Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain—that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees—as far as Zoar. The Lord said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day.  Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended. Joshua son of Nun 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. Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.

I am sure many of us remember the horrific incidents in Charlottesville, Virginia a few months ago, when racists and skinheads converged onto the small city to voice their racism, and to protest the taking down the statutes of Confederate leaders. A counter protestor was killed when a racist plowed his car into the crowd and shots were fired, and fists and kicks were thrown, and it was an awful, awful moment in the life of our country. The Sunday after the events I joined a few thousand at the Daley Plaza downtown to express our stance against racism, and our support of those who were feeling under attack by the latest wave of vitriol hurled at black and brown people. After listening to a series of speakers a young man stood up and made a stark challenge to us: cut out of our lives our friends and family who continued to practice racism with their words and/or their lives. At first, oddly enough, I thought, well, of course, we shouldn’t tolerate messengers and practitioners of hate and discrimination in our lives – I mean, there is something to be said about the fact that who we hang out with, who we share our lives with, is ultimately a reflection on us and what we value as well – even the New Testament offers this idea to its readers. But almost immediately, I was struck by the impossibility of putting that challenge into action in my own life – I am a Southerner, despite my lack of an accent, and almost every relative and every white friend of mine has said or done something that is racist – and I am certainly not immune from that charge either. I am a recovering racist, still working on aspects of my thought and life that perpetuate racism in my own heart and in my surroundings. I think I’ve spent most of my adult trying to get “woke” as the young people say nowadays, to wake up from the parts of me that had been infected by the white privilege I bear within me that is all around me, and around most of my family and friends. But if I were to do what the speaker at that rally asked me to do, I would probably have no blood family left in my life, people that I do very much love and care about. My parents were good people, they were heroes of mine, loving and kind people for the most part, and still they harbored ideas and thoughts about African-Americans that sadden me, that are shameful to me and that besmirched the goodness they generally practiced in their lives. And what about me – how do I cut myself out of my own life, me who is still working on that places in my heart and soul that haven’t quite woken up yet, haven’t yet reached the Promise Land, so to speak, the land where we can greet each other in all of our racial, sexual, and political complexity and discriminate against each other, explicitly or implicitly? Most of us in this room are probably dealing with some part of this problem, this imperfection, this sin we see in ourselves and in the ones we love, and how to navigate our relationships with those who have no desire to wake up and think that we are foolish for questioning the assumptions they imparted to us years and years earlier, consciously or not.

Of course, all of this has to do with the problem of how profoundly imperfect we all are, how despite our best hopes and wishes for ourselves and others, we rarely can live up to the goodness we desire to practice and hold within our hearts. There has been much criticism of original sin, perhaps rightfully so, that we are somehow born bad, or at least part of us is. Of course, the greater message of the Bible is that we are also born good – God said so at the beginning of creation, that God looked over the world, and us, and said it was good. But whether or not you buy the doctrine of original sin, what it does try to get at is something we all know is there, in each of us, in all of us, if we are honest with each other, and that is that there is shadow in us that doesn’t want to welcome the light, that doesn’t want to resist racism, that doesn’t want to wake up, that doesn’t want to give a damn about people I don’t know and don’t understand, a part of us that doesn’t want to do the right thing by the earth, that doesn’t want to give a damn about anything except ourselves and the people closest to us – and sometimes not even them. There is shadow even in a heart created within the light of God’s goodness, and it shouldn’t and doesn’t surprise many of us that despite the goodness and sometimes even greatness of our family or personal and public heroes, within them, as within us, there is shadow, some prejudice that surprises us, some bigotry that shows up unexpectedly, some unwillingness to do the right thing, at least in this part of our lives. I know this is true because it is true for me and everyone I know, and that desire for the perfect hero, the perfect politician, the perfect spouse, the perfect friend, the perfect parent, it all eventually crashes down, as we see them for who they are, and we see ourselves for who we are – people striving to do the right thing, but often failing to do so, sometimes even unaware that we have missed the mark, “missing the mark” being a common way we Christians speak of sin.

All of this desire for the perfect hero came too fore this week when I was thinking of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation, or at least the anniversary of Martin Luther’ posting of the 95 these against the practice of indulgences in the city of Wittenberg, Germany. In a recent issue of The Christian Century magazine (Oct 25, 2017), Rabbi Noam Marans reminded us Christians of the awful anti-Semitic legacy of Brother Martin Luther and how we Protestants were no better, in practice, than the Catholics we sought to correct during the Reformation. He points that early in his career, Martin Luther took a positive stance towards Judaism, writing an essay in 1523 called “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew,” in which he noted that our Lord Jesus was himself Jewish, and that we Christians and Jews are sisters and brothers because of that connection. And yet by 1543 Luther had changed his mind about the Jewish people because he felt they were not readily converting to Christianity as he had hoped, and he wrote a screed called “On the Jews and Their Lies,” which is just patently anti-Semitic, in which he says ”…thus when you see a real Jew you may with good conscience cross yourself, and boldly say, ‘There goes the Devil incarnate.’” Later the Nazis would use this essay and other of Luther’s writing as part of their justification for their campaign of genocide against the Jewish people. But of course those vile words weren’t the only words Luther wrote, and so much of what else he wrote was beautiful and joyful and true – listen to brother Luther, yes BROTHER Luther:

The whole being of any Christian is faith and love. Faith brings the person to God, love brings the person to people.

God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.

I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess.

There are some of us who think to ourselves, 'If I had only been there! How quick I would have been to help the Baby. I would have washed His linen. How happy I would have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in the manger!' Why don't we do it now? We have Christ in our neighbor.

Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!

What we have with Luther is what we have with all those that we love, and with our very own selves – people of often great light and love who carry within them some deep shadows, some places within them, within us, that God has not broken into, because we will not Her into those spaces, those corners of our hearts, our minds, that we would rather keep free of love and grace and understanding, whether or not we are aware of it.

But the ambiguity of people, especially the ambiguity of our heroes, shouldn’t surprise us, though of course, it still does, we who live in hope that people can actually live up to all their words, all their values, or that we can always live up to all of our own values. Look at brother Moses in our text today, he who stands high upon Mount Nebo, at the very cusp of his life’s work, which was leading his people into the Promised Land, and yet looking out onto a land he will never enter himself. God gives him only a glimpse of what must have seemed like Eden to him, after so many years of wandering in the desert because the people were stubborn and ungrateful and continued to try the patience of God. What brings Moses to this moment is the fact that he too was imperfect, that he too was sometimes often quick to anger and arrogance, and it showed up in an incident which is recounted in the book of Numbers, chapter 20. The people are thirsty, and they complain to Moses and Aaron, and they pray for water on the people’s behalf, and God grants this prayer, and Moses does as he is told – he strikes the rock and water pours forth. But what seemed to condemn Moses to die on Mount Nebo, and never be able to enter the Promise Land, are the words he said to the people – Listen, rebels, shall WE bring water for you out of this rock! We honestly don’t know for sure what angered God so deeply about Moses’ words, but most think that it was because he had deigned to take credit for the miracle – shall WE bring water for you, we Moses and Aaron. He had made it about him and not God, it became about the Messenger and not the Message, it became about Moses and not the Promised Land or about Moses and not God. Whether or not you or I think it fair, that is what seemed to prompt God to close the door to the Promised Land to both Moses and his brother in law Aaron, both who would die out with the first generation of Israelites because of their stubbornness. Joshua will lead the people into the Promised Land, not Moses, not Aaron, and so Moses dies on that high and holy mountain, buried by God’s own hands, and praised by the writer or writers of Deuteronomy as the greatest of the prophets of Israel. God seems to choose flawed human beings to do great things in this world, a truth you see being replicated over and over again in the Bible.

Now, to be sure, not everyone is Moses, or Luther, or Calvin, or Martin Luther King Jr, people whose light was so great that we often ignore the darkness they carried within them. I want us to be clear that knowing that all of us are flawed, imperfect human beings capable of great wrong doesn’t mean that we simply dismiss the imperfections of our leaders, excusing them from the task of becoming better leaders, to become better human beings. I often say about brilliant and gifted people that with great light comes great shadow, but that doesn’t mean the shadow should be ignored or un-confronted. I’ll share with you a couple of ways how I think we can distinquish the great leaders, maybe even the prophets of our age, from those who simply took power or were given power by an electorate: first, good leaders rarely make the mistake of confusing the mission and the messenger, the mistake of confusing the word they’ve been given with the proclaimer of that word, the messenger. Moses made that mistake at that rock, striking in anger and frustration, taking credit for what he did not do, but he did such a thing very rarely – he was Israel’s greatest prophet because he almost never wavered from his mission, which was to lead God’s people into the Promised Land. You can tell a good leader by her unwillingness to make it about her, that the point is not Moses but the Promise Land, that the point is not Martin Luther but the hopeful transformation of the church for his time, that the point is not Martin Luther King, Jr. but the racial equality that must happen in this world. All of these flawed, imperfect souls, kept the point the point, even as they stumbled personally, writing vile words, not living up to their best values, or whatever. It was never about them, but the goal, the calling they had to be prophets of their age, and the tellers of great truth.

But, you know, you could argue that even thieves and serial murders and narcissists have the same sort of focus, that they too keep the point the point, they too can dismiss themselves in favor of a laser focus on their vile mission. And that is why the mission itself matters, the calling matters, because it matters whether or not a person too points to a Promised Land of sorts, to a land of milk and honey. What I mean by this is that it isn’t good enough to just have a goal, a focus – I mean, one can have bad goals, a bad mission, a skewed conception of the Promised Land, that oddly includes only you and your own. But the Promised Land in the Biblical tradition is not just about me, it was never about Moses, but the Promised Land was always about us, about a world where there is plenty of milk and honey for the both of us, for all of us. From the laws that given to Moses were supposedly given by God to govern this land, you have important principles like the 50th year Jubilee, where all land bought and sold was returned to its original owner, so that there would never be a simple accumulation of land and money to a small few. And the courts of justice could not and would not be bought by the richest, and thus justice could be meted out fairly, and the widows and their children, the most vulnerable, would always be taken care of, and the very land itself would rest every 7 years, and the stranger who stumbled into land of Israel would be no stranger, for those in the Promised Land would remember that they too were once strangers in the land of Egypt, and all strangers would be treated with justice and compassion. A good leader doesn’t just have a clear mission – Pol Pot of Cambodia had a clear mission, as well – but the Mission itself must be a just and good one, a Promised Land not for the few but for all of us. Luther cast a vision for the renewal of the church, and though there were grave mistakes made on the way, including by Luther himself, the Promised Land for him was a church where freedom resided, where we understood that we were loved by God through our faith, and not because of what we do or don’t do, that the Scriptures were for the people, as dangerous as such an idea that might have sounded like 500 years ago. So much of that vision, that mission has come true, in every part of the church universal, and that is because it was a Promised Land that included all of us, each and every one of us.

Before I end today’s sermon, I just want to remind us of something, or maybe I am simply reminding myself, in these less than heroic times, where the real prophets among us seemed to have been drowned out by the false prophets of this age, the false prophets who do not have a vision of the Promised Land that includes all of us, which means that what they offer is no Promised Land at all. But, in fact, there is a Promised Land, there is a world to come, a world that can be actualized, and for us Christians it is the Kingdom of God of which Jesus speaks, the realm of God, which mirrors the Promised Land of Jesus’ ancestors, a land of milk and honey for both friend and stranger alike, a place for all of us who have left the Egypts of this world and who seek freedom in a new land. Our work is surely to keep praying and working for this new world, to do works of justice, and to be present and aware of our own imperfections as we struggle the imperfections of others. We need new prophets, new leaders in this day and this age, ones who focus on the realm of God alone and not on themselves, at least not too much on themselves, and ones that can cast a vision that looks like the one that Moses cast, that Jesus cast over two thousand years ago. Now, whether or not those prophets will arise in this age, in all of their imperfections, I don’t know, but I do believe this – in the end, this Promised Land, this new world to come, the one where all are welcomed, where there is justice for everyone, all of it will come to pass one day, because it is simply what God wants, and what God wants, God eventually gets. We can hasten our collective entry into Promised Land by working with God and working beside each other, or we can delay our entry and entry of others into the Promised Land by doing nothing. But know this: in the end, the Promised Land will come with or without our help. For your sake and my sake, and the world’s sake, I’d rather be on the side of making the Kingdom of God a reality sooner rather than later – but make no mistake, it will come, it will surely come, this new world and it will include you and me, in all of our imperfections, alongside other flawed and beautiful human beings, friends and strangers, because, you see, it is a Land that has been promised to us, and God will keep that promise, the one that was made to all of us. Amen.