"On top of Mount Nebo"
Knox, 6 November, 2011 © Scott McAndless
Deuteronomy 34, Psalm 2 0, Matthew 5:13-16, Philippians 3:4b-16
It’s just not fair. For years, it seems, I have lived with only one goal. I have only wanted to bring your people into possession of the land that you had promised them. I have dreamed of that land, imagined it right down to the smallest blade of grass. When I spoke about how the land would flow with milk and honey, it was like I could taste the milk and feel the sweetness of the honey on my tongue. And what’s more, as I led your people I never lost sight of this goal: that they should enter into this promise and possess it in righteousness and in faithfulness.
Was I a perfect leader? Of course not. I made lots of mistakes. One time, at Kadesh, I was even so angry with them that I kind of lost it. I shouted at the people and I smashed the rock with my staff. And I know that some of the blame for the people’s failure to follow can be placed on me. But I never doubted you. Even at the worst moments – when it seemed that there was no water and no food and that we were surrounded by powerful enemies – I always had full confidence that you would see us through.
And now here we are – on the very edge of entering into possession of everything that I have hoped for – and it turns out that I am not going to be part of it. You’re going to take me up this mountain and let me die there. Doesn’t my dedication to this cause count for something? What about all of the blood, sweat and tears that I have put into it. How could it all end for me here on Mount Nebo? How could you bury me in this land which belongs to the Moabites – in a land that is to belong forever to foreigners and strangers instead of in the land for which I gave everything?
Moses was undeniably a great leader, the one who brought his people out of slavery, who told them that they could do better than to give their service to the Pharaoh as slaves and who held out the vision of a land flowing with milk and honey. He brought them through the Red Sea. A few times he even kept God from destroying the entire people and starting all over again from scratch, he led them down hard roads by the sheer force of his will, but he never was able to enter into that Promised Land himself. Instead he had to die just before they all passed the border. So scandalous is this very idea that Bible actually spends a fair bit of time and energy trying to explain it.
One explanation is given in the Book of Numbers where it says that the reason why Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land was because of something that happened in a place called Kadesh. There was no water, the people came to Moses and complained. And so Moses took the matter up with God. And God told him to gather the people and speak to a rock and water would come out. Well, Moses didn’t exactly follow those instructions. He yelled at the people and he hit the rock twice with his staff. The water still came out but, according to the Book of Numbers, because Moses didn’t do exactly what God had said, he wouldn’t be able to enter the Promised Land.
Not everyone has found that to be a completely satisfying explanation. At the very least it seems kind of arbitrary. Another simpler but perhaps no more satisfying explanation is found at the beginning of the Book of Deuteronomy. There Moses explains that he will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land because the people were too afraid to enter it after a group of spies had gone in and brought back a report. At that point God condemned the people to wander in the desert for 40 years until the whole generation of adults had died. And, Moses adds, he too was banned at that point and thus will die just before the people enter in.
But as I look at the story today, I wonder if we shouldn’t maybe be so worried about the explanations. Maybe the question of why Moses couldn’t lead the people into the new land wasn’t as much about what Moses did or didn’t do wrong as it was about his role as a leader. Maybe it is about something essential in the task of leadership.
Moses was the perfect leader for the wilderness. He was the one who kept before the people the vision of where they were going. That is the essential task of leadership after all – to take a group of people from where they are to where they need to be. And in the wilderness that was pretty straightforward. Where they needed to go was a pretty well defined geographical location and, even if they were forced to take a roundabout route to get there, what they needed to do was keep together and keep moving. Moses did that for them. The symbol of Moses’ leadership might be that pillar of smoke that led the people in the day and the pillar of fire that led them by night.
But even if Moses was the right leader for the wilderness, that doesn’t mean that he would also be the right leader in the Promised Land. Once the people of Israel moved into their new land, the job changed remarkably. At first it was all about organising the militia for war. And then, after the victories, the leader in the new land had the rather tedious task of dividing up the land among all the tribes, clans and families of the people of Israel. That is the kind of job where you really never are going to please anybody – where no matter how evenly everything is divided up somebody is going to feel like they were short-changed. Somehow I don’t think that Moses – the hothead – was really the right guy for that job!
So maybe what we really have at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy is a story about a necessary change in leadership. Every organization goes through these kinds of transitions from time to time. It is rarely easy, of course, and that is reflected in this passage, but it can be ultimately for the good.
Of course, I can’t read a story like this one in these days without making a few connections to my own story. Knox Presbyterian is about to go through a season of change in leadership whether we all like it or not. And there are some ways in which I can identify with Moses at the moment. I have led in this place for quite a few years like Moses led. And, like Moses, I have not always been the perfect leader and I have made my mistakes. There have been times, for example, when I have let my emotions get in the way of doing what I needed to do in certain situations. (Though I can’t say that I ever got angry with the people of this congregation like Moses had a certain tendency to do. Still I understand how that guy felt.)
I also feel like I have been the right leader for the time – again, maybe not perfect, but the one who had the right skills for the moment. And what has been that moment? I do see that the church in general is passing through a kind of wilderness time in these days – a time when the old ways of being the church just aren’t working so well anymore. A time when we have this tendency to look back to the “good old days” in Egypt where “we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted.” (Exodus 16:3) And, if that is where the church has been, then I think it would be fair to say that my job, as a leader, has been to hold out before you and before all God’s people the vision of where we need to be going – a place unlike where the church was a few decades ago but also unlike where we are now.
If that is the kind of leader that I was supposed to be for this church at this time, then I hope that I fulfilled that role well. But it seems that I am not the right person to lead it in the next phase of its life. Someone else with the right mix of talents and skills for an ever changing context will need to come and fulfill that role – and indeed someone will come. That is, I am sure, all of our prayer and I know that God will hear.
But as for me, it seems, it is time to go up Mount Nebo – not, I am very glad to say, because I am about to die, but because that particular mountaintop experience is a good way to think about the transition that we are talking about here.
Why did Moses go up Mount Nebo? He went up that particular mountain because of where it was situated – on the very borders of the Promised Land. He went up that mountain because that mountain afforded him a view of the entire land – a vision, if you will, of all the future that lay before his people. And I do believe that I have been given that – God has laid before me a certain vision, not only of where the church in general is going but also of where this particular church is headed and what God may have in store for you.
And, believe me, there is much that is good in store for you. But here is where the story in Deuteronomy throws us a little curve because, although Moses is indeed given a wonderful vision of that future, does he ever get a chance to share that vision with the people back in the camp? No he does not! And so I don’t think it is necessarily my place here and now to tell you exactly what God’s plan is for you as you head into the future. It is something that you need to discover for yourselves because you are the ones who will make your own future with God’s help.
Which brings us, of course, to the question of why Moses didn’t bring what he saw back to the camp. In fact, it says, no word at all about Moses came back to the camp and nobody ever knew where exactly he died or where he had been buried. (Which always made me wonder, by the way, where this account of what Moses did and saw on top of Mount Nebo came from.)
But that is not really the issue in this passage because I think that there is a very good reason for why this passage stresses that no word came back and nobody ever knew what happened to Moses’ body. There was a danger, you see, that the people might have gotten stuck there on the very edge of the Promised Land. Even if they were about to enter into a much better land than the desert places where they had been living, there is a natural tendency in times of great transition to become very nostalgic. Whatever is familiar (even if the familiar is nothing very good) becomes very attractive.
And there is especially a tendency to be very nostalgic for old styles of leadership even when new times call for new styles. So, if the people knew where Moses was buried they would have just built a shrine to him and that shrine would have kept them psychologically stuck to Moses’ leadership style even as they moved into brand new territory. And God’s people cannot afford to become mired in the past.
My friends, the place the Christian Church needs to be is not the place where it is now – even though we often find comfort in familiarity. And the place the church needs to be is not where it was a few decades ago though I do know we get very nostalgic for those times. God is calling you to move forward – is giving you a vision of a Promised Land. I can’t see that for you. I can’t take you in. I feel very privileged to have seen some glimpses of that land in my ministry in this place. I thank God for those glimpses. But I can’t take you there and I’ve brought you as far as God has called me to bring you.
Now move on. Don’t build a shrine here, don’t get stuck. God has some wonderful things in store for you.