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Hespeler, April 13, 2025 © Scott McAndless – Passion Sunday
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Luke 23:1-12.

After the events that took place on that fateful Friday, both Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas remained in place, ruling over their territories for a few more years.

Pilate continued to terrorize the people of Judea and Samaria until he eventually went too far, ordered a massacre of Samaritans at Mount Gerizim and lost his post. And Herod continued to extract as much money from the Galileans as he could until, eventually, he asked for too much and the Emperor had him exiled.

But for those few years, they both thoroughly enjoyed one aspect of their lives: their ongoing friendship. Whenever they could, they would meet up at one of their many palaces and spend an enjoyable afternoon sipping wine and sharing their memories of that golden day.

A Conversation Between Friends

“You know,” Pilate would often say, “we get along so well these days that I sometimes forget why we hated each other for so long.”

“Yeah, right,” Herod would say with a smile, “I hated you because you ruled over territory that once belonged to my father and should rightfully belong to me, and you hated me because I guess you were jealous of how devilishly handsome I am.”

“Something like that,” Pilate would chuckle.

But the truth of the matter was that they really had hated each other. But all of that had changed one Friday when they had become fast friends. They had bonded over a troublemaker who had been arrested.

Casual Cruelty

Now, condemning and punishing people – whether guilty or not – was never something that either of them had trouble doing. Pilate got a perverse kind of satisfaction out of ordering massacres and even mingling the blood of worshippers with their sacrifices. And Herod had a real cruel streak as well, as he particularly showed in his attacks on Nabataea.

But when cruelty is your favourite hobby, it can get complicated dealing with all of the consequences of your actions all the time. Finding excuses and ways to shift the blame almost becomes a full-time job.

And that was where their friendship really started. When that Jesus of Nazareth showed up before him, Pilate would have been only too happy to torture him to death right away. He had caused a disturbance in his city at a moment when Jerusalem was filled with rowdy pilgrims who might start an insurrection. Of course Pilate wanted him dead!

Passing it on to Herod

But Pilate had been getting performance reviews from the Emperor who was concerned about all of the indiscriminate killing. Apparently he wanted him to tone it down a bit. So, when Pilate found out that Nazareth was actually in Herod Antipas’ territory and that Herod was in town for the festival, he saw a perfect opportunity to let someone else take the fall on this one. And so off Jesus was sent to Herod’s place.

As for Herod, he had actually been wanting to kill Jesus for some time. Some Pharisees had even told Jesus so. So he was definitely on the same wavelength as Pilate. But, he could see that the man was doomed now anyways. So why should he stick his neck out? He chose instead to mock Jesus for a while over all of the reports of miracles and wonders he had heard about, and then just send him back.

Pilate should have been annoyed at that, of course. Herod hadn’t done what he wanted him to do, leaving him once more in the position of possibly catching some heat over his crucifixion quotas.

Passing it onto Jewish Leaders

But of course, this was not the only way that Pilate had for finding someone else to pin this on. The local religious leaders were quite aware of just how difficult Rome could make life for them if there was unrest, especially around the Passover.

So, if Pilate showed signs of not wanting to kill the man, maybe if he even made a ridiculous show of wanting to wash his hands of the whole affair, he knew that he could make them step up and take the blame on themselves. He could manipulate them if he needed to.

But Pilate couldn’t help but find some respect for Herod who had clearly understood what he was doing and yet had not been willing to play his game. He resolved that, as soon is this whole affair was over with, he would call up that fellow and get to know him better. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there is something a little bit odd in the whole story of the trial, suffering and death of Jesus. There just seems to be a lot of energy being put into laying the blame and deflecting the blame for everything that happened. I mean, the whole story of Herod and Pilate’s unlikely friendship, which is told only in the Gospel of Luke, is really just the most obvious example of people trying to pass the buck back and forth.

Who Killed Jesus

The answer to the question of who killed Jesus is actually quite clear. Based on the historical data, there is one clear answer. He was killed by the Romans. He was executed by crucifixion. Crucifixion at that time was a uniquely Roman method of execution. They wouldn’t even allow anyone else to employ it. We know who did it.

It is also not very hard to understand what the Roman motivation might have been. Jesus had caused a disruption in the temple during the festival of Passover.

And Passover was a festival that always made the Romans very nervous about insurrection. It was a remembrance of the time when God had saved the people of Israel from slavery. The Romans liked slavery. Indeed they were completely dependant on it for everything. They got very trigger-happy whenever people were celebrating that kind of liberation. They clamped down on any disruption during Passover immediately.

So, it is pretty clear who killed Jesus and why. Pilate did it; he maybe didn’t drive the nails into Jesus’ hands himself, but he was in charge. So, you’ve got to wonder why the gospel stories spend so much time trying to chase down other suspects. They tell the whole story as if it is a great whodunit that no one can solve.

Why the Gospels Don’t Emphasise That

Now they may have had some practical reasons for doing this. These gospels were written at a time when the church really couldn’t afford to catch negative attention from the Roman authorities. It was not really a good idea at the time to go around blaming the Romans for murdering their founder. It was helpful to introduce a bit of nuance into the telling.

But I don’t believe that this was just a cynical step taken to escape dangerous imperial attention. These gospel writers were writing for churches who knew very well who had killed Jesus. They understood how the empire worked better than any of us could. But, by playing around with the question of whodunit, I think that the writers were inviting those readers to look deeper – to look beyond the question of blame.

Our Tendency to Lay Blame

Whenever something goes wrong in this world, that seems to be our human reflex. We look around to find somebody to blame. Tragedies happen; they happen all the time. But there is something inside us that makes us think that, if only we can find someone, anyone to heap the fault on, it will somehow magically make the tragedy make sense.

It is faulty reasoning. Identifying someone to blame may sometimes (if done correctly of course) create an opening for justice to be done. It may even create opportunities to avoid similar tragedies in the future. But it doesn’t automatically make anything better. It can sometimes make things worse – especially when our blaming is faulty or too simplistic which it often is when we are desperately looking to lay blame to make ourselves feel better. But it is a very natural human response.

So of course, as the early church reflected on the death of Jesus, they felt that natural human response to find someone to blame. Of course they blamed the Romans, but they also knew that it was dangerous to talk too loudly about that. So they also considered the other possible collaborators – Herod Antipas, Judas (of course), the Jewish leadership and even the Jewish people themselves. So of course, the gospel writers wove all of that speculation into their account of Jesus’ passion.

Looking Beyond Blame

But the writers also knew what they were doing. They understood that blame is never a sufficient response to tragedy. It doesn’t really solve the underlying problems. That is why I believe that they went out of their way to push their readers beyond questions of mere blame.

That must be what Luke is doing by telling his unique story about the unlikely friendship of Pilate and Herod. They are, to be clear, perfect villains. They are the sort of people who would sooner condemn you to death than sneeze at you.

And yet Luke invites us as readers to enter into the speculation. “What if they didn’t do it? What if they didn’t even want to kill him and they each tried to pass the responsibility off to the other?”

The Scandal of Christian Antisemitism

That doesn’t make much sense historically. But what if Luke invited us into that story to show us just how silly it is to put all of your energy into blaming someone.

The whole blame game around the crucifixion has been so destructive throughout Christian history. In particular, the false but far too easy decision to pin it all on the Jews has caused no end of hatred and emnity, culminating in some of the worst atrocities carried out in the name of Christianity including the Spanish Inquisition, European pogroms and ultimately the Holocaust. Blame for the crucifixion has often taken Christians very far from who Jesus has called us to be.

Enemies Becoming Friends

And so maybe Luke told this story about shifting blame between Pilate and Herod to make us look past all of that to see what? To see friendship and specifically a friendship between two most unlikely characters.

What is the message in that? Is it supposed to make us like Herod and Pilate? Surely not. They are still the bad guys. Pilate is still the guy who gives the order that sends Jesus to the cross. They are irredeemable in many ways.

And yet Luke tells of how this all ended in their unlikely friendship. Is there not a message to the church in that? So long as we make the story of the suffering and death of Jesus merely a story about judgement and blame, we will not realize the fullness of its power.

Beyond Judgement

I do know judgement is a part of the Christian understand of Jesus’ death. For many, their only understanding of the meaning of it is that God judged and blamed us for our sins and that Jesus died to take that judgement away.

That is, of course, an accepted theological understanding, but I think that, with this story, Luke is prompting us to consider that there is something else at the heart of what Jesus suffered as well. He is telling us that it is ultimately about turning enemies into friends.

I mean, if the trial, the suffering and the death of Jesus could turn the likes of Herod and Pilate into friends – if it could make a little bit of space for friendship in the hearts of these psychopathic monsters, is it not also possible that Jesus went through all of that to bring the end of all sorts of enmity.

Jesus gives himself ultimately so that we can be friends with God and God can be friends with us. Jesus’ death means that ancient enemies – even the Russians and the Ukranians, even the Palestinians and the Israelis, can set aside generations of hatred and resentment to build friendship. It even means that you might find the opportunity to set aside that grudge, that resentment or even that hatred you’ve been carrying around against somebody forever. That is what the death of Jesus can achieve.

Wear your silliest socks today!

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Hespeler, April 6, 2025 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday in Lent
Isaiah 43:16-21, Psalm 126,  Philippians 3:4b-14, John 12:1-8

Have you heard the story about the time when Jesus was eating supper at somebody’s house when, all of a sudden, a woman came in and began to anoint Jesus? But then all of the men who were present began to criticize her harshly for doing that. But then Jesus began to defend her. In fact, Jesus defended her so strongly that he suggested that she might be better than any of them. At least he suggested that she had done what they should have done but had failed to do.

Of course you know that story – or at least you do if you are at all familiar with the gospels. That story is told in each of the four gospels in our New Testament.

Or is it?

Here is what you may not have noticed if you haven’t studied the gospels in depth. Yes, that story is told in each of the gospels, but there are details in those tellings that actually make them so distinct that they cannot be the same story.

In Simon’s House

Let me show you what I mean. The story told in Matthew and Mark is virtually the same – as in word-for-word the same for the most part – so we’ll count that as one story.

This story takes place in “Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,” where as Jesus “sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head.” (Mark 14:3) The woman is unnamed and the people who are present criticize her for wasting the money when it could have been given to the poor.

The details of this story are important. You anoint kings by pouring oil on their heads and so she sees herself as anointing Jesus as a king. Also the fact that she is unnamed is significant as Jesus calls attention to that when he says that “what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” It is also significant that she does this just before Jesus is killed, as he says, “she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.”

In the Pharisee’s House

But the story in the Gospel of Luke has different details. It takes place much earlier in the ministry of Jesus and in the home of a Pharisee where Jesus is reclining (not sitting) to eat. The woman, still unnamed, anoints Jesus with the same alabaster bottle of ointment, but she anoints his feet, not his head, and only does so after she washes them with her tears and dries them with her hair.

The details make the story quite different. This is not a royal anointing; you anoint the feet of someone as an act of penitence. And the men present criticize her, not because of the expense, but because she is so sinful and should not be touching someone as holy as Jesus. And Jesus praises her and forgives her because she has washed his feet when his hosts have failed to do so.

In Lazarus’ House

And then we come to this story that we read this morning from the Gospel of John. We are back in Bethany and just before Jesus’ arrest, but we’re in a completely different house – the house of Lazarus who Jesus just raised from the dead a chapter ago. And this time, the woman who is doing the anointing, far from being unknown, is a woman who we have already encountered in this book. She is Mary, the sister of Lazarus, the same one who told Jesus off for not coming sooner when her brother was dead.

So, what is going on here? The stories echo each other so perfectly, but the essential details mean that they cannot be the same story of the same events. I see two possible explanations.

Understanding Each Story

It could be that this was something that just happened to Jesus all the time – as in, there were constantly various women who were coming up to Jesus with alabaster jars of costly ointment. That seems a bit odd, but I suppose it is possible.

The other possibility is that these three stories are all based on one original incident, but what has happened is that each of the gospel writers has taken that story and intentionally told it in a slightly different way.

But they would have done this for a reason. You don’t go adapting a sacred story like this one without trying to use it to get your particular message across. Each of these gospel writers, in other words, was trying to use this story to teach us different things about who Jesus was and why he had come.

And if that is what is going on here – and I think that it is – then our job as readers is clear, isn’t it? We need to do our best to understand what each author is trying to get across to us by the way that each story is told. So, let’s it take a deep dive into the story told in the Gospel of John, because there are some really interesting things going on in there. In fact, let us put ourselves into the place of Mary as she prepares to greet her extraordinary guest.

When Lazarus Had Died

When Mary’s brother told her that he had invited Jesus to dinner, her mind immediately went back to the last time she had seen him. It had been at a horrible moment, when Lazarus has just died.

She had just finished watching and feeling utterly helpless as her beloved brother weakened and sickened over several days. Lazarus was not only somebody who she loved dearly. He was also the only source of financial security for his unmarried sisters. And here she was, there was nothing she could do to save him. And then she lost him. He was gone.

Four days after that, Jesus had come. She knew his reputation as a healer. She knew that, if he had come sooner, none of this would have happened. But now, here he was. Too little, too late.

She should have been furious but, honestly, her grief was so great that it was like she could hardly harness the strength to express any emotion whatsoever. When her sister Martha went out to greet Jesus, Mary just stayed back in the house. She wasn’t weeping; she wasn’t doing anything yet. She was just lost.

Martha and Mary

 Martha had done all of the heavy lifting that day. She had been the one to confront Jesus over his tardiness. She was the one who spoke to him of her hope of a resurrection of the dead on the last day, but that that seemed far too remote to give them any comfort now. She was the one to stand there perplexed as Jesus cryptically said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

But Mary, when she was summoned and had to force herself to get up and go out to see him, all she had been able to say was, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And then, finally, with those words, the floodgates broke, and she began to weep like she had never wept in her life.

And then she saw it. Through the veil of her own tears, she looked up to see that he was weeping too. And no, it was not just a few tears tumbling down his cheeks. It was not just a moment’s weakness. He had completely taken onto himself the sorrow that had consumed her entirely in that moment.

For Mary, that moment when he wept as she wept had meant everything. The rest of what happened that day – the opening of the tomb and even when her brother had come forth again – that was just like a dream that flowed from that moment.

Preparing for the Guest

She had not said another word to Jesus since. And when she heard of her brother’s invitation, she knew that she would now finally have her opportunity. She, unlike her sister Martha, was a woman of few words. So, she decided to show him what was in her heart.

She spoke to Martha and asked her if she would take on the work in the kitchen. She would offer hospitality in the form of food. But Mary would take on treating him as the guest of honour that he was.

Martha was expecting, no doubt, that her sister would carry out the traditional duty of washing the visitor’s feet. Mary had a little something extra in mind.

Something Left Over

Remember that, just weeks ago, the sisters had carried out the terrible duty of preparing their own brother’s body for burial. This was something that had always been women’s work and they had done it with extreme care. They had used nothing but the best myrrh and aloes and costly perfumes. But, when they had done, there had been one alabaster jar of precious nard left over. Unbeknownst to her sister, Mary had kept it aside.

She probably should have sold it. It would have fetched 300 denarii – almost a year’s wages – or more. She could have used that kind of money to feed about seven and a half thousand hungry people. (At least the calculus at the feeding of the five thousand was that 25 denarii could feed a thousand).

But something made her feel as if she needed to keep it for Jesus. She was no fool. She could see the opposition rising against him. And she could also see that he was not going to back down just because things were getting dangerous.

Preparing His Body

Women were used to navigating dangerous situations. That was just what life was like for them. She knew just how likely it was that they were going to take him. And if they took him, there was no way that they were going to let him live.

And now, as she prepared to welcome Jesus into their home, she thought that the time had finally come to prepare his body for the now inevitable destruction that awaited it. And so, she took that jar of precious ointment and broke it open over his feet as he lay down upon the dining couch.

What was she doing in her mind? She was certainly acting as the hostess in her brother’s house by washing his feet. But she was also anointing him, not as a king or a priest. For that she would have anointed his head. No, she was anointing him as one already dead and ready for burial. She unbound her hair as a sign of one in mourning and used that hair to wipe the ointment onto his feet.

The Disciples’ Complaint

When they complained to her about the cost of the ointment and what else she could have done with it, it was not as if she didn’t already know. What, did they really think that women couldn’t do math? Well, yeah, actually that’s probably exactly what they thought. But it wasn’t that.

It was that they weren’t all that inclined to spend money to feed the hungry. Hadn’t they even said as much when Jesus had wanted them to feed 5000? They said that it would be ridiculous to spend that kind of money.

No, she was pretty sure that they raised that point as a smokescreen. They wanted something to distract themselves from the realization that she was coming to terms with – that they were about to lose him.

At least, she was pretty sure that was what was happening for most of them. But as for the one called Iscariot, she had good reason to mistrust his motives. Some women just know when they are dealing with a man who is untrustworthy.

Mashing Stories Together

It is an unfortunate habit we have of taking the stories of the Gospels and just sort of mashing the ones that are similar together in our minds. Remember that each gospel writer was telling his own story. Remember that they did not just write these books to report about what had happened. If that was all that these books were for, one would have been enough.

No, each gospel writer was trying to get across the important truths about Jesus that he had discovered. And each did that in the way that they adapted and told the stories. When we harmonize those stories, reducing them to the lowest common denominator so that they are all the same, we run the risk of losing sight of the very important truths that these writers were trying to give us.

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March 30, 2025 © Scott McAndless – Fourth Sunday in Lent
Joshua 5:9-12, Psalm 32, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

In our reading this morning from the Book of Joshua, we meet the children of Israel at what is clearly a key moment of transition. Let’s just take stock for a moment of where they are in their story as a people.

What God Has Done for Them

They have been saved from an enslaved existence by their God. They have been given a new identity – transformed from being the Pharaoh’s workforce to a people who are called by the name of their God.

In addition, their God has given them a law to live by. To put that in terms that we can relate to, they have been given a constitution. And their shared experiences both as they escaped from Egypt and as they struggled together through various trials and tribulations and a few battles during their wilderness wanderings have forged them into a united community with a shared national story.

These are all things that create a sense of nationhood. For us, they are the very things that give us a shared understanding of what it means to be Canadian: a name, a constitution, set of laws and a shared national story.

God has done all of this for them in addition to saving and sustaining them through all this time – the sustenance consisting mostly of the regular provision of food. Manna, as least has they have experienced it, has been heavenly food that they have not had to work for. It has simply been provided.

One More Thing

But in our reading this morning, we are told that God does one more thing for them. It happens once they have crossed the Jordan River and entered into the Promised Land. They arrive at a place called Gilgal, and this thing happens that seems to be pivotal and momentous. But I’m not quite sure what it means.

God says, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” But what is this disgrace? The Hebrew word that is used there is חֶרְפַּ֥ת (ḥer-paṯ). It only appears a few times in the Old Testament, and it is translated in various ways. Sometimes it is translated as disgrace, as here. But when it is used actively, it gets translated as abuse, taunting or scorn. It is a word that indicates that somebody is disrespecting you, either by denigrating you or perhaps laughing at you.

About Respect

What this is saying therefore is that, despite all that God has done for the children of Israel, they are still not getting the respect that God feels that they deserve. They are being mocked and taunted by others. And I can imagine it, can’t you? “You’re just a bunch of former slaves that have banded together,” people were saying. “You’re not a real nation.”

And so, as a final gift to them and a cap on their wilderness wandering, God rolls all of that away from them at the place called Gilgal. (And Gilgal, not so coincidently, means “rolling.”)

To put all of this in terms that we can relate to, lets imagine a ridiculous scenario happening to us today as Canadians. We have a shared identity, a shared national story and constitution. We fiercely defend our sovereignty. We don’t pretend that our country is perfect or that we don’t have problems, but we are justly proud of who we are as Canadians.

“Joking” About Our Identity

So, imagine what it would be like if somebody started making jokes about Canadian sovereignty. They might “joke around” by doing things like calling Canada the 51^st state or calling our southern border nothing more than an “artificial line” and our Prime Minister a governor. I know it is hard to imagine anyone doing such a thing (or at least it was a few months ago), but my question is how would you feel about such jokes?

I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t find them very funny. Rather than responding with laughter, Canadians would be much more likely to respond with anger, defiance and even retaliation, right? And all of the protestations that someone might make that they are “just joking,” would certainly not calm down such a reaction. Indeed, as the so-called joking continued, we would no doubt become more and more concerned about where such disrespect might lead.

So maybe, if you reflect on that, you can understand what the children of Israel were feeling at that moment of transition and what God was doing for them. And maybe, just maybe, all of that might make you wonder whether God might just be willing to do a little bit of rolling away for our sake too.

Domination by Empire

The disgrace that the Israelites have suffered is related to their domination by a powerful Egyptian empire. In addition, this passage was probably written down at a time when the people of Judah had just returned from exile in the land of another empire, the Babylonians.

The disgrace is therefore not specifically related to something about Egypt. It is rather something that is common to all empires. They extend their power by denigrating and mocking and disgracing the nations around them. It is often much more effective than exercises of military might.

And that is certainly where empires often start like, for example, when Vladimir Putin’s attacks on Ukraine began in the form of mockery and statements about how they were not a real country and their borders were not real borders.

And I know how we like to say that you shouldn’t listen to such things and that “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” But there is something about the jibes of empire that make them hard to ignore. There is always a lot of unspoken threat behind them.

A God Who Understands

But in this passage, we learn about a God who understands what it is like to be victimized by powerful empires. He has chosen these people of Israel and saved them from the power of empire. He has made a bunch of slaves into a nation that is free and sovereign. And now he has also removed any stigma of the disgrace that they have suffered.

I don’t know, but all of this does seem to be a message that we could use at this particular moment. We live at a moment in time when the disrespect of one empire and one wannabe authoritarian leader seem to be disrupting us a lot.

And one thing that might do to us that would be unhelpful would be if we got caught up in the hurt that such disrespect might make us feel. Stewing in our bad feelings is likely not going to be very constructive.

So, knowing that God is willing to take away that disgrace for our sake might be a helpful thing. It can help us to get past the emotional response and move on to more practical measures.

Practical Results

And what might those practical measures be? Well, the passage ends by saying this: “they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.” And I can’t help but think that that might have something to do with not allowing any sense of disgrace to overwhelm them. It certainly reminds me of one of the most positive responses among Canadians these days as they choose to live on the things that are produced in their own country as much as they can.

I think that this passage makes it clear that such measures are not just good economic sense. It is a way of banding together as a people to support one another, knowing that our solidarity is a threat to the imperial powers of this world.

You see, that is what they don’t want us to know, that they are not as powerful as they pretend – that they actually depend for their power on everyone feeling inferior and subservient. When we don’t play that game, they lose that power.

Not Easy

That is not to say that it is going to be easy. When the Hebrews ate the produce of the land that year, it started with little more than, “unleavened cakes and roasted grain.” And I know that is traditional Passover food, but the very simplicity of the food is a message. When we choose to support one another first, that may come with a lowering of the standards we may have enjoyed while under empire’s wing.

Like the Israelites who complained, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and ate our fill of bread,” (Exodus 16:3) we may find ourselves missing many things in times to come. But let us not forget that independence and sovereignty are more valuable than pots of meat.

So, I do see this passage from Joshua speaking to us at this particular moment. And given the somewhat fraught political situation right now, it might be hard to approach this story as anything but Canadians.

Eating the Produce of the Land

But there are other ways to interpret and apply this passage that I would also like you to take away with you today – something to think on at least. The idea of eating “the produce of the land” is something that may apply to your own personal life as well.

It is so easy for any of us to fall into the habit of relying on an outside energy to direct and define our lives. Now, when that external energy is with you in a mutually supportive way – like in a good marriage or in our relationship with a loving God – that can be a very beneficial habit.

But when that energy is dominating and controlling, when it has an Empire energy to it, that is another story. This is what happens with addictions, with high control religious systems and with co-dependant relationships. This is destructive. It causes disgrace in that it keeps us from being the people we have the potential to be.

It is Worthwhile

And this passage is here as a comfort to you if that is what you are dealing with. God stands ready to roll away the disgrace of any empire that rules over your personal life.

And yes, that may not be an easy process. You may need to concentrate on the produce of your own life for a time, develop your independence in some uncomfortable ways. That may even mean that you have to subsist on “unleavened cakes and roasted grain” for a while.

But the work is always worthwhile and, in these words of the Lord to Joshua you have a promise that your God will work with you.

Despite what the powerful of this world often claim, your God is no friend of empire. Your God is at work to free those under the domination of any kind of empire – to free those who have been enslaved in any way and roll away all disgrace.

This story from the Book of Joshua is told of a people at a moment of key transition. And I can’t help but think that we are also living in a time of transition. The world is changing; old alliances are shifting. But do not fear. God will roll away your disgrace at a place called Gilgal.