Joshua 21
“Scattered”
April 25, 2010 - Fourth Sunday in Easter

         It’s the reading of Aunt Ida’s will. You sat patiently as her attorney explained legal stuff like bequests and codicils and probate. Now he’s reading the document, announcing what’s been left to each family member. Her no-good gambler son with the pierced eyebrow sighs with relief as he receives her house and half the money. Her pastor smiles as their church is blessed with ten percent. Her nieces and nephews, your cousins, all gladly get $5,000 apiece. Finally a page turns and you hear your name… only to hear Aunt Ida did not leave you money, land or anything of great value. She left you the old family Bible. It’s a nice sentiment, but you can’t help wishing there was a little cash to go along with it.

         A few weeks ago we looked at the distribution of land among the tribes of Israel in Joshua chapters 13 through 19. Each of twelve tribes was blessed with a carefully described piece of Canaanite real estate, an “inheritance” in the promised land, two and half tribes on the east side of the Jordan and the other nine and a half on the west side. But we skipped over the fact that one tribe, Levi, did not receive anything in this distribution. Chapter 14, verse 4, says it was because Joseph’s tribe was so big it had become two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim. So Levi became the thirteenth tribe, the odd man out, with no inheritance.

         Joshua 21 addresses Levi being passed over in God’s will, pun intended. In verse 1 they come before the high priest and Joshua and the other tribal heads to request a little place amidst all the lands the other tribes received. The Levites need cities to live in. Like the rest of Israel, they are nomadic herdsmen. They need pastures for their flocks. And, as they point out, Moses left instructions in Numbers 35 to provide the Levites with cities and even giving dimensions for the surrounding pastures.

         Verse 3 says it happened. Each of the tribes gave Levi something out of their own regions, their own inheritances. The rest is details, beginning with the number of cities designated for each of the clans of Levi, named according to his three sons, Kohath, Gershon, and Merari. Though Kohath was not the firstborn, his descendants were allotted cities first because Aaron and the rest of the priests came from that tribe. Then the other tribes which donated the cities are listed along with the names of all the towns.

         It’s as if you came to those cousins as they fingered their $5,000 checks and begged them to share. A hundred dollars from one, fifty from another, and you end up with a little bit of Aunt Ida’s fortune for yourself. But it doesn’t feel real good. You’re still the one who only got a Bible. You’re the one who didn’t really have an inheritance, a place in the will.

         There are actual ways we may feel disinherited, feel as if we’ve missed out on God’s blessings, left to pick up whatever crumbs other people drop for us. That’s how it can feel to lose a job, to end up homeless, to have to show up and sit and wait in a hard plastic chair or stand in a long line at the social services office in order to collect an unemployment check or some food stamps.

         Even those of us with homes and jobs may feel we’re not really where we want to be, that we’re not in the right place for us. We look at successful wealthy classmates with whom we graduated from high school. We visit a friend’s large, lovely home in a nice neighborhood. We climb in our fifteen year old car and hope it will start. And we feel like God has passed us over while handing out His blessings, like we just got an old black book with a frayed cover. Others got all the good stuff. Others are the ones who have real homes, real places to live and work and even go to church.

         Some of you left another church or are in that process right now to come here. It’s a tough and painful and leaves you feeling lost and uprooted. Some of you may just be moving in to town, while others are getting ready to move away. You’re wondering where you really belong. What place has God given you? Some of you are graduating from high school. You know where you’re going to college, but what will it really be like? You will leave your familiar room at home, leave your best friends, leave the old spots you hang out, and get assigned a spot in a big dormitory, a bed and a desk a half a closet in a little room with somebody you never met before.

         Why does God do that to us? Why does He pick us up and put us down in all these strange, new, lonely, uncomfortable places in the midst of people we don’t really know and where we often feel like we don’t really belong?

         Why did He do it to the Levites? The Levites, after all, were special. They were the tribe of Aaron, Moses’ brother, Moses’ second in command and spokesperson. Aaron was the spiritual leader of Israel, the high priest, the one who stood before God and offered sacrifices for their sins. Why did God disinherit Aaron’s tribe? Why leave his family out of the blessing of territory and towns and boundaries of their own? Why scatter them around Israel, dependent on the charity of other tribes, living in towns that probably weren’t the best, but whatever the others were willing to give up?

         Friday afternoon I was in Seattle at our North Pacific pastors’ meeting. The business was over and it was continuing education time. Our main speaker was missing because he got stuck in Sweden by the volcanic cloud. I was tired and trying to stay awake listening to a substitute present material I had heard several times before. I would have been much happier reading in my hotel room or better yet back here in my own office, writing this sermon and attending to things at home. I wondered why I was there.

         Then I went downstairs for a break and ended up in conversation with another pastor who said, “You know, I’ve got a theological question for you.” He told me about a person in his church who was promoting an odd belief and claiming Covenant freedom for it. And so I talked with my friend and we found a way for him to respond to that congregant, found a couple resources for him to read and share with his church leadership, found a way to address the problem with Scripture and with Christian love. And on my way back upstairs I realized that’s why I was there, not for me, but for my colleague.

         That’s why God scattered the Levites around the other twelve tribes of Israel. He put them there not for their own good, not to bless them, but to bless the other people among whom they would minister. We’re not told directly what role those Levites served in their various towns around Canaan. Scattered like that, they no longer connected easily to the service of the Tabernacle or of the Temple later on. Why were they there? II Chronicles 35:3 says simply that they “instructed all Israel.” They taught the people in every tribe, even on the far side of the Jordan, that there is one God, that He brought them out of Egypt, that He had saved them and gave them a Law to live by. Just by their presence, the Levites were a reminder of God, a reminder of the faith that held Israel together.

         As you and I wonder why God put us where we are, why we don’t have nicer stuff or a better job or a less dysfunctional family, more of life’s blessings and less of life’s troubles, the answer may have less to do with us and more to do with people around us. Like He scattered the Levites around Israel, God scatters His people today around our neighborhoods, around our cities, around our country, around our world. He doesn’t want us bunched up together in one holy utopia populated only by Christians. He wants us out there in the mix, like the Levites, reminding our neighbors, our local governments, our nation, our world that there is a God who loves them and wants to save them through His Son Jesus Christ.

         I’m not sure about it, but somebody did the geography and the math to calculate that no one in Israel lived more than ten miles from a Levite towns. No one was farther than a half day’s walk from a representative of the Lord who could teach them and pray for them and advise them on how to do God’s will. Jerusalem and the Temple might be far away, but God was not far from anyone. That’s why God disinherited the Levites and scattered them around the land to live in borrowed towns and pasture their sheep in cast-off fields.

         That’s why God lets you and I land in strange and sometimes hard places. We’re there not so much for us as we are for those around us who need to be reminded there is a God. There is a God who came to save us as a Man named Jesus, who Himself had no place of His own, but who died on the Cross and rose again so everyone might inherit eternal life. That’s why you and I are where we are, to instruct those around us in the grace of God.

         I’ll be honest. The last few years here in this place have been hard for Beth and me. Conflicts a few years ago, a little less to live on, and a congregation that is smaller have sometimes made us ask, “Why are we here?” Then God connected us with someone, brought a person or a family to us whom we’ve been able to teach or help or counsel. And we looked at each other and said, “That’s why we’re here,” like the Levites, not for ourselves, but for those around us.

         That’s at least part of why you are where you are, whether it’s a good place or a tough place. It’s not just what God is doing with and for you. It’s what God wants to do through you that put you in that neighborhood or in that job or in that school. It may even be why you find yourself out of a familiar place, leaving old friends, losing a good job, changing churches. God wants you to be Levites, to be His presence for somebody else.

         Yet that’s not the whole story of the Levites. An extra tribe popping up in Israel because one tribe split is not the only reason Levi did not receive a regular inheritance like the others. Right near the beginning of the distribution of land to all the other tribes, we read in Joshua chapter 13, verse 33, “But to the tribe of Levi, Moses had given no inheritance; the Lord, the God of Israel, is their inheritance, as he promised them.”

         God was their inheritance. He didn’t give them territory or vast fields of sheep and goats or big cities full of power and wealth. God gave the Levites Himself. That’s what He promised them, and that’s what He promised you and me, wherever He puts us, whatever else He gives us. That’s what we were saying when we said and sang the 23^rd Psalm together this morning. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” “I shall not lack,” “I have everything I need in the Lord who shepherds and guides me where He wants me to go.”

         That’s what we heard from Jesus this morning as He said in John 10:27, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” The Lord is our inheritance. He gives us Himself and no one can take us away from Him.

         So Aunt Ida’s old Bible might have been the greatest treasure she left to anyone in that will reading I imagined. The Savior and Lord we meet in Holy Scripture is a gift and a legacy far exceeding the value of anything else we might inherit in this world. In Him we lack nothing. Our accounts are full, our real estate is vast, and our place in this world is a kingdom, the kingdom of God.

         Which brings us to the end of Joshua 21 and to the point of all this, the point of all the details of distributing a land inheritance to the twelve tribes Israel and cities to Levi. It’s also the point of God’s decisions to put you and me in all those different places, whether in a small apartment or in a large house, whether in a good job or drawing unemployment, whether going to school or going to work, whether in a community of many friends or in some lonely assembly of strangers. The point is that through His grace, through His Son Jesus Christ, God is transforming this world into His kingdom.

         The closing verses of this chapter point to God’s Kingdom. Verses 43 to 45 say

So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there. The Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their ancestors. Not one of their enemies withstood them, the Lord gave them all into their hands. Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.

Like other triumphant passages we’ve looked at in Joshua, you could say this is hyperbole, exaggeration. We know not all the land was in their possession yet. They still had enemies to battle, cities to conquer, even Jerusalem was not yet theirs. Yet it’s stated here in perfect faith, in complete confidence, that God was truly fulfilling all His promises, was making this land into a home of peace and rest for His people. And the Levites spread evenly around the country were there to remind them all that God had given them this land, that God was their King, that the place where they lived was becoming the kingdom of God.

         You and I look forward to the complete and final fulfillment of those same promises which have been passed on from Israel to us as Christians. We read the Christian vision of that promise from Revelation 7 this morning, hearing that we will be

before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger, never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on the them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Rest on every side, every foe defeated, no hunger, no thirst, every tear wiped away. That’s where our Lord is leading us. That’s the kind of world God is making here on earth. And that’s why He scattered the Levites around Israel and why He scatters us around into nice places and hard places, into locations where we want to be and locations where we’d rather not be. He’s bringing the grace and love and peace of His Kingdom into the world through us who are the spiritual heirs of the Levites.

         David Bentley Hart tells us that Jesus came into a cruel world. Poor people were enslaved or abused or ignored. Women were treated as the property of men. Unwanted girl infants were taken out and left on hills to die. Criminals were publicly tortured and executed for the entertainment of bloodthirsty masses who welcomed a diversion from their own hunger and misery. Jesus came into that world, that cruel culture, and started a movement that fed the poor, that honored women, that cherished every child born and that followed His command to visit and care for those in prison. They believed Jesus when He said God’s Kingdom was coming into the world through Him. So they soon scattered all over the world to bring the Good News of His Kingdom to everyone, and they made the world better.

         You and I are still part of that scattered movement. That’s why we are where we are, to bring the Kingdom, to bring the presence of God into our neighborhoods, our schools, our workplaces, wherever we are. We’re Levites. Our inheritance is the Lord Himself. God gave us Himself in Jesus Christ. May we gladly receive that legacy and share it in all the places God puts us, until we finally rest in the Kingdom He is building.

         Amen.

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