In a 1936 speech to the British Parliament, Winston Churchill said, “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.” Personally, institutionally, we are all faced with choices. Sometimes even not to make a choice is, in fact, to choose to enter a period of consequences. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, church leaders were required to make consequential choices based on erratic and sometimes rapidly changing information. While we were still spraying our mail with Lysol, we had to decide, “Do we close the church?” Later, it was, “What about masks? Do we ask, or do we mandate?” And of course, “What do we do about _____ who wears his mask under his nose?” I remember, half-joking, that I craved the day when we could have a good old-fashioned church argument about nothing more consequential than the color of the sanctuary’s carpet. Whatever choices we made, the potential for great consequences chastened us. Joshua takes pains to present the Israelites with a clear choice, a consequential choice. In his farewell sermon, Joshua tells the people that they must choose this day whom they will serve. He reminds his friends, his family, his people what God’s choice of Israel means: Israel’s common life is to be a life of covenantal faithfulness. Israel is to be God’s living witness in the world. Or, they can choose not to live in relation to the God who has chosen them, with a very different string of consequences to follow.
If we expand the text, we see how Joshua warns the Israelites that they are entering into a period of consequences either way. While they need no reminding, given the last 40 years in the wilderness, he nevertheless does remind them — and quickly adds that continuing to serve an idol comes with perilous consequences.
Read the rest of the commentary on the website. Thank you to this week's writer the Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis. | 
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