mouths. What, when and how much. The strategy works because people kid themselves about how much they eat. When they see the actual record, they are surprised, and often shocked. In the same way, people kid themselves about where their money goes. When it is laid out for them, they are often surprised and sometimes shocked.

The real battle in most of our lives is not between good and bad but between good and best. I assume, for purposes of this sermon, that most of us are not "wasting our substance in riotous living," like the Prodigal Son, but that, like everyone, we have honest choices to make, priorities to establish among our commitments. What's good, what's better, what's best? Those other gods, in Joshua's day, weren't all that bad, some of them had some nice qualities about them, and they made people happy, but in contrast to the Lord, they were nothing and had to be foresworn. All those little pearls were really quite pretty, but seen beside the pearl of great price, it was obvious that they all had to be sold. We often have to choose between what is good and what is best. We have to choose, and not just with our money but with every aspect of our lives. And we cannot sit on the fence. "Choose this day whom ye will serve….as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."