Joshua 9
“Saved by a Trick”
March 7, 2010 - Third Sunday in Lent

         Henry Gondorff guns down Johnny Hooker. A federal agent pours four shots into Gondorff and he goes down in a heap. A dazed Doyle Lonnegan is hustled out the door complaining that he’s leaving his money behind. Then the pandemonium settles down with two men lying dead on the floor. You may recognize that as the next to final scene of “The Sting,” with Robert Redford and Paul Newman. It’s a classic film about two grifters, two con men, and the brilliant trick they pull on a gangster who has murdered a friend. Their “long con,” as it’s called, is one of the best movie stories ever.

         The story of Joshua 9 is also a long con, pulled off by a band of grifters from Gibeon who concocted a scheme to trick the invading Israelites. They had something in common with Redford as Johnny Hooker. When Newman’s character asks him if he wants to kill Lonnegan, Hooker replies, “I don’t know enough about killing to kill him.” His revenge is non-violent, a trick. The Gibeonites also avoided violence in favor of a trick.

         In verse 1, we see the kings of Canaanite city states as far away as the Mediterranean coast making plans to band together and repel Israel’s invasion by force. We get one of those long lists of “-ites,” “the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites,” who all “came together to make war against Joshua and Israel.” After the fall of two strong cities, they were running scared. Their answer was to fight back.

         The con men of Gibeon had a different idea. They responded with a “ruse,” it says in verse 4, a trick aimed at saving their lives and their cities without having to fight a possibly losing battle. Israel was focused on dominating the land of Canaan. They would not regard travelers from a distant land as a threat. If the Gibeonites could only convince the Israelites “We’re not from around here” they could forge a peace treaty rather than fight a losing war.

         Gibeon was the central city of a collection of towns in the hill country merely seven miles southwest of Ai, the site of Israel’s latest victory. It was only about nine miles northwest of what would one day become Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. Yet the Gibeonites went out to meet the Israelites with a very carefully crafted story and forged evidence to back it up. “We have come from a distant country; make a treaty with us,” they tell the Israelites in verse 6.

         Israel’s leaders look like a bunch of rubes that just fell off the turnip truck as they talk with the party from Gibeon. They question the story in a “Duh, what if you’re not telling us the truth?” kind of way in verse 7. But they quickly succumb to the ruse, accepting moldy bread and worn out clothes as proof that these travelers really are from some distant country.

         Joshua asks the key question in verse 8, “Who are you and where do you come from?” But the con men are smooth talkers. They call themselves “servants” of Israel, putting themselves completely at Joshua’s disposal. They repeat that they have “come from a distant country,” and then pull out another con man’s trick: flattery. Verse 9 says they are there because of “the fame of the Lord your God.” They say they’ve heard the news spread all over the ancient world about what God did for these people in Egypt and how they defeated two kings on the way to Canaan east of the Jordan. Their nation was just so awed and overwhelmed that from far away they sent out this peace party.

         With all that praise ringing in the ears of Joshua and Israel, they pass around their moldy bread, dried, cracked wineskins and worn out sandals. And Joshua buys it. Verse 14 highlights the big mistake at this point. It’s the same mistake made before the battle of Ai. They “did not inquire of the Lord.” They went solely by their own instincts, made their own half-baked judgments. They did not stop to pray and seek God’s guidance. So in verse 15 Joshua makes the requested treaty and Israel’s leaders swear to it with their own personal oaths.

         Most cons are quickly uncovered. The grifter knows all he has to do is get you to hand him your wallet or wire that money or sign that piece of paper. It doesn’t matter if you figure it out after he’s out the door or two blocks away. So the Gibeonites didn’t worry that Israel figured it out in just three days and came calling at their door. There was that oath, better than any signature on a contract. Israel surrounded the cities, but verse 18 says they did not attack because they had sworn an oath “by the Lord the God of Israel.”

         You and I don’t quite understand this, because we’re used to our modern legal understanding that contracts created under false pretenses are null and void. A contract to buy property that isn’t actually as described is not binding. A marriage to a shyster who has wives in three other states holds no obligation. Fraud nullifies the force of modern legal agreements. Why wouldn’t Israel have every right and even duty to attack and punish Gibeon for its deception?

         Throughout the Old Testament we find that an oath made to God is understood to have a force that only a fool dares to trifle with. It’s just the opposite of our modern idea that the commitments which really bind us are legal contracts, while the sacred promises we make in church, whether it’s marriage vows or a Lenten fast, are the ones that can be broken without consequence. The Israelites were afraid of God’s wrath if they broke their oath to the Gibeonites and attacked them after making the treaty.

         Which means Israel’s oath before the Lord to Gibeon superseded even the command from Moses in Deuteronomy 7:2 to slaughter all the inhabitants of Canaan. “…you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.” Yet here they are doing just that, making a treaty, even after the trick is revealed, showing mercy.

         The “mercy” the Gibeonites received was not a free pass. The Israelite leaders and Joshua condemned them to indentured servanthood forever. They are to be water carriers and wood cutters from that point on. It’s tough, but it’s not a death sentence. And as Joshua fleshes out his sentence on Gibeon it even has a strange grace to it. They are to cut wood and carry water, says Joshua in verse 23, “for the house of my God.” So the Gibeonites not only live, but they somehow become part of the most intimate and sacred aspect of Israel’s life, servants as verse 27 says “for the altar of the Lord.”

         As Israel’s story unfolds, Gibeon itself becomes holy for Israel. We just read in Confirmation class how king Solomon offered sacrifices to God at Gibeon and was blessed there with his famous wisdom. Somehow the con men, the tricksters, become part of the community of God’s people and even their city becomes a holy place.

         It’s fascinating that there is absolutely no indication that God was displeased about all this, the treaty and the mercy shown to the Gibeonites. There is the implied criticism that they did not inquire of God beforehand, but beyond that, no sign of divine displeasure. In fact, right after this, in chapter 10 as we will see next week, God worked perhaps His greatest miracle yet on behalf of Joshua and his army.

         Despite how it might appear, God’s intent toward the inhabitants of Canaan, and indeed toward all sinful and wicked people, is not uniformly violent. We’ve already seen in Joshua 2 how Rahab of Jericho and her family were spared as she hung a red cord out her window. She joined God’s people, even became part of the royal lineage. Now we see something similar with the Gibeonites. Despite the slaughter and violence, despite New Atheist fulminations about the bloodthirsty God of the Old Testament, the story of Joshua contains a thin red thread of mercy offered to outsiders and to enemies.

         People like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris want you to believe that faith in God is the source of most violence in the world. But it’s clear here in Joshua 9 that it is faith in and fear of God which makes Israel merciful. They spare the Gibeonites because they believe their oath to the one true God requires it. If those con men had tried their trick on any other people, with any other gods of that time, they would have been toast. But in the end, the God of Israel is a God of mercy.

         Our Gospel text this morning from Luke 13:1-9 gives us Jesus addressing the same kind of issue. Someone told Him about Galileans brutally murdered by Pilate while offering sacrifices. Jesus knew His followers would imagine what terrible sinners the Galileans were to deserve such a fate and that they would think the same thing about eighteen people who died when a tower fell on them. It’s God’s punishment for sin. Yet Jesus takes the opportunity to point out that everyone is a sinner, everyone deserves punishment. The only hope for anyone is to repent. Then He told a little parable about a gardener’s patience with a fig tree to teach us how God is patient with us as sinners.

         As we think about con men like the Gibeonites, about the deceivers we’ve met and who have hurt us, our Lord reminds us that we are all guilty. We are all deceitful about our own sins. We are not by birth or by right part of God’s people. We are all Gibeonites, coming to God hoping some trick will save our skins from His wrath. And He is merciful, taking us into His holy community and suffering us to live in His presence, just as the Gibeonites were accepted into the midst of Israel and even became servants of the Tabernacle, then of the Temple.

         “Would you help me with my rent?” is a request we hear on the phone more and more these days in our church office. A few years ago a woman I’ll call “Jane” made that request. We try to be wise and careful because we have limited funds and we want our gifts to be used for the purpose intended. So we agreed to provide a check for a small portion of what was needed and asked for a landlord’s name to whom to write the check. She would come and pick it up.

         I was in the office when Jane arrived with a young man who was clearly her boyfriend. As I handed her the check I glanced at her friend and noticed he was wearing a picture ID from work. What only registered with me after they were out the door with the check was that the name on his badge was the name she had given as her landlord. We had been deceived, tricked.

         Jane and her boyfriend were walking. We could have run after them, called them on their con job, demanded the check back. But there is that red thread of mercy that runs through the Old Testament. In the New Testament, in the Gospel it becomes a great red stream of mercy, flowing from the wounds of Jesus, flowing out of His heart, out of God’s heart, mercy for sinners, for tricksters, for us. And so like Israel, like Jesus Himself, we want to be merciful.

         Completely unlike ancient Israel, we as Christians have no call at all to be agents of God’s wrath and judgment. God did not make me judge of Jane’s soul. Instead, He had mercy on my soul. Even more than Israel, we Christians have good reason to allow ourselves to suffer wrong or trickery in order to be what we truly are, agents of grace. That’s what Jesus means when He says to turn the other cheek. That’s what Paul is driving at as he talks about disagreements among church members, in I Corinthians 6:7, asking us whether it would not be better to being wronged or cheated than to be wrathful and full of hate.

         As hard as it is, and it was terribly hard for Israel as they surrounded Gibeon, let’s ask how we will regard those who deceive us? With mercy? How will we ask how those who lie and cheat us to be part of us? How will we welcome them into this community, into this church? How will we bring our own Gibeonites to join in the service of this Table before us, where the great, strong, red stream of mercy in Jesus Christ is poured out for all? The incredible trick of God through Jesus is that He saves them just like He saves us, with the trick of undeserved and merciful love. Together, may we serve at His Altar forever.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2010 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj