I opened my computer account wanting very much to write something relevant for the June issue of ‘Light of Life.’ Somehow, I felt that I could not write a thing; I came up against a roadblock, massive wall of obstruction; I just could not think of what to put down; I just got stuck and could not think of any particular route to follow. I was up against a massive blank wall; I had no idea or a title in mind, catchword or phrase to fill in the screen. I was struck down mercilessly with a writer’s mental block; it was indeed a very strange experience for me. I have seen plays in which a writer sitting at his writing desk with a cigarette on the left and a glass of whisky on the right hand looking at a blank page on a typewriter, frozen, immobile, struggling to breath and desperately searching for a word or strings of words to hang on to and escape from the epicentre of that whirlpool of self destruction. It certainly is not a place to be and it is important to escape from that mood and circumstances as quickly as possible to become a creative person again. Suddenly, through the grace of God the thought of Joshua and the Jericho wall came to me. Joshua had a huge problem of a totally different scale and but he turned to his God to see what God had in mind to destroy the massive impenetrable fortified walls of Jericho’s to accomplish his God-given leadership task for his people.

Towards the end of the 5th chapter of the book of Joshua we read: “When Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, ‘Are you for us or for our adversaries?’...Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy.” After wandering forty years in the wilderness of Sinai, the Israelites were stationed on the eastern bank of river Jordan. The task before them was to occupy the land of Canaan which had been promised to them through their patriarch Abraham. The God-appointed leader of Israel at this time was Joshua and he crossed the river Jordan and came across the fortress city of Jericho. The procedure adopted for capturing the city of Jericho was unconventional, it had its intelligence gathering and spy networks activities through the involvement Rahab. When Joshua and his people followed God’s instructions the walls of Jericho fell down mysteriously without any direct human attack on the fortified walls of the city. Very often in our lives we come across our Jericho walls that defy all solutions. This story helps us recognise that God has a destiny both for the individuals and for the members of the faith communities and yet so often some massive problems, denominational divisions, liturgical and doctrinal issues, gay ordinations, priesthood of women, etc., seem to block and make spiritual pilgrimage difficult if not impossible.

When Joshua was at the Jericho wall, he first saw the massive wall, but then he looked beyond the wall and saw a man ‘with his sword drawn in his hand.’ From that moment onwards he was not looking at the problem, he was looking at the man who confronted him and because of this confrontation he was made to realise that the place that he was standing was holy. There are many instances of such encounters in the biblical stories of people; to Moses God appeared in a flame of fire; to Jacob God’s agent came as a wrestler; to Saul on the Damascus road a light, which shone round him, and as he fell down, he heard the voice, “Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me?” To the depressed He is the God of hope, to the afflicted He is God of comfort, to the lonely and friendless He is the friend in need, and in all situations of life He is the Lord who meets our every need. For Joshua this confrontation with the warrior became more significant than the problem of the massive Jericho wall. This reorientation helped him to realise in utter humility that the place that he was standing was holy because of the grace-filled confrontation with the helper in the form of a warrior with a sword. When we face problems in life our focus should be on Jesus who is willing to guide us, help us and protect us.

My immediate desperation to write few lines is of little consequence in comparison to the realisation of my need to appreciate that the place that I am standing is holy and the task given to me at any time is by divine delegation, a God-given task. I think such confrontations are important for all of us, whether it be our tasks at our work place or the local parish, the first step in facing a problem is the realisation that help is at hand through our submission to the Lordship of Christ. When Joshua realised the divine intervention his response was simply, “What does my Lord say to His servant?” We hear an echo of this in Saul’s utterance at the Damascus road as well, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” Therefore, our first encounter is with Jesus and the rest will follow if we have the humility to submit ourselves and wait for His grace-filled instructions.

The sequence of events of God’s encounter with Joshua at the Jericho wall has other significance: In the first place, Joshua has to deal with the wall; secondly, he has to face the warrior and realise it has a nuance far beyond his first physical awareness of this theophany; thirdly he is to be taught how to stand and behave himself in utter humility in the divine presence. Joshua is told to take his sandal off his foot for the place that he is standing is holy. We often miss the fine sensitivity of this issue in our relationship with God in our spiritual life; we forget the holiness of the occasion. We pray for God to deal with our problems and that of others, but are not sensitive to realise that God wants to deal with us directly on a very simple issue of removing our sandals in His presence. This sandal also has myriads of meanings. When we flow with the grace of God we do not need to depend on other aids and agencies for coping with our needs. Removing the sandal is a symbolic way of showing our obedience to God’s involvement in our lives.

I often wonder whether we are sufficiently reverential to the presence of the Lord during our Sunday worship due to our familiarities of Sunday liturgical worship and pastors who lead the worship. Our posture, body language and dress codes are not often conducive to such a holy event. We need to internalise the beauty of the whole occasion and feel the wholeness within ourselves for our life outside the church for the rest of the week and the whole process should begin again at every encounter with our Lord. Although we pray for “Thy will be done” thousands and thousands of times, we are not willing to take our sandals and gloves off to do ‘His will.’ The problem is of not knowing what is needed to establish His kingdom, but our refusal to have the humility to become partners in this task. As a result God’s name is dishonoured entirely due to our disobedience; we allow others to ask the mocking question we discussed last month, “Where is your God?”

Parts of our Jericho walls are of our own making as well; we build them from our cradles to our graves. As we are building these walls for creating our separate, distinguishable, unique identities and ego boundaries we get imprisoned in the prisons of our own making. The story of Saul and David is another example of building walls and boundaries. Saul, preoccupied with his power and his jealousies over David, built his own walls of separation and designed plans to kill David. This process consumed his whole life, he lost God’s plan for his life and lived a disobedient life and died by falling on his own sword, his death was of his own making. David on the other hand continued to respect Saul’s authority as anointed king and gained everything. These walls are real road blocks in our spiritual journey. Therefore, we need to see the presence of our Lord at the wall or outside the wall that we are building all through our lives for creating importance in others’ eyes through status, titles and pay cheques. In this busyness of life we do not realise the most important declaration of Jesus, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

In the absence of those interactions with Jesus, between birth and death there is absolutely no life, people are dead of living or living dead. We are misusing God’s gifts for our death, which are meant for an abundant life. We deny ourselves this abundant and fullness of life by our misguided actions or inactions. Our precious life itself is the holy ground on which we are standing and we need to remove our sandals to breakdown the walls that we have created to keep our Lord outside our lives. Joshua found out that he was not alone in the struggle that he was facing. God often speaks in detail as He did to Joshua in telling him how to use his soldiers. Some of these instructions, like walking around the wall thirteen times in seven days, may look foolish to others. However, we can be sure that God will win for us our real struggles, but it will be in God’s time and through God’s agenda. The important question is this; would we be willing to do something as simple as examining and re-examining our lives or reformulating our priorities if God asked us to do? May God’s grace help us to breakdown our own Jericho wall, which separates us from our Lord and our God.