Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Ms. Angela Harris, United Methodist Chaplain Intern
Kay Spiritual Life Center
October 23, 2005
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
In the passage from Deuteronomy, we find Moses, one of our spiritual giants, climbing a mountain, finally glimpsing the Promised Land, and dying. We are reminded that Moses is 120 years old , but that he is still kicking. Our scripture says that “his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated”.
In scripture every time you have Moses, or for that matter any of our other spiritual mothers and fathers going up a mountain, it’s a good time to pay attention – because something big is going to happen. On mountaintops, God called Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, and on another he was given the 10 commandments as well as the instructions for the Ark of the Covenant. Moses’ theophanies, his visions from the Lord, were always about more than just him, each one was connected with a revelation of God’s purpose for the community. Moses lived his life attempting to be faithful to the God he knew and loved, the God he was in personal relationship with.
Moses is one of the only ones in the Bible that got a personal appearance of the Lord. His life’s vision was to make it to the Promised Land. Moses was a human who made mistakes, and although he was a great leader, he was not perfect, and God out of God’s great love – God held him accountable for the life he lived.
Moses, one of God’s beloved, didn’t always get the literal translation of his vision. He was given the gift of the sight of the fulfillment, but not allowed to enter in to it. Sometimes the visions and the promises the faithful are given are more like a light house leading to safety, or growth, rather than a snapshot of the future. Our journey as Christians is ongoing, death itself is not an end for us, but a transition. Sometimes the visions that we are given are just to help us through to the next day, or the next place in our journey, what we think is the endpoint or the destination, can just be a symbol, or even a doorway for the next generation.
Some folks see the Bible and its stories a bit like a fairy-tale, story after story good encounters evil, and 9 times out of ten good defeats evil, and when that is reversed its usually just so God can win in the end. (See the story of our friend Job). But I personally see the Bible, and the Christian journey, more like the Odyssey. The characters of the Bible, myself, and the characters of this congregation, set out on a journey we had no choice in beginning, God chose our birth date and location in God’s infinite wisdom. But along the way we get distracted, at times we have to say good-bye to the ones we love, we make new friends, we battle one-eyed professors, er monsters, and we live each day trying to move a little bit further in the journey, back to the one we love and a place called home. And like we had no choice in our beginning, only God knows the date when we will be called home to heaven.
The life of faith is one long journey. It has mountain-top highs and it has devastatingly deep, make your stomach drop – lows. There are moments when you feel so intimately connected with the divine that the veil between heaven and earth feels very thin indeed, and there are other moments when you wonder if God is even listening, or if instead God decided to check- out for a while and go on automatic pilot.
These last few months God has really been working on my soul. The message has been in two parts. The first has been a reminder, or perhaps, an invitation for personal reflection. It has centered around the fact that as a pastor, but more than that – as a Christian, I am called to be a coyote of sorts. One who slips in between the realms of the spiritual and the earthly. It seems to me that a lot of being a Christian is living in the tension of the already and the not yet. It seems that part of my destiny is to stand on the fringes or the margins and to describe what I see, what I feel coming, while also faithfully engaging in the present. At times this feels like I am trying to balance one two many balls in the air at once, but at others – it just feels like I am supposed to make my home in the in between places in life, and to try and attempt to be present and perhaps even helpful to those that I meet a long the way. At times it is a lonely place, but I trust that there is purpose and promise in being faithful.
I think that as Christians we are all coyote-like when we talk about our faith journey, our life, with God and with others. It stretches you to put into concrete words that things that your heart and your soul know. One pushes past logic and reason when you explain how God is at work in your life. But just because we can’t always explain perfectly, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. There is something unique and special that comes when we talk about our faith life with others. It is a gift we give the other and that we give our self. In talking about your soul, your personal spiritual journey – you transcend the present, moving into the vision of the community of faith – the living body of Christ.
The second part of the message that God has been trying to impart is that who I am is enough. Perhaps some of you need to hear that same message tonight? Who you are, as a child of God, is enough. None of us, not even Moses, was created to be a perfect being. Making perfect grades, or earning a huge salary, or having popular friends, or a beautiful lively partner is going to make you in your core any more likeable or pleasing to God. We are going to make mistakes. Some of our dreams are going to come true, but others are going to implode on us. But being a Christian is as much about the journey as it is the destination. Who you are right now, is enough. God desires us to seek relationship with God, turning over both our accomplishments and our failures. I can personally attest to the fact that God has used my failures in life to bless me just as much if not more than my successes. God wants it all, every piece of our heart, every moment of the journey.
Moses is an example of holy living, but he is also an example of holy dying. What do you suppose was harder, being told you are about to die, or being told that he wouldn’t reach the Promised Land? The fruit of Moses’ often frustrating work falls on a generation beyond his own. Like so many other great leaders, he devoted his life to a dream whose culmination he did not live to see. Leaders are limited by their followers, and even the greatest leaders aren’t perfect, and beyond that – the laying of blame, even in the Biblical stories, isn’t an exact science. Moses life offers us an opportunity to reflect on both the hopes and the frustration of life under promise.
God’s story goes on forever. When our lives end, God’s continues on, our future beyond the grave is in him. Moses death is surrounded by ambiguity and wonder, hope and frustration. Although a bit of my frustration was eased when I read that rabbinic traditions state that Moses was granted a instantaneous peaceful death via a kiss from God and that God God’s self buried Moses. We don’t find either of these traditions in our scriptures, but I am sure that the activities of God extend past our written accounts and our imaginations.
Death always brings some level of disappointment. One’s part in the larger story of life comes to a close and one cannot see what will unfold later. The human story is always somewhat incomplete. Death always interrupts and disappoints in terms of future from which one is excluded by death. In death we are released from all the burdens we place on our self, and those that we put on others with unreasonable expectations. Knowing that we too will die one day can give us hope and trust in the face of the incompleteness of our lives, and give us perspective to our roles and importance in the larger scheme of things.
It is certain that we will never see some of our dreams and hopes come to pass. We live by God’s promises, trusting God to bring some fruits out of our labors, even if we never see them or get to enjoy them ourselves. The God we serve is a good and faithful God. As you live out the odyssey, the struggle, the delight, the journey of faith live it well, so that when your time in the great story comes to a close you too can die well.
Amen.
