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Choose ye this day!
Joshua 24:15

Today’s first reading narrates the great convocation at Shechem, a city located near Joseph’s grave (v. 32) and Jacob’s well, where, in John’s gospel, Jesus meets the Samaritan woman (John 4:6).  Shechem had been a  great Canaanite city, strategically located in the narrow pass between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. 
            In the presence of the assembled Israelite tribes and their leaders, Joshua rehearses Israel’s sacred history, dwelling especially on the Exodus and the Conquest (vv. 6-13).  He then challenges the people to decide whether to serve the Lord or to serve the tribal gods of their fathers: “Choose ye this day!” (v. 15).  Religious commitment is always a personal choice, not a matter of convention or habit. 
            Despite Joshua’s warning that the Lord is a jealous God (v. 19), the people affirm their decision to serve him (v. 21).  So Joshua demands that they put away foreign gods (v. 23), and the ceremony concludes with the making of a covenant (v. 25a), “a statute and an ordinance” (v. 25b), and the erection of a memorial stone beneath a sacred tree (v. 26). 
            This ceremony was not only the renewal of the Mosaic covenant on Mount Sinai; it may also have extended this covenant to other tribesmen who had not been involved in it before. 
            Our second reading (Mark 6:7-32) is an instructive example of the evangelist’s mode of composition.  It begins with Jesus sending out the Twelve on their missionary journey.  He gives them authority over unclean spirits and admonishes them to travel light (vv. 7-9).  The journey itself takes up just two verses: the disciples preach repentence, cast out demons, anoint the sick with oil and heal them (vv. 12-13).  This scanty account has led some scholars to wonder whether there ever really was a pre-Easter mission. 
            But to give the illusion of time passing between the disciples’ departure (v. 12) and their return 18 verses later (v. 30), the evangelist inserts the famous story of the execution of John the Baptist, brought about, against Herod’s will, through the connivance of his wife Herodias and the charms of her dancing daughter, to whom tradition has given the name “Salome.”  Richard Strauss composed a powerful opera based on this tale, as elaborated by Oscar Wilde. 
            The connecting link between the apostles’ mission and the death of the Baptist is provided by verse 14: “King Herod heard” of the mission.  Finally, Jesus rewards the disciples (and the reader) with an invitation: “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest a while” (v. 31). 

July 8, 2007

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