“The Joshua Generation”

A Sermon by

Rev. Robert M. Hardies

All Souls Church, Unitarian

Washington, D.C.

Sunday, 18 January 2009

Our first reading this morning is from the book of Deuteronomy, the final verses of the final chapter, which describe Moses’ death on the brink of the promised land.

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, which is opposite Jericho, and from there

                                    the Lord showed him the whole promised land:  Gilead, as far as Dan, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh;

                                    all the land of Judah, as far as the western sea.  And the Lord said to Moses, “This is the land which I

                                    promised to your ancestors, to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.  I have let you see it with your eyes, but you

                                    shall not cross over.”  Then Moses, God’s servant, died in the land of Moab and was buried there.  The

                                    Israelites wept for Moses at the foot of Mount Nebo for thirty days.  Then the period of mourning was ended.

That’s how the book of Deuteronomy ends.  And all too often, on Martin Luther King, Jr., Sunday, that is where our story ends, just short of the promised land.  But this day is different.  And so today, I’m going to turn the page in my Bible, because on the very next page, the story goes on, the journey to the promised land continues.  On the next page, the book of Joshua begins like this:

                                    When Moses had died, God said to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses’ aide, “Now then, you and all these people,

                        `           get up and get ready.  Get ready to cross over the River Jordan into the promised land.  Be strong and

                                    courageous.  Be strong and very courageous.  Keep the book of the law close to your heart.  Meditate on it

                                    day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.  Do not be terrified.  Do not be

                                    discouraged, for I will be with you always.

Here ends our readings.

The death of Moses is one of the most poignant moments in the Bible.  Here was Moses, God’s faithful servant, who freed his people from slavery in Egypt, who led them for forty years, forty years of wandering and deprivation, and has finally, finally, brought them to the brink of the promised land.  But just as they are about to cross over, God leads Moses up to the mountaintop, up where both of them can get a good view of the promised land, and God shows it to Moses and they savor a moment there, on the mountaintop, because they have been partners in this enterprise for lo, so many years.  But then God turns to Moses and says, “You shall not cross over.”  Imagine having labored so long, come so far, only to hear those words, “You shall not cross over.”

In the last sermon he preached before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of a dream he’d had, a dream in which God takes him up to the mountaintop and shows him a promised land of justice and equality for all, a land that God assures him will one day come to be, but which he will not live to see.  “You shall not cross over,” he said.  And for so many years on this Sunday, our story has ended here on the mountaintop, with God and Moses and Dr. King all together there.  We ended with the promised land in our sights; some years the view from Nebo was clear and it seemed as though we could almost reach out and touch the promised land.  In other years, clouds obscured our view and it seemed distant.  In either case, we had not crossed over.  But this year is different.  This year, the story will not end on the mountaintop.  This year, as we stand ready to inaugurate our nation’s first African-American President, this year for the first time, we turn that page, and oh, what a difference a page can make.  [Applause]  For on this new page, that story of Joshua and his generation begins. 

The Joshua generation is the generation that finally crosses over, the generation that, at long last, arrives in the promised land and stakes a claim, a claim that it will never relinquish, a claim of justice and freedom for all people.  We, we are the Joshua generation.  No matter what our age, each of us, by virtue of being alive at this historic moment, we are members of this generation.  And it is our responsibility to build the promised land.  But before we do that, we have another responsibility, because the responsibility of any generation is first to honor those who have come before.  I know that on this weekend, many of us are thinking of loved ones who longed for a day such as this, but did not live to see it.  The Moses generation, the generation that made this day possible.  Maybe they were our beloved spouses, our comrades in the struggle.  Maybe they were our parents or grandparents, mentors who told us the stories, who passed on their commitment to us.  I want to invite us to pause now, to remember those who are no longer with us and to feel their presence among us today.  Hold these names in your hearts or, if you are so moved, speak them into this holy space.  Let us remember.  Amen

Now that we are all here, we can turn to the task that lies before us.  And the task is substantial.  I know there are some who will hear all this talk about crossing over into the promised land and will use it as an excuse to be complacent. “Hey, we’ve arrived now, so let’s kick back and relax and enjoy ourselves,” just like I’ve heard some people say that now that we’ve elected an African-American President of the United States that, well, we’re past all that racism and all those issues we’ve got around justice.  You know, we’re all part of that hip, post-racial, “multi-culti,” Obama generation.  Friends, this may be the promised land, but it is not Shangri-La.  [Laughter]

And in the Bible, when Joshua and his people crossed over, God did not say, “Hey, why don’t you just relax and get comfortable and stay for awhile.”  Do you  remember what he said?  God said to the people, get up and get ready.  Get up and get ready to cross over into the promised land.  Get up and get ready to not just dream about the promised land, to not just preach about freedom, to not just theorize about justice.  Get up and get ready to build the promised land.  Get up and get ready – it sounds to me a lot like, “Fired up, ready to go.”  [Applause]

Any community organizer knows that the only way to build a promised land is to build lots of promised communities, communities that are laboratories of the promise, models of the promised land, communities that make Dr. King’s dream of the beloved community a reality.  Communities where people of all races and classes and cultures come together to live into this promise of justice and equality for all.  You see, I believe that the Joshua generation cannot fulfill its promise until we all come along together.  We cannot fulfill our promise if we remain divided and isolated.  One thing that I do not like about the biblical story of the Joshua generation is that when Joshua gets to the promised land, he takes his people and he divides them up into twelve tribes and he sends them all into separate parts of the promised land.  That doesn’t sound very much like the promised land to me; sounds more like Washington, D.C.  [Laughter]  Imagine God saying “I’m going to take one tribe and I’m going to put you over on one side of Rock Creek Park and I’m going to take another tribe and I’m going to put you on the other side of the Anacostia River.”  Not in my promised land.  We must all go there together.  You know, the promised land is not a gated community; it’s not one of those places where you go and you slam the door behind you and no one else follows in.  We are all in it together.

And that is why there is one practice that will be absolutely crucial to the success of the Joshua generation, and that is the practice of solidarity.  In the Joshua generation, solidarity must become more than a political tool; it must become a spiritual practice.  One of Dr. King’s mentors was the mystic and prophet Howard Thurman.  Thurman said this: “Ultimately, there is only one place of refuge on this earth for any person, and that is another person’s heart.  It is our vulnerability and our interdependence that unite us as a human family.  We are each other’s safe harbor.” And so, if you’re a man, you stand up for the equality of women.  If you’re white, you show up for the rights of people of color.  If you’re straight, you fight on behalf of gay folks.  If you’re a citizen, you stand, side by side, with the immigrant.  If we are to build the promised land, solidarity must be the spiritual discipline, as well as the political practice of the Joshua generation.   

There’s so much I want to say to you today about this new generation and about the challenges that lie ahead.  But we’ve got a lot of time ahead of us.  And so, I want to close today by telling you one final story, about what it means to shift our mindset to a new generation.  Awhile back, I served as a human rights worker in the jungle of Guatemala.  I lived among a village of indigenous Mayans whose communities had been massacred during Guatemala’s 35-year civil war.  They’d fled to Mexico where they spent 15 years in refugee camps.  While in Mexico, this devoutly Catholic community took great comfort and solace in the Moses story – how he freed his people from slavery, how he sustained them as they wandered through the wilderness for 40 years and how he finally led them back to the brink of their country.  These people had lived the Exodus story. 

When the civil war ended, they made the courageous decision to return to their homeland.  They couldn’t go back to where they’d come from because the military had repopulated their villages.  So they were given a small patch of jungle out of which to carve a new life for themselves.  They faced many obstacles, from an intransigent government to a belligerent army to an unforgiving terrain and climate.  But almost all of them agreed that their biggest challenge, their biggest challenge, was to move on from the story of Exodus and embrace the story of building a promised land.  To shift from demanding their rights to protecting everyone’s rights, to shift from a refugee mindset to a homesteader’s mindset, to allow their wandering spirits to finally settle and take root again.  One gentleman who had lived long enough to see the war and the flight to Mexico and the return said to me one day, “Rob, we will survive as a people only if we stop being Moses and start being Joshua.”

Friends, on this historic Sunday, as we celebrate the legacy of Dr. King and the Moses generation, and rejoice in the inauguration of our nation’s first black President, I challenge us to take up the mantle of the Joshua generation.  We aren’t refugees any more.  We are no longer exiles in our own nation.  We have come home.  So let us build that promised land, one promised community at a time.  Get up and get ready.  There’s a lot of work ahead.     Amen

[Applause]