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 Bethpeor, 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.
It must have been quite a view, the view from the top of the mountain, from the summit of Mt. Nebo rising some 2300 feet above the plains of Moab at the eastern edge of the Jordan Valley.
You could see for yourself, of course, because Mt. Nebo is still there, in Jordan, about twenty miles south of Amman and thirty miles east of Jerusalem. From there, you could see what Moses saw, the whole Jordan Valley spreading out before you, flanked by mountain ranges north and west and by the desert and the Dead Sea to the south. You could look north as Moses did, toward Gilead and Galilee; and west toward Jerusalem and the heart of modern Israel, lands named by the ancient Israelites after their tribes, Judah and Ephraim and Manasseh, lands backed by the Western Sea, the Mediterranean; and you could look south toward the Negeb, the desert, and Zoar at the southern tip of the Dead Sea. You could see all of it, all the Canaan Moses saw, an expanse of land the size of New Jersey.
Moses was an old man when he stood atop that mountain, near death, but Deuteronomy, the fifth book of Torah, says he was still full of vigor and that he could see just fine. He could see that land, the land that he and the Hebrew refugees with him had waited forty years to see, the land of the promise. He could see it! At last, he could see it.
It had been more than a struggle to get there, half a lifetime of ordeal and peril and hunger and strife for Moses and the Israelites: hurriedly fleeing Egypt with Pharaoh’s armies at their heels, wandering endlessly in a barren wilderness with little to eat or drink, suffering attack by the people of the lands through which they traveled. For Moses in particular, it had been a struggle, a long and fraught journey, the last long chapter of what must have seemed to him like three lifetimes.
Saved from a kill order at his birth, there was his first life, growing into manhood as a member of the Egyptian court, living a life of privilege and possibility and ease, but unease, too, torn between two conflicting identities, unsettled by the sufferings of his birth-people, sufferings he saw, but did not share.
After personally taking vengeance upon a murderous Egyptian slave-master, Moses fled Egypt and settled in Midian, living his second and what may well have been his best life, quietly tending sheep, taking a wife, raising a family, living a life happy and peaceful and blessedly uneventful.
And then, God. And then, God … God confronting him, God commissioning him, God cajoling him, until finally Moses reluctantly agreed to return to Egypt to ask the king to let God’s people go. Then came his third life, the most difficult and dangerous and thankless of all.
Confronting the hard-hearted ruler of the mighty Egyptian empire was one thing, but that must have seemed a walk in the park compared to dealing with the relentless grousing and complaining and cowardice and ingratitude and bitterness and faithlessness of Moses’ own people. Oh, how they longed to be slaves again, more than happy to trade in the demands and risks of freedom for the easy and predictable misery of vassal servitude in Egypt!
And so it must have been a sweet view for Moses atop that mountain, knowing he had persisted, that he had endured, that he had succeeded in fulfilling his mission, God’s mission, bringing the people of the covenant to the brink of the land of promise.
But it was a bittersweet view, too, because he himself would not enter it. He could see it, but he would never set foot in that land, never make his bed there, never settle his family there, not die there.
Moses never reaped the rewards of his monumental effort. His only reward was to be remembered, to be remembered as God’s faithful prophet, one who performed signs and wonders like no other — not least of which was somehow managing to manage an unmanageable people!
And to be remembered as one whom God knew, one whom God knew, face to face. Is this what it means to be loved by God? Is this what it means to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind? To listen to God and to speak, to know God and to be known, face to face? With that kind of intimacy?
Moses stood atop that mountain and saw the land. He saw the land of promise, and then he died.
We are like Moses. My friends, we are like Moses, entirely, completely. There is nothing that Moses saw that we cannot see, nothing that Moses did that we cannot do, no relationship with God that Moses had that we cannot have.
There is nothing that Moses saw that we cannot see, nothing that Moses did that we cannot do, no relationship with God that Moses had that we cannot have.
We are like Moses. We too have our Midian times: times of honest work and a pleasant home life, times of blessing and contentment and peace. And we have our Egypt times: times of struggle and doubt and concern, seeing suffering and oppression and injustice all around us, feeling powerless and overwhelmed and beyond discouraged. And sometimes, like for me right now and maybe for you, we have both at the same time.
We are like Moses. We struggle with obstinance, with disbelief, with failure of courage, with bitterness and apathy, both in those we watch, but also in ourselves. Like Moses, we hesitate, we protest, we too would much prefer to stay home tending sheep and sitting down at the supper table with loved ones, and forget all about Egypt, forget all about the suffering, all the suffering we see, but do not share.
But we are like Moses. Like Moses, we are commissioned by God, called by God, called to go to the promised land and to take with us as many people as we can. Because our true home is there, that’s where we belong, that’s where all of us belong, in the land of promise, the peaceable kingdom, the realm of shalom, not somewhere else, but right here, this place, this world, as it will be when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
But we are like Moses. We will not get there. We will not enter it. You and I will not enter that promised land. But we can see it!
We can see it! We must see it! We must let the Lord lead us up the mountain and show us the view! The view is everything, the view is the reality that what God has promised will be. The way of shalom, the path of peace, is not the stuff of vain wishes and hopeless dreams. It is God’s promise. It is what will be. It is where God is leading us. And we can see it! From the top of the mountain, we can see it.
I like to climb Blue Hill. I like climbing out onto the open granite ledges on the southeast flank of the summit and taking in the view, the extraordinary view from the mountains of Acadia in the east to the Camden Hills in the west: Newbury Neck, Bartlett Island, Long Island, Naskeag Point, Isle au Haut, Blue Hill Bay, the inner and outer Blue Hill harbors, Eggemoggin Reach. It is almost — no, not almost — it is, for me, a spiritual experience, because it is there, seeing that view, gaining that perspective, that I remember who I am and what I am, that I am reminded of my place, my so small but important place, on this vast and beautiful earth. And it is there I feel most home.
The view is everything. So climb the mountain, take in the view, remember what God has called you to be and to do, and know that even though you and I may not set foot in the land of promise, it is there and it is our true home. It is our home, yours and mine, and all of us.
The psalm for this Sunday is Psalm 90, a psalm, a song, attributed to Moses. Stand now on top of the mountain with Moses and sing with him …
O Lord, you have always been our home.
Before you created the hills
or brought the world into being,
you were eternally God,
and will be God forever.
You tell us to return to what we were;
you change us back to dust.
A thousand years to you are like one day;
they are like yesterday, already gone,
like a short hour in the night.
You carry us away like a flood;
we last no longer than a dream.
We are like weeds that sprout in the morning,
that grow and burst into bloom,
then dry up and die in the evening.
Teach us how short our life is,
so that we may become wise.
Fill us each morning with your constant love,
so that we may sing and be glad all our life.
Let us, your servants, see your mighty deeds;
let our descendants see your glorious might.
Lord our God, may your blessings be with us.
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