Sermon Notes Oct 30/Reformation sunday

Joshua takes on the mantle of Moses. We have a smaller version of the crossing of the Red Sea waters again. At first from slavery to freedom, and now we move from the wilderness to the Promised Land.to me it has echoes of the ancient Baal story in a fight with Judge River. (see Slaying the Dragon) To me, it shows the immense religious confidence of Israel to appropriate other stories and fold them into their story. Its religious imagination can adapt other traditions toward the worship of God if it encounters cultural material worth considering. In religious terms, it demonstrates the power of the god of Israel over any ancient enemy to God’s creation and the special people of Israel.

It seems to me to be crucial to note that this military campaign is more like a religious procession and will show itself again in a similar fashion in Jericho.this is an interesting take on the violence of the conquest that is such canard with those who stereotype the OT without bothering to read it at times.The river marks a boundary. so for me it is a liminal place, a threshold. As Dennis Olson said, it took the death of the old and the birth of the new to be able to finally shake off the slave mentality and enter into the Promised Land as a free people. The American slaves called the Ohio, the Jordan, as the marker of slave to free territory. Sometimes, we cannot go into a new place, forge a new direction until we have changed enough inside to be able to not only make but to flourish in the new situation.

Recall Joshua is the name of Jesus in Hebrew (god saves/helps/delivers)What do you think it felt like for Joshua to enter this long-Promised Land? Did he think of Moses, do you wonder? What are the wonders and dangers of attaining your dream? Are you exhilarated, or could you be disappointed. do you feel a bit empty once the great quest is over?” Is it a feeling of now what, where do we go from here? Possession of a dream does not seem to have the emotional impact of moving toward it at least some of the time.Indeed sometimes the journey, not the destination, is where all of the growth occurs. (Augustana One on Onestory)

Bruce Springsteen has a song the Promised Land, and it also appears in at least one other song.. “blow away the dream that break your heart/blow away the dreams that tear you apart/blow away the lies that leave you nothing except lost and brokenhearted. In his great song, Thunder Road, he sings of “riding out tonight to case the Promised Land.” This would be a good place to consider the pluses and minuses of the dream of the Promised Land as physical reality or metaphor.(see Breuggemann’s The Land.)

On this day we recall Luther’s promotion of a religious debate that turned into a revolution. He stood at the Jordan again when he said, here I stand, I can do no other in his reliance on his reading of Scripture against an authoritarian response form the church.Reformation Sunday is a dream found and deferred. Our watchword, the church reformed, always being reformed, is one that tries to keep the horizon receding and realizing that we do not achieve perfection in this life. In that sense, our decisions place us at the Jordan, a boundary marker of the kind of person we demonstrate by dint of our actions. We all cross the Jordan into the Promised Land at the great boundary of death. That will be a Promised Land that will exceed every hope.