Joshua 24:1-28 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Tribes Renew the Covenant

24 Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. 2 And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. 3 Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac; 4 and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I gave Esau the hill country of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. 5 Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in its midst; and afterwards I brought you out. 6 When I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, you came to the sea; and the Egyptians pursued your ancestors with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea.[a] 7 When they cried out to the LORD, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and made the sea come upon them and cover them; and your eyes saw what I did to Egypt. Afterwards you lived in the wilderness a long time. 8 Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan; they fought with you, and I handed them over to you, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you. 9 Then King Balak son of Zippor of Moab, set out to fight against Israel. He sent and invited Balaam son of Beor to curse you, 10 but I would not listen to Balaam; therefore he blessed you; so I rescued you out of his hand. 11 When you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, the citizens of Jericho fought against you, and also the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I handed them over to you. 12 I sent the hornet[b] ahead of you, which drove out before you the two kings of the Amorites; it was not by your sword or by your bow. 13 I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant.

14 “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. 15 Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

16 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods; 17 for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all

the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; 18 and the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”

19 But Joshua said to the people, “You cannot serve the LORD, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. 20 If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm, and consume you, after having done you good.” 21 And the people said to Joshua, “No, we will serve the LORD!” 22 Then Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD, to serve him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.” 23 He said, “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your hearts to the LORD, the God of Israel.” 24 The people said to Joshua, “The LORD our God we will serve, and him we will obey.” 25 So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made statutes and ordinances for them at Shechem. 26 Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God; and he took a large stone, and set it up there under the oak in the sanctuary of the LORD. 27 Joshua said to all the people, “See, this stone shall be a witness against us; for it has heard all the words of the LORD that he spoke to us; therefore it shall be a witness against you, if you deal falsely with your God.” 28 So Joshua sent the people away to their inheritances.

John 4:1-30 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Jesus and the Woman of Samaria

4 Now when Jesus[a] learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2 —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)[b] 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with

his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you[c] say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he,[d] the one who is speaking to you.”

27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah,[e] can he?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.

39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

SERMONMENNONITE CHURCH OF THE SERVANTT

JUNE 28, 202OTEXTS: JOSHUA 24:1-28 JOHN 4:1-30, 39-42

Place--where people come from, and where they go to--is a major emphasis in the biblical story. Many of the places mentioned in the Bible are not incidental; not just background to the real stories. They are often purposeful, part of the stories themselves. The theological significance of these stories is often shaped by their geographical locations.

Today, we’re going to focus on two place references in John’s gospel: the general setting in Samaria and the specific place where Jesus met the Samaritan woman, Jacob’s Well. But to get there, we’re going to start with the place where Joshua conducts his covenant renewal ceremony: the town of Shechem in the land of Canaan. Since Canaan is the primary setting for the Old Testament story and much of the New, including the setting for Jesus’ ministry, In Joshua 24, Joshua is presiding over a covenant renewal assembly for tribal leaders held in the town of Shechem in Canaan. Shechem shows up three times in the book of Genesis. Genesis 12:6 says that Abraham passed through Shechem on his journey from Ur. It has a special significance for the northern tribes, serving as their first capital city.1 It also may have also been the town where Jesus meets the Samaritan women which John calls “ Sychar,” Some scholars say that “Sychar” is “an evolution of the name Shechem, 2” although recent scholarship has cast doubts about this. According to one biblical commentator, if we accept Joshua’s account of all his victorious battles, Shechem may have been the last city standing!3

Joshua reminds the assembly what had led them to Canaan: from Abraham and his descendants, to Moses’ leadership through the Exodus and wilderness experience, to crossing over the river where they encountered a Canaanite people-group known as the Amorites. Sometimes, the term “Canaanite” refers to all the people-groups who lived in Canaan-later called “Palestine,” but other times, it refers to only one of several groups who lived in Canaan. It is the latter interpretation that Joshua 24 follows.

According to the account in Ch. 24, Joshua and his army defeated the Amorites, the residents of Jericho, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites (24:8-13).

At the end of the covenant renewal ceremony, Joshua tells the people of God’s requirements for covenanting with them. The bottom line is, to covenant with God is to serve—worship, obey-- the one God and forsake all foreign gods. Repeatedly, the people promise to do so, but Joshua makes them say it over and over again. Finally, Joshua “made a covenant with the people that day and made statutes and ordinances for them at Shechem (24:25). Then, “[Joshua] sent the people away to their inheritances” (24:28). the parcels of Canaan allotted for each tribe.

1 Grant-Henderson, Dr. Anna, “Joshua 24:1-25,” http://otl.unitingchurch.org2 “Jacob’s Well,” Encyclopedia of the Bible,” https://www.biblegateway.com/resoources/enclyopedia-of-the-Bible3 Haslam, Chris, “Revised Common Lectionary Commentary: Joshua 24,” November 12, 2017 http://montrealanglilcan.org/comments

It sounds like this is the end of the story of the conquest of Canaan. Without going deeply into the debate about whether or not there actually was an invasion,

it does stretch the imagination where the Israelites got all their weapons after spending 40 years in the wilderness. Many scholars believe that if there actually were battles like those described in the book, they were battles fought from Israelites who had already settled in Canaan.

The Joshua traditions were incorporated into a multi-volume history from the same school of historians who discovered, or created, the book of Deuteronomy in the latter 6th century and early 5th century, B.C. This means that the book of Joshua was developed several centuries after the setting of the book, during the conquest of Canaan. The intended audience was the people of Judah, during the Exile. Joshua had warned the people that bad things would happen if they didn’t serve God only, and this was being played out for 5th century Jews. But the book also served to encourage the people that, just as Joshua was victorious over the Israelites’ enemies, the people of Judah would once again be victorious. One day, they would be restored to their rightful place in their land in Canaan, the place of God’s promise.

It is curious that the Joshua tradition includes mixed reviews of the outcomes. Joshua 11:23 says, “So Joshua took the whole land according to all that the LORD has spoken to Moses.” On the other hand, 13:1 says “Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the LORD said to him, ‘very much of the land still remains to be possessed.’” How do we reconcile these conflicting perspectives?

According to Princeton Seminary’s Dennis Olson, who uses the term “Canaanite” in the broad sense, “Joshua had a clear mandate to wipe out the Canaanites completely.”4 This mandate is attributed to Moses, who instructs the invaders in Deutermonmy Ch. 20:16 “..as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them…” (20:16-17a).

Olson goes on to say, :…at the end of his life, Joshua had failed. The Canaanite prostitute Rahab and her family (Joshua 6:22-25), the Canaanite clan of Gibeonites (Joshua 9:22-27) and many other Canaanite towns were not conquered and thus allowed to remain living on the land.”5 Given the choice between wholesale genocide and a less than successful outcome, I’d prefer the latter.

Before looking at John Ch. 4, I want to focus on what happened to the nation of Israel, a few years beyond a century earlier than the Exile. The Assyrians had been flexing their muscles, putting great pressure on both Israel and Judah. Judah survived, but Israel fell in 721 B.C.

The Assyrians had a brilliant strategy for protecting its conquered people from rising up against them. They mixed the people from all the lands they had conquered, bringing some people in and sending other people out. Since these mixed populations had different political interests, different languages, different ethnicities, it would be highly unlikely they would rally around the same goal.

This was the situation in the Assyrian- controlled territory of the former nation of Israel, also by this time, known as Samaria. Israel’s King Omri had established the city of Samaria as his new capital, and from that point on, the whole nation tended to be called “Samaria.” At first a descriptive word for a particular place, Samaria became a pejorative term for a place populated

4 Olson, Dennis, “Commentary on Joshua 24:1-25,” Working Preacher http://www.workikngpreacher.org5 ibid

by a people despised by the Judean Jews. There was much animosity between Judah, or Judea, after the Exile, and the Samaritans.

Why this animosity? First of all, the Samaritans were a mixed population, some Jews; others, gentiles. For the Judean Jews, this made the Samaritans impure. Second, the Jews in Samaria had different views about what was considered scripture than the Judean Jews. Samaritan Jews accepted only the Torah as authoritative, while Jews living in Judea also accepted the prophets, and by the time of Jesus, some of the “writings’ tradition, as well. Third, Samaritan Jews worshipped at their own temple on Mt. Gerizim, while the Judean Jews believed that God could only be worshipped in Jerusalem, on Mt. Zion. Finally, according to the Jewish historian, Josephus, John Hyrcanus, a 2nd century Hasmodean leader and high priest in Judea, destroyed the Samaritan temple.6 By the 1st century A.D. when Jesus was around, there was no love lost between the Judean Jews and the Samaritans.

When Jesus heard the Pharisees claim that Jesus was baptizing more people than John the Baptist—even though John says it was actually Jesus’ disciples who were doing the baptizing—Jesus decided to leave Judea and go to Galilee. Evidently, things were getting too tense in Judea.

Most Jews took the longer route to get to Galilee in order to avoid going through Samaria. But the gospel-writer says that “[Jesus] had to go through Samaria.” We are not told why he has to travel this route, but without Jesus taking this route, John would have no story to tell.

Jesus and his disciples stopped in the Samaritan city of Sychar, possibly the former Shechem, and went to Jacob’s well. John’s gospel is the only biblical reference to Jacob’s well. There is nothing about Jacob having dug a well, although it is likely that he might have done so. Today, an archeological site in biblical Shechem is near a well, and it is an old one. Genesis 33:19 says that Jacob purchased land from Shechem and lived there for a lengthy period of time, so he would have needed a well.7 But the more important factor is that the gospel-writer needed a well. Without this meeting-place, the story would have fallen apart.

Jesus was sitting down by the well at high noon, weary from travel. His disciples had gone to buy food, so he was all alone—that is, until a Samaritan woman came for water. Jesus asked her for a drink. What’s wrong with this picture?

First of all, Jesus was meeting with a woman. For a man to give a woman the time of day in public was a cultural taboo, In addition, when a woman and a man meet each other at a well, a common cultural connontation is that of a courtship ritual. People met at wells to find a marriage partner.

Second, Jesus was meeting with a female gentile,. There was an ethnic, racial difference, because the woman is not a Jew. She’s probably a product of intermarriage among the diverse population of Samaria.

Third, Jesus was meeting with a female gentile Samaritan, a particularly despised kind of gentile. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?,’” the woman asks. (4:9a) John’s editorial comment follows: “(Jews do not share things in common with

6 Josephus, Antiquities XIII, 62-63, cited in Sloyan, Gerard S., “The Samaritans in the First Century, Horizons 10.1.1983, 8)7 “What is the significance of Jacob’s well?” Got Questions, https://www.gotquestions.org

Samaritans”) (4:9b). Jesus has challenged the cultural barriers that keep people apart because of gender, race, and nationality.

In addition to challenging the barriers of gender, race, and nationality, in Jesus’ conversation with the woman about worship, he challenges another boundary: religion. The woman points out what she considers an injustice: the worship of her ancestors on Mt. Gerizim is invalid according to the Jews who insist that “…the place that people must worship is in Jerusalem” (4:20b). In Jesus’ response to the woman, John wants to show that Jesus is firmly rooted in his Jewish tradition: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation comes from the Jews (4:22). But he reaches beyond this tradition: the time is coming, Jesus says, when people will worship on neither mountain, but in spirit and in truth, because, after all, God is spirit (4:24). Where one worships should not be a source for division.

Jesus has a conversation with the woman about water. They continue to talk on two different levels; Jesus says that if she knew “the gift of God,” who Jesus is, she would have asked him for this living water, the water that ends all thirst. It is clear that the woman can’t get beyond her literal interpretation of water. “’Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water’” (4:15). In the midst of this conversation, the woman accuses Jesus of thinking more of himself than Jacob, who built the well and “…’with his sons and his flocks drank from it’” (4:15). Dirty people and their animals; I wouldn’t want to drink from this well! As we will see, her disrespectful comments and her lack of understanding doesn’t disqualify this woman from perceiving who Jesus is.

Jesus reveals that he knows the woman’s ways with men. This has led to the unfortunate interpretation of this text that this woman, if not a prostitute, is at least an adulterous. But let’s look at her situation: five husbands and an unmarried live-in boyfriend. There are several possibilities beyond one that puts this woman in a bad light. She may have been trapped in a marriage custom in which, when a woman’s husband dies, the husband’s oldest brother marries the widow. If her second husband dies, the next oldest brother marries the widow, and on down the line. It could be that she was widowed several times, until the last remaining brother was left, but he refused to marry her.8

But the interpretation that is both more plausible and more likely, is that the five husbands refer to the people from five foreign nations who Assyria imported into Samaria after it conquered the nation in 721 B.C. Years after this influx of immigrants, Herod the Great settled about 6,000 foreigners in Samaria. As for the unmarried man she is living with, this could be a reference to Rome. 9In his commentary on this text, Osvaldo Vena says, “If that is the case, then Jesus is commenting on the Samaritans’ mixed race and culture due to imperialism, not on [the woman’s] private life.”10

Why did the woman come to the well at high noon? Most women came to the well early in the morning or in the evening, to beat the heat. Did this woman’s bad reputation cause her to avoid catty comments and judgmental stares from the more respectable woman of the village? Or could it be that John wants to show this woman “in the fullness of light?”11 In the fullness of

8 Vena, Osvaldo, “Commentary on John 4:5-42,” March 19, 2017 http://www.workingpreacher.org9 Petty, John, “Lectionary Blogging: John 4:5-42, March 21, 2011 https://www.progerssiveinvolvement.com10 Osvaldo11 Petty

light, she discerns that Jesus is a prophet (4:19). In her first witness to other Samaritans, she asks, rhetorically, “’He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’” (4:29b). The power of this woman’s testimony prompted the Samaritans to invite Jesus to stay while. Because of what she has said, they have been led to the source, confessing “…we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world” (4:32b).

According to Osvaldo Vena, a commentator cited earlier, “John 4 represents the founding narrative of a considerable number of Samaritans in the Johannine community. It points to the diversity among the early Christian communities, and it legitimizes the discipleship of women.12

In the same land, the land of Canaan, we have these two biblical stories: a story about the commemoration of a military conquest based on ethnic cleansing, and a story about the Savior of the world—the whole world, no exceptions. In what ways can we hold these stories in creative tension, as both important contributions to our heritage of faith?

One option is to refuse to read those biblical passages that are outdated or offensive. But doesn’t reading the Bible in this way lead us to become our own individual judges of what has value and what does not, rather than seeking wisdom from other members of the Christian community? What I find worthless, you might find helpful, and in listening to you, I might gain a different perspective on biblical passages that are troubling.

Another option, one that many Mennonites favor, is that when we read scriptures where God and human beings say things and do things that make us uncomfortable, our standard for evaluating these words and behaviors is Jesus. But doesn’t reading the Bible in this way lead us to reject or radically reinterpret large portions of the Bible that don’t meet this standard? How many parts of the Bible match up to Jesus?

What are some other options for reconciling with the Bible’s difficult or offensive passages?

12 Vena