Roots & Rivers
Raíces y ríos
Joshua 1–9, 19–24
Preached by
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser
Eden United Church of Christ
Cherryland, CA
01 Nov 2026
How ‘bout them Valkyries, Church?! This past week, our Eden team members gathered for a little spooky brunch. We had quite the cast of characters, even the Mona Lisa was in attendance. Not everyone could make it, but we had a good time. Nuestro equipo se reunió para celebrar Halloween. ¡Y aparecieron no uno, sino dos Dr. Simi!
It is good that we laughed, because this has been a heavy week. ICE presence has ramped up in the Bay and we’ve felt it, and on Wednesday, two giants crossed over on the very same day. Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, the woman who gave us "¡Sí, se puede!", died at ninety-six. And in Mexico City, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas died at ninety-two, the man whose 1988 presidential campaign was stolen from him and from millions of Mexicans. Two leading figures for justice and democracy, on both sides of the border, called home together.
Que bueno que pudimos reunirnos y reirnos. Ha sido una semana pesada. La actividad del ICE se ha intensificado en el Área de la Bahía, y lo hemos sentido. Y el miércoles, perdimos a dos gigantes: Dolores Huerta y Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, dos campeones de la justicia y la democracia, en ambos lados de la frontera.
Today we celebrate All Saints Sunday and Día de los Muertos. We remember those who have gone before us—our ancestors in faith, our families, our loved ones. Those whose lives, sacrifices, and stories have made our lives possible. And our scripture takes us to a river.
After forty years of wandering, the Israelites have finally reached the Jordan. Before them lies a new land, an uncertain future. Behind them, generations of slavery, liberation, wandering, and wilderness.
And God tells Joshua to do something peculiar. Choose twelve people, one from each tribe, and have them gather twelve stones from the riverbed. Carry those stones across and arrange them as a memorial.
Why stones? Joshua explains: When your children ask, "What do these stones mean?" tell them the story. The stones aren't there simply to commemorate the past. They're there to provoke questions in the future. God is asking Israel to remember tomorrow: to preserve the stories of yesterday so that future generations might discover who they are, where they've come from, and how God has accompanied them.
Hoy, en el Domingo de Todos Santos y el Día de los Muertos, recordamos a nuestros antepasados y seres queridos, cuyas vidas e historias dieron forma a las nuestras.
Nuestro pasaje bíblico nos lleva al río Jordán. Tras cuarenta años en el desierto, Israel finalmente cruza hacia un nuevo futuro. Pero antes, Dios le pide a Josué que recoja doce piedras del lecho del río como monumento conmemorativo.
¿Por qué? Para que, cuando las generaciones venideras pregunten qué significan estas piedras, puedan conocer la historia de la fidelidad de Dios. Antes de seguir adelante, se invita a Israel a recordar, recordar las generaciones por venir.
I've been thinking quite a bit about my own ancestors, and my kids’ ancestors lately. On my mother's side are the Beans, an Irish-American family from the foothills of Appalachia Tennessee—close to Dolly Parton country. One ancestor, Captain William Bean, a hunting buddy of Daniel Boone, established one of the first permanent European-American settlements in Tennessee in 1769. My great great grandfather helped build Red Oak church of Christ in Boone’s Hill Tennessee.
Before the religious restoration movement took root, the Beans had a reputation for being a little wild. They cut off people's ears, defied warrants, and apparently were so difficult that Judge Andrew Jackson himself had to arrest one of my ancestors because the local sheriff refused. And they also participated in the dispossession and genocidal violence inflicted upon the Cherokee people. That's part of my inheritance, too.
Últimamente he estado pensando en mis propios antepasados y en los antepasados de mis hijos. Soy de un pueblito chiquito en Tennessee cerca de Jack Daniels y Dolly Parton. Del lado materno mi familia es irlandes y uno de mis antepasados fundó el primer pueblo blanco en Tennessee en 1769, es decir quitaron terrenos de pueblo indigenas. Del lado paterno, mi familia es Alemán, ellos trabajaron la tierra y crearon una maderería. Cuando tenía yo la edad de Sofía, empezaba a trabajar allí y en la granja familiar.
On my father's side, Phillip Wiser came from Germany to North Carolina in 1763, eventually settling in Tennessee. His descendants became sharecroppers, others worked in logging and sawmills. One of my great-great-great-great grandmothers was Cherokee. My great-grandfather was a preacher in the churches of Christ in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. He died logging. I was Sofia’s age when I started working stacking lumber and operating heavy machinery at Wiser Sawmill and Elk Valley Hardwoods, and getting into trouble on the family beef cattle farm.
I grew up in a little town on the Tennessee–Alabama border, between two somewhat more famous towns: one known for Jack Daniel's whiskey, the other for the founding of the Ku Klux Klan. You could say I inherited some interesting history. I don't share all the theological or social convictions of my ancestors. And there are certainly things in their history I would rather not repeat. But their struggles and faith helped make me who I am.
Yuliana's family carries its own extraordinary stories. Her grandmother was a nurse who traveled on horseback through the countryside of Puebla, vaccinating people. Her great-grandmother was a midwife who helped raise a leader in the Mexican Revolution and signatory of Emiliano Zapata's 1911 Plan of Ayala.
Another ancestor had Mixteco roots in Oaxaca. His son became one of the early Braceros, laboring in the United States during the 1940s. And today, one of his descendants directs a newcomer navigation center, accompanies immigrant families, and speaks out for justice in local No Kings rallies.
La abuela de Yuliana fue enfermera y recorría a caballo las zonas rurales de Acatlán Puebla para vacunar a la población. Su bisabuela fue partera y ayudó a criar a un líder de la Revolución Mexicana, Jesús “El Tuerto” Morales quien fue signatario del Plan de Ayala de Zapata en 1911.
Otro de sus antepasados tenía raíces mixtecas en Oaxaca, y su hijo fue uno de los primeros trabajadores del programa «Bracero» en los Estados Unidos. Durante nuestro sabático hace dos años, visitamos algunos de estos lugares ancestrales y comunidades Zapatistas en Chiapas. Son historias de migración, trabajo, fe y resistencia. Y todos nosotros portamos historias semejantes. Cada uno de nosotros tiene un río a sus espaldas.
During our clergy renewal leave, we visited some of these ancestral places in Mexico, including communities carrying forward the legacy of the Zapatistas in Chiapas. These aren't just family histories. They're stories of migration, empire, labor, faith, resistance, and belonging. And each of us carries stories like these. Go back just eight or nine generations, and your family tree contains hundreds of ancestral places. Hundreds of lives, most of whose names we'll never know. Some of you in this room can trace ancestors to the Pilgrims. And every one of us has a river behind us, and perhaps in front of us.
The biblical story is filled with rivers. The Jordan was referenced in our reading this morning. This photo is of the river Usumacinta that separates México and Guatemala.
In Joshua, Israel remembers that Abraham's ancestors lived עֵבֶר הַנָּהָר 'ever ha-nahar “beyond the river”— not the Jordan, but the Euphrates. That is, they came from a foreign land back East, Mesopotamia.
In fact, a possible origin of the word Hebrew is connected to the idea of crossing over, coming from the other side. ‘ibrîm (עִבְרִים) probably comes from the same word עֵבֶר from that famous phrase, “beyond the river” we find throughout the Bible and outside the Bible.
Think about that. The people we call Hebrews may have carried a name marking them as outsiders, migrants, people from beyond the river. When Abraham is called "the Hebrew," in Genesis, the ancient Greek translators chose a word meaning just that: wanderer, emigrant. So, not entirely unlike the names used today for migrants who cross the Rio Bravo or as some know it, the Rio Grande. Yes, I’m saying that the ethnic name “Hebrews” is in essence “River-crossers” and tatamount to saying “wetbacks.” In First Samuel, it is the Philistines who sneer at David's men as "Hebrews," in a not so complimentary way.
Look at their story. Hebrews are a people continually on the move. Abraham leaves his homeland. Joseph is taken to Egypt. Forced laborers in Egypt. A mixed multitude rising up in Exodus. Exiles are carried to Babylon to work in construction. Like enslaved Africans, Chinese contract workers, Braceros, Filipinos, and undocumented Latinos today, they were empire's essential workers. Indeed, “Hebrews” are targeted by ICE today.
And every crossing changes us. Their identity as well as ours isn't something fixed and finished. It's shaped by the journeys we make, the people we encounter, the suffering we endure, and the possibilities we discover.
The Uruguayan musician Jorge Drexler captures something of this in his beautiful song Movimiento. He sings of humanity as a species always traveling, generations of immigrants carrying our lullabies, or stories, our wars, across continents, always looking at the river and dreaming of the other bank. We are alive because we are in motion.
Yo no soy de aquí
Pero tú tampoco
De ningún lado del todo
De todos lados un poco
El músico uruguayo Jorge Drexler canta que estamos vivos porque estamos en movimiento. Nuestros antepasados cruzaron ríos, océanos, desiertos y fronteras. Algunos, por voluntad propia; otros, forzados. Algunos, en busca de oportunidades; otros, simplemente para sobrevivir. Hemos heredado su valentía, sus esperanzas, sus heridas y, a veces, sus prejuicios. Por eso, recordar no siempre resulta cómodo.
En la Plaza de las Tres Culturas, en la Ciudad de México, se alza una placa que conmemora la caída de Tlatelolco ante Hernán Cortés en 1521. Su inscripción describe aquel momento no como un triunfo ni como una derrota, sino como el doloroso nacimiento del pueblo mestizo que dio lugar a México. Ni triunfo ni derrota. Es un monumento conmemorativo complejo, ¿verdad? Lo que algunos recuerdan como una conquista, otros lo han celebrado como el comienzo de un nuevo pueblo. Por eso, recordar no siempre resulta cómodo. Llevamos dentro relatos en conflicto; tanto de los conquistadores como de los conquistados. Al igual que las doce piedras de Israel, los monumentos conmemorativos nos invitan a plantear preguntas. ¿Qué celebramos? ¿Qué lamentamos? ¿Y qué necesitamos contar de otra manera para que nuestros hijos hereden algo más veraz y más justo? Por eso ponemos ofrendas y relatamos historias. Y porque nosotros lo hacemos, también lo harán las generaciones por venir, así transmitimos la fe.
At the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Mexico City stands a stone memorial marking the fall of Tlatelolco to Hernán Cortés in 1521. Its inscription describes that moment as neither triumph nor defeat, but the painful birth of the mestizo people who became México.
heroically defended by Cuauhtémoc,
Tlatelolco fell into the power of Hernán Cortés.
It was neither triumph nor defeat,
it was the painful birth of the mestizo
people that is the México of today.
Neither triumph, nor defeat. It's a complicated memorial, isn't it? What some remember as conquest, others have celebrated as the beginning of a new people. This is true in many so-called promised lands from the Iron Age to our age. Yet neither telling can erase the suffering, survival, and resistance woven into that history. That's why remembering isn't always comfortable. Our memories are rarely simple, no matter how well curated they have been. We carry contesting stories inside us, conquerors and conquered alike.
Like Israel's twelve stones, memorials don't tell their stories by themselves. They invite us to ask questions. Whose stories do we preserve? Whose do we overlook? What do we celebrate? What must we lament? And what do we need to tell differently so that our children inherit something more truthful, more just, ultimately more life-giving for all?
This is part of the sacred work of remembrance. Because at the end of the day, as Paul reminds us in Galatians and Romans, we are spiritual river-crossers in Christ.
On Día de los Muertos, we create ofrendas, prepare favorite foods, display photographs, and tell stories. On All Saints, we remember that our faith belongs to a much larger story, shaped by generations who prayed, struggled, loved, and opened doors before us.
And today, we become part of that story. What we choose to preserve, whom we welcome, and the love we put into action will become someone else's inheritance. May we remember tomorrow.
In a few moments, we'll gather in Oliver Hall for our ancestors' potluck. There will be mucho mole! I hope you'll sit with someone you don't know well, share the story behind a family dish, and listen to theirs.
Someday, another generation will ask, just as the children of Israel asked, "What do these stones mean?" May they remember us by the doors we opened, the love we shared, and the justice we pursued together. Amen.