Staying and Going

Text: Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
Other texts: John 6:51-66

[Last week and this week we heard the same passage from the Gospel of John. Today’s remarks carry on from last week’s.

Last week we heard that Martin Luther considered Holy Communion to be daily sustenance in the fight against evil. We talked then mostly about the sustenance part, and how the body and blood of Christ feeds a hunger that we all share. This week, we’ll talk more about the daily part. Last week we talked about how the followers of Jesus were put off by what he said, and many left. This week, we’ll talk more about those who remained.]

“Lord, to whom can we go?” asks Peter. Jesus has placed his disciples at a crossroads. Go one way, or go the other. Go with me, or don’t. To both those who left and those who stayed, their choice was the obvious correct one. For Peter and his eleven friends, the obvious choice was to stay with Jesus. We approve of that choice, which seems obvious to us, also. Peter’s words have become a part of Sunday worship in many Lutheran churches, where they introduce the Gospel reading. They are like a street sign that confirms that we are walking the same road that Peter and the disciples took.

But for Peter, choosing to go with Jesus was not like choosing the main street but taking instead the little dirt path off to the left. Following Jesus was unusual and risky. When Peter asks “to whom can we go,” the word he uses makes it clear that going to something implies going away from something else. “To whom shall we go from?” would be more accurate but more awkward. Peter gives up some other way of life to have a life with Jesus.

In this sense, Peter is not following Jesus so much as turning toward Jesus. Lord, to whom shall we turn? is more like it. It is a question of orientation. Changing direction. As Peter lives his life, which way will he be facing?

The same question is presented by Joshua to the Israelites. Make a choice, says Joshua, between God and the other gods. There are a lot of gods in the world, he says. Go with them or go with God. You can serve the Lord or you do not have to. It is up to you. Make your choice; follow whom you want. But as for me, Joshua famously says, as for me and my household, we will serve God.

The people answer: Far be it from us that we should forsake God for other gods. This is the answer to Joshua’s version of Peter’s question. For Joshua and his people, there is no other way to turn. This is God, who freed the people from slavery in Egypt, did great things, and protected them from all dangers. To whom else, we can hear them say, to whom else can we go? We will turn to face our God, they say. They declare: We too will serve the Lord. And yet, Joshua immediately tells them—in verses just beyond our reading—tells them they won’t. And he is right. As time goes on, they don’t.

Joshua is not condemning them, or invalidating their promise. Their promise, like Peter’s, is not some potion that makes other gods disappear or makes them less seductive. Their promise, and Peter’s, is a vow. Like a marriage vow, it binds people together in good times and in bad, in times of bliss and times of hardship. Sometimes it gets so bad that the promise is all that remains, for a while. A thread between two people, or between us and God. Joshua is validating their promise, praising its power against the powers of other inevitable attractions.

Following Jesus, being a Christian, is not a one-time decision but an ongoing and recurring one. The story of faith in the Bible is a story of good intent followed by betrayal, then revival followed by faithlessness. The choice placed before the people by Joshua—serve God!—is the same choice placed earlier by Moses—choose life!—and placed later by Jesus before the disciples.

It seems that the choice once made must be made again and again. We cannot just declare ourselves for Jesus once and be done with it. Peter, who here declares un-rivaled loyalty to Jesus later denies him.

Following Jesus is at best adopting a new way of life. To see things as Jesus seems to. To be a peacemaker, as Paul writes in the second reading today. To love one another. I am the way, Jesus said. The early Jesus movement was called the Way. It is a habit of existence more than a one-time statement of loyalty. It requires constant maintenance, nurtured not by our will to be good and true—which will always fail, as Joshua said of the Israelites—but by the spirit of God, and reminders of our promises, and the support of others. The same things that nurtured our spiritual ancestors.

This is the reason we repeat these same stories about God and humans. This is the reason why we share in the body and blood of Christ each Sunday. Why we gather each week to confess sins, pray, praise God, recite dogma. They are reminders. Our pattern of worship echoes the story of Joshua: gathering, re-hearing the word of God, responding, re-committing, going out again. We affirm the promises we made in baptism. We repeat the creed, and the Lord’s Prayer.

There will always be authorities and powers of evil, as Paul describes them. Competition for our souls. Ways of life. There are lots of other places to go, in spite of Peter’s proclamation. There will always be other gods. What they are for you, you’ll have to say for yourself. You know them.

Our task is not to destroy those gods. But rather to put them aside, to put them away as Joshua says. Out of sight and hearing. Not literally burying them, as Joshua meant—though that might work for some of the material gods that command our allegiance. But to turn our faces away from them. To turn to Jesus for guidance instead. To think: whom am I serving by doing this or that? Am I serving God? Whom am I following? I have made a vow to Christ. Is this thing that I am about to do in line with that vow? Am I still on the way?

Joshua and Peter are both rhetoricians, great public speakers, good politicians. They make it sound like choosing God over other gods, choosing to go to Jesus from some other way, requires nothing more than a good heart and firm resolve. But to describe what people do here is as choosing is misleading. We cannot keep a vow to always be true.

To follow Christ turns out to be not an act of will, but a willingness to make a risky promise. God offers us daily invitations to a new way of living. A new way of seeing. By declaring that we follow Jesus, we can make this vow: to accept those invitations—with the help of God and as much as we are able—one day at a time, again and again.