Whose Empire is it Anyway? I

“Fit for Battle?”

Joshua 6:1-21

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

January 13, 2008

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

               Welcome to the Season of Justice at UBC.  I know, justice is a pretty common theme around here, so it seams odd to have just one season dedicated to it.  Are the other seasons those of injustice?   But it’s Epiphany season, where we remember the light that come into the world.  Next Sunday is Martin Luther King’s Birthday.  February is African American History Month.  It seems to work.   As you know, this entire year, we are trying to make sense of our faith.  As we continue to ask the overarching question, “Whose Faith is it Anyway?” we will spend the next four Sundays asking the question, “Whose Empire is it Anyway?” 

               The book of Joshua, seems to celebrate the emerging Hebrew empire conquering all of the other empires, or at least city-states that existed on the other side of the Jordan river.  Much of history is written from the perspective of the winners.  Biblical history is no different.  

               The book of Joshua celebrates the conquest of not only Jericho, but 30 other city-states.  That’s a lot of cities to conquer.  That’s a lot of bloodshed on the way to nation-building.  The reason for all of this warfare is not because of anything that the occupants of the other empires did wrong, at least according to Joshua.  

               The reason was that God told them to destroy them and they did.  In fact, many who showed the Canaanite people mercy were punished in God’s name.  Each of the dozen tribes of the Hebrew people received land in the empire that would become Israel and Judah.  Even now, this ancient God-ordained conquest continues because people dare to occupy the land that was given to the Hebrew people by God.

               This scenario gets played out over and over again across the world and across history.  The King of England wanted easy new markets so they conquered and expanded their empire across the world.  The Romans did the same thing.  So did the Chaldeons, the French, the Mongolians, the Soviet Union, and the United States.  And each of them felt in some way they were doing God’s work on behalf of empire.  Whose empire is it anyway?  

               These days, people dare to have the oil we crave.  Last generation, it was nuclear weapons. 

Next generation it will likely be water.  Empires make war so they can have what they want.  They also spread their form of government which is seen as the best, at least in the minds of the conquerors.  

               We saw this in the Crusades, just as we see it in radical Islam and even in the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  Money will only go to developing countries if they change their policies to favor private ownership of goods and services.  Gone are labor unions, public utilities and environmental protections.  Whose empire is it anyway?

               Let’s get back to the scripture.  We have heard it sung this morning that Joshua fit the battle of Jericho.  It was the first of the conquests on the way to establishing the Holy Land of Israel.   Moses and Miriam and Aaron led the people through the wilderness for 40 years.  Moses passed his mantle on to Joshua and they finally entered the Promised Land.  All of the male warriors who had fled Egypt were dead and this was a conquest for the next generation.  A couple of spies were welcomed in to Jericho by Rahab who was a professional woman.  She saw that God was on the side of the Hebrew people and she clandestinely aided and abetted the enemies of the Jericho people.  It was a shrewd and calculated risk.  If they were on God’s side, she reasoned, they would spare her.  If not, then they would be killed.  Either way, she lived.  She might even have the ability to be treated as a whole person instead of simply the occupant of a bed for hire.  Matthews’ genealogy includes Rahab’s name—an indication of how the outcasts and risk-takers are integral to God’s new plan.

               The book of Joshua is a bloody book, but it is also a book about obedience to God.  God is the actor of history.  God makes the walls of Jericho to fall down because of ritual.  Think about it.  It’s a wonderful picture.  The people of Israel had been promised the land by God and had spent four decades wandering and this was the moment.  They must have been excited.  They wouldn’t have to break camp again.  They could eventually take the beautiful Ark of the Covenant and put it someplace a bit more permanent.  It was getting kind of heavy.  They could show the other people that poked fun at them as they wandered around seemingly aimlessly that they weren’t crazy.  

               This was a cause for celebration.  But these were not warrior people.  They were wandering and tired folk who were looking for a home.  So on the eve of the siege, Joshua told the people to be quiet.  He told them to cease from cheering.  He told them to simply walk around the city for seven days without saying a word.  It was a prayerful walk.  Was it a mocking walk?  Maybe.  Maybe they were mocked by the Jericho people.  At the very least it was a walk that confused people.  

               But walk they did.  On the seventh day, they blew trumpets and shouted.  All of that pent up power; all of those squelched aspirations came flooding out.  All of those hopes and dreams and anger and rage and confusion—they let it all hang out.  And if the scriptures are to be believed, the walls came a tumblin’ down.  A new power was at hand: a God who made things to happen by words and not necessarily by violence.  

               Soon, the people got drunk with this new power.  They conquered town after town—none by simply the words that they said or the trumpets that they blew.  They learned how to fight.  They created an army.  And before long they decided that they needed to be just like every other country.  They needed to have kings and hierarchy.  Many say that this desire to be an empire, just like every other empire, was their eventual undoing.  They were no longer mobile.  They built a temple.  They were dynastic.  They got mired down in paranoia, which is the temptation of many a ruler.  They eventually got a taste of their own medicine and in 587 BCE they were overrun and sent into exile in Babylon.

               With empire comes great power and great seduction.  Even in Joshua chapter 7 a person by the name of Achin was punished for taking some of the loot from the people of Jericho for his own personal gain.  All of the gold and silver were to be used for the liturgical life of the people—in other words in control of the priestly hierarchy.

               Think of the imperial desires that have fed empires.  In the year 350 of the Common Era, the Roman Emperor Constantine declared that Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Christianity changed after that.  No longer was it a challenge to empire, it was now identified with empire.  It became a political statement as well as a religion.  They started identifying with power and domination. 

               Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand wanted a source of gold so they supported Christopher Columbus’ voyages to the Americas, beginning the European invasion and eventual conquering of the Americas.

               Columbus brought back Native American people on his return voyages to work as slaves.  Thus began the trade in human bodies across the Atlantic Ocean, all with God’s supposed blessing and the blessing of the God-anointed King.

               We needed cheep fruit and coffee and sugar, so we supported dictatorships in Central America.  FDR said of Anastasio Samoza, the dictator of Nicaragua, “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”

               Hitler wanted world domination, so he exterminated the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and union organizers to feed his own twisted theology of racial superiority.

               The US needed an ally to counter the threat in Iran and so armed Saddam Hussein in the 80’s.

               Saddam Hussein needed access to the sea, and so he invaded Kuwait

               The US invaded Iraq saying that the war would be paid for from the oil that we would control.  We saw how that turned out.  

               We hear this is a holy war.  And we wonder, whose Empire is it, anyway?

               The people that were fit for battle in Joshua’s time, for all of their blindness, knew that their God was a liberator.  God had protected them from slavery in Egypt and was bringing them into a new land.  The people prayed and were devoted to God.  

               This is what is so scary about the Taliban and Al Qaida.  They are devout people who are believing that they are doing God’s work.  They are looking at their Bibles and their Korans and looking at the story of the battle of Jericho.  They are looking at the devotion of the people of God.  They are fit for battle.  They are willing to fight for their empire.  The difference is that their empire is not a nation state.  Their empire is a twisted belief that God wants death and destruction for the enemies.  They get this from our own holy books.  The empire mentality of the Bible is something to be wary of.  

               But it need not be simply taken at face value.

               Is there room in empire for compassion and light and hope and mercy and reconciliation?  As we hear the words of Joshua again, we need to remember the power of empire and ask ourselves to which empire do we sacrifice?  Whose empire is it, anyway?

               I think about this question as I think about the sesquicentennial of the founding of the state of Minnesota.  If you have read the Star Tribune these past few months, you have read the differing histories of the indigenous people and the European settlers.  Yes, this state was founded in 1858, eight years after this church was founded.  But it was founded only after the US Empire exterminated or sent into exile the Ojibwe, Dakota and Lakota people.  Whose empire is it anyway?  

               I remember being in a chapel service at Union Seminary and hearing Robert Warrior, a man of Cherokee ancestry saying that the history of his people closely resembled the people of Canaan—the people of Jericho and Ai and Gilgal who were all conquered by the Hebrew people.    The reason given for their destruction and the destruction of the Canaanite people is the same, it was ordained by God.  

               As we are stewards of this book and this faith, we need to look at the stories contained in it from all sides.  We need to find the redemptive word for us within the pages.  I’m gratified to read the words of I Peter 3 (8-10):

“Those who desire good these days, let them keep their tongues from evil and their lips from speaking deceit;  Let them turn away from evil and do good; let them seek peace and pursue it.  For the eyes of God are on the righteous, and God’s ears are open to their prayer.  But the face of God is against those who do evil.” 

               Sisters and brothers, empire is a part of our reality.  We live in and amongst empires.  Some of them do awful things for what they believe are the right reasons.  The challenge for us is to have the ability to discern the will of God from the will of empire. 

               Empire is a part of us, but it does not need to define who we are.  We find our true, real purpose when we connect ourselves with God, the ultimate liberator and the ultimate life-giver.

               Whose empire is it anyway?  

               To which empire do we give our allegiance?  

               The answer to that makes all the difference in the world.