Pentecost 19A John B. Valentine
Joshua 24:1-24 October 16, 2022

“AT THE CENTER OF OUR STORY ....”

Here’s a funny question for you? What do:

• Michelle Obama’s book ... Becoming ....
• Chris Kyle’s American Sniper ... and
• John Krakauer’s Into This Air ...

Have in common?

Seriously ... do you know those books?

Jon Krakauer’s book is the captivating story of a disastrous expedition to the top fo the world’s tallest mountain ...

Chris Kyle’s book is the unforgettable story of the most lethal sniper in the history of the US Army ... and

Michelle Obama’s book is a compelling reflection what it means to grow up on the South Side of Chicago and to eventually become a resident of the most famous house in the world.

But what do they have in common?

Obviously ... all of them are all best-sellers ...

Obviously ... all of them are fairly contemporary ... and

Maybe obviously ... or maybe not ... all of them are autobiographies ...

In fact ... the reason I found them in the first place was because I Google-searched the most popular autobiographies of the 21st Century ... and those three were at the top of the list!

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Autobiographies. You know those things?

Stories of one’s own life ... told from the perspective of oneself.

Some autobiographies are simply exercises in self-inflation ...

Think Mein Kampf or The Art of the Deal.

Some autobiographies are exercises in self-deprecation ...

Think St. Augustine’s Confessions or Mother Teresa’s Come Be My Light ...

Some are comedies ...

Think most anything ever written by Erma Bombeck ...

And some are just sobering ...

Like most of what was written by Elie Wiesel.

And yet ALL of them are shaped by the author’s recollection ...

Chock-a-block full of conscious and unconscious omissions and distortions ...

To the end that the novelist Graham Greene once said that an autobiography is only “a sort of life” ... and then he titled his own autobiography just that ... A Sort of Life.

Just out of curiosity ... since we all have autobiographies ... whether they’re written down or not ...

How many of you relish the opportunity to get autobiographical ....

Like when somebody asks you ... invites you ... to tell a bit of your own story????

And how many of you disdain having to get autobiographical ....

Because you’d rather keep your stories and your memories to yourself???

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Actually ... when I look at this morning’s scripture lesson ... I can’t help but think of autobiographies.

You see ... this morning’s lesson is from the last chapter of the biblical book of Joshua ...

And it is basically a brief recounting of the history of the Covenant ... and of the first six books of the Bible.

• How it was that God led Abraham and Sarah from the Land beyond the River and into the land of Canaan ...

• How it was that God graced that family with a child ... and grandchildren and great-grandchildren ...

• How it was that the Israelites ended up in Egypt ...

• How it was that God got the Israelites OUT of the land of Egypt ...

• How it was that the people lived in the wilderness ... and how God protected them throughout that sojourn ...

• How it was that God gave the people a land on which they had not labored and towns which they had not built and vineyards and olive-yards that they did not plant ... and

• How it was that Joshua and the rest of the Israelites all had a place in that story.

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Now the reason that Joshua’s retelling of that story gets me thinking of autobiographies is ...

In part because Joshua uses first-person language ... “us”, “we”, “me” words ... which is what autobiographies do ... and

In part because Joshua’s retelling is chock-a-block full of conscious (or maybe unconscious) omissions and distortions ... because triumphal stories about human migration and colonization and invasion and the like have ALWAYS got a flip-side.

Let’s be clear that this is an INSIDER’S VIEW of the history of the People of God.

But what I find fascinating about the way that Joshua tells the story is where God is in the telling!

To Joshua’s way of telling it ...

God isn’t just some benign force that is operating in the background ...

God isn’t just some bit-part player who shows up to keep things interesting ...

God isn’t just some supporting actor who helps the main characters on their way ...

No ... God is at the very CENTER of the story!

To Joshua’s way of telling it ...

God is the one who is doing everything all the way through ...

And when Joshua makes his appeal to the people ... asking them to ‘Choose this day whom they will serve’ ...

He’s basically saying “There’s two ways of understanding our story, folks.

• Either WE are at the center of our story ... and God is just there to watch the show ...

• Or GOD is at the center of our story ... and we thus know to whom we are indebted.”

But as for me and my household ... we will serve and acknowledge and revere the Lord.”

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That’s an interesting proposition ... folks.

When Joshua puts God at the center of the Israelites’ story ... he makes a pretty compelling case that they’d be fools not to serve and acknowledge and revere the Lord.

But what about us???

How much different would OUR autobiographies look if we put God in the center of “our” story?

• Our story as a nation ...
• Our story as a community ...
• Our story as a congregation ...
• Our stories as families ...
• Our stories as individuals ....

How much different would your autobiography look if you put God at the center of your story??

How would your perspective change ... how would your self-understanding change ... if God was more than a bit-player in the autobiography that is yours?

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You know how it is that we are entering the Holiday Season in our community?

I was in Costco the other day ...

• And there were oodles of bags of Halloween candy and pallets full of pumpkins decorations reminding me that Halloween is right around the corner ...

• And there were four or five rows of Christmas lights and wrapping paper and Advent calendars shouting that Christmas is a mere nine weeks away ...

• And the only thing that I saw that hinted that Thanksgiving is happening a little more than a month from now was the giant bag of stuffing mix that sat at the end of one of the aisles.

It was like this giant corporate confession that Thanksgiving is boring ... that Thanksgiving is passe’ ... that Thanksgiving is merely a blip on the radar between Halloween and Christmas nowadays.

But it stuck me

That we have deemed the holiday that we call Thanksgiving to be boring because we deem the act of thanksgiving to be boring ...

That we have deemed the holiday that we call Thanksgiving to be passe’ because we deem the act of thanksgiving to be passe’ ...

That we have deemed the holiday that we call Thanksgiving to be an inconvenience because we deem the act of thanksgiving to be an inconvenience.

That we don’t like ... that we don’t need Thanksgiving ... because we have written God OUT of the center of our individual and corporate autobiographies.

Like Abraham Lincoln said some hundred and fifty years ago ...

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God.

We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

To which Joshua then says ... “DON’T GO THERE, MY FRIENDS!”

• We are God’s people ... because of the blessings of God.

• We are free ... because of the blessings of God.

• We have a hope and a land and a promise ... because of the blessings of God.

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Remember this day ... every day ... each day ... to put God at the center of your story!