Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

We get the well known phrase, "As for me and my household, we serve the Lord" in this passage. As I said last week, the Lectionary doesn't pay much attention to Joshua, but this passage appears twice. Scholars have recognized the form it takes is very similar to Hittite treaties. The early readers of it probably would have noticed. Of course, this is a treaty with God, a bit different than your usual conqueror.

The pattern is; a gathering of the tribes involved and some review of how they all got there, then the stipulations. Someone is to be the one in charge and the others will serve them, like vassal states. This includes exclusive loyalty and what will happen if they don't live up to their end of the bargain. Someone has to witness the treaty, but God tends not to show up in gatherings like this, so they are "witnesses against yourselves". In the verses immediately following these, there is a provision for placing the text in a public site.

Why such a covenant? Is there an expectation that God will attempt to conquer his own people? Who is being asked to agree to these terms? Borrowing a little from E.O. Wilson, I think the best answer is that this is a treaty intended to control the power of the leaders. The people have little real power but they have been asked to make sacrifices to get this nation established and to get to the Promised Land. Without them, the leaders would have nothing to lead. They will likely benefit the most from all that effort. To get the continued support of the people, the people want to know that there is a higher power, a source of morality that holds sway over those who might exploit them. They are as E.O. Wilson says, "perhaps no more than a tribe united by a creation myth". The covenant is to make sure everyone sticks to that.

If you read the passage, which is kind of necessary to get the full value of this sermon helper, you may have seen the slightly out of place verse 19, saying "you can't serve the Lord." I can't be sure why he said that, but it could foreshadowing of the troubles to come.

Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-20

I'll just cover the two part Book of Wisdom passage in one. We see Hellenistic influence in this passage, speaking of Wisdom as an actual being, not just symbolic. Although these words stand nicely on their own, the beginning of the chapter addresses kings, "Listen therefore, O kings, and understand". Again, we are addressing the leaders, telling them they had better know wisdom if they want the immortality that all those in the tribe have been promised.

Amos 5:18-24

Amos is a rather dark fellow. Just what he is so mad about is a little clearer in the verses just before this one. I quoted those back in Year C, Week 10. He doesn't like people trampling on the poor and oppressing the righteous. The Bible tends to do this a lot, using words like "justice", but then spending pages on how mad they are instead of talking about just what justice is and how to achieve it. I like Amos anyway. He went right for the jugular, and didn't seek fame or a fancy title.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Because this is part of a series on the book of 1 Thessalonians, feel free to look back or ahead to enhance your discussion of this passage. We skipped a chapter, but I think the selections work with or without it. This passage is packed with beliefs.

We have grief over lost loved ones, a foundational feeling that binds community. As Robert Ingersoll said, "Love is a flower that grows on the edge of a grave." We hold hope and love and loss of loved ones tightly bound together. We hear our parent's voices in the cries of our children. Knowing that some have died before the promises of Jesus have been fulfilled causes trepidation, but Paul is here to make it alright.

We have the belief that Jesus died and rose again. Whether it's the whole story from the gospels of an actual man who lived and rose bodily or a celestial god figure that came down from some higher level and was sacrificed spiritually, or some other version of myth and ritual, it's hard to tell from reading Paul. We just get creedal statements like this, telling us what to believe to conquer death.

Comfort and encouragement comes in the form of apocalyptic language of trumpets and heaven. A vision some of my friends call "Jesus clouds" comes to mind, the ones with colors and beams of sunlight shooting out from them. From these cryptic verses come entire books and stories of the end times and the rapture. The word "rapture" does not appear in the Bible, but was derived from "caught up" in this passage. That doesn't mean the rapture will happen the way it is depicted in the "Left Behind" books, it means people do a lot with a few words.

It ends by bringing all of this into the living community, "encourage one another". Unfortunately now, and probably then as well, the focus was on reuniting with loved ones in a death that was only the death of this body. It was a loss if you were still alive, but a comfort to know there was something better once the whole story played out. Now, after two thousand years and Jesus still has not shown up, you would think we would start to focus on the "encourage one anther" part here and now.

Matthew 25:1-13

Whenever a parable uses some sort of analogy that seems obviously to be Jesus, even getting called Lord, but then has that character act counter to the central message of the gospels, I first assume I'm wrong, and I need to read it again. Unfortunately, this is not the traditional approach. The tradition we see in many churches today comes from the narrative of Christ's expected return, not from the context of the time. The message of the gospels is caring for community, but here we have the "wise" bridesmaids speaking of scarcity and worrying about running out of oil for themselves instead of including their friends. Everyone falls asleep while waiting for the party to get started, so who is wiser or better in that way? This parable is a bit weird, but aren't people weird? Don't we have these same traits and urges to be care free but to worry about not having enough, and to think ourselves wise but sometimes be naïve and forget to prepare?

Important to note is this gospel was written about the Jewish institutional leaders who were trying to shut out the fledgling Jesus movement. They had just been defeated by the Romans and didn't need any trouble in their own ranks. Hoarding what you have and calling others fools for not doing it is a theme throughout the book of Matthew. And Christ always comes out on the side of those who share. Somehow Christians today have lost the message that simply calling yourself wise does not make you wise. It could be because they are no longer that fledgling movement and they have no idea what that's like.