Sermon, Sun 26 Aug: 'You've gotta serve somebody'

READINGS: Joshua 24: 1-4, 11-18; Psalm 34:15-22;
Ephesians 6:10-20

SERMON
Let’s pray: may the words of my mouth, and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer, Amen.

This last week was the second week of the new school year, and,
for some of our schools, the first time for school assemblies.
I’d been asked to pick up on the theme of thinking about ‘new things’ with the students:
new experiences,
new skills to pick up,
new school work to learn.
For some, a new teacher,
for others, new friends;
and, in the case of a couple, a whole new school to get used to.
I kicked off my time with the students by asking a very carefully phrased question –
‘How did you get into school today?’
Quick as a flash, up went several hands.
A small person replied: ‘The bus’
Others nodded in agreement.
I smiled at them and asked them to listen to the question very carefully once again:
‘How did you get into school today?’
There was a pause, and then a lightbulb moment,
followed by some grins, a few giggles, and a wee chorus of:
‘Ohhh! The door!’
‘Absolutely!’ said I, ‘think of the mess the bus would make! 
And that’d be a shame, given it’s a nice new school!’
Cue laughter.
Pushing my luck, I grinned at them and asked:
‘Okay, and how will you get out of school today?’
And, with a laugh, a small boy cried out:
‘Reverse the bus!’
It was beautifully done,
and there was much hilarity and it was great fun -
said boy is the grandson of one of the congregation, and that's all I'll give away.

We then spent time thinking and looking at a whole variety of doors –
wondering who, or what, might be found behind them, and, thinking about
how we’d feel if we had to go through the door.
All of it, was, of course, to talk about new things –
and what it felt like to be on one side and move to the other –
from being used to the familiar, to doing something unfamiliar –
the challenge of the new.

Doors ... take us places.
It might just be to the broom cupboard,
or, as in the case of the book, ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,’
it might just be to an entirely different world.
Doors:
sometimes made of wood, or glass, or metal.
But other times, doors are less physical:
think of Hogmanay and standing at the gate of the year –
time as a door.
Or, think of doors of opportunity –
having the possibility to do something,
a new thing,
a new experience.
Something that may completely change your life.
And, there, standing on the threshold,
you may be experiencing a whole range of emotions and thoughts:
Do you go through?
Do you haver about the edge for a very long time, not sure what to do?
Or do you walk away?

Doors...take us places,
and sometimes, places can be a little like doors.
Shechem, the place where Joshua called the Israelites to gather,
was, in many ways, like a door.
And we have to take a trip further back in time to get a sense of why gathering
at Shechem came with the echoes of all sorts of possibilities:
the opportunity to do something new,
the chance to see life shaped and changed forever.
Why Shechem?
Because, it’s where the story of promise,
the story of being chosen
and making a choice
begins.
We go right back to Abraham, in the Book of Genesis, chapter 12.
God calls Abram:
‘Leave your country, your people, 
and your father’s household 
and go to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you, 
I will curse;
and all peoples on earth 
will be blessed through you.’

Abram, later renamed Abraham, is given a choice by God,
a door of opportunity, if you like, and steps through it to accept, in faith, God’s promise.
He leaves everything that is familiar,
strikes out into the unknown with this as yet unknown God,
and, having travelled through the land,
arrives by the great tree of Moreh,
at Shechem.
It is there that God appears to Abram.
It is at Shechem that God says:
‘to your offspring, I will give this land.’
It is there that Abram makes an altar ...and worships God.
As for Abraham and his household, they will serve the Lord.

Generations pass.
The story of God’s relationship with Abraham
expands from a promise to one person and his household,
to what eventually becomes a numerous people –
the descendants of Abraham,
and the children of the Promise:
God’s people.
God’s chosen, who stand, here again,
at Shechem.
Gathered together, Joshua, who has led them into the land of Promise,
reminds them of their story.
‘Long ago, your forefathers beyond the River 
worshipped other gods...
but I took your father Abraham from the 
land beyond the River and led him,
and gave him many descendants.’

Chapter, by chapter, the stories making up
the story of the people of God are recounted by Joshua –
they’re reminded of their time in Egypt;
of their liberation from slavery there –
of the God who promised to rescue them
and who did.
Of the pursuit of the Egyptians,
and of the crossing of the Red Sea –
the Sea that became for the Israelites
the door to freedom.
They’re reminded of God guiding them
and taking them to the land long-promised.
A long tale, with so many twists and turns,
but always, always, with God at the centre:
God offering choices,
creating opportunities,
the promise of new things.
As he finishes recalling all that God has done for them,
Joshua calls upon them to make a choice:
A bit like the old Bob Dylan song, he notes ‘You’ve gotta serve somebody.’
To the people God has chosen, Joshua says ‘choose.’
Joshua asks them, ‘who are you going to serve?’
And, showing them the door being offered,
echoing the choice made by Abraham so many generations before him, Joshua states:
‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’
Will the people follow in the ways of the gods,
or, will they follow in God’s way?

They walk through the door, choosing God.
They will make a mess of it time and time again,
but God, who had already chosen them,
will walk with them,
will be faithful,
will continue to be the God of the promise –
as the Psalmist will later claim:
‘no one who takes refuge in him will be condemned.’

Generations, kingdoms, and empires pass.
The choice is always there:
‘Who are you going to serve?’
In the good, and in the bad, God continues to walk with his people...
until, at a particular time,
God walks within human time and history,
in flesh and bone as one of us –
showing what love looks like in and through the life of Jesus.
The question is asked again:
‘Who are you going to serve?’
The response is made –
by fishermen, tax collectors, farmers,
radicals, the poor, the dispossessed,
the ill, and everyday people.
They hear the invitation afresh.
They choose to walk, through Jesus,
into new life,
a new way of being, and understanding,
a new found freedom –
even if that freedom is, for some like Paul,
found through service in prison chains,
or persecution.
They will serve the Lord.
But, in challenging times, how will they do it?

Paul, writing from prison, says to the new Christians in Ephesus:
‘put on God –
put on the armour of God.’
But it’s a strange kind of armour –
let’s look at the six items of the kit that Paul lays out before them:
• the belt of... TRUTH
• the breastplate of...RIGHTEOUSNESS
• the shoes that are THE GOSPEL OF PEACE
• the shield of...FAITH
• the helmet of...SALVATION
• the sword of...THE SPIRIT – THE WORD OF GOD
I’ve read this passage a number of times over the years, and gone ‘okay.’ 
But this week, as I looked and prepared,
something new fell into place for me
that had been sitting there in plain sight ever since
I’d come across this passage in my late teens –
and it’s to do with the shoes –
and given I was the Imelda Marcos of shoes at one point in my life,
I'm surprised I'd never really picked up on this before!
Here it is:
‘your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace’ 
If it’s your shoes that give you balance,
that keep you stable,
that ground you –
what grounds us as Christians?
Here within a very military metaphor...
it’s the ‘gospel of peace.’
The armour of God, then, is very different:
it’s about reconciliation –
peace with God,
peace with neighbour –
God’s ‘shalom’ –
life that’s full and rich and rounded and based on relationship:
‘you gotta serve somebody’ –
found in serving God and serving neighbour.
That’s the way to effect the promise of the harmonious kin-dom of God.
To do that requires integrity –
the belt of truth.
To do that requires walking in God’s way –
the breastplate of righteousness.
To bring in God’s kin-dom requires faith,
living into your salvation –
the knowledge that God has chosen you,
God has rescued you –
and in Paul’s letter ‘you’ is not an individual ‘you’ – it’s plural:
‘you’ as the Body of Christ
‘you’ as God’s people.
We don’t stand alone, we stand together,
with God and with each other.
We are God’s...
and he is ours,
and we, together are his community.
Like Abraham,
like Joshua and the people of the promise,
together we are part of the story of God’s people –  as God’s word reminds us.

Putting on the armour of God is essentially about clothing ourselves in Christ –
who is the Prince of Peace,
the one in whom we find righteousness and our rescue – our salvation and new life.
Who showed us in his own life
how we’re to live.

Like God’s people before us,
we too stand at Shechem –
and perhaps,
to follow in God’s way is to, each day, make that choice
when it comes to who we’re going to serve.
Like God’s people before us,
we too, will make messes,
but, we too, whether we feel it or not,
have God walking alongside us in the rough and the smooth
of all of the things that make up the very stuff of life.

This day, who are we going to serve?
We... will serve God.
How will we do it?
Look at how Jesus lived,
clothe ourselves in him as if it were armour:
live with integrity,
be people of reconciliation,
follow in God’s ways,
walk in the ways of peace.
Put on Jesus –
not the might of armies,
but the world-reconciling power of God,
embodied in the Cross
and the Resurrection of Christ.
Put     on    Jesus...
There’s a very old Sunday School song from the 80’s and the words, tho’ simple,
kind of sum up the question of
who we serve
and
how we serve:
‘Put on love every day,
never hide your love away,
don’t save love for a special day,
put on love every day.’
To put on Jesus is to put on love –
So, this day, and every day:
let us serve the Lord in love,
for that is the most powerful weapon in heaven and on earth. Amen.