Preparing
with Joy for the Paschal Feast
Part I of XV
Sunday 28 January
2018
Third Sunday before
Lent
The Charge to Moses
and Joshua
Deuteronomy 31:19-30
Now
therefore write this song, and teach it to the Israelites; put it in their
mouths, in order that this song may be a witness for me against the Israelites.
For when I have brought them into the land flowing
with milk and honey, which I promised on oath to their ancestors, and they have
eaten their fill and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them,
despising me and breaking my covenant. And when many terrible
troubles come upon them, this song will confront them as a witness, because it
will not be lost from the mouths of their descendants. For I know what they are inclined to do even
now, before I have brought them into the land that I promised them on oath.” That
very day Moses wrote this song and taught it to the Israelites. Then
the Lord commissioned Joshua son of Nun and said, “Be
strong and bold, for you shall bring the Israelites into the land that I
promised them; I will be with you.” When Moses had finished
writing down in a book the words of this law to the very end, Moses commanded the Levites
who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, “Take this book of the law and
put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your
God; let it remain there as a witness against you. For
I know well how rebellious and stubborn you are. If you already have been so
rebellious toward the Lord while I am still alive among
you, how much more after my death! Assemble to me all the elders
of your tribes and your officials, so that I may recite these words in their
hearing and call heaven and earth to witness against them. For
I know that after my death you will surely act corruptly, turning aside from
the way that I have commanded you. In
time to come trouble will befall you, because you will do what is evil in the
sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger through the
work of your hands.” Then Moses recited the words
of this song, to the very end, in the hearing of the whole assembly of Israel.
In the name of the
Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
Starting today, the Third Sunday before
Lent, we will be exploring the Old Testament readings read at the Great Vigil
of Easter, mindful of the words that we shall hear in the Mass during Lent that
in the Lenten journey, we are called to prepare ourselves to celebrate the Feast
of the Resurrection with great joy.
In the first reading for today, we hear
about the succession of leadership among the people of God from Moses, who led
the people out of bondage, to Joshua, who led them into the Promised Land. If we only look at the very short window of
time in which the handoff of authority takes place between Moses and Joshua, we
can be tempted to think that Joshua is in fact the promised successor of whom
Moses speaks in today’s Old Testament reading.
But if we remember Moses’ final words to the people, it becomes clear
that Joshua is not this successor, but rather there is still one to come.
I say that because in his final words,
Moses reveals that he already knows, because God has told him as much, that
after him, the people will forget to be faithful when they have entered the
Promised Land. They will reject God, and
will once more be found in need of deliverance.
And by the end of Joshua’s life, we will hear that message repeated.
We know from the witness of Scripture
that Moses and Joshua warned the people for good reason. In the absence of these two leaders, the
people did indeed reject God and go their own way. Again and again, the Scriptures tell us, God sent
prophets to call them back to faithfulness.
Again and again the people turned away from God. And so in the fullness of time, God did what
the prophets could not do. God came
among us. Jesus is the one foretold by
Moses.
What is interesting is that his name, not
as we know it commonly these days, but rather as Jesus would have been called
among those who experienced the Incarnation of the Word of God in human flesh,
is the same name as the immediate successor of Moses. The names of Joshua and Jesus are in fact the
same name; Yeshua!
As we draw near to our Lenten journey, we
do well to consider how attentive we are being to Jesus, who has come among us
to bring us into the Kingdom of God.
Each day that we live in this world, we are faced with the challenging
of embracing again Jesus as “My Lord and My God,” and walking the way of faith
that Jesus sets before us. And this is
indeed a challenge. I say that because
at times we need to encounter Jesus again as if for the very first time all
over again, and to be reminded what this Christian life of discipleship means
and demands of us.
There are so many different views even
among us who embrace the identity of Christian as to who Jesus is and what his
words mean for us and our daily life.
There are people who pacify Jesus and make him rather weak in his
presence. But if we read the Gospel,
looking for who Jesus is and then how we are shaped by him, rather than looking
at who we are and conforming Jesus into who we desire him to be in our midst,
we will find a divine presence that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the
comfortable. And this is not the presence
of Jesus that we often wish to encounter, for if we are honest with ourselves,
we know that most of us are living rather comfortably.
So how does Jesus afflict us? Remember that Jesus shows us again and again
that he is the lover of all who longs to call all persons into
relationship. Remember that Jesus showed
up in places where the comfortable thought he ought not be, interacting with
persons that the comfortable felt he should not seek and befriend. Remember that, in sharp contrast to all of
our popular images of him, that Jesus was from a poor, Palestinian family. If you want to know what Jesus looked like
historically, don’t look at the art of the Church. Look to the residents of Bethlehem and
Nazareth, of Palestine, from our own day.
When we see this image of Jesus of
Nazareth, Son of Mary, Son of God, it makes we wonder how we would react if
Jesus stood in our midst and said the very things that we hear him saying in
the Gospel Sunday after Sunday? Would we
accept him? Would he be welcomed into
our country and among our people, or would we seek to send him back, having
rejected him and his words and deeds?
Our confession of faith serves as a
witness against us. We profess at every
Mass that Jesus is Lord and God, that in him alone are found the words of
eternal life. We commit ourselves again
and again as Christians to look and sound like Christ. And our commitment, if we are not careful,
can easily sound like the protests of our ancestors in the faith who swore
passionately to Moses and Joshua that they would never forget their God or fail
to walk in his ways.
Mercifully, the connection ends
there. In the Old Testament, we find a
God, who when rejected, turns and rejects the people who have rejected their God. The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus
never rejects us, but continually seeks us out, longing to transform us. The apostles, all of whom knew first-hand
what it was like to be pursued by the grace of Christ, spoke of this when many
of them wrote of God in Christ as always being “faithful even when we are faithless.” Our God never gives up hope for us and for
our salvation. And when we know that we
have such a God, what more should we do than simply submit and cherish the knowledge
and love of God who is not finished with us yet. As we prepare for Lent, and as we journey
throughout Lent towards the Feast of the Resurrection, may we desire to be
shaped by the hands of Jesus in such a way that we will always be faithful to
God in the midst of the whole people of God, growing ever more faithful until
at last we experience first-hand the power of Christ’s resurrection.
In the name of the
Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
The Rev’d Timothy
Alleman
Rector
The Church of the
Holy Cross
Preparing
with Joy for the Paschal Feast
II
The Story
of Creation
III
The Future
Glory of Zion
IV
The Conversion
of Nineveh
V
The Flood
VI
A New Heart
and a New Spirit
VII
Salvation
Offered Freely to All
VIII
Israel’s
Deliverance at the Red Sea
IX
The Valley
of Dry Bones
X
The
Gathering of God’s People
XI
In Praise
of Wisdom
XII
The Gifts
of Wisdom
XIII
The Three
Youths in the Fiery Furnace
XIV
The First
Passover
XV
Abraham’s
Sacrifice of Isaac
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