The flowing river of history

Morning Prayer: Joshua 4

As the Israelites cross over the river Jordan, Joshua gives instruction that one representative from each of the twelve tribes take up a large stone from the river bed and carry them into the first place the people will set their camp in the land, as a perpetual memory to what the Lord their God has done for them.

But Joshua himself takes up twelve stones and sets them up in the middle of the river itself. Why?

Joshua is of the half-tribe of Ephraim, Ephraim being the younger of Joseph’s two sons. In Genesis 48, Joseph presents his sons before his own father, Jacob known-as Israel, for his blessing. The blessing Israel proclaims relates to the boys’ as perpetual memory of his own name, his history and that of his ancestors. Israel also declares that the younger son, Ephraim, will be greater than his brother, Manasseh.

In short, Joshua understands his own heritage as being to secure the remembrance of the descendants of Israel. While they are all to have a vested-interest in the remembrance of what God has done, Joshua’s role is to remember who it is that God has acted for.

And while the people are instructed to set up the stones of testimony where they can be seen, where their children can walk up to them and around them, laying their hands on them and asking, ‘What do these mean?’ Joshua sets his memorial up where it will be covered by the waters.

These are the people God found overwhelmed by water—in a world where the waters represent chaos, and the land represents stability and a future, a purpose, tied to tending the earth from which we came and to which we return.

These are not a people who are anything in their own might, but a people rescued, again and again.

Yes, the people were to remember God. But in order to do so, they would need help not to forget themselves.

How easily we forget ourselves. And so perhaps, in the footsteps of Joshua, the role of the public leader is not to do the work of telling God’s story to the people for them, but to do the work of reminding them—and God—who they are.