Border Crossing

What kind of images do the words “Promised Land” mean to you? I didn’t see the TV show by that name very often, but it seemed to me, with my limited exposure, that this was a traveling family, always ready to pick up and move somewhere new, always optimistic about what was around the next corner, always finding something worthwhile everywhere they went. I kind of got a pioneer feeling from it, as though these people were somehow echoing that great Western movement of our ancestors - although strictly speaking that’s not accurate, because your ancestors stayed put - once they got here. Can’t get a whole lot more eastern than we are here in South Jersey.

But even here, on the east coast of the United States, most of our ancestors did pull up stakes and strike out for a new land, hoping for something better, looking for a future for themselves or their children. Some of them had friends or relatives waiting for them when they arrived; many others had nothing at all but a vague description of anything from ferocious savages to cities of gold. In those days of perilous migrations it was easy to think in Biblical terms about the seemingly unlimited possibilities that lay ahead, of the land flowing with milk and honey and the providential hand of the One who had given it.

Now, though, when people hear the words “Promised Land” - especially in a religious context - they mostly think in terms of metaphor, of the journey through death into the eternal realms of God. Think of all the hymns about crossing over the river Jordan. . . . We’ve been burnt, rather, by the failed promises of the Progressive Movement at the beginning of this century, the idea that just ahead lay utopia, an earthly millennium where death and tears, poverty and injustice would all be done away with. But we can get more out of Joshua’s story than that.

Let’s look back to the time of Joshua. In those days, the Promised Land was very real, a place in which the Israelites expected to live, to build houses and plant crops and raise families. It was a place they knew of from Joshua himself, and his sidekick Caleb, when they were young men sent ahead to spy out the land. It was a place the tribes had been hearing about for forty years, all the time they had been wandering about in the wilderness, waiting for God to say the word. It was all they had, that promise... Their home in Egypt hadn’t been much, although from the way the Israelites complained during their wanderings you would have thought they had left the Garden of Eden. Once they had made their decision, though, leaving behind them in Egypt a slaughtered Pharaoh and a devastated economy, it wasn’t really possible to turn back. Just think what kind of reception they would have gotten. . . .

So rather a lot had been invested in this adventure. Probably some of them were still shaking their heads, not believing the time had really come at last; others might have found they enjoyed the nomadic life; none of the younger generation had a clue of what farming was all about, and even their elders had learned their agriculture in a far different climate than this would be. It was going to be totally unlike anything they’d ever experienced before... were they really ready?

But it would be their home. God had promised. And it would be THEIRS. No more kowtowing to foreign kings. At home at last. The home which God promised back in the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob... The abundant land of which Moses spoke as he led his people out of Egypt.

But there was a catch. It was not only a rich land, a fertile and inviting land, but it also was a n inhabited land. Other people already occupied it. The cities and towns that God had promised to give to the Israelites were filled with warriors and (some said) even giants. Most of them were not exactly looking forward to handing over their territory and possessions to this rag-tag bunch of wanderers who were massing on their Eastern border.

No, this wasn’t going to be a shoo-in.

Still, God had promised.

So, there they were, the twelve tribes, priests, old men, armed men, women, and children, all milling about on the East bank, fresh from the ritual cleansing Joshua had commanded, probably buzzing with curiosity over what would happen next.

Those long-ago Israelites aren’t much different from us, you know. All of us long for that kind of land: the kind of place - the kind of life - where our enemies are overcome by the power of God, where our needs are met with unheard of abundance, where the fear and uncertainty of the wilderness in which we wander is replaced by the joy and the celebration of life lived in a place as secure and abundant as Eden itself.