I've Been to the Mountaintop
A sermon by Jamie Howison on Deuteronomy 34:1-12
For close to five months now, we have been walking through ancient stories and following the long narrative arc of the foundations of Israel as told in Genesis, Exodus, and now—briefly—Deuteronomy. We began on June 14, with a story introducing Abraham and Sarah, and traveled with them and then with Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Rachel and Leah, Joseph and his brothers, Moses and Aaron and Miriam. Along the way we bumped into Hagar and Ishmael, the Pharaoh and his daughter, the Egyptian midwives Shiphrah and Puah, and a whole host of other characters, but all along we kept telling stories of the places “where God just was,” as Rachel put it in her sermon last week. Tonight we bring the long arc of stories to a completion, as we bear witness to the death of Moses on the top of Mount Nebo, gazing across to the land of promise.
“Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses,” the text says, and that’s a sensibility still very much maintained in Judaism. After his initial anxious protests—“Don’t send me to Pharaoh, Lord, I’m not very good with words” and all that—Moses has advocated for the people, led them out through thick and thin, argued with God on their behalf, taught them and resolved their disputes, occasionally lost his temper at them, and ultimately been that transformational leader who could shepherd them through their wilderness wanderings to the very banks of the Jordan River… but no further.
This might strike you as being terribly unfair, as it has struck many commentators—both Jewish and Christians—for centuries. The reason Moses is prohibited from leading the people across into the land of promise goes back to an incident much earlier in the story, at a place called Meribah. The people were again crying out in protest that they were about to die, in this instance for lack of water. God instructs Moses to call water out from a rock, but instead of just calling out with his voice Moses had taken his staff and twice struck the rock with it. Here’s how it reads in the book of Numbers:
Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, ‘Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?’ Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff; water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their livestock drank. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.’ (Numbers 20:10-12)
Well, as Kathryn M. Schifferdecker notes, “Most commentators who try to solve the puzzle note that Moses strikes the rock twice instead of speaking to it, as God had commanded. And he says, ‘Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?’ perhaps thereby claiming to be the source of the miracle, rather than giving credit to God.”
So, is it that Moses’ lost temper and angry bravado gave an impression that it was he who brought out the water rather than the holiness of God, and that was enough of a transgression to prevent he and Aaron both from finishing the long journey into the land of promise? Can just one stumble like this override decades—decades—of faithfulness? I don’t know about you, but I find that a hard pill to swallow.
Yet there may be another way of looking at it all, and one that is marked by a kind of grace. Moses has lived and laboured long for the people, and it might just be that he needs to let his mantle be passed on to Joshua for the next chapter in Israel’s unfolding story. Look out over the land, Moses; “the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob,” and in which the people will make a home. Joshua will lead them now, Moses. You can die now Moses, and rest in peace knowing that your work is done. This is no longer yours to carry, Moses. You can’t do everything, dear one. Now rest.
That’s not unlike the message King David will later receive, when he’s begun to dream of building a temple in his newly established royal city of Jerusalem. The prophet Nathan comes to David with a word, saying that no, the temple was not David’s to build; that work would fall to one of his sons. That’s not yours to do, David. You can’t do everything… (2 Samuel 7)
It is at once a release and a reminder. A release from carrying the burden further in his old age, and a reminder that God’s people always transcend any one leader, that God’s work is done using many hands. The work must be shared, the mantle has to be passed. And that’s good news.
Trust this, Moses, and die at peace. Joshua will lead well, because he’s seen you lead so well. The story in which you have played such a key role will be told and retold by the people of God for generation after generation, and in telling it they will extend it in new and surprising ways.
That’s why these ancient stories are told; so that we can see glimpses of ourselves in them, learn from them, and have our imaginations enlarged for new and surprising things.
On April 3, 1968, in Memphis Tennessee, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the final speech of his life. Though delivered as a speech to striking sanitation workers in that city, and not as a sermon to a church congregation, King could never not preach, and as he brought things to a close he spoke the following words:
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. [and here he in referencing Mount Nebo, the place on which Moses stood] And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
The next day at 6:01 pm on the walkway in front of his room at the Lorraine Motel, King was shot by an assassin. Having evoked and extended and improvised upon the biblical story of the exodus from enslavement and the long journey into a new and promised land, King lay dying. According to the biographer Taylor Branch, King’s dying words were to the musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at another planned event. “Ben,” he said, “make sure you play ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’ in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.”
Now I don’t believe for a minute that God willed the death of Dr. King, which actually stands as one of the great atrocities of that period; that a man who had stood as the great proponent of peaceful protest would die by an assassin’s bullet. But I am moved by King’s own awareness of his place in a story much bigger than his own, that inspired him to preach: “I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” As a people.
Just as Moses’ mantle was passed to Joshua, King’s mantle of leadership was passed on to people like Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson, who were beside him at the motel that day, and then to folks like John Lewis—known as the conscious of the US congress—and the Rev’d Dr. William Barber II, whose voice rings in our current days with such clarity. These are people soaked in these ancient stories, and that’s a big part of why they have had the courage and the consciences to do and be what God called out of them.
That is a big part of the reason why we’ve spent these five months exploring these stories. We are a story-formed people, after all, and it is stories such as these ones that will tell us the sometime hard truth about ourselves and then enlarge our imaginations to live into what we were created to be: a people on the move, and a people made in the image of God.
