University Christian Church

In my backyard as a kid, we were blessed to have some fruit trees.

One of them was a Chinese pear tree. Just about every year, the tree would bloom and produce these beautiful pale yellow pears, absolutely overflowing, weighing down the branches. If you picked them too early, they would be too sour and hard to eat, but if you waited patiently toward the end of fall, they’d be ready and perfectly crisp and sweet. We could fill baskets full to bring into the house to enjoy.

The best thing about this pear tree was that we didn’t plant it. Someone else did. Maybe the person who lived there before us or the person before them. Whoever it was, though, we got to enjoy the fruit of that field.

I’m curious if you had an experience like that growing up - or even now - being able to go out and enjoy something that you had nothing to do with.

And really, that’s the best kind of fruit. You didn’t have to plant it, and you didn’t have to pay for it.

But thank God, right, that someone, many years ago, not even thinking of you probably, planted a tree or a bush whose fruit sustains your life.

As we close out this short series through the Book of Joshua, we have come to a similar kind of moment for the people of Israel - where they are told in no uncertain terms, “I gave you a land on which you had not laboured, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.”

Chapter 24 comes at the end of Joshua, as this leader has grown old and is prepared to die. Just like Moses, he gathers the people together for a final speech, a final time of commitment. Joshua begins by recounting anew the whole story of the people of Israel. He reminds them how God saved them and brought them out of Egypt. He reminds them of God’s care for them in the desert and God fighting for them against powerful kings and enemies. Finally, Joshua summarizes the whole military campaign to enter Canaan, do battle against Jericho, and advance with every decisive victory to claim what God had promised them.

Of course, Joshua doesn’t mention those Canaanites, like Rahab and her family or the Gibeonites, who managed to outwit or find a way to survive the violence and destruction. And if we look carefully, we’ll discover that there are other Canaanite cities left standing. So, there’s some tension here even as Joshua claims with confidence all that God had done.

The point of Joshua’s speech though is that God is and has always been the one in control for the people of Israel.

God is the prime actor. God is their chief strategist. God makes all of this possible.

And now, they get to, at least for a time, enjoy the fruits of all of God’s work. They didn’t have to plant the fields or build the cities or lay out the subdivisions. God had set it up so they got to reap what was tended and nurtured and labored by someone else. And at least for a time, kick back and live the good life.

Two weeks ago, as we heard the challenging uncomfortable message from Mark Charles, a Navajo leader and speaker, I hope this passage feels a little jarring to you. It is to me, knowing about American history, about the destruction and violence wrought upon Native American communities as European settlers and then American settlers pushed west, hungry for land and resources. According to historians like Michael C. Mann in 1491, those first European settlers found a landscape teaming with abundance - new fruits and vegetables, plentiful game, and immense beauty. It’s no wonder they thought it was like the Garden of Eden, and all of that, as historians and archaeologists continue to uncover, was because there were people and communities and trade networks and sophisticated nurturing and care for this landscape.

And as progress unfolded across North America, the price was the lives of indigenous communities, removed to claim that land and this bountiful land.

For me, it’s even more personal since I am from the great state of Oklahoma. In our state history, this swathe of land was given to a number of Native American nations to live, some of them forced there on a death march by US forces. There were treaties and maps and agreements - it was all official. Eventually though, American settlers began to see that this Indian Territory was actually a beautiful place with rich soil and lots of value, and not long after, lands promised to Native American nations was bit by bit taken back, re-assigned, opened up to settlers.

When the Wichita-Caddo tract was opened up, before anyone else had a chance, churches were allowed to buy tracts of land. Our own Disciples of Christ Board of Church Extension bought tracts of land for $1, and wherever that was, they started a church there. One of those churches was in a little town that came to be called Anadarko, and it came to be my home church where I was raised up in Sunday school, where I was baptized, and where I had my first communion.

Breaking bread, sharing the cup - on land that really belonged to someone else

What do we do, as people of faith, as followers of Jesus who came so that we might have life, life abundant, when we benefit from lands and abundance that is not our own, that came at the expense of someone else’s suffering and conquest?

Certainly, human history is filled with numerous examples of conquest, war, and terror - and often, the people fighting those battles claimed that god or their particular gods were fighting alongside them, justifying their violence and mayhem. The Book of Joshua is one such narrative of conquest, where God seems to be bloodthirsty and violent and unforgiving, but what I have tried to do through this series is also point out the tensions in the stories. Daniel Hawk, author of Joshua in 3-D, thinks that Joshua is filled with signs that the community of God was having an internal argument about this, and that stories like Rahab and the Gibeonites challenge the dominant narrative. God was also with those who were spared, those who survived, those who resist destruction.

It’s as if the deep question beneath this text is what Joshua commands the people:

Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.

Will you serve the Lord?

Joshua makes clear - “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” - but his question hangs in the air. “Well, we’re here now - who will you serve? What kind of life will you lead? What God will you follow?” He has seen the people at their worst. He has seen that they are likely to wander and get distracted and lose sight of God in all that the world offers. It’s like he asks again, will you serve the Lord?

I think that question hangs in the air for us too as we come to the end of this series:

We know our country’s history. There is so much trauma and pain, from slavery to colonialism to genocide to assimilation and violence. We can’t take it lightly. It is not a history that has receded in the past, but it is a history that right now affects us and keeps us from living into deep community together.

And at times, it has felt like we have traded in the God of Abraham and Isaac for the God of Success, Stock Markets, and Starpower, all the while some people suffer.

How will we live with this knowledge of who we are and where we come from?

How will we choose to live at this intersection, knowing what we know now?

Will we accept the stories we have been given and the world as it is?

Or will we choose to be shaped by another way, another narrative, of one called Jesus, which by the way is just the Greek translation of the name Joshua, to lead us all into a new life and a new community?

As for me and my house, my faith doesn’t let me ignore these questions. Certainly, I have much to learn, and I don’t always know how to respond or be a part of the healing that God seeks in our land, but I cannot simply enjoy the fruit of this time and place without doing something to mend our broken landscape and our broken relationships.

As for you and your house, what will you do? How will you respond with what you have?

There is an old Chinese proverb or saying that goes - “Those who come after rest in the shade of the tree planted by those who have come before.”

It speaks to this wonderful mystery of life and faith that so many of us would not be here today if it wasn’t for someone else. That so many of us here have had success because someone else intervened or mentored or blessed us. It speaks to the decisions that people made that only years and years and years later, sometimes without their knowledge, open the door or make life possible for someone they would never know. And it moves in gratitude and humility also, for the people who were here before, for the people still among us, for those who deserve to be heard and seen, for all the ways we each need restoration.

We recognize that the mending work, the work of God’s reign, will not happen overnight, but perhaps, we are called to begin planting fruit trees and stacking stones that someday will nourish those who will come next and form the cities that will bring us back into right relationship with God and each other. That seed for you might be an act of generosity today that will sprout in someone’s life tomorrow. That seed for you might be to refrain from being silent when hurtful words are aired, even in a church setting. That seed for you might be to sit at the feet of an elder and listen as to how we got here. That seed for you might be to help us as a church imagine a future where we can alleviate the suffering of the hurting and poor in our community and nurture the next generation of leaders. That seed for you might be to choose integrity over a quick buck, honesty over the easy way out.

And I pray, it is to choose our God who came that we all might have life, life abundant.

Who will you serve?