Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Joshua 24:1-15

I’ve gotten my TV back now that the Yankees are out of the World Series. If you come to visit our house in October, you will likely quickly pick up that at least one person in our house is a Yankees fan. With MLB TV on in the background and everyone but me donning Yankees apparel, in addition to renditions of New York, New York and Take Me Out to the Ball Game where we root, root, root for the Yankees sung at the top of our kids’ lungs, it’s hard to miss. My hope is that you also pick up, even during this time, that we love God and that we are a Christian home, from the chalk blessing from Epiphany that we put on our door to the Holy Family icon that greets you in the entryway and the painting of Jesus on the cross in our living room.
I know that our family is not unique even though we’re pastors in putting Christian symbols and scripture verses up in our home to share our faith. In our reading from Joshua today, we hear that famous verse from 24:15, “As for me and my family, we’ll worship God.” You don’t have to raise your hands, but how many of you have some kind of wall hanging in your home that has that verse on it from Joshua 24:15? It’s a great one, a declaration of our commitment to God. It is a simple way to share our faith with people who visit our home, to let our guests know that our family worships God. However, just like Joshua warns the Israelites, the warning to us today is that this is not a stagnant, once and done commitment. It’s not enough to simply put up the flag of Christianity in our home or a plaque with some nice words on it to tell people outwardly that we are committed to God. That’s the easy part. The hard part is actually living our lives putting God first, before anything else.
This chapter from the end of Joshua is called “Renewing the Covenant,” but it is the second time that Joshua exhorts the people of Israel to follow God instead of other gods or idols. The first time Joshua asks the Israelites to recommit to God is in chapter 8, after the walls of Jericho are destroyed. Let’s take a minute this morning to review where we’re at in the story of the Old Testament as we’ve been walking through it this fall, because God renews the covenant with the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob many, many times. We started with Noah and the flood – God almost completely wipes out every living thing because God is so frustrated and angry with the sinfulness of creation. The flood is God’s big do-over, but God promises Noah that the Earth will never again be destroyed by a flood, no matter how bad we get. Then we heard how God promised Abraham and Sarah land and descendants, but they didn’t QUITE trust God completely – until in their very old age God gave them Isaac. We heard how Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, and Potiphar and his wife put him into prison, yet Joseph remained faithful to God to be able to save the family that betrayed him from famine. And then the last two weeks we’ve been recalling the story of Moses and the Israelites as God led them out of Egypt and gave them the Ten Commandments as rules to live by. Yet, some of you may remember, the Israelites get tired of wandering in the wilderness for forty years, so they build a golden calf to worship. Moses is so angry, he breaks the Ten Commandments, and he has to go up Mount Sinai again to get another set. Our story of faith from the beginning is one of seeking to follow God and failing, over and over again. From Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the garden until now, we are constantly tempted to commit our lives to other things other than God. One of the most tempting gods, in fact, are ourselves. How many of us at one point or another in the day or the week have thought that it would be better if we could do things our way, and have our will be done rather than following God’s will? We say we worship God, but often we worship ourselves and our own wants and desires more often and more easily.
With today’s reading, Moses has died, and Joshua has been appointed the new leader of the Israelites. Joshua is the sixth book of the Old Testament, and God hasn’t given up on his people yet, miraculously. Joshua recounts the same history to the Israelites who have now finally entered the promised land. I often tell people one way we can trust scripture is true is to think about the kind of people would write a memoir that paints such a terribly honest picture of their ancestral heritage? The Israelites just do not look good through much of scripture, yet they honestly tell their struggle to be in faithful relationship to God for us to be encouraged, too. Because here’s some good news: God never gives up. God sticks with the Israelites, as stubborn, strong-willed, and wayward as they are. God keeps his promises. God gives them land. God gives them more than they need to live well in that new land. And God still sticks with us today. God says in Joshua 24, “I handed you a land for which you did not work, towns you did not build. And here you are now living in them and eating from vineyards and olive groves you did not plant.” Therefore, Joshua urges his people, “Fear God. Worship him in total commitment. Get rid of the gods your ancestors worshiped on the far side of The River (the Euphrates) and in Egypt. You, worship God.” Joshua says they can go worship other gods if they want to, but they ought to be clear about that instead of giving God lip service and turning the other way. Then he says that famous verse, “As for me and my family, we’ll worship God.”
Joshua is not just talking about showing up in church for an hour on Sunday to check that to-do off the list. We are not any better than our ancestors in the faith of old. We mess up. We make a lot of other things in our lives more important than God. We build our own golden calves, whether it be making ourselves slaves to our phones or to our calendars, making up excuses for why we don’t have time to pray, why we can’t honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy, and so on. You know where you most struggle to put God before other things in your life. When we talk today about renewing the covenant with God in our own lives, it can’t start with what we’re able to do. If we put ourselves first, we’re only making an idol out of ourselves, thinking somehow we could possibly be more perfect than God. Instead, we can only start with confession to God, that we need help. We’re easily tempted by other gods. We’re easily pulled in other directions. We need forgiveness. We certainly need grace. “As for me and my family, we will worship God,” is not so much as a declaration as a plea, for God to help us – for God to bring us back into awareness that God IS at the center of our lives. As Lutherans, we believe we don’t make God the center of our lives, because God is always at the center of all things. The only thing we do is respond or become more aware of God’s action already at the center. We love God because God first loved us, messed up, imperfect, wayward, broken people. Just like God sticks with Joshua and the Israelites, thanks be to God, God is still sticking with us. Amen.

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Exodus 19:3-7, 20:1-17

This morning we have another opportunity to reflect on the Ten Commandments and their relevance for our lives today. It’s amazing to me how this simple set of rules, given to a completely different culture living thousands of years ago could still be used as a guide for life by us today, with relatively little need for translation! We had the opportunity to dig into the Ten Commandments more in-depth this summer, so today I want to look at them as a whole, thinking about when laws are helpful for our lives, and when they’re not so helpful.
Lutherans approach scripture looking at both what is law and gospel in the text. At first read, the Ten Commandments are simply laws, right? Follow these rules, and you’ll be good with God, we think. But there is actually good news in this passage from Exodus that we have before us today, too. First of all, we hear why God established these laws to live by in the first place: because God loves us. God wants to be in healthy relationship with us, and God wants us to be in healthy relationships with one another. Rules and laws are necessary for any healthy relationship, whether it be laws to govern a nation, bylaws for a standing committee or church council, promises we make to one another in a marriage with our wedding vows, an employee handbook at work, and so on. Rules are helpful for us to know what’s OK and what’s not OK in our relationships with one another. You can take a minute to think about which rules and laws in your own life help you be in better relationships with one another. There are probably also a few rules or laws you can think about that you find burdensome, or not so helpful, like speed limits when you’re in a rush, for example!
The other piece of good news in these chapters from Exodus is that God’s love far exceeds God’s anger when we break any of these commandments. Rabbis have interpreted the passage to mean that God’s love is 500 times stronger than God’s anger, because of God’s reference to anger on the third or fourth generation, but love for the 1000th generation. Similar to a loving relationship with our parents, God’s love and forgiveness is far greater than God’s punishment or consequences for breaking any one of the commandments.
At this point, it could be helpful to know how Lutherans understand the law in juxtaposition with gospel whenever we encounter laws in scripture and in our society today. The Formula of Concord was established in 1577 by Lutheran Reformers, after Martin Luther’s death, and it explains our understanding that the law has three uses. First, the law curbs our sin. Laws, whether legal laws or the ten commandments, serve as a deterrent when we fear punishment. It “stops the open outbreak of sin that will do even further damage.” So for example, the law functioning as a curb may be that I don’t want to commit adultery because I fear that subsequently my spouse will divorce me, in addition to fearing that God will be angry with me. Secondly, the law serves as a mirror. If there are times when we start to get a little too full of ourselves, thinking we’ve got this life thing pretty well figured out, and hey, I haven’t killed anybody or slept with anybody other than my spouse so, I’m good, the law says, “wait a second.” The law as a mirror reminds us of our sin, that we are in need of Christ’s forgiveness and grace because we cannot measure up. When we start to rely on our own efforts to save ourselves by thinking if we just check off those Ten Commandments we’ll be good with God, God holds up a mirror to show us that we still need God – apart from Christ we can do nothing.
And thirdly, the law serves as a guide, and this is probably my favorite understanding of the Ten Commandments, because this is where the law can be good news for us. Thank God we have this gift from God of ten ways we can live in better relationship with God and with one another. We don’t have to guess at what God wants for us. Empowered by the gospel of forgiveness and righteousness because of Christ, we can then strive to live by these rules with the freedom in Christ God gives us. When we mess up, we can rely on God’s forgiveness.
It’s probably easiest to understand how the law can work as a curb, mirror, and guide for us with an example, so here’s one for me personally. Recently, some of you know that I have taken on a new exercise routine. We are preparing to go skiing in Colorado in January, and I am in no shape to spend even a day on the snowy slopes at this point, so I started doing a daily routine to build up my muscle strength. My motivation also started with a curb: at my annual physical, I learned that my cholesterol levels were quite high. This is hereditary in my family, but I knew I could improve those levels by trying to eat better and exercise more regularly. I fear the effects of heart disease, so this got me motivated to get back into shape. I also literally looked in the mirror and thought after having two kids, I can do better than this. And finally, my commitment to these new rules to exercise daily is a guide – I enjoy having more energy and feeling stronger, I can look forward to skiing as a reward along the way, and I can see how regular exercise improves my life. Sometimes I miss a day or two: I break the rules, so to speak, but the grace I give to myself which I believe comes from God is that as long as I stick with my new routine in general, it’s OK if I sometimes miss a day.
The Ten Commandments are not unreasonable – they’re quite simple rules, really, but if you take time to reflect on each of them, the mirror you see of yourself helps you realize there have been times when you have not honored your mother and father, or kept the Sabbath day, or times when you have coveted your neighbor’s stuff. God loves you five hundred times more than he is angry with you for not living up to those rules. God sent his only son into the world to die and be raised for us so that we don’t have to live in constant fear and guilt for not being able to follow these rules. But God does still today encourage us to live in the freedom of the Ten Commandments as a guide for living, for the health and wellbeing of ourselves, our neighbors, and the world. Amen.