Intervention...choose Joshua 24

If anyone is following along... not that I think anyone is... you have been following the development of line of thought in the last two posts. I've been trying to wrestle with the reading for Joshua which is the OT reading for November 9th. The reading itself is the final say on a book of the Bible that demonstrates Gods strength in protecting his people but is also quick to point out that if God's people fail to commit, they will be nothing. God as revealed in Joshua is not a warm, squishy God but one of might. As evidenced by the disjointed nature found in the last two posts this line of thought has not been all that concise nor very strait. Two posts ago I became impressed not only with Joshua's cojones... ie the ability to stand up with strait truth to his people instead of trying to convince him that he was correct or they were in error... but also the image of God being proclaimed who either receives us or spits us out. The image that came to me was that of God as a center in basketball. If he be for us then our commitment will be recieved like a point guard feeding him the ball. Exploding out of the paint he'll jam it home. If we say we're for him but have not really made a commitment, then, as this reading reveals, God will stand like a lion blocking our feeble attempts from even getting close. The point of fact is that Joshua seems completely ok with the Israelites either chasing after false gods and getting de"vow"ered or living up to their conviction and sticking the covenant. In the last post I spent more time with the book of Joshua, recognizing that like Marcion, God's wrath in Joshua might interfere with Christian sensibilities and have modern Christians, like Marcion, seek to remove the book and all that it has to offer from sight. I did play with the way Jesus does demonstrate his 'wrathfulness' in the Gospels seeking to unify God's will and as essential found both in the old and new testaments. Emasculating Jesus does not seem the best solution in seeking to nullify God's strength as reavealed in the OT. Like Joshua seems to suggest in today's reading- God will not be mocked.



And where did the path lead? It led right to the most damning question that a preacher should wrestle with... why does any of this matter to the souls who show up on Sunday morning? It matters because this question of commitment.... true genuine commitment.... is about life. It is to damn easy to get caught up in trying to figure out God. We'll spend countless hours wondering if Jesus was correct or if the writers of the old testament actually had a clue or if the church has any value beyond supporting itself. And why do we do this? Because it is easier to wonder what God is about then to stare into the void of life and death. Give me starbucks. Give me my childrens homework. Give me even a failing economy... anything but that deep dark void of death that will come when the bio-electrical system that supports this very typing shuts down.



Death is morbid! Don't go there! The fact that life precedes it does not much make it easier to deal with. Easier to wonder what God might be about then live into the claim that it is God Himself who sustains our life and the other dramatic claim that if we are to live we must live to the Lord. This is in fact the claim that Joshua is suggesting to the people. What will your choice be? Whom will you live for? Will you live for life itself? Choose this day...

Most of the time we live lives that do not make us aware of this ongoing choice. The fact is that I can idly while away my time thinking of other things. That fact does not make the central question go away or eliminate it from always being a very present reality. The fact is the choose this day option is alway on... always present... always knock, knock, knocking. It is my ignorance of this that sends me following false Gods. Not in the sense that on thursday I'll bow down to baal and on Friday I'll chat with Vishnu. No like the israelites in the promiseland (A christian baptised) I can on time to time remember that God has liberated me, acknowledge that my life is infinitely better due to the relationships I've had with the faithful, be conscious that based on past experiences and the reading of scripture that God is wonderful and after doing so go back to my own devises and pursuits of my heart. These too are false Gods. This certainly is weak commitment. It is this weak game that God smacks away. Don't bring me your clouded delusions, God says, I am the God of life... and life is what I take.

And it is when life comes down on the line do we begin to see the commitment that Joshua is presenting to the people. Choose the living or choose the dead. To follow God is to choose the living. This becomes most apparent in an intervention.

An intervention is a hard thing. It's purpose is to present a choice to one who is lost. In most cases interventions are done on drunks or drug addicts... their lives so spent on death that the option for life or death must be clearly drawn. No longer are they able to see truth. They think their way of life, consumed by false Gods of delusion, apathy, and the numbness of toxins is the only way out. Often the only way to save their life is for a group of people to intervene on them. Sobriety or the street they often say. Life or death and if you choose death you will do it on the street.

An intervention does not come about easy. It is the result often of a family who in watching their loved one die drink by drink have exhausted every hope in trying to help their sick person get well. An intervention for the family is often the last result... an admision of powerlessness... dad, mom, uncle bill has squandered all hope. We must act abandoning even the result. Dad, mom, uncle bill we love you but we will no longer watch you chase the false Gods of addiction, selfishness, greed, remorse... we are powerless... to stay in covenant with us you must choose. Choose this day... life or death.... we want you to choose life.

And that question at the moment of intervention is presented and sits out there. Our drunk who has allowed this question past the defenses of a lifetime knows now the God whom Joshua presents in todays reading. He or she may attempt to justify trying to remove the mantle of God's weight upon their shoulders... but I'm a Christian, but I have been good, but I have prayed and tithed and loved... and like the false God's that have led to this moment they will be swated aside. God will not be mocked. God will dismiss them not because he does not love the broken child of God there in front of him but because he does. There in that hoped for moment of awareness, where the drunk or addict, comes face to face with the true powerless self, he or she comes face to face to the God in the paint. Bring anything but life and it will be swated away. Choose life and God will open up the Red Sea. I am the God of life Joshua reveals I am the God whom chose you. Chose me and I will open up the promiseland. Chose me and nothing, not plague, war, terror, or power will seperate you from me. I am life God says... I love you....only I am able to transform you...from the lowest bottom to newest life....choose.

And that is what hangs in the balance in an intervention. The individual, through prophets who they themselves have experienced the powerlessness of watching sickness consume their loved one, present the choice of life or the ongoing persuit of death. Get sober or get dying. Like Red in the shawshank redemption announces, Get busy living or get busy dying. Our God will not be mocked. He is not a pinch hitter. His love appears like razors to the one pursuing death- chipping away at all that is not life.

And these thoughts this morning are not easy thoughts. They are not designed to comfort or soften. I say them because life hangs in the balance. Each soul here today from the smallest to the oldest to the wisest to the most miserable is God's very own. In your baptism you were marked.... marked! Christ's very own. There is no distance that God will not go for you. There is no breadth God will not stretch accross to uphold you. He is the alpha and the omega... the source of life. And this morning.... and this afternoon.... and this evening.... and in the middle of the night when your terrors and worries and doubts creep accross you mind... he is there and he is there in the birth of your children, and when they cut their knee and when you first kiss your passionate lover and fight like cats and dogs about life, your children, work, the economy. He is there, knocking at your door, I love you so much he says... I love you so much I will allow you to discover for yourself that I am the only way. I love you so much, this wrathful God of the OT says, that I will give myself to you in my son, and be there for you now in my spirit. Choose this day, he calls, choose.

Life hangs in the balance...