The story starts with a mass ritual that leaves the Israeli army rather shockingly out of commission. Seems odd, but the exodus-ed Jewish people had simply forgotten a central sacrament of their lives, that all boy babies must be circumcised. They just hadn't gotten around to it for forty years, hard as that is to believe.
But the forty-year sentence their unbelief had earned them is over now, and they're already in the Promised Land; so it seems that God almighty thinks it's time to renew the ancient promises. Not just with the babies either, but every last male in the tribes--grunts to generals--every one of them goes under the knife. "Go on--drop 'em," God says.
It was a Mother's Day sermon, the preacher said yesterday, a wry smile.
But seriously, the opening act of Joshua 5 is the kind of story that gives the Bible an R-rating. Sharpen up the flint knives, God tells them--every last one of you.
They obey. I'm guessing that none of those men of steel screamed, but for a time at least, I'm sure nobody went dancing either.
But the Almighty has still more in mind. He then directs them all to celebrate a Passover, something they'd also not done for far too long. It's as if in the middle of the war He's decided to do battle inside the souls of the people of Israel, to lay off of the Canaanites for a while and work on rebuilding identity.
The Passover had to remind all of them of the blood they'd once brushed on the doorposts of their lives, a memory many of them didn't have but a reminder nonetheless not to forget. In Joshua 5, the people of Israel are being consecrated by the sacraments they'd rather too busily neglected. Don't forget, God almighty seems to say, that there's also a war going on forever within.
Quite a passage, and it's not over.
Joshua sees somebody standing before him with a drawn sword. This is Joshua the Brave, Joshua the hero, Joshua the Commander-in-Chief, and he's got a voice like a bullhorn, I'm sure. "Who goes there?" he bellows. "Friend or foe?" What he says in the King James is "Art thou for us or against us?"
Now remember, Joshua himself probably isn't square-skipping just yet; he's still got wounds in all the wrong places. But he also knows and defiantly believes that he's been marked by Yahweh, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. Passover wine still courses within his veins. He has been renewed. Drop that deep voice an octave because He knows he's sanctified, listed among the saints. He has absolutely no doubt he belongs to God.
But this stranger with the unsheathed sword, a man who identifies himself as someone who is really not a man but commander of the Lord's army, maybe even Jesus Christ himself, some say, answers Joshua's question up there on the ramparts in a way that has to take the Israeli general out at the knees.
"Whose side are you on?" Joshua says, the medals on his chest jingling.
Simple question. Difficult answer.
"Neither," he says. "Neither," says the being with the sword. He's no Canaanite but he's no Israelite either, and if Joshua thinks he's one of them he's kidding himself. He might well have said what the Lord said to Moses at the burning bush: I am the I am, and you're on holy ground so let me just remind you that some bowing is in order.
That's what the captain of the Lord's army says.
Seriously, that incredible answer is one of the most sobering lines in all of scripture, not so much a rebuke as a pure definition.
It was quite a sermon yesterday, but then quite a passage too. No matter where you stand in the religious wars going on all around, with this passage one size fits all.
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