There’s a story I rather like about the college freshman biology class which kept a rattlesnake in a cage in the laboratory. The students enjoyed the monthly feeding almost as much as the snake did. The entire class would gather around the cage and watch in completely absorbed and attentive silence. “I’m jealous of the snake,” the instructor said, not quite joking. “I never get the class’s undivided attention like this.” A student answered matter of factly, “You would if you could swallow a mouse.”
It takes a lot to catch people’s attention in this TV-saturated age. There are so many things competing for our time and interest. And even if you can catch the public eye, how long does it last? Fifteen minutes of fame is about all you can count on, unless you keep coming up with new and different gimmicks to stay on top of the ratings. We have very short attention spans. Media specialists tell us they are getting shorter and shorter every year. People used to sit still for two-hour sermons... and still do, in third world countries - but nowadays twenty 20 minutes is about average, and some preachers - especially in the churches who’ve embraced the “contemporary worship” approach - try to stick to ten. We’re so busy rushing toward the 21st century that there hardly seems to be any time to reflect even on our present, much less our past.
But survivalists tell us that the only way you can keep on course in the wilderness - if you get stuck out there without a compass - is to mark where you’ve been, and keep assessing our direction by checking back to see if you’re still headed in a straight line or have somehow wandered off course. Because if you lose sight of your starting point, you wind up going in circles.
Wandering off course by forgetting our past is hardly an invention of our own age, of course. Nothing is, really... People seem to remember their history most often when it provides them with an excuse to hate their neighbors, like the Serbians who hate the Albanians for their defeat at the battle of Kosovo in 1463, or the Irish who hate the British for the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
But today is a day to remember for good, not for bad. Today churches around the world celebrate All Saints Day. And one of the reasons we do that is to hold them up as standards against which we can measure our own lives. Are we still going in the right direction? Or have we lost our way?
Joshua, an old man about to die, called the people of Israel together at the end of his long and mostly triumphant leadership of their conquest of Canaan. He called them together to remember - and to decide. And in the same way we too are called together every Sunday, but especially today, to remember, and to decide.
Part of the meaning of this day is to remember the saints in our own lives, parents, teachers, the people we loved, who loved and taught us. And a big part of that remembering is just in telling the story, in recalling and sharing who they were for us. But the bigger purpose in today’s remembering is to celebrate the saints that belong to the whole church, those men and women in whose faithful lives we can see God’s purpose being worked out, and whose stories remind us that we each have our own place in God’s history, and whose examples call us to give an accounting of our own faithfulness.
We need those reminders to stay on track.
In today’s scripture reading Joshua told the story of how God had treated the children of Israel: how he had chosen Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and promised them a land of their own; how he had remembered Joseph in Egypt and raised up Moses to deliver the people; how he had led his people safely from the clutches of Pharaoh and watched over them in the Wilderness of Sinai, and how finally he had brought the 12 tribes across the Jordan and into the promised land, driving out their enemies before them, and giving them a land that they had not labored for, grapes and olives that they didn’t plant.
Joshua tells the story, he holds their history up before them, and then he then calls his people to respond to that history by making a decision. They can decide to follow the God who gave them life, or they can decide to forget God and follow the path of the nations around them and to worship their gods.“Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve...but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (v. 14 15)
The people respond to this challenge by reciting their story back to Joshua: the story of how God worked miracles to set them free, how even though the nations were against them the Lord had protected them, and they cap their recital by making a commitment that they, too, will serve the God of Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob the God of Moses - the God that has been so good to them.
But Joshua knew they would forget. Even then, receiving their fervent assurances, Joshua knew that many of the people would fall away almost before the next spring’s grass covered his grave. Because although the people were moved by the emotionality of the moment, captured by the drama of God’s action in their lives, they didn’t have what it took to be faithful without regular pep-rallies or the never-failing stimulus of fear... We do have a tendency to make fervent promises to God when they’re under stress that we forget the minute the crisis is over. But that’s not what Joshua was asking for. The kind of service Joshua was talking about wasn’t a once-a year-pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or a half-hearted Sabbath slow-down.
Joshua - or rather God - is asking for heart-felt devotion. Devotion to God as the central value in life is the one enduring key to faithful living in any generation. And the simple truth is that people today are living for everything other than God. How many people do you know who say they don’t come to church because it’s the only time they have to - pick one - sleep in, spend time together, get the chores done - the list goes on. My sister’s Sunday morning priority is 10-K races. It takes real devotion to turn the hearts and lives of today’s young adults away from a full agenda of work and play toward the life and work of the church. We simply live in a time and culture that tempts us daily to live for everything other than God. I think that’s precisely the danger Joshua was speaking of in his day. We never escape it. And the solution is clear: Joshua’s pledge of devotion to God, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” (v. 15) has to be renewed in every single generation.
Late in his career, when the Yankees were comfortably ahead in the pennant race, Joe Dimaggio was asked why he continued to play so hard. He said, “Because there might be somebody out there who’s never seen me play.”
That’s how it is for us as People of God. Our devotion must be played out daily, and it must be renewed daily. And it is nurtured here within the church community, as we retell the stories of faith, but it is even more important to nurture that devotion within each smaller household. In the classic Broadway production “Raisin in the Sun,” an African American mother struggles to keep two adult children on track. In one memorable scene, the mother is confronted by her daughter’s angry skepticism. The daughter states in defiance, “Mama, you don’t understand. Its all a matter of ideas, and God is one idea I just don’t accept. There is simply no blasted God.” With dignity and strength, the mother says, “I want you to repeat this after me...in my mother’s house there is still God.” After a long pause, the daughter honors her mother’s affirmation of faith. Slowly, quietly, she says, “In my mother’s house there is still God.” The passing on of cherished devotion to God begins in each household.
Rabbi Harold Kushner writes, “You become a certain kind of person when you choose to believe that there is a pattern and a purpose to the universe, when you learn to see the world through the eyes of faith.” Seeing the world through eyes of faith, and living in devotion to God, doesn’t just happen by accident. It emerges from intentional nurture from one day to the next, and from one generation to the next. It is nurtured in the retelling of the stories, and in the remaking of the vows. And the person who is devoted to God serves him all the time, regardless of who is watching. The person who is devoted to God is always ready. The person who is devoted to God doesn’t use up all their time and energy and other resources on the other things that call out for our attention, but instead, like the five wise maidens in Matthew’s story, they are always ready for his call.
When I worked for the Pillsbury Company, there was one division called “Ready to Serve” - RTS for short. All the foods in that line didn’t require any preparation beyond opening the container. Because everything else had already been done.
A Christian should be “ready to serve,” not waiting for the bell to ring before starting to get prepared. We should always be in the process of making sure we are, as Paul says to Timothy, “equipped for every good work.” [2 Tim 3:17] When God calls us, we won’t have time to say "wait - wait - I’m not ready." So tell over the stories, day by day. There are no more exciting stories in the world, no more gripping dramas, than the story of God with his people. Nothing competes, even today, with the story of Jesus Christ. Remind yourselves, you and your children, every day, and after you have renewed your vows, live them out in service, as your heartfelt response to God.
