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October 23, 2005
Mountaintop Experience
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
The Bible's full of stories that include mountains. Mt. Sinai is where Moses got the law from the Lord. The temple in Jerusalem is set on Mt. Zion; it's where the Lord had promised to be there for the people of God. Jesus was transfigured before three of his disciples on a mountain; Peter calls him Messiah, the Christ. We know about mountaintop experiences. They stand vivid in memory. Some of us remember such times as turning points in our lives. In the last chapter of Deuteronomy, Moses has a mountaintop experience. This one is very different from his other mountaintop experiences. He dies.
It's not clear why Moses heads up the mountain—was it Mt. Nebo or Pisgah? That's only one of the uncertainties in this story. Maybe it doesn't matter. This time on the mountaintop it's for his last confab with the Lord—and a very one-sided encounter at that. We know about one-sided conversations with the Lord. In our prayers we seem to do all the talking. Some of us say we'd like to have the Lord speak to us directly. I wonder. Could I take it if the Lord spoke to me as to Moses?
At this, their last meeting, the Lord's a bit short with Moses and not a little harsh, even cold. Moses is silent. No bargaining. No long farewells. Just silence. The Lord lets Moses know about the next—and presumably, the final—step in the journey of the Israelites into the promised land. Was it a kindness to show him how it's going to be, only to tell him he'll not be going along? We hear not a word from Moses. Maybe he was speechless. Whether he was or not, next thing we know, he's dead and buried and people are writing nice things about him. Moses was the greatest! Not another like him since.
Maybe Moses knew, somehow, the way we all know such things. We sometimes know in our hearts what really not even a thought, much less been made into words. Or maybe Moses didn't have a clue until that very moment. Maybe he went up the mountain believing, hoping he'd be making the last leg of the trip; that he'd have a part in the land promised his people, the land flowing with milk and honey. However long he'd known it, when the Lord tells him he's not going, that clinches it. Now it's for sure: I'm not part of this. I'm not included. The promise is for the others, not for me. I guess we'd like to hold out the hope of heaven for Moses. But there's nothing of that here.
Finding out what Moses found out on the mountain that day is the sort of thing that could cause some people to die of a broken heart. I don't know if his heart was broken, but next thing we hear is that Moses is dead. Makes me wonder. Makes me wonder about the way the Lord deals with us. If the way the Lord dealt with Moses is the way leaders get treated, what about the rest of us?
Do you suppose the Lord ever had to run a building fund campaign? Imagine that your Magnet for Ministry fund-raisers went to members and said: We'll show you how it's all going to turn out, but you won't be able to worship there. My guess is that the next sound to be heard is not that of a pen writing a check, or signing a pledge card. My guess is you and I are here worshiping in Danish modern. What's the Lord up to when he comes to Moses this way?
We're not told that Moses said anything. Maybe there was nothing to be said. What could you say when the Lord tells what was told to Moses? But how could Moses not wonder? How could he not wonder why he'd been saved from that marsh so long ago? How could he not wonder why he'd been reared among royalty, cast out into exile after he killed a man in a burst of righteous indignation, then brought back from the wilderness full of a vision of God and a commission to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and sent them on their way to a "promised land?" What, then, was all that barefoot business before the burning bush? What was the manna and quail in the wilderness about? What about all those times Moses talked with the Lord as a friend talks to a friend? And the law of God? Hadn't he been the faithful mediator? Wasn't all that and more worth something—worth getting to go with everyone else to the promised land?
The way it seems makes a lot of us uneasy. The Lord could have let him down easier. Moses, we need to talk. No, I talk. You listen. We've been friends a long time. I don't know exactly how to tell you this. I hope you understand, it's nothing personal. It's just that, well . . . . Say, you remember that promise I made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? You know, the one about their descendants getting everything you can see from here all the way to the sea? Moses, you've done a great job, well, a really good job—I mean you did just fine most of the time. Nobody could have done it better. Something's come up. Now that Joshua's going to take over, I've got something else in mind for you. First, there's something I'd like to show you. Then, we'll get to the rest. Maybe that's when we would give him the plaque and the gold watch. That's not the Lord's way.
That's the way of the God of the Old Testament for you. You've heard people say something like that. They may go on to say: The God of the Old Testament is a God of WRATH; the God of the New Testament is a God of LOVE. That's one of those slanders that keeps circulating. Repeat a falsehood enough and it catches on. Odd, the same doesn't seem to go for the truth.
In the 2nd century church some were saying what keeps getting echoed to our day: that the God of the Old Testament was no account, and that the God we got to know in Jesus is the one we ought pay attention to. Disciples then and disciples now know that's baloney. Without the Old Testament we haven't a clue what Jesus is about. The God who is incarnate in Jesus Christ IS the God who told Moses he wasn't going to the promised land. There's no use our looking to some imagined kinder, gentler God.
So what was the Lord up to coming to Moses this way? The Lord loves Moses. Always has. The Lord dealt with Moses face-to-face, as a friend deals with a friend. They're still friends. But the Lord's not sentimental. At least you wouldn't say so hearing the report Moses got. There's plenty of feeling. The Lord doesn't let false feelings substitute for a real relationship. The way the Lord deals with Moses, only a friend could do. Only a friend can say the really hard things that need saying and not break off the relationship. The Lord says to Moses: It's all over. And Moses knows his friend is right. No need to say anything. They both know its true.
No sentimentality. Anton Chekov tells of an aristocratic woman who weeps at the suffering and death of the protagonist in a grand, dramatic opera while her coachman sits outside, awaiting her in the freezing cold of a Russian winter night. Sentimentality.
Nothing sentimental touches the relationship of Moses to God. It's real; a relationship that separates disciples from dilettantes. It is not a relationship I have. I do not know whether I will ever have it. Such a relationship is not mine to command or to pretend to. It is a gift of God. Scripture tells us of gifts and blessings we do not possess, and may never own. God's grace is not limited to what I have received or know or have grasped in my own experience. The gifts and blessings of God are what we're called to tell others about. Not our own experience. If our own experience helps get the message across, fine. If not, let's not have it get in the way of the truth of scripture.
The late Joe Sittler taught in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. "The View from Mt. Nebo" is the title of his sermon on this story. The heart of what he said is that Moses stands for all those people whose religious experience is so different from the expression of Christian faith that is dominant and pervasive that they feel like they're not part of it. That somehow their faith is not authentic. Maybe it's the way some Presbyterians used to "traditional worship" feel when they go worship with a congregation who have projectors and praise songs.
The dominant mode of religion in the U.S. as portrayed in the media and perceived in the public mind as Christianity is represented by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the "left-behind" series of tales, and the purpose-driven people, accompanied by a phalanx of video vicars, mega-church moguls and slick-handed suburban shepherds. Is it the gospel or a caricature of the gospel? It is a mistake to let caricatures of Christianity pass for the real thing. Caricatures are too easily believed and too easily rejected. Those who reject the caricatures may think they're rejecting the real thing.
At the New York marathon one year, a young man, watching that part of the race when people using wheel chairs are making their way to the finish, says dismissively: "This part will be over pretty soon then we'll get to see the real thing." A woman, standing next to him, responds: "Fool, that's as real as it gets." It doesn't get much more real than this last encounter of God and Moses.
Joseph Sittler gets at the difference between a caricature of Christianity and the true character of Christian faith this way. The kingdom of God. . .
. . . does not mean habitual piety, puritan mores, better homes and gardens, middle-class respectability, soul sweetness and body cleanliness, inoffensive community acceptability. . . . [We ought not palm off such phony realities in the name of ] redemption, salvation, sin, faith, grace. . .. [Whether or not we have the gift of these huge and clear realities], they constitute what it means to be a Christian. (The Care of the Earth and Other University Sermons, p. 82)
At Velma Goettel's service this past Friday, Dr. Percy Harris reminded us of her life of service, including her work for civil rights. I can't read this story of Moses' viewing the promised land from the mountain without thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. In what is perhaps his most famous speech Dr. King told us that he was fearing no one, that he had been to the mountain, that he had seen the promised land, and, though he mightn't make it there himself, he was confident about those who would. Do you suppose Moses, the greatest of all the prophets, was likewise confident about the people he had led out of Egypt, through the wilderness to this threshold?
I know of only one who surpasses Moses. I trust that through the power of the Holy Spirit your worship and study, your fellowship and service will lead you up the mountain to a relationship to God in Christ so deep and so true to the gospel that, like Moses, your will and decisions are determined by the Spirit of God, and that you will find courage to obey even when you do not fully understand or have the blessed assurance we all long for.
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