November 8, 2020: Gotta Serve Somebody

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Rev. Rhonda Blevins

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. “Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in 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, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.” But Joshua said to the people, “You cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm, and consume you, after having done you good.” And the people said to Joshua, “No, we will serve the Lord!” Then Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.” He said, “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.” The people said to Joshua, “The Lord our God we will serve, and him we will obey.” So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made statutes and ordinances for them at Shechem.

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Last week you may remember me asking if you had ever encountered God in some profound way. Those of you in the sermon based small groups had a chance to share those experiences with your groups.

In 1978 a famous American singer-songwriter had one of those encounters while he was in a hotel room in Tucson, Arizona on tour. The rock-and-roller was not a Christian, but he would later reveal that he had a vision of Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords. “There was a presence in the room that couldn't have been anybody but Jesus,” he recalled. “Jesus put his hand on me. It was a physical thing. I felt it. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. The glory of the Lord knocked me down and picked me up.” After that, the singer converted to Christianity. The next year he would record an entire album with distinctly religious lyrics (to the chagrin of many of his fans, picking up some new fans from within the Christian faith).

I want to play you a few lines from the biggest hit song from that faith-inspired album—a song that earned the singer a Grammy for best male vocals the next year.

You may be an ambassador to England or France;
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance.
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world;
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes,
Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord,
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You probably recognize the distinct vocal stylings of Bob Dylan. Although the lyrics to “You Gotta Serve Somebody” were recorded in 1979, they’re as true today as they were in 1979 as they were in roughly 1250 AD when the Israelites settled in the land of Canaan after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt.

Joshua, the leader of Israel nearing the end of his life, told the people the same thing Dylan told us in 1979: “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” Joshua’s most famous line in his speech didn’t earn him a Grammy, but it did earn him many a cross-stitched hanging in Grandmothers’ houses across America nearly three millennia later (not too shabby):

Choose this day whom you will serve . . .

as for me and my house,

we will serve the Lord.

Let me give you a little context for Joshua’s speech here. You may remember Joshua’s immediate predecessor as leader of Israel was Moses. Moses had gone up Mt. Sinai and received the 10 Commandments from God. Do you remember the first two of those commandments? “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” and “thou shalt not make any graven images.” In other words, no idols. Who was with Moses on Mt. Sinai when God gave Moses the 10 Commandments? Joshua. Who was with Moses as he came down from Mt. Sinai to find that the people had built a golden calf as an idol? Joshua. Who was with Moses when he had a fit of rage and threw down the stone tablets, shattering them on the ground—the tablets on which the 10 Commandments were inscribed? Joshua. Who was there was there when Moses took the golden calf, burned it in the fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it? Joshua.

Joshua was a young man when all of that happened. Now years, decades, have passed. Joshua has taken over after Moses died. Joshua led the people to claim the land of Canaan that God had promised generations prior. And now Joshua is getting along in years. He has witnessed first-hand how the people of Israel continued to cling to idols of foreign gods these many years after the 10 Commandments made that illegal. As it turns out, the law has only been minimally effective at curbing that bad habit. And Joshua, confronting his people about their behavior, names this “elephant in the room.” “Put away the gods” he admonishes them. Like, literally. Get rid of the idols, for God’s sake. Recognizing that the law had only been minimally effective, Joshua appears to give the people a choice, as if to shift it from an external mandate to an internal motivation. “Choose this day whom you will serve.”

This line from Joshua is his most famous, like: Arnold Schwarzenegger saying “I’ll be back,” Clint Eastwood saying “Go ahead, make my day,” or Clark Gable saying, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a #*!%.” Joshua’s line, “Choose you this day whom you will serve” goes down in history as his best line.

As I started thinking about this text, I first considered all of the things we can serve in life other than God. We can serve wealth, success, power, influence. We can (and do) serve corporate interests often without even being aware of doing so. We can serve a political party or ideology or philosophy or even a religion. With this last one, have you ever thought about the fact that you can serve a religion, even Christianity, without serving God?

A friend of mine has a sister who is a nun somewhere up north. Her sister is a sister. One day she was telling me about her sister, and she dropped this scathing review: “My sister is a very good Catholic, but she is a terrible human being.” Ouch!

Who or what are you serving? Dylan is right, I believe, in saying you “Gotta Serve Somebody.” Who are you serving? And if you have a hard time figuring out the answer to that, all you have to do is look at your bank statement. “Follow the money,” they say. You’ll discover very quickly who you serve.

But as I continued to live in and with the text this week, another part of Joshua’s best line began to rise to the top. It’s not just about who or what you serve, but about setting an intention every day to serve God. It’s not a one and done kind of deal. Choose you this day (and the next and the next and the next) whom you will serve. I hear echoes of this idea when Jesus told his followers, “Take up your cross daily and follow me.”

You see, every day we make choices about who we’re going to serve. We have finite resources of time, talent and treasure. We spend our time, our talent, and our treasure every day in service of something. Sometimes the choice is so habitual that it doesn’t even seem like a choice anymore. Sometimes we make a choice one day that stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Example. Do you ever sign up for a “free trial” for something online, like a subscription service to a credit reporting bureau or consumer reports or audible or a digital streaming service? In order to enjoy this free trial, you have to enter your credit card number, but no worries, you won’t be charged if you cancel within 14 days. And then you forget to cancel. And before long you have 72 subscription services you never use but you’re paying $2,359 every month for these services? You know what I mean? Me neither.

All this to say, the choices you make today affect your unintended choices tomorrow. So choose you this day whom you will serve.

As 2020 comes to a close (hopefully), many of us are eager to see 2020 in the rearview mirror. With a global pandemic, a divided populace, a vitriolic election cycle and who knows what afterward, I am ready for some resolution to the madness we’ve known this year. Much of what we have experienced this year is the result of choices that we as a people have made over the past few years and decades. As a culture, we haven’t always chosen well. We have served gods like entertainment and wealth . . . the “American Dream” with its promise of a white picket fence and 2.5 kids. But that white picket fence has kept us divided. That white picket fence has kept us from working with one another to achieve common goals. And over the past few years, we’ve been building bigger fences, allowing ourselves to become so divided that we lose sight of one another and our common vision.

I don’t know who or what can help us heal this division.

But here’s what I do know. We each have a part to play. We must find ways to come together on a micro level if we’re ever going to know peace on a macro level. And while affecting change at the macro level may seem unattainable, I do have some insight on how to find unity on a micro level, and so do you. 

Yesterday morning my youngest child had a little league game, and afterward I came to the church to check in with our Rise Against Hunger volunteers, packing rice and nutrients to send to people dealing with food insecurity around the world. I arrived an hour or two after the volunteers at roughly 11:30, just after major networks had made the presidential election call. I wasn’t sure what I would walk in to, knowing that we have both republicans and democrats in the church, knowing that the news was fresh, that the volunteers, like me, were just finding out news the entire country had been waiting on since Tuesday night. Would the rice packing stop so that people could get on their phones, check the news, send the news. Would some of our volunteers be weeping in a corner while others celebrated? What would the mood be? How would politically disparate members of the same church behave toward one another in light of major breaking news happening during a church missions project?

I walked through the sanctuary, into my study avoiding Chapel Hall where the missions project was happening. I heard the standard upbeat music playing—the music we play every year during the event. Then I heard the music turn down. I thought, “Oh my, they’re getting ready to make the announcement about the election.” But then I heard the sound of a gong, and someone exclaimed, “4,000 meals packaged!” The volunteers shouted and clapped and got busy packaging their next 1,000 meals for their shift. I walked into Chapel Hall, folks in masks and hair nets making them barely recognizable. Republicans next to Democrats—everyone happily working, doing their part to feed hungry people half a world away. Maybe they knew the election results; maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. What I do know is that those volunteers chose that day who they would serve. They chose that day to serve something bigger than the biggest news story, something bigger than this narrative of division we keep hearing about. And in that packing of rice and nutrients, there weren’t democrats or republicans, there weren’t winners or losers, there was just one people choosing that day who they would serve.

They chose to serve God by serving their neighbor.

You “Gotta Serve Somebody.” Those volunteers yesterday chose well. You chose well. And now, choose well this day, and the next, and the next. Do that, and it will be enough. “As for me and my house . . . as for me and my church . . . we will serve the Lord!”