8/26/18 “The Un-sexy Part of the Story” by Nancy Petty
Text: Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
This past week our Jewish family at Temple Beth Or received serious and specific threats of harm and violence to their community. As a result, they had to suspend many of their weekly activities. In the wake of this news, I reached out to my colleague and friend Rabbi Dinner to offer my support and ask if there was anything Pullen could do for the Temple to help protect and stand in solidarity with the Jewish community. As we talked, I realized that as they approach their High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur beginning September 20, they are having to focus their energy on security issues rather than on the important preparation for their highest of holy days of their faith. Listening to the Rabbi speak of the trauma her congregation is experiencing, my heart broke. I reassured her that I, along with other Pullen people, would do whatever we could to support the Jewish community and specifically Temple Beth Or, Pullen’s longtime sister congregation. I knew I could offer this because of the emails I had received from some of you offering assistance after hearing about the threats on the local news. One email I got from a Pullen member read:
What can/will Pullen do to support Temple Beth Or? They have always been so supportive of Pullen and I know you care. Could we offer to have Pullen members stand guard outside the Temple during their services? We have a letter of support in our library that Temple Beth Or sent to Pullen in 1992 [when we were going through the Holy Union and welcoming the LGBT community into our church vote, a time when we were receiving weekly threats] and I will always remember how much their letter meant to me.
Later in the week, I received another phone call from Rabbi Dinner asking if I would offer a few words of support and solidarity at their Friday evening Sabbath service. She explained that they had been planning a contemplative service for this particular Sabbath worship for some months and that they were going to go ahead as planned. She said that she was inviting several other clergy to offer readings and prayers that would flow into the contemplative format. She asked if I would speak for three or so minutes on the theme: The Redemptive Power of the Community Uniting. “Of course,” I said, “I’ll be there.”
There is so much I could share about the evening and specifically about the worship. However, I will limit my remarks to this: the redemptive power of this Christian pastor standing beside her Imam colleague in a synagogue surrounded by our Jewish brothers and sisters, together, reading and singing and praying our faith—only 5 days after serious threats on the Jewish community that came, probably, from either Neo-Nazi Christians or radical Muslims—was a real life lived moment of the redemptive power of the community uniting. It didn’t matter that the Imam and I struggled mightily to read aloud in Hebrew the prayers and sing the songs. We tried our very best as he held one side of the worship book and I held the other. It didn’t matter that by the time we found the right page in the worship book, everyone else had moved on to the next page. It didn’t matter that we were Jews, Christians, and Muslims speaking out of our own individual faith traditions, quoting from our individual sacred texts. It didn’t matter that I had on a Christian stole, the Rabbi her kippah and prayer shawl and the Imam his religious dress. It didn’t matter how we were dressed, or what sacred text we read from, or what language we used—Hebrew, Arabic or English—when praying or singing. It didn’t matter. We each stayed true to our tradition. We each offered support to one another. And every person in that sacred space participated in the redemptive power of the community uniting; and it was a beautiful and holy moment—one that I believe comes very close to being most like the kingdom of God that Jesus taught about and the beloved community that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of.
As I worshiped Friday evening with my Jewish and Muslim and Christian friends and colleagues, Joshua chapter 24 was resting in the back of my mind. Like every week, I had been studying and living with and reflecting on the text from the lectionary reading I had chosen to preach on for this Sunday. And for this week I had chosen Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18: a familiar text to even the most casual church going Bible reading home décor person. The words from those selected verses in Joshua 24 are plastered on posters hanging in churches, on decorative home wall hangings, and I even saw it once hanging over the door of a country diner. Many of you know it by heart. When David read it, I imagine some of you finished it in your head before he did. “Now choose this day whom you will serve…but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” It’s the sexy part of Joshua 24. The quotable part. The feel-good part. The righteous part. The easy to say, hard to live part. It is the part that the mysterious folks who set the lectionary chose to highlight from Joshua 24. It is the part that looks pretty hanging on the wall.
But as I sat worshiping Friday evening at the Temple, in the wake of such hate-filled threats on the Jewish community, it was not the sexy part of Joshua 24 that I thought of. Rather it was the un-sexy part of the story, verses 3-13, those left out of the lectionary reading. I thought of this part of Joshua 24 that one can’t easily quote. The part that is so often forgotten, not just when reading the text but in the living out of our faith. It reads:
3 Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac; 4 and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I gave Esau the hill country of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. 5 Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in its midst; and afterwards I brought you out. 6 When I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, you came to the sea; and the Egyptians pursued your ancestors with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea.[a] 7 When they cried out to the Lord, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and made the sea come upon them and cover them; and your eyes saw what I did to Egypt. Afterwards you lived in the wilderness a long time. 8 Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan; they fought with you, and I handed them over to you, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you. 9 Then King Balak son of Zippor of Moab, set out to fight against Israel. He sent and invited Balaam son of Beor to curse you, 10 but I would not listen to Balaam; therefore he blessed you; so I rescued you out of his hand. 11 When you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, the citizens of Jericho fought against you, and also the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I handed them over to you. 12 I sent the hornet[b] ahead of you, which drove out before you the two kings of the Amorites; it was not by your sword or by your bow. 13 I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant.
Do you see what is going on in verses 3-13? Joshua is reminding the people of all the un-sexy parts of the journey: the times when God provided for God’s people and they didn’t even realize it or remember it. The times when God saw God’s people through hard times and times of conflict and times of fear and in times when violence threatened the people. Joshua is reminding the people that in those times God was present. No, not every situation turned out good—after all God’s people lived in the wilderness a long time the story says— but the point is that God was with God’s people, even in the wilderness. God was there. God was present in the people and with the people. God was present offering redemptive power—the redemptive power of God’s steadfast love—most often in the midst of community.
It is so easy to forget of those times when we have been sustained by the power of God’s love and care for us. It seems we can easily hold on to God in the good times—the sexy times—when life is glamorous and working out and everything is going our way. We can easily call up the convenient quotes that make us feel good and look good. But when we get to the un-sexy part of the story we have a harder time seeing God. We have a hard time knowing God in our lives or feeling God’s presence comforting us in the difficult and hard places.
I realized Friday night that what I so admire about the Jewish faith, as I have experienced it in worship at the Temple Beth Or and in my many conversations with my colleague Rabbi Dinner over these last 25 years, is that their faith and worship honor how God has journeyed with them through the good and the hard times—the sexy and un-sexy times—and how their faith and worship is continually recounting and reliving that journey through the past and present and into the future. They hold the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey alongside the reality of their wilderness wandering, and it is all sacred. They recite the plagues that were visited upon their people as well as the promises made to their ancestors, and it is all sacred. They hold the tension of the slaughter of the innocent babies along with the subversive saving acts of two midwives, Shiprah and Puah, and they don’t forget God’s love through it all. They remember the un-sexy parts of their story along with the sexy parts and they speak of God’s presence in both. Not an easy faith, but certainly an authentic and honest faith.
When I arrived home late Friday night after Shabbat service Karla was already in bed. Needing some time to process the day, I sat alone recalling all the un-sexy, hard times of my 54 years of living. I remembered when my parents threatened to pull me out of college after my first year because it was rumored that I was hanging out with the “gay” people on campus. (One of the drawbacks of going to a small Baptist college close to home where your parents know everyone.) I remembered feeling like I was in the wilderness for the next three years as I tried to survive the rest of my college experience tightly shut up in the closet. And maybe for the very first time Friday night I thanked God for not abandoning me then. No, I couldn’t see it at the time. But I can now. I remembered when I worked in my first church, still in the closet, and the relationship I was in ended and my heart was broken. And I thought I might die. And for the first time, nearly 30 years later, I thanked God for not abandoning me then. I couldn’t see it at the time. But I can now. I remembered other dark nights of the soul when I was scared and lonely and depressed and I didn’t know what to do and felt like God was nowhere in sight and in my remembering Friday night I could hear Joshua saying to me: in those times–the un-sexy, difficult, feeling lost and scared parts of your story—God’s care and love journeyed with you in each and every one of those places.
We get a lot of encouragement to live in the present moment. And that’s an important discipline for the spiritual life. We get even more encouragement to think about and plan for the future and I’m not so certain that that is a good spiritual practice. But I’m wondering today if we might do well to borrow a page from the spiritual playbook from our Jewish sisters and brothers and practice more the spiritual exercise of remembering. Not a remembering that nurtures nostalgia for the past or that harbors resentments of losses and hurts. But rather a remembering that reminds us that we serve a God who journeys with us through wilderness places and through the times of our life that flows with milk and honey.
What does it mean chose this day to serve the Lord? One thing, one important thing it might mean is to remember—to remember that we are never alone. God is with us at every stop on the journey. Even when hatred threatens to do harm, God is present. To Joshua, and to our Jewish sisters and brothers, who reminds us of this truth, thanks be to God. Shabbat Shalom!!
