Life goes on
Commentary
October 27 this year is the Sunday before "All Saints Day." That festival day in the church on November 1 each year has been so eclipsed in the broader American culture by Halloween that it is little more than a trivia question about the etymology of that latter holiday's name ("All Hallow's Eve"). But there are some serious indications that it is time for our culture to reclaim a proper sense of mourning. Who would have predicted, after all, that a dark comedy about the funeral business could become a television hit? Yet that is precisely what Six Feet Under has become.
The Christian theology of mourning, as Paul expressed it early on (see 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), brings together both grief and hope. We do "not grieve as others do who have no hope" (v. 13). Paul is clear that one reason we have hope is because we know that life will go on even for those who have died in the Lord. Just as God raised Jesus from the dead, so God will raise both the living and the dead at the climax of the age so that "we will be with the Lord forever" (v. 17).
But life not only goes on eternally for those who have died; it also goes on in the here-and-now for those who have survived the deaths of loved ones. God has not left us without hope either. As the story of Moses' death illustrates, even the loss of one of God's greatest saints did not deny the Israelites the benefits of Spirit-inspired leadership. Part of the gospel message of hope is that life goes on with God for those of us who are left behind as well.
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
The book of Deuteronomy ends with a brief hagiography of Moses. As with many such writings about holy ones, the text claims that the health and vigor of the saint was undiminished even at the point of death (v. 7). It is doubtful that such assertions were ever taken literally. Rather, their literary function was two-fold. First, it underscored that the divine presence that had empowered their lives continued with them through the moment of death. Second, it suggests that not even death was ultimately able to triumph over them; God either takes them directly from this world (cf. Enoch in Genesis 5:19-24 and Elijah in 2 Kings 2:11-12) or they willingly "lay down their life" rather than having it "taken from them" (see John 10:11-18). Later tradition added various legendary details about the special circumstances that surrounded Moses' death (e.g., Jude 1:9, which, according to the early Church Fathers, draws on a work titled the Assumption of Moses).
The key feature of Moses' death scene is that the one through whom God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt is not being allowed to travel with them into the Promised Land. This restriction on Moses is simply stated in this passage without elaboration (Deuteronomy 34:4). According to Numbers 20:11-12, the reason Moses is not allowed to enter the land is because he had not strictly followed God's instructions for providing water in the wilderness for the Israelites on one occasion. But this explanation raises as many questions as it answers.
First, there is the problem that the Pentateuch twice reports that Moses performed the miracle of bringing forth water from a rock at a site subsequently named "Meribah." The earlier episode is recounted in Exodus 17:1-7; it locates the spring on Mount Horeb, and the instrument by which Moses accomplishes the miracle is by striking the rock with his staff. The Numbers 20:1-13 account, however, locates the spring at Kadesh, and Moses' sin is precisely that he strikes the rock rather than merely speaking to it.
His respective actions in these two episodes underscore a second problem. Why is Moses punished so harshly for such a seemingly insignificant deviation from God's instruction? Some have suggested that it is precisely because there can be no deviation from God's command, whereas others say the problem is that Moses believes he and Aaron can personally provide the water without divine assistance by replicating his earlier actions (see especially Numbers 20:10).
It has been noted that the Exodus and Numbers accounts stem from the Elohist and Priestly sources respectively. Some source critics have suggested that the Priestly writer specifically created the Numbers account to explain the otherwise seemingly inexplicable deaths of Moses and Aaron (see Numbers 20:23-29) prior to entering the land of promise. Over the course of the development of the tradition, the test ultimately becomes about more than any of the specific details of Moses' and Aaron's actions, but a broader test involving all the religious leadership of the people (cf. Deuteronomy 33:8-11).
Although the story here at the close of the Torah obviously holds these stories about the testing of Israel's leadership close below the surface, it also underscores that the death of Moses is not the end of God's working through the leadership of the chosen people. In very matter-of-fact fashion we are told that the people mourned for Moses for 30 days in the hills of Moab. But "when the period of mourning for Moses was ended," Moses' leadership passed to Joshua, son of Nun, who "was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the LORD had commanded Moses" (34:8-9).
No matter how great a figure Moses had been in delivering the Israelites from Egypt and mediating God's instruction of Torah, and even though he proved to be without equal among the religious leaders of Israel through the post-Exilic period in which the compilation of the Torah was completed (vv. 10-12), God did not leave them without spirit-filled leadership. Life goes on for the people of God.
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
If all we had to work from was the information Paul provides us in his letters about his mission activities, it would be impossible to construct anything approaching the itineraries of the three missionary journeys related in Acts. The Epistle Lesson for this Sunday, however, does contain one of the rare points of contact between Pauline autobiography and canonical biography about him.
Paul is recalling the beginning of his ministry in Thessalonica as coming on the heels of his work in Philippi, where he states, "We had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated" (v. 2). He does not provide any further detail about this mistreatment, but it is possible to fill in the gaps from the account in Acts 16:12-40. There we read about his early success in the conversion of Lydia, the controversy that erupted following the exorcism of a young, slave-woman soothsayer, Paul and Silas' flogging and imprisonment and ultimately their public release following an earthquake. Having been asked by the magistrates of Philippi to leave so as not to cause further disturbances, Paul and Silas had continued on to Thessalonica, the other major city of the province of Macedonia.
Once again, as Paul himself relates here, his ministry began on a very positive note (v. 1). Things would not continue so positively, however. Acts 17:1-10 relates how that opposition from the Jewish population of Thessalonica ultimately led to Paul and Silas being ushered out of the city by their supporters under cover of darkness. With the same characteristic restraint in offering details we saw in his allusion to the problems at Philippi, Paul himself simply reminds the Thessalonian Christians about this episode by noting the "great opposition" he ultimately encountered there (1 Thessalonians 2:2) and saying that "we were made orphans by being separated from you -- in person, not in heart" (2:17).
Paul attributes the success of his early mission activity in Europe to the fact that he and his associates sought "not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts" (v. 4). Not only did they not seek to ingratiate themselves to others by "flattery," but they also did not seek "praise from mortals, whether from you or from others" (vv. 5-6).
The goal of his ministry was to bring faith in Christ to birth among his Greek audience, and then to nurture them in that faith. Paul uses the striking image of a mother who nurses and "tenderly car[es] for her own children" (v. 7) to describe his relationship with the Thessalonian believers. It seems quite likely that Paul intends by this simile to communicate the self-giving role of ministry, just as a mother literally gives of herself when she breastfeeds her child (see also his remark about sharing "not only the gospel of God but also our own selves" in v. 8).
That principle of self-giving, nurturing leadership stands in marked contrast to the attitudes of others who use "deceit or impure motives or trickery" (v. 3) to satisfy their own "greed" (v. 5) through those under their leadership. Paul's choice to adopt this self-giving stance toward them was deliberate. He explicitly notes that "we might have made demands as apostles of Christ" for support (v. 7), but that they had refused to do so. It is not clear whether these comments are implicit criticism of others who may have followed him to Thessalonica and sought financial support from those to whom they ministered. What is clear is that Paul wants to emphasize that all his actions toward them were motivated by deep care and love.
In these ways Paul has modeled the attitude of all ministers who would follow in Christ's self-giving ministry. While he would later in his ministry acknowledge that there were potential problems with not allowing those to whom he ministered to support that ministry themselves (see 2 Corinthians 11:7-11), he remained convinced that the proper attitude of leaders of God's people is to give themselves to others rather than to seek benefit for themselves from others.
Matthew 22:34-46
The Gospel Lesson for this Sunday is the third of three "controversy stories" that set the stage for Jesus' Passion (22:15). These controversies involve questions that are put to Jesus in an attempt to "entrap" him or to catch him in something for which they can bring charges against him. The first test in this series involves the Pharisees, joined by the Herodians, regarding whether the Jews should pay imperial taxes to Rome (22:16-22). The second is brought by the Sadducees and regards the question of belief in resurrection (22:23-33). Finally there is here in the assigned lection a question, again from one of the Pharisees, regarding the most important of the commandments (22:34-40). In each of the first two cases, Jesus' response is met with "amazement" (vv. 22 and 33), and as we shall see this final exchange brings an end to the whole effort to trap Jesus by his own teachings.
Looking more closely at the specifics of this third and final test, Jesus is asked by a "lawyer," that is, a specialist in interpreting and applying the precepts of the Mosaic Torah or instruction, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" (v. 36). Just what response that he might have expected from Jesus that would have provided grounds for accusation against him is difficult to imagine. The possibility exists that Matthew has shifted this exchange to this current context, for in Mark this question is generated by someone who is impressed by Jesus' responses to questions put to him rather than by someone looking to "test" him (see Mark 12:28-34; note, however, that in Luke 10:25-28 the question appears as a "test" as here in Matthew).
Whatever trap the lawyer might have thought he was setting, Jesus evades it by replying firmly in the Judaic tradition. The greatest commandment, Jesus says, is, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (v. 37). This response is taken directly from Deuteronomy 6:5. Jesus then continues that the next greatest commandment is, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," again quoting directly from the Torah (Leviticus 19:18b; cf. James 2:8). Within these two commandments, Jesus contends, the full content of the Torah and the prophets' preaching on it is summarized. The basic structure established by these two commandments has often been referred to as the "two tables of the law," going back to a traditional division of the Ten Commandments into a table outlining one's responsibilities to God (commandments one to four) and a table of commandments regarding our responsibilities toward others (commandments five through 10; see Exodus 20:1-17).
Jesus then turns the table on his questioners. He challenges their messianic expectations by asking whose "son" the Messiah will be. Their response, that the Messiah will be a descendant of David, reflects a widely held Jewish belief from this period. The Messiah would be a purely human figure, descended from David, whom God would choose to lead the Jews as God had chosen David to rule over Israel. But if the Messiah is only a human descendant of David, how can it be that David (the traditionally ascribed author of Psalm 110) calls him "Lord"? A father would never have addressed his son or a more distant descendant in that manner. So if David is the author of Psalm 110, and if its opening verse is a prophetic pronouncement of God's future exaltation of the Messiah, then how can the Messiah be no more than a human descendant of David?
Matthew reports that none of those present was able to provide a response overturning the logic of Jesus' conclusion, "nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions" (v. 46). But there is the possibility that by this exchange Jesus perhaps gave his opponents precisely what they were looking for. In Matthew's account of Jesus' trial before the high priest, the court condemns Jesus on the charge of blasphemy because he assents to being "the Messiah, the Son of God" (26:63-66).
Normally the idea that the Messiah could be called "Son of God" was understood in a strictly adoptionist fashion (cf. Psalm 2:7). But such a claim would not have been blasphemy. For that charge to stick would require understanding the claim to being "Son of God" in a more direct sense, as Jesus himself in fact does by quoting Daniel 7:13-14 (which also mentions being seated at God's right hand as Psalm 110:1 does) in his response to the high priest. But of course even then it is only blasphemy if the claim was untrue. The irony in Matthew's Gospel is that Jesus' opponents set out to convict him on the basis of false testimony (26:59-61), but in the end falsely convict him on the basis of true testimony.
Application
The story of Moses' death includes the note, "The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended." In that straightforward declaration are to be found two important insights for all who have lost loved ones: there must be a time for mourning, and that time must come to an end (cf. Ecclesiastes 3:4). Too often we do one or the other.
Some people have the rituals of mourning down pat. They are completely convinced that life cannot go on because their loved one is no longer with them, that things will never be the same again and that can only portend disaster. They engage in eulogizing the deceased to the point that people are no longer permitted to remember that person's faults. Like the unexpressed reason for why God will permit Moses to see the Promised Land but not to cross the Jordan River to enter it, they would rather live with puzzling omissions than remember hard truths.
Other people can never bring their mourning to an end because they never allow it to begin. Our modern society has done much to separate the presence of death from our lives. Although there are many salutary reasons for choosing cremation over embalmment and whole body burial (even as many continue to hold that Christian belief in the hope of bodily resurrection is best witnessed to by the latter), one cannot help but wonder if the increasing popularity of cremation isn't related to avoiding being in the presence of the deceased's body. We have sanitized this inescapable part of life right out of our lives.
But like the people of God on the plains of Moab, we need to both mourn and bring our mourning to an end. We need to face the hard and unpleasant truths about those we have loved even as we grieve the loss of all that made them dear to us. We need to accept that their time among us has ended, even as the lasting effects of their lives among us continue. Recall that "Joshua ... was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him." Life goes on for those gathered into God's eternal presence, and life goes on for us as well.
An Alternate Application
Not only is October 31 Halloween, it is also Reformation Day. It was on that date that Martin Luther posted his famous 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg so as to occasion debate among those who would see them there when they came to the church for All Saints' Day services. Martin Luther's hope was to spark change within the church by changing the relationship between priesthood and laity (among other things), and not to split and ultimately fragment the church.
On this Sunday before Reformation Day it would be appropriate for us to consider what reformations may be called for within our own churches. How well are we living up to Luther's call for a "priesthood of all believers"? Among those who do see the task of ministry belonging to all the people of the church, have we made our own Paul's understanding of ministry as self-giving out of love and care for others?
First Lesson Focus
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
We do not usually think of Moses as a prophet. Based on the stories we heard in Sunday school as children or perhaps on the conceptions we received from Hollywood epics like The Ten Commandments, we picture Moses as the great leader of the exodus or as the lawgiver bringing the tablets down from Mount Sinai. But a prophet Moses surely was. In fact our text states that Moses was the greatest prophet, like no other after him, for the Lord spoke to him face to face like a friend (cf. Exodus 33:11) and not through the mediation of inspired words or dreams or visions (cf. Numbers 12:6-8).
In Deuteronomy 18:15, the Lord promises that after Moses' death, he will raise up a prophet like Moses, whom the Israelites should obey, and there is evidence that later prophets, such as Jeremiah, saw themselves as that Mosaic prophet. In intertestimental times, the expectation of a prophet like Moses took on eschatological tones and was connected with the coming of the kingdom of God. Thus, in both John and Acts, Jesus is understood as that promised eschatological figure (John 7:40; Acts 3:22-26).
As a prophet, Moses fulfills all of the prophetic functions. Prophets in the Old Testament are those who tell when, why, and where God is at work, and it is Moses who first prophesies that God will be at work in the deliverance from Egypt. Prophets are also intercessors for their people, and Moses repeatedly intercedes with God through prayer to turn aside God's judgment on the people (cf. Deuteronomy 9:13-29). As intercessors, prophets are also suffering intercessors, taking first upon themselves the judgment that the Lord is bringing upon the people (cf. Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel), and in Deuteronomy, it is Moses who takes upon himself the sins of Israel in order that Israel may enter into the Promised Land (1:37; 3:26; 4:21). Thus, in our stated text, Moses is shown the Promised Land, but is not allowed to enter into it. Finally, Moses is the mediator of the Word of God to the people, as all of the Old Testament prophets are mediators of that word. But, says verse 10, no prophet who follows is like the prophet that Moses was, given the power by God to do signs and wonders in Egypt and in the desert wanderings.
Moses' intimate closeness to the Lord is evidenced by the fact that even at the time of his death at 120 years of age, Moses' physical powers are not abated, for he lives from the vitality and power of the Lord, who is the Source of life-giving vitality. Significantly, however, Moses is buried in the land of Moab on the eastern side of the Jordan and no one knows where his grave is. Why? Because the people of God are not to worship the dead or make pilgrimages to their graves, because God is the Lord of the living and not of the dead and is the sole one to be worshiped. Indeed, Israel is not even to celebrate its dead heroes, for its one hero and leader and Lord is the living God, and if some human being has done mighty deeds, as Moses did, it is only because Almighty God has worked through him. Always Israel's adulation is to be pointed in the right direction.
According to our text, Moses is given the sight of the Promised Land toward which his whole ministry has been directed. The Lord directs him to ascend 2,740 feet up Mount Nebo, in the Abarim range in Moab, and then to cross a mountain saddle to Mount Pisgah, from where the Lord shows him the Promised Land laid out before him. Moses sees it all, from the territory in the north where Dan will reside to the southern regions that will be Judah's home, and then beyond, even to the desert of the Negev and the southern tip of the Dead Sea. Moses sees the end place of his journey, but he is given only the glimpse of it and not a resting place in it. It is a foretaste, but not the full reality.
In a sense, we all have only that foretaste, don't we? We know we journey toward a promised place of rest called the kingdom of God. And occasionally, just occasionally, we have a little glimpse of it. When families dwell together in love and harmony, exercising toward each member that unconditional love that belongs to the kingdom, then we know that kingdom's joy, don't we? When bitter disputes are ended by forgiveness and mutual forbearance, and people dwell together in peace, then the kingdom's peace seems a reality to us, doesn't it? When an act of kindness or charity lifts the burden of need from someone else's life, then there is a little foretaste of the kingdom's mercy, isn't there? Or indeed, when we suddenly experience the presence of God in worship and are led to sing his glory and to praise his name, singing with all our might, then we know something of the kingdom's exultation, don't we, and God is all in all in our hearts and our lives have found their goal. Yes, we get little foretastes of the kingdom of God in our earth-bound and sin-spotted lives, because a loving God has broken into this world in Jesus Christ our Lord. He bears with him the joy, the peace, the mercy, the love, the presence of his Father. And we know with certainty that the kingdom is real and that we all are journeying toward it.
Lutheran Option -- Jeremiah 31:31-34
588 B. C. was a desperate year in the life of the Israelite people of the southern kingdom of Judah. The Babylonian armies of Nebuchadnezzar were laying siege to the Holy City on Mount Zion, soon to overrun it and to exile most of its population to Babylonia. Jeremiah himself was imprisoned in the court of the guard of King Zedekiah, while outside the prison the terrified population was hungering for food and drink or attempting to escape the doomed city in the dark of the night. God had given his chosen people into the hands of their enemies, because of their unfaithfulness to him. But in that desperate situation, Jeremiah was given the words from the Lord that make up our text.
God would not desert his beloved people forever, was the message. Instead, in the future, God would return to his people and establish a new relationship with them through the means of a new covenant. It would not be like the covenant that the Lord made with them on Mount Sinai in the time of Moses. Faithless Israel broke that covenant, worshiping other gods, ignoring God's most basic commandments (cf. Jeremiah 7:8-10), and corrupting communal life, even though God was to them like a loving husband. Rather, this new covenant would be written on the Judeans' hearts, so that they would want to obey God's will. They would be transformed from the inside out, so that they would willingly and joyfully walk in God's ways. Every one of them would know the Lord, as a loving wife knows her husband or as an adoring son knows his father. And all of their past unfaithfulness toward the Lord would be forgiven. God and people would once more be united in an unbreakable bond of love and fidelity.
Those words of Jeremiah's were never fulfilled until Jesus sat at the table of the Last Supper with his disciples. But when he offered that cup of the new covenant to his followers and to us, he pledged that by his sacrifice on the cross, he made it possible once more for us to live in daily communion with our God. Moreover, following his resurrection, he poured his Spirit into our hearts, so that you and I now have the power to walk in his way and to do his good will.
In other words, out of his sheer grace and mercy, God has come to us in his Son and offered us an unbreakable fellowship with himself to all eternity. He has opened the door now for each one of us to enter into his goodness, his joy, his everlasting life. He holds out the cup of the new covenant to you and to me.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
Psalm 90 is a prayer, expressing gratitude for God's abiding presence in the face of the transient and frail nature of human life. Any human life, no matter how noble or helpful or wise, is terminal. Time marches on, and generations come and go. Some people have more years than others but none have life unending, not in this existence anyway. The psalmist does not bemoan that fact. Instead, he prays that in this lifetime, we will gain the wisdom to value the days we have and the fact that God is with us in them.
One stark difference between God and us is that he is eternal and we are mortal. H. Richard Niebuhr, once wrote that "we are in the grip of power that neither asks our consent before [he] brings us into existence nor asks our agreement to continue us in being beyond our physical death."
The wisdom the psalmist prayed for is the clarity to see ourselves rightly in relationship to the eternal Creator. It is to acknowledge joyously, not grudgingly, that we did not make ourselves, but are contingent on the One who grants us life. And then, to trust him, to praise him, to seek his will.
It may seem obvious to say that God is eternal and we are not. But things are not quite that simple. Think how, in our sense of loneliness in the world, we have sought another human being who we believe can free us of our loneliness. Perhaps it was when you fell in love. At that moment you may have had the notion that this other person could meet your needs -- for love, for romance, for companionship. "Now I'll never be lonely again," you might have said. "Never" is a very long time, and in placing another person in the position of banishing our aloneness forever, we act as though we are to live forever. Because we are mortal, we cannot escape loneliness forever. Only an immortal can do that. The psalmist was wise enough to know that the only permanent anchor for the solitary individual is in God, who is immortal. For in attempting to defend ourselves against what is a part of every human existence -- aloneness -- without including God, is to act as if we were divine ourselves.
"Every time we build new defenses to protect our life as inalienable property, we find ourselves caught in the tenacious illusion of immortality," says the late priest/writer Henri Nouwen (Reaching Out, 116). Whenever we give eternal value to things we are or the things we own, we have forgotten that we are only here temporarily.
Human togetherness, which does allay some loneliness briefly, is not an ultimate solution. The loneliness of existence is a seed God has planted within us to drive us to seek him.
The psalmist tells us that while our relatively short existence here on earth is extremely valuable to us, it is not everything. God is all in all. When we live as though our life is even more important than his existence, we behave as though we were designed to live forever right here.
The Christian theology of mourning, as Paul expressed it early on (see 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), brings together both grief and hope. We do "not grieve as others do who have no hope" (v. 13). Paul is clear that one reason we have hope is because we know that life will go on even for those who have died in the Lord. Just as God raised Jesus from the dead, so God will raise both the living and the dead at the climax of the age so that "we will be with the Lord forever" (v. 17).
But life not only goes on eternally for those who have died; it also goes on in the here-and-now for those who have survived the deaths of loved ones. God has not left us without hope either. As the story of Moses' death illustrates, even the loss of one of God's greatest saints did not deny the Israelites the benefits of Spirit-inspired leadership. Part of the gospel message of hope is that life goes on with God for those of us who are left behind as well.
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
The book of Deuteronomy ends with a brief hagiography of Moses. As with many such writings about holy ones, the text claims that the health and vigor of the saint was undiminished even at the point of death (v. 7). It is doubtful that such assertions were ever taken literally. Rather, their literary function was two-fold. First, it underscored that the divine presence that had empowered their lives continued with them through the moment of death. Second, it suggests that not even death was ultimately able to triumph over them; God either takes them directly from this world (cf. Enoch in Genesis 5:19-24 and Elijah in 2 Kings 2:11-12) or they willingly "lay down their life" rather than having it "taken from them" (see John 10:11-18). Later tradition added various legendary details about the special circumstances that surrounded Moses' death (e.g., Jude 1:9, which, according to the early Church Fathers, draws on a work titled the Assumption of Moses).
The key feature of Moses' death scene is that the one through whom God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt is not being allowed to travel with them into the Promised Land. This restriction on Moses is simply stated in this passage without elaboration (Deuteronomy 34:4). According to Numbers 20:11-12, the reason Moses is not allowed to enter the land is because he had not strictly followed God's instructions for providing water in the wilderness for the Israelites on one occasion. But this explanation raises as many questions as it answers.
First, there is the problem that the Pentateuch twice reports that Moses performed the miracle of bringing forth water from a rock at a site subsequently named "Meribah." The earlier episode is recounted in Exodus 17:1-7; it locates the spring on Mount Horeb, and the instrument by which Moses accomplishes the miracle is by striking the rock with his staff. The Numbers 20:1-13 account, however, locates the spring at Kadesh, and Moses' sin is precisely that he strikes the rock rather than merely speaking to it.
His respective actions in these two episodes underscore a second problem. Why is Moses punished so harshly for such a seemingly insignificant deviation from God's instruction? Some have suggested that it is precisely because there can be no deviation from God's command, whereas others say the problem is that Moses believes he and Aaron can personally provide the water without divine assistance by replicating his earlier actions (see especially Numbers 20:10).
It has been noted that the Exodus and Numbers accounts stem from the Elohist and Priestly sources respectively. Some source critics have suggested that the Priestly writer specifically created the Numbers account to explain the otherwise seemingly inexplicable deaths of Moses and Aaron (see Numbers 20:23-29) prior to entering the land of promise. Over the course of the development of the tradition, the test ultimately becomes about more than any of the specific details of Moses' and Aaron's actions, but a broader test involving all the religious leadership of the people (cf. Deuteronomy 33:8-11).
Although the story here at the close of the Torah obviously holds these stories about the testing of Israel's leadership close below the surface, it also underscores that the death of Moses is not the end of God's working through the leadership of the chosen people. In very matter-of-fact fashion we are told that the people mourned for Moses for 30 days in the hills of Moab. But "when the period of mourning for Moses was ended," Moses' leadership passed to Joshua, son of Nun, who "was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the LORD had commanded Moses" (34:8-9).
No matter how great a figure Moses had been in delivering the Israelites from Egypt and mediating God's instruction of Torah, and even though he proved to be without equal among the religious leaders of Israel through the post-Exilic period in which the compilation of the Torah was completed (vv. 10-12), God did not leave them without spirit-filled leadership. Life goes on for the people of God.
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
If all we had to work from was the information Paul provides us in his letters about his mission activities, it would be impossible to construct anything approaching the itineraries of the three missionary journeys related in Acts. The Epistle Lesson for this Sunday, however, does contain one of the rare points of contact between Pauline autobiography and canonical biography about him.
Paul is recalling the beginning of his ministry in Thessalonica as coming on the heels of his work in Philippi, where he states, "We had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated" (v. 2). He does not provide any further detail about this mistreatment, but it is possible to fill in the gaps from the account in Acts 16:12-40. There we read about his early success in the conversion of Lydia, the controversy that erupted following the exorcism of a young, slave-woman soothsayer, Paul and Silas' flogging and imprisonment and ultimately their public release following an earthquake. Having been asked by the magistrates of Philippi to leave so as not to cause further disturbances, Paul and Silas had continued on to Thessalonica, the other major city of the province of Macedonia.
Once again, as Paul himself relates here, his ministry began on a very positive note (v. 1). Things would not continue so positively, however. Acts 17:1-10 relates how that opposition from the Jewish population of Thessalonica ultimately led to Paul and Silas being ushered out of the city by their supporters under cover of darkness. With the same characteristic restraint in offering details we saw in his allusion to the problems at Philippi, Paul himself simply reminds the Thessalonian Christians about this episode by noting the "great opposition" he ultimately encountered there (1 Thessalonians 2:2) and saying that "we were made orphans by being separated from you -- in person, not in heart" (2:17).
Paul attributes the success of his early mission activity in Europe to the fact that he and his associates sought "not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts" (v. 4). Not only did they not seek to ingratiate themselves to others by "flattery," but they also did not seek "praise from mortals, whether from you or from others" (vv. 5-6).
The goal of his ministry was to bring faith in Christ to birth among his Greek audience, and then to nurture them in that faith. Paul uses the striking image of a mother who nurses and "tenderly car[es] for her own children" (v. 7) to describe his relationship with the Thessalonian believers. It seems quite likely that Paul intends by this simile to communicate the self-giving role of ministry, just as a mother literally gives of herself when she breastfeeds her child (see also his remark about sharing "not only the gospel of God but also our own selves" in v. 8).
That principle of self-giving, nurturing leadership stands in marked contrast to the attitudes of others who use "deceit or impure motives or trickery" (v. 3) to satisfy their own "greed" (v. 5) through those under their leadership. Paul's choice to adopt this self-giving stance toward them was deliberate. He explicitly notes that "we might have made demands as apostles of Christ" for support (v. 7), but that they had refused to do so. It is not clear whether these comments are implicit criticism of others who may have followed him to Thessalonica and sought financial support from those to whom they ministered. What is clear is that Paul wants to emphasize that all his actions toward them were motivated by deep care and love.
In these ways Paul has modeled the attitude of all ministers who would follow in Christ's self-giving ministry. While he would later in his ministry acknowledge that there were potential problems with not allowing those to whom he ministered to support that ministry themselves (see 2 Corinthians 11:7-11), he remained convinced that the proper attitude of leaders of God's people is to give themselves to others rather than to seek benefit for themselves from others.
Matthew 22:34-46
The Gospel Lesson for this Sunday is the third of three "controversy stories" that set the stage for Jesus' Passion (22:15). These controversies involve questions that are put to Jesus in an attempt to "entrap" him or to catch him in something for which they can bring charges against him. The first test in this series involves the Pharisees, joined by the Herodians, regarding whether the Jews should pay imperial taxes to Rome (22:16-22). The second is brought by the Sadducees and regards the question of belief in resurrection (22:23-33). Finally there is here in the assigned lection a question, again from one of the Pharisees, regarding the most important of the commandments (22:34-40). In each of the first two cases, Jesus' response is met with "amazement" (vv. 22 and 33), and as we shall see this final exchange brings an end to the whole effort to trap Jesus by his own teachings.
Looking more closely at the specifics of this third and final test, Jesus is asked by a "lawyer," that is, a specialist in interpreting and applying the precepts of the Mosaic Torah or instruction, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" (v. 36). Just what response that he might have expected from Jesus that would have provided grounds for accusation against him is difficult to imagine. The possibility exists that Matthew has shifted this exchange to this current context, for in Mark this question is generated by someone who is impressed by Jesus' responses to questions put to him rather than by someone looking to "test" him (see Mark 12:28-34; note, however, that in Luke 10:25-28 the question appears as a "test" as here in Matthew).
Whatever trap the lawyer might have thought he was setting, Jesus evades it by replying firmly in the Judaic tradition. The greatest commandment, Jesus says, is, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (v. 37). This response is taken directly from Deuteronomy 6:5. Jesus then continues that the next greatest commandment is, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," again quoting directly from the Torah (Leviticus 19:18b; cf. James 2:8). Within these two commandments, Jesus contends, the full content of the Torah and the prophets' preaching on it is summarized. The basic structure established by these two commandments has often been referred to as the "two tables of the law," going back to a traditional division of the Ten Commandments into a table outlining one's responsibilities to God (commandments one to four) and a table of commandments regarding our responsibilities toward others (commandments five through 10; see Exodus 20:1-17).
Jesus then turns the table on his questioners. He challenges their messianic expectations by asking whose "son" the Messiah will be. Their response, that the Messiah will be a descendant of David, reflects a widely held Jewish belief from this period. The Messiah would be a purely human figure, descended from David, whom God would choose to lead the Jews as God had chosen David to rule over Israel. But if the Messiah is only a human descendant of David, how can it be that David (the traditionally ascribed author of Psalm 110) calls him "Lord"? A father would never have addressed his son or a more distant descendant in that manner. So if David is the author of Psalm 110, and if its opening verse is a prophetic pronouncement of God's future exaltation of the Messiah, then how can the Messiah be no more than a human descendant of David?
Matthew reports that none of those present was able to provide a response overturning the logic of Jesus' conclusion, "nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions" (v. 46). But there is the possibility that by this exchange Jesus perhaps gave his opponents precisely what they were looking for. In Matthew's account of Jesus' trial before the high priest, the court condemns Jesus on the charge of blasphemy because he assents to being "the Messiah, the Son of God" (26:63-66).
Normally the idea that the Messiah could be called "Son of God" was understood in a strictly adoptionist fashion (cf. Psalm 2:7). But such a claim would not have been blasphemy. For that charge to stick would require understanding the claim to being "Son of God" in a more direct sense, as Jesus himself in fact does by quoting Daniel 7:13-14 (which also mentions being seated at God's right hand as Psalm 110:1 does) in his response to the high priest. But of course even then it is only blasphemy if the claim was untrue. The irony in Matthew's Gospel is that Jesus' opponents set out to convict him on the basis of false testimony (26:59-61), but in the end falsely convict him on the basis of true testimony.
Application
The story of Moses' death includes the note, "The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended." In that straightforward declaration are to be found two important insights for all who have lost loved ones: there must be a time for mourning, and that time must come to an end (cf. Ecclesiastes 3:4). Too often we do one or the other.
Some people have the rituals of mourning down pat. They are completely convinced that life cannot go on because their loved one is no longer with them, that things will never be the same again and that can only portend disaster. They engage in eulogizing the deceased to the point that people are no longer permitted to remember that person's faults. Like the unexpressed reason for why God will permit Moses to see the Promised Land but not to cross the Jordan River to enter it, they would rather live with puzzling omissions than remember hard truths.
Other people can never bring their mourning to an end because they never allow it to begin. Our modern society has done much to separate the presence of death from our lives. Although there are many salutary reasons for choosing cremation over embalmment and whole body burial (even as many continue to hold that Christian belief in the hope of bodily resurrection is best witnessed to by the latter), one cannot help but wonder if the increasing popularity of cremation isn't related to avoiding being in the presence of the deceased's body. We have sanitized this inescapable part of life right out of our lives.
But like the people of God on the plains of Moab, we need to both mourn and bring our mourning to an end. We need to face the hard and unpleasant truths about those we have loved even as we grieve the loss of all that made them dear to us. We need to accept that their time among us has ended, even as the lasting effects of their lives among us continue. Recall that "Joshua ... was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him." Life goes on for those gathered into God's eternal presence, and life goes on for us as well.
An Alternate Application
Not only is October 31 Halloween, it is also Reformation Day. It was on that date that Martin Luther posted his famous 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg so as to occasion debate among those who would see them there when they came to the church for All Saints' Day services. Martin Luther's hope was to spark change within the church by changing the relationship between priesthood and laity (among other things), and not to split and ultimately fragment the church.
On this Sunday before Reformation Day it would be appropriate for us to consider what reformations may be called for within our own churches. How well are we living up to Luther's call for a "priesthood of all believers"? Among those who do see the task of ministry belonging to all the people of the church, have we made our own Paul's understanding of ministry as self-giving out of love and care for others?
First Lesson Focus
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
We do not usually think of Moses as a prophet. Based on the stories we heard in Sunday school as children or perhaps on the conceptions we received from Hollywood epics like The Ten Commandments, we picture Moses as the great leader of the exodus or as the lawgiver bringing the tablets down from Mount Sinai. But a prophet Moses surely was. In fact our text states that Moses was the greatest prophet, like no other after him, for the Lord spoke to him face to face like a friend (cf. Exodus 33:11) and not through the mediation of inspired words or dreams or visions (cf. Numbers 12:6-8).
In Deuteronomy 18:15, the Lord promises that after Moses' death, he will raise up a prophet like Moses, whom the Israelites should obey, and there is evidence that later prophets, such as Jeremiah, saw themselves as that Mosaic prophet. In intertestimental times, the expectation of a prophet like Moses took on eschatological tones and was connected with the coming of the kingdom of God. Thus, in both John and Acts, Jesus is understood as that promised eschatological figure (John 7:40; Acts 3:22-26).
As a prophet, Moses fulfills all of the prophetic functions. Prophets in the Old Testament are those who tell when, why, and where God is at work, and it is Moses who first prophesies that God will be at work in the deliverance from Egypt. Prophets are also intercessors for their people, and Moses repeatedly intercedes with God through prayer to turn aside God's judgment on the people (cf. Deuteronomy 9:13-29). As intercessors, prophets are also suffering intercessors, taking first upon themselves the judgment that the Lord is bringing upon the people (cf. Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel), and in Deuteronomy, it is Moses who takes upon himself the sins of Israel in order that Israel may enter into the Promised Land (1:37; 3:26; 4:21). Thus, in our stated text, Moses is shown the Promised Land, but is not allowed to enter into it. Finally, Moses is the mediator of the Word of God to the people, as all of the Old Testament prophets are mediators of that word. But, says verse 10, no prophet who follows is like the prophet that Moses was, given the power by God to do signs and wonders in Egypt and in the desert wanderings.
Moses' intimate closeness to the Lord is evidenced by the fact that even at the time of his death at 120 years of age, Moses' physical powers are not abated, for he lives from the vitality and power of the Lord, who is the Source of life-giving vitality. Significantly, however, Moses is buried in the land of Moab on the eastern side of the Jordan and no one knows where his grave is. Why? Because the people of God are not to worship the dead or make pilgrimages to their graves, because God is the Lord of the living and not of the dead and is the sole one to be worshiped. Indeed, Israel is not even to celebrate its dead heroes, for its one hero and leader and Lord is the living God, and if some human being has done mighty deeds, as Moses did, it is only because Almighty God has worked through him. Always Israel's adulation is to be pointed in the right direction.
According to our text, Moses is given the sight of the Promised Land toward which his whole ministry has been directed. The Lord directs him to ascend 2,740 feet up Mount Nebo, in the Abarim range in Moab, and then to cross a mountain saddle to Mount Pisgah, from where the Lord shows him the Promised Land laid out before him. Moses sees it all, from the territory in the north where Dan will reside to the southern regions that will be Judah's home, and then beyond, even to the desert of the Negev and the southern tip of the Dead Sea. Moses sees the end place of his journey, but he is given only the glimpse of it and not a resting place in it. It is a foretaste, but not the full reality.
In a sense, we all have only that foretaste, don't we? We know we journey toward a promised place of rest called the kingdom of God. And occasionally, just occasionally, we have a little glimpse of it. When families dwell together in love and harmony, exercising toward each member that unconditional love that belongs to the kingdom, then we know that kingdom's joy, don't we? When bitter disputes are ended by forgiveness and mutual forbearance, and people dwell together in peace, then the kingdom's peace seems a reality to us, doesn't it? When an act of kindness or charity lifts the burden of need from someone else's life, then there is a little foretaste of the kingdom's mercy, isn't there? Or indeed, when we suddenly experience the presence of God in worship and are led to sing his glory and to praise his name, singing with all our might, then we know something of the kingdom's exultation, don't we, and God is all in all in our hearts and our lives have found their goal. Yes, we get little foretastes of the kingdom of God in our earth-bound and sin-spotted lives, because a loving God has broken into this world in Jesus Christ our Lord. He bears with him the joy, the peace, the mercy, the love, the presence of his Father. And we know with certainty that the kingdom is real and that we all are journeying toward it.
Lutheran Option -- Jeremiah 31:31-34
588 B. C. was a desperate year in the life of the Israelite people of the southern kingdom of Judah. The Babylonian armies of Nebuchadnezzar were laying siege to the Holy City on Mount Zion, soon to overrun it and to exile most of its population to Babylonia. Jeremiah himself was imprisoned in the court of the guard of King Zedekiah, while outside the prison the terrified population was hungering for food and drink or attempting to escape the doomed city in the dark of the night. God had given his chosen people into the hands of their enemies, because of their unfaithfulness to him. But in that desperate situation, Jeremiah was given the words from the Lord that make up our text.
God would not desert his beloved people forever, was the message. Instead, in the future, God would return to his people and establish a new relationship with them through the means of a new covenant. It would not be like the covenant that the Lord made with them on Mount Sinai in the time of Moses. Faithless Israel broke that covenant, worshiping other gods, ignoring God's most basic commandments (cf. Jeremiah 7:8-10), and corrupting communal life, even though God was to them like a loving husband. Rather, this new covenant would be written on the Judeans' hearts, so that they would want to obey God's will. They would be transformed from the inside out, so that they would willingly and joyfully walk in God's ways. Every one of them would know the Lord, as a loving wife knows her husband or as an adoring son knows his father. And all of their past unfaithfulness toward the Lord would be forgiven. God and people would once more be united in an unbreakable bond of love and fidelity.
Those words of Jeremiah's were never fulfilled until Jesus sat at the table of the Last Supper with his disciples. But when he offered that cup of the new covenant to his followers and to us, he pledged that by his sacrifice on the cross, he made it possible once more for us to live in daily communion with our God. Moreover, following his resurrection, he poured his Spirit into our hearts, so that you and I now have the power to walk in his way and to do his good will.
In other words, out of his sheer grace and mercy, God has come to us in his Son and offered us an unbreakable fellowship with himself to all eternity. He has opened the door now for each one of us to enter into his goodness, his joy, his everlasting life. He holds out the cup of the new covenant to you and to me.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
Psalm 90 is a prayer, expressing gratitude for God's abiding presence in the face of the transient and frail nature of human life. Any human life, no matter how noble or helpful or wise, is terminal. Time marches on, and generations come and go. Some people have more years than others but none have life unending, not in this existence anyway. The psalmist does not bemoan that fact. Instead, he prays that in this lifetime, we will gain the wisdom to value the days we have and the fact that God is with us in them.
One stark difference between God and us is that he is eternal and we are mortal. H. Richard Niebuhr, once wrote that "we are in the grip of power that neither asks our consent before [he] brings us into existence nor asks our agreement to continue us in being beyond our physical death."
The wisdom the psalmist prayed for is the clarity to see ourselves rightly in relationship to the eternal Creator. It is to acknowledge joyously, not grudgingly, that we did not make ourselves, but are contingent on the One who grants us life. And then, to trust him, to praise him, to seek his will.
It may seem obvious to say that God is eternal and we are not. But things are not quite that simple. Think how, in our sense of loneliness in the world, we have sought another human being who we believe can free us of our loneliness. Perhaps it was when you fell in love. At that moment you may have had the notion that this other person could meet your needs -- for love, for romance, for companionship. "Now I'll never be lonely again," you might have said. "Never" is a very long time, and in placing another person in the position of banishing our aloneness forever, we act as though we are to live forever. Because we are mortal, we cannot escape loneliness forever. Only an immortal can do that. The psalmist was wise enough to know that the only permanent anchor for the solitary individual is in God, who is immortal. For in attempting to defend ourselves against what is a part of every human existence -- aloneness -- without including God, is to act as if we were divine ourselves.
"Every time we build new defenses to protect our life as inalienable property, we find ourselves caught in the tenacious illusion of immortality," says the late priest/writer Henri Nouwen (Reaching Out, 116). Whenever we give eternal value to things we are or the things we own, we have forgotten that we are only here temporarily.
Human togetherness, which does allay some loneliness briefly, is not an ultimate solution. The loneliness of existence is a seed God has planted within us to drive us to seek him.
The psalmist tells us that while our relatively short existence here on earth is extremely valuable to us, it is not everything. God is all in all. When we live as though our life is even more important than his existence, we behave as though we were designed to live forever right here.
