“Getting it right. Getting it wrong.”

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

Joshua 24:1-3a, 13-15 and Acts 2:42-47

October 17, 2022

Is God’s word perfect? 

Well, I suppose it depends on what you mean by God’s word for starters. 

Like many of you, I grew up being told that the Bible was God’s word. Or maybe, more accurately, words. God’s perfect words.

By the time I went to seminary I was pretty sure this couldn’t hold because, well, you know, there are a lot of contradictions in the Bible. And some other stuff that’s flat out horrifying. So how could it be perfect?

The Bible is, in my mind, clearly a book written by humans seeking to understand God, just like we do. In these sacred stories we see that sometimes our faith ancestors got it right….and sometimes they got it wrong. There’s no perfection here, just humans being human.

Today’s two texts from Joshua and Acts really showcase the ups and downs of humaning. In the book of Acts we have this utopian vision of Jesus’s early followers getting it right. They shared all their possessions. They took care of everyone who had acneed. They made space for everyone at an ever-widening table. There they are, doing what we say we’re trying to do: “love one another - every single other.” 

It’s a powerful story. A vision of what humans can do when we take seriously the call to shape our lives in the ways of Jesus and try to “be the church” together. To share what we have - generously and with gratitude. To care for one another, bearing each other's burdens and sharing each other's joy. To nurture a community that provides a warm and welcoming home base for asking questions, serving, working for justice, and building God’s Beloved Community. 

It’s a powerful story of what it looks like for faithful people to “get it right.” 

Of course, if you keep going you’ll find that this little utopian moment didn’t last forever. Unity gave way to questioning who’s really in and out. And by chapter 5 we’ve got stories of people holding back “just a little” from the common purse for themselves and being struck dead because they lied about it. So much for sharing everything with glad and generous hearts, huh?

The Bible is full of these stories of getting it right and getting it wrong. And sometimes it seems to be all jumbled up together in one breath. The passage from Joshua is a bit like that. We only heard an excerpt of the 24th chapter today but if you look at the whole thing you’ll find a condensed history of the people of Israel up to this point. The book of Joshua is the story of the Israelites’ conquest and settlement of the lands they believe God gave to them.

If you know a verse from Joshua it’s probably the one we heard today, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” It’s a sweet little nugget. But the stuff that comes before it in Joshua? Hoo boy. 

I can’t help but hear this text in conversation with the double-pronged holidays we just observed earlier this week: Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples Day. Two observances that tell very different stories about the history of the land we call home. 

There is no getting around the fact that the cultural and physical genocide of indigenous people in the West was not in spite of Christianity but, in large part, because of it. It’s not that Christians didn’t do enough to stop the atrocities, it’s that Christians were leading the way.

Passages like Joshua 24 provided the framework that allowed sinful theologies like the Doctrine of Discovery to flourish. The Doctrine of Discovery was created by papal bull in the 15th century to justify European powers stealing land from indigenous people in what is now North America. The teaching provided theological justification for colonizers by claiming that Christians had not just the right but holy responsibility to either convert or conquer all non-Christian people. Lord, have mercy.

We look at these statements now with horror but it’s easy to see how you get there from the Book of Joshua. The theology of the Book of Joshua is essentially that the Israelites are God’s chosen people and that God promises to give them two things in exchange for their faithfulness - many descendents and land. In Joshua God ensures that the Israelites conquer the land by force the people conquer the land by force - time and time again giving them military victories. Until we eventually arrive at the place we heard in today’s reading where the people are celebrating that they are able to live on land that they didn’t labor on, eat from trees and fields they didn’t plant, live in homes they didn’t build, and generally reap all these magnificent benefits because they stole them directly from the people who had lived there before. 

Ick. 

Nowhere in Joshua does it say that we’re supposed to somehow extrapolate that God wanted Europeans in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th centuries to do the same thing. This was written solely as the history of one group of people and their (flawed, I would argue) understanding of how God was operating in their lives. It was never meant to give license for other colonizers to do the same thing, but again and again we have done just that. 

Those of us who participated in Indigenous Peoples Day at K-State this past week heard first-hand about how these theological fallacies have directly impacted the place we call home. Our own Tanya González welcomed guests to the university in her role as Interim Associate Provost and spoke with wisdom about the history of the university. 

Tanya said

This university, like all universities, has a complicated past, one that is embedded in colonialism and its legacies of racialization and inequity, but that also claims a commitment to educational access and public good. Today, Kansas State University continues to uncover our stories and truths through land and people

acknowledgments; through scholarship, creative activity, and discovery; through teaching and learning; and through connecting to our partners in education, to our communities in Kansas and beyond. We know, after all, that it is only by recognizing the truth that we can find healing and transformation.

Kansas State is an institution like our own congregation, with a complex history. It’s an institution whose history features people sometimes getting it right and sometimes getting it wrong. We often talk about the complexities of our own congregation’s history - founded by white Congregationalist settlers from back East who came to Kansas Territory with the noble goal of making Kansas a Free State. While they succeeded in that endeavor, they also succeeded in stealing land from people who already lived here. 

Institutions have a way of concealing when humans get it really, really wrong. But we are called, as followers of the Light, to look closely at who we have been, who we are, and who we want to be. It is only through careful reflection on the past that we can chart a different future together. 

Kaw language scholar Storm Brave spoke on Monday about the history of her people, the Kansa, and their relationship to this place that we now call Kansas. She talked about broken treaties, broken promises, and what it’s like to know that the dominant culture worked very, very hard to completely eradicate your culture for generations. Ms. Brave said, “I’m not sharing this to offend anyone, but if it does offend, you have learned something and that’s what history is for.” 

Learning is what history is for. And so we struggle with the history of our institutions, our local communities, and our faith ancestors. People getting it right and people getting it wrong. All mixed up together.

I asked at the beginning of this sermon if God’s word is perfect. The Bible seems far from perfect to me, and I’m okay with that.

But I want to close by noting that “God’s word” doesn’t always mean the Bible. Sometimes when we say God’s Word we mean The Word spoken of in John 1, “In the beginning was the Word.” The Christ force that infuses all creation, light shining brightly, never overcome. 

Christ invites us not to perfection but honest reflection in the light. A willingness to shine a light, even on the hard stories that we’d rather forget. The ability to step into the light and let our own stories be heard. The light illumines, warms, softens, clarifies. 

May we be strong enough and brave enough to keep stepping into the light and seeing with new eyes. Sometimes we’ll get it right and often we’ll get it wrong. 

May we remember that perfection is never the goal and that Christ accompanies us as we practice being faithful humans together.