SUNDAY HOMILY
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
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We've been reading about Moses' leadership of the people of Israel for a while now, tracing their journey from bondage in Egypt. Now they are about to enter into the land promised by God. Moses has done his job. He has fulfilled his calling. The time for Moses to die has arrived.
Moses has attempted to bargin with God. He wants to see the good land promised by God. He wants to experience the land with the people. God does not grant him that request, at least not in the way Moses truly wants. Nevertheless God shows mercy and grace to Moses. After blessing Joshua, the one chosen to lead the people into the Promised Land, and after blessing the people also, Moses is directed by God to climb the mountain to a place called Nebo.
It's an impressive place because of the view. Our reading for today tells us that God took Moses there so that he could see the whole of the land into which God was leading the people. Moses' request is granted in part, with a tenderness from God in which the will of God remains unchanged. And having seen the whole land, the servant of God died. God buried Moses' body at some unknown place. The people mourned, and then they went under Joshua's leadership across the Jordan and into the Promised Land.
I did some reading because somewhere in the back of my mind I seemed to recall that Moses' final views were something more than impressive. The sights from Nebo are incredible. The Jordan River valley lies below the mountain. Most days one who stands where Moses stood can see cities like Jericho on the West Bank of the Jordan from this spot in what is now the nation of Jordan. It is only on the clearest of clear days, according to what I read, that the Holy City of Jerusalem is visible from Nebo. And the reason why this is of significance here is because on a straight line between Nebo and the Western Sea, that body of water known to us as the Mediterranean Sea, Jerusalem is in the middle. If Moses truly saw that water, and indeed the whole land, there simply is no human explanation for how it could be so. It's impossible! And yet how well we know that God does all things well, especially the impossible.
This all makes for an interesting story, but what difference does this make for us? Why do we hear this as Word of God? We hear this because we have a share in this story. Scripture reminds us often that the physical and earthy are intended to mirror the spiritual and the heavenly. A popular image of the death of the child of God in our Christian faith is the crossing over of Jordan. This image of crossing over recalls the journey of the people of God under Joshua's leadership, but it also includes Moses' spritual experience. In death, Moses entered the true and enduring Promised Land.
We stand even now on Nebo with Moses. We live in that spot where the fullness of the promises of God are yet to be fulfilled. We are a people on a journey. At times we are in valleys that can be beautiful one moment and so filled with fog we cannot see a thing. At times we stand on the mountain and observe only those things that are near. Other times the view is so clear that we can be left speechless. Some times it is as if heaven and earth are joined.
We are at that spot right now. We are here, called to the Word of God and the Holy Eucharist, bread for the journey. To be present at Mass is to experience the joining of heaven and earth, a vision as grand and humanly impossible as seeing the Mediterranean from Mt. Nebo. Standing on this side of Jordan, God calls us to look beyond the limits of this life and this world. God longs for us to see with eyes of faith that something better is on the horizon. And the strength of that vision of heavenly hope presses us onward until at last God calls us into the fullness of the Kingdom as once God called Moses.
And how interesting, how fitting, it is than we hear this the Sunday before we keep the Feast of All Saints. They have already gone the way of Moses. Today we remember them already. They are present with us now in this moment where heaven and earth are joined around Christ. Their lives are changed, not ended. And so it shall be for us one day when we too cross Jordan to enter into the Kingdom. Until then, we stand in this place and behold the gifts of God that has brought us this far, and which will continue to be our strength forevermore, in this life and in the life to come.
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Father Timothy Alleman
Rector, The Church of the Holy Cross
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