The Immortal Story Deuteronomy 34:1-12

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1 Erica Whitaker, pastoral resident Reformation Sunday Wilshire Baptist Church 26 October :30 service Dallas, Texas The Immortal Story Deuteronomy 34:1-12 Spoiler alert. And please don t hate me for this. But Mufasa dies in the middle of The Lion King. Ned Stark dies in the first season of Game of Thrones. Jack dies in Titanic. Charlotte dies in Charlotte s Web. Dumbledore dies at the very end of the sixth Harry Potter book. And if you happen to be looking at your Tapestry during the Old Testament reading this morning, Moses dies right before the children of Israel get to the Promised Land. We journey with our favorite characters in the good, bad and ugly moments of their lives. We watch them fail. We watch them succeed. We watch them impact the lives of others. We end up falling in love with them, and then we have to watch them die. It s depressing and unsettling to have one of the key people not make it all the way through the storyline. But even the most important characters in God s never-ending story have a beginning and an end. These past few months we have watched the Lifetime series of Moses unfold before our very eyes. Perhaps we should take a moment to pause with the Israelite people to remember our dear friend, Moses. I wonder if the high priest who found the scroll of Deuteronomy in Second Kings might have also found a smaller scroll with the eulogy from Moses memorial service. Maybe it would have read something like this: Moses. Son, brother, husband, father, friend. Moses was The baby drawn up from the Nile, the murderous young man, the fugitive in the desert, the sheep-shearing shepherd, the stuttering, inquisitive idealist, the burning-bush conversationalist, the staff-holding, plague-bringing Israelite leader. Moses was The vision-casting campaigner, the humble servant of the Lord, the interceding holy priest, the courageous commander-in-chief, the resilient wilderness guide, the loving, patient pastor, the incomparable, unparallelable, unrivaled, unequaled God- fearing man. Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face-to-face. 1 1 Deuteronomy 34:22 (NRSV)

2 Today we turn the last page of the book of Moses. The Israelites might be asking themselves, How will we continue? But we know that their story does not end here. They will continue into the Promised Land. They will raise generation after generation, with great leadership coming and going. But God s story is not dependent on mortals who will be born and who will die. God s story is an immortal story. This immortal story requires us to dream beyond our own mortality. We must have eyes to see beyond the grave. Moses is back up on the mountain with God. But this time God has allowed Moses to see the dream with his own eyes. A dream of freedom. A dream of hope and promises. A dream that would have marched Martin Luther King Jr. all the way into the promised land if death had not come to him so quickly. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream of a new world to come. A dream that went beyond the inequality of his day. A dream of a society full of free people. A dream he knew would become a reality, even if he would not be able to walk into it. Like Martin Luther King Jr. s vision, Moses vision never grew dim. He always could see ahead with clarity. Now Moses stands, staring at the Promised Land in the near distance. This was the very land promised years and years before Moses. God made a covenant with Abraham long before Moses ever was 2 born. This is the land God swore to the descendants of Isaac and Jacob. The seeds of hope have been sown and now their offspring will see them bloom. The Israelites have had to wander in the desert for forty years until the last of the elder generation had died. Moses was a part of this generational passing. The new world, the Promised Land, is the sequel written for the next generation. Moses gives his own farewell speech, a blessing onto the next generation, at the end of Deuteronomy 33: Blessed are you, O Israel; who is like you, a people saved by the Lord. Yes, it is challenging to remember those coming after us, those generations who will live beyond us. In a world full of sickness, disease, war and death, it can be difficult to dream about the possibilities to come. Some people have chosen not to have children because the world is just going to hell in a handbasket. Henri Nouwen writes, No one can dream of a new earth if the old earth has no promises. 2 There seems to be a fundamental unhappiness among many people in our world today. Everywhere we see restless, anxious people, unable to concentrate, suffering from a growing sense of depression. Depression numbs the mind, paralyzing the soul. Depression turns our dreams into nightmares. It blinds our vision of hope for the future. 2 Wounded Healer, Henri J. Nouwen

3 Dreaming in a dark, depressed world seems impossible. But there is hope not only for the new earth to come but also for the old earth that is already here. Wilshire, you have been dreaming for years of the possibilities and promises for our world today. What if a church cared for young women and children in the Dominican Republic? What if a church built homes and brought medical supplies to a poor city in Peru? What if a church sent members to elementary schools every week to read with children? What if a church fed the hungry, healed the wounded, and welcomed the refugee? The dreams of what ifs have become a reality here at Wilshire. A culture that is depressed can t problemsolve, let alone see beyond the world s grave state. But when the church dreams beyond the grave, the walls of societal depression begin to break down. Dreaming beyond the grave opens our eyes to see a new world for the next generation. Henri Nouwen calls these small acts of love and hope, creative activities. 3 We have to have creative activities in our world. Not only for us to dream beyond the grave but also for us to live beyond the grave. Hope has already come before us, and we can hope for our children, for our children s children. Hold on to the promise of life, even after death. 3 Wounded Healer, Henri J. Nouwen 3 Life will continue. God s immortal story keeps moving forward like the changing of seasons. Wind is the common denominator when the seasons change. Wind is the transitional constant that moves the world forward. The wind brings change, oftentimes whipping our pages into the next chapter. Like the wind, the Spirit of God carries us into new seasons. The writer of Ecclesiastes says there is a season for everything, a time to die and a time to give birth, a time to mourn and a time to laugh. The Spirit of wisdom is the warm breeze of new beginnings after a cold winter of bitter loss. This same Spirit of wisdom fills Joshua, Moses predecessor. With the Spirit of wisdom Joshua is equipped, complete for the task of leading the people of God into the promise land. The Spirit of God moves the story forward, inviting us to live beyond the grave. Martin Luther lived beyond the grave when he nailed the 95 theses to the door of Castle Church of Wittenberg on October 31, almost five hundred years ago. Today is Reformation Sunday. We remember Martin Luther, who saw that the people in his world were imprisoned by hopelessness and despair. Luther s words propelled the Church forward in hope for the next generation. Now, we don t worship Luther, Moses or any other founder of a religion or movement, save Jesus, the one who saves.

4 But we are inspired by those who have come before us who were willing to live beyond the grave. When we commit acts of hope for the world of tomorrow, we live beyond the grave. When we fight for proper education for children in our neighborhood,we live beyond the grave. When we care about the hungry and homeless, we live beyond the grave. Loving our world today creates a world of fulfilled promises for tomorrow. Moses loved the people of God all the way to the mountain gates of the Promised Land. Deuteronomy stands at the end of one book but opens up to the sequel. Joshua and the Israelites people move forward on the very next page of your Bible. The story of God is not dependent on authority figures like Moses but rather upon God s Word. The Israelites don t journey onward alone. No, they carry with them the Word, the Torah. The Word of God never leaves them nor forsakes them. This is the timeless Word that is ever-present in God s immortal story. For in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. 4 It is this living Word of God that moves along with the story. The Word became flesh, entering the world in a specific time and place. The Word of God is Christ Jesus, the Resurrected One in God s immortal story. 4 John 1:1-2 NRSV 4 Jesus was and continues to be the only person who was physically buried and yet has no grave. No one knew or even knows today where Moses was buried. Some say Moses would not be able to find his own grave. But Moses, like Jesus, was always more interested in graveless living. Graveless living is selfless living. We often forget that God s story does not revolve around us. Our story can be caught in the prison of own mortality. The fear of death can trap us into self-centered living. But we must exchange our greedy living for graveless living. Graves are only for the dead. Christ broke through that veil of humanity in order to set us free from the grave. God s story is the place where tragedy and triumph unite together. The plot may seem to be unresolved, but that s because the story itself has no grave. God is a living God; therefore God s story is a living story. The story is continuous, picking up new characters like you and me along the way. Yes, we will all physically die in this world. However, each day we are suspended between the end and the beginning in this immortal story. We must remember our baptism. For we are buried with Christ and then raised to new life everlasting. Wendell Berry wrote a poem called Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. He says, Friends, every day do

5 something that won t compute. Love the Lord. Love the World. Work for nothing. Berry concludes this radical poem with two words: Practice Resurrection. Keep dreaming for tomorrow. Have eyes that see beyond the grave. Continue living graveless lives. For the grave does not have the final say in God s immortal story. Remember the words of the prophet Martin Luther King Jr.: We are free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! Amen. 5