A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
16th October 2022
Joshua and the Israelites crossing the Jordan (Gustave Doré)
At the end of September, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin
announced the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions by Moscow.
Laying claim to 18% of Ukrainian land,
he said that these territories would be ‘Russian forever’.
In response, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
said that, “All territories illegally occupied by Russian invaders
are Ukrainian land and will always be a part of this sovereign nation.”
Next month a group of us from Bloomsbury
will be visiting the occupied territory of Palestine,
where two people-groups, two governments,
both assert their ownership over the same piece of land.
Is the West Bank Israeli? Or is it Palestinian?
And perhaps, if a path to peace is to be found, can it be both?
These arguments over the eternal sovereignty of land
are an integral part of the current conflicts in both Ukraine and Palestine,
and also in many other places around the world.
Whereas the historical reality, of course,
is that land ownership shifts over the centuries,
and very few places on this this planet can even begin to lay the claim
that they have belonged to the same people-group since time immemorial.
Well, there’s nothing new under the sun,
as the writer of Ecclesiastes put it (1.9);
and in our reading today from the book of Joshua,
as we continue our journey through the Hebrew Bible
we encounter a story that is predicated on some very specific claims
to land-ownership and God’s will.
From the perspective of the person who wrote the book of Joshua,
the Promised Land is promised, in its entirety,
to the people of Israel for all time.
Except, of course, as is so often the case where land is concerned,
it’s nowhere near that simple.
Even within the book of Joshua itself
there is no single, clear, unambiguous vision
for what the borders of the land of Israel are to be,
or how they are to be divided up.
And this reflects the fact that this is another one of those examples,
of a book being written many, many centuries,
after the setting for the events it is seeking to describe.
So, if you were to read through the chapters of Joshua
leading up to our reading today from the final chapter,
you would find a number of different ‘land ideologies’ in play.
varying in their relatedness to on the one hand concrete historical reality,
and on the other hand an idealistic and idealised vision of what ‘Israel’ should be.
So, at the idealistic end,
we find the Promised land neatly packaged into portions
carefully allocated to the tribes of Israel.
But at the more realistic end,
we find stories of land still belonging to other people groups
who are not part of the 12 tribes,
including the so-called ‘people who remain’
who, it seems, are the original inhabitants of the land,
still holding large territories within Israel (13.2-6),
despite having been apparently entirely wiped out
only a few years before.
Back to the idealistic end again,
we have horrific stories of total conquest,
of a divinely ordained genocide of all those living in the land
as the Israelites crossed the Jordan to take their inheritance.
But then at the more realistic end,
we have stories of Philistines, Geshurites, and Avvim,
of Caananites, the Sidonians, and Amorites,
of the Gebalites and the Lebanese;
all living within the supposedly conquered and cleansed land
that flows with milk and honey.
And then if we return to the idealistic end of the spectrum,
we find that the borders of Israel
extend far west and north beyond the Jordan,
all the way to the distant Euphrates;
but back at the realistic end,
we find Israel defined as nothing more
than a series of partially occupied territories
confined to the land east of the Jordan
sandwiched between the river and the Mediterranean Sea.
It’s not as clear cut as many would like to think,
and certainly the book of Joshua is no use at all
as a guide to discerning the divinely ordained historical borders of Israel.
Rather, what we have here,
is a story written a millennia after the time it is describing;
and as is often the case with ancient historical narratives,
it tells us far more about the people who wrote it
than it does about the situation it is seeking to describe.
The reality is, that, from an historical point of view,
there is no evidence to support the conquest of Canaan
as we find it described in the book of Joshua.
Far more likely, the so-called conquest
was a slow process of migration, cohabitation, and assimilation,
as incoming tribal groups intermarried and intermingled,
with the people already living in the land,
sometimes with fighting, sometimes without.
As we all know from the contemporary experience of immigration to this country,
incoming groups often retain their identity
as distinct for two or three generations,
but then the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the initial immigrants
become assimilated to the culture,
both shaping and adopting to a new culture of combined customs.
The easy rhetoric about ‘them’ and ‘us’ breaks down in time.
We no longer notice the divisions between Angles and Saxons,
between Normans and Vikings,
and one day our descendants will have set aside
all the current suspicions and stigmas
that we attach to cultures and identities in our time.
And so it was with ancient Palestine,
as the incoming people of Israel moved into occupied territory.
Except, as we discovered last week,
the sins of the parents are visited on the children
even to the third or fourth generation.
And at the time the book of Joshua came to be written,
there were still ethnic and ideological battles being fought
over what it meant to be part of the people of Israel.
over what it meant to be the heirs
to the covenants of Noah, Abraham, and Sinai.
And so we find ourselves, for a few minutes,
in the reign of King Josiah,
who was King of Israel in the seventh century BCE (640-609BCE).
So, we’re about 650 years before the birth of Jesus,
and in that tricky time in Israel’s history
between the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel
at the hands of the Assyrians,
and the coming invasion of the Southern Kingdom by the Babylonians.
The Israelites in that period knew that they were in a sticky situation:
the large empires of Assyria and Babylon were sabre-rattling
and invasion seemed an ever present threat.
We find the story of Josiah’s reign in the second book of Chronicles,
and it begins when he was crowned
at the age of just eight years old.
A decade later, when he was 18,
he apparently went through something of a religious conversion,
and decided to ‘seek the God of his father David’.
The significant thing here is that David, who of course was his ancestor, not his father,
was the much-mythologised king of Israel from many centuries before,
and the stories of David spoke in idealised terms a united Israel,
of a time when Israel’s territory expanded to the fullest extent.
So, King Josiah announcing that he will ‘seek the God of his father David’,
is a statement of intent:
he is setting his course on a nationalistic agenda.
He’s going to mark his period in power by playing to people’s nationalism,
by appealing to their sense of ethnic identity.
And as populist nationalist rulers have often discovered,
this can be an effective strategy.
So, riding a wave of renewed religious fervour,
he set about destroying the altars of the Baal religion,
these symbols of another culture, another people.
He persecuted the prophets of Baal,
and restored the temple in Jerusalem.
King Josiah in fact ordered his High Priest, Hilkiah,
to use the tax money to renovate the temple,
and somewhat conveniently, whilst doing so, Hilkiah discovered a scroll
apparently hidden for centuries in the temple treasure room.
When Josiah reads this scroll,
he discovers that it sets out a theological perspective
that is perfectly in tune with his own nationalist agenda.
Not only, it seems, does Josiah have history on his side,
he now also has God on his side too.
And what this scroll describes
is a way of looking at the world,
whereby when you are obedient to God,
then God rewards you with prosperity and success,
and when you are disobedient to God,
you experience failure and defeat.
And how do you know what God wants?
Well, you ask the priest!
And how does the priest know what God wants?
Well, it’s in the priest’s interest
for this to be in line with what the king wants.
And so Josiah creates a highly effective mechanism for control,
where history, theology, and the religious establishment
are all in sync with his agenda to reform, restore, and rebuild Israel.
The fact that he’s harking back to a golden age
that never really existed, is irrelevant.
It’s the power of the myth that matters,
and a good story can carry a lot of power.
So Josiah calls an assembly of all the people, and all the elders of the people,
and declares that only the worship of The Lord will be allowed.
All other forms of worship, all other gods, are outlawed,
and the local sanctuaries, or High Places, were destroyed,
from Beer-sheba in the south
to Bethel and the cities of Samaria in the north.
Josiah had pagan priests executed
and even had the bones of the dead priests of Bethel
exhumed from their graves and burned on their own altars.
It’s a move not dissimilar to the exhumation of Oliver Cromwell’s body
after the restoration of the monarchy,
so that he could be hung drawn and quartered;
and it’s a powerful public symbol
that the new regime is here to stay.
Josiah also reinstituted the Passover celebrations,
taking this festival of God releasing Israel from enslavement,
and turning into a symbol of national identity
around which he required people to flock.
All of this is essential, he says,
because if there is any compromise,
God will remove God’s blessing,
and the people will be overcome by the threat of invasion
from the neighbouring nations.
It’s not quite North Korea,
but it’s not all that far from it.
Josiah constructs a highly centralised state,
with a powerful propaganda machine,
where non-compliance from his ideology is absolutely forbidden.
And part of this programme is the writing, or re-writing,
of the nation’s religious texts,
of their founding mythologies.
It’s quite Orwellian,
as history itself becomes a tool to serve the king’s agenda.
And so we get the beginnings of what will become the book of Deuteronomy,
a highly revisionist history of Israel,
where the story is told in such a way as to justify the conviction,
that obedience leads to blessing
and disobedience to destruction.
If you read through Deuteronomy,
you can see this again and again,
as Israel’s fortunes rise and fall
in line with their obedience to the law of the Lord.
It is also in this period that the book of Joshua comes into being,
telling it’s stories of Israel’s ancient pre-history,
describing their occupation of the promised land,
and their destruction of its pagan inhabitants.
The book of Joshua is thus highly idealised, politicised history,
written to justify the ideology of Josiah’s regime
under which it was created.
This is King Josiah’s preferred view of history,
because it all points to him!
The fact that at no point did any of this happen as written,
and that the political realities even of Josiah’s time
don’t reflect the ideology of the book he had written,
is not the point.
This is not history,
it’s a cautionary tale for seventh century BCE Israelites.
It’s a story written to scare people into compliance,
to inspire obedience to Josiah’s programme of reform.
It’s message is clear:
if the people are obedient to the Lord,
by which he means, of course, himself,
then Israel will prosper once again.
And the final chapter of the book of Joshua,
which we had in our reading today,
is the culmination of this process,
describing the renewal of the covenant between God and God’s people
in such a way as to appropriate it to King Josiah’s ideology.
This final chapter is set as a gathering of the people of Israel,
called together by the ancient warrior-of-old Joshua,
whose exploits in subduing the native Canaanite population
had become the stuff of legend.
The gathering is set in Shechem,
a symbolic location as it was the place where the Lord appeared to Abraham,
and where Abraham build the first altar to the Lord.
If you’re wanting to conduct a ritual of religious cleansing,
this is the perfect location.
And so in the story Joshua goes through all of God’s mighty deeds,
as the basis for the request which is coming,
that the people purify themselves, and serve the Lord alone.
And then we get this interesting dialogue
between Joshua and the people,
on the issue of serving other gods.
Joshua’s request is very clear:
that all the people should renew their commitment
to the historic covenant established on that same spot by Abraham.
And the theology that requires this is also very clear:
if the people abandon The Lord and serve other gods,
then the Lord will judge them, do them harm, and consume them.
It’s all very frightening, very manipulative, very Josiah.
and it’s straight from the playbook
of how to be a populist nationalist leader.
So, what are we to make of all this?
How does this ancient story of revisionist history, genocide, and invasion
speak to our Christian faith as it takes shape in our world?
Well, I want to offer a few thoughts to guide us.
Firstly, I think we need to be very wary
of any collusion between the church and the state.
It’s very easy for church institutions
to become part of the national propaganda in any society.
We can see this in the way the Russian Orthodox Church
are colluding with Putin to provide theological and ideological justification
for the invasion of Ukraine.[1]
Historically, we Baptists have always stayed at one remove
from the established structures of the state,
it’s why we don’t sing the national anthem in church,
or fly the national flag.
But we take this stand, not because we are called to disengage from politics,
but because we want to be free to offer our critique
as we engage with the events of our day.
I’m always amazed to see Baptist churches in other parts of the world
flying the flag for their country.
This seems to be to be a betrayal
of the very basis on which we were founded,
that people should be free from the influence of the state
in the affairs of their religion.
Friends – we are first and foremost citizens of the Kingdom of God,
our King is Jesus, and our God is the Lord,
and we need to pay close attention
to stories like the one we have been reading today,
as we reflect on the ready tendency of people of faith,
to pay allegiance to the state
at the expense of their witness to the alternative kingdom of God
for which they pray every time they repeat the Lord’s prayer.
Your kingdom come… on earth, as it is in heaven.
But secondly, as we continue to reflect
on our reading from the end of the book of Joshua,
I think this story calls us to consider before God
our response to those places in our world
where land us used as a tool of oppression.
Our church visit to Palestine in a few weeks,
will take us into the heart of occupied territory,
as we spend time with the Palestinian Christian community,
who see their role as peacemakers
in the middle of this conflict over land
that is both ancient and contemporary.
The ideology of Josiah, and the stories of Joshua that he created,
played a part in defining the foundational mythology of the promised land,
which echoed down to the post war project to re-create the land of Israel.
And so the conflict over the holy land continues,
as people occupy, and people are displaced,
and suffering is experienced on all sides,
to the third and fourth generation and beyond.
But of course it’s not just Palestine, and it’s not just Ukraine,
there are many places around the world
where war, occupation, and oppression are daily realities.
And those of us who owe our allegiance to the prince of peace
have a part to play in bringing peace to the world.
And it begins, I suggest, but not turning away,
but rather taking the conscious decision
to keep aware of where people are suffering around the world, and why.
Our founding minister here at Bloomsbury, William Brock,
famously declared that the best tools for the preacher
are the Times Newspaper and Bible,
and I think he’s right, although for me it’s usually a combination
of the BBC, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera, rather than the Times.
But this twin commitment,
to deep engagement with scripture on the one hand
and informed engagement with what’s going on in the world on the other,
is not just about preaching,
it’s about praying.
And whilst only a few of us get to preach,
we all get to pray.
So let us allow the media reports to drive us to our knees,
as we pray for those who suffer;
and by praying we create a world
where their suffering is no longer invisible,
where their plight is no longer ignored.
Turning our faces towards those whom we could so easily pass by
is the first step of the path to change,
as our lives and their become intertwined
within the mystery of God.
The book of Joshua is not an easy read,
and it raises for us the fundamental question
of which God it is that we will worship.
Do we choose the nationalist God,
who fights for us against our enemies,
and promises us blessings if we obey God’s commands?
Or do we choose a different God,
one revealed in Jesus?
One who calls us to pray and work for peace,
to judge not let we also be judged,
and to love our neighbour as ourselves.
But as for me and my household,
we will serve the Lord Jesus
[1] https://time.com/6167332/putin-russian-orthodox-church-war-ukraine/
