Eyes to See Deuteronomy 34:1-12

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1 Brent Newberry, pastoral resident Reformation Sunday Wilshire Baptist Church 26 October :00 service Dallas, Texas Eyes to See Deuteronomy 34:1-12 I have a Kindle. It s one of these E- readers. I use it, but if I m honest with you, there are a couple of reasons why I don t actually like it. The first is purely superficial, but if all of our libraries are digitalized, how are we supposed to brag about all of the books we ve read? Or in some bookcases, books that we started to read but never got around to finishing? People can t walk into your office or study any longer and feel intimidated by the packed shelves. Now you have to find a way to randomly scroll through your digital library in front of them. The other reason I have a love/hate relationship with my Kindle is that over the past few years, I ve experienced an odd moment when reading a book on my Kindle when the little slider shows I still have 3 percent of my book left to read and then all of a sudden the story ends. It turns out that the remainder of the percentage left to read is promotional material or notes or an About the Author section. The ending drops my emotions off a cliff. Maybe this has happened to you. But because I wasn t reading a paper book, and hadn t felt that it was the final page of the book, I wasn t able to emotionally prepare for the end; I wasn t able to slow down and soak up every last sentence. I couldn t fully experience the moment. Upon reaching the end of a movie or book the end of any story when the hero dies, if it s told well you re left feeling disappointed. You bear the brunt of dreams that are unfulfilled. You re left to feel the pain and loss of missed opportunities. Today we re at the end of the book. We re on the last page, the last piece of that scroll. Deuteronomy ends here. The Torah ends here. Moses, the fearless leader though maybe not always has hiked up another mountain, and maybe he didn t know this was the end, but we ve reached the last page of the book. And like any Mel Gibson movie in which he s the hero rallying a group of people, Moses reaches the end. The book of Deuteronomy serves as that last speech to the people, rousing them to a life of faith and covenant with this God of the ages. But before we go on to read this last page, maybe we can slow down, if only for a few moments this morning, and soak up these last sentences. Moses is back atop another mountain. He s quite the mountain man. You might be, too, if you had had the same kinds of experiences that he had. Here the text points out Moses eyesight

2 that even in his old age he has young eyes, eyes to see. It s a theological statement meaning that Moses had faith, that he saw, that he had seen God present and at work among the people: signs and wonders that we ve recounted over the past few weeks, fantastic signs of frogs and locusts and water turning to blood, a sea parting in half, water coming forth from a rock. Moses had eyes to see God at work. He had seen God s past activity, and it generated a future hope in God doing so again. And again. Here the language isn t explicitly such, but this moment is almost like a vision or a dream that you might read about in the Prophets. Moses at this summit can see stretches of land virtually impossible to see by the naked eye. It s like taking the stairs to the top of Reunion Tower and being able to see Fort Worth and Waco, the new Baylor football stadium (which might actually be visible to the naked eye), down to Austin and San Antonio. It s a vision of the future for Moses, of possibilities and provision, of promises to be fulfilled. I think of the story last week, when George preached on God hiding God s face from Moses, and the reminder that oftentimes we see God only after the fact. But if you remember that story from last week, God passes by, and then Moses sees the back of God. And it s almost as if God was then inviting Moses, to follow along. Come, follow me. It s like foreshadowing for this moment on our mountain where God is now showing Moses God s faithfulness. Just as God had promised to go with the people into this new land, God is now showing Moses that indeed God will go, that the people will be taken care of: look out and see for yourself. Memories of God s past provision and visions of God s future hopes, from falling manna and quail to flowing milk and honey, Moses has eyes to see. If you look back at Moses life, you begin to realize that his having eyes to see was about even more than a faith in God s past and future work; it meant seeing God at work in the present, too. It meant that Moses had eyes to see the people. He saw them as more than just a mob of complainers; he saw them as the children of God, dearly loved by God, and he grew to love them, too. All the times he mediated on their behalf, all the effort and loyalty and commitment he had. Of all the signs and miracles he performed, Moses greatest wonder was giving himself to these people he came to love. Moses had eyes to see a God who was present and at work. He had eyes to see the people that God had called him to lead and love. And now, with that, here we are at the end, bearing the brunt of the emotional dissonance of the moment. It was Moses last time up the mountain, his final face to face this side of eternity. 2

3 Moses had followed this God and the people have followed him, right to the precipice of Promise. And yet he didn t get to go himself. The best Moses got for all of his hard work and obedience and risk taking and adventure, for all his patience and loyalty and mediation, for all the mountain climbing Moses merely got to look on from afar. Then Moses died. This bittersweet moment where he got to see the future but was held back from it unfulfilled dreams, disappointment, loss. The people wept over his death for 30 days. We don t weep for fallen leaders for that long; this relationship was one that the Israelites felt deeply. They knew they were loved and cared for. You can almost imagine how his death might have created a crisis of faith for the people he loved. Who will lead the way, who will care about us, was anyone else paying attention? I daresay you know a thing or two about disappointment and loss, about uncertainty and unattainable dreams. You know what it s like when you lose your job or have trouble in your marriage or feel that your child doesn t love you. What do we do when our eyes can t see, when they seem closed or blurry, when our dreams and hopes of the future seem to die on that mountain with Moses? Who will take care of us; who will be there for us; was anyone else paying attention at all? Yes. You see, the story doesn t end on that mountain. Even as the book ends, the story goes on. Someone else was paying attention; the people weren t forgotten. The God who was with Moses in that tender moment on the top of the mountain was also with the people in their mourning at the bottom. They were not alone. It s what they didn t realize the first time, when Moses was up above and they built the golden calf. They didn t understand that God was somehow present with Moses and also with them. In their fears and insecurities, in their doubts and feelings of loss, they turned inward and built an image from their own imagination. They sought refuge and peace and rescue out of their inward projections. They hadn t yet learned that God was with and within each of them. (At least this time the people knew to weep.) Christian Wiman is a poet who has a terminal illness. In his book, called My Bright Abyss, he describes Christ as contingency, a possibility, an eventuality. He says, Christ comes alive in the communion between people. When we are alone, even joy is, in a way, sorrow s flower: lovely, necessary, sustaining, but blooming in loneliness, rooted in grief. He goes on, I m not sure you can have communion with other people without these 3

4 moments in which sorrow has opened in you, and for you; and I am pretty certain that without shared social devotion one s solitary experience of God withers into a form of withholding, a spiritual stinginess, the light of Christ growing ever fainter in the glooms of the self. 1 It can be so hard to see beyond the hopelessness of a broken relationship, outside of the ruminations of selfdoubt, above the uncertainty of fragile dreams. It can be hard to remember or even believe that you aren t the only one to experience the visceral pain of brokenness. And even if you are hurting alone, others have been there, too, and will be there again. It s not about misery loving company, but that in the generosity of sharing your pain, you open yourself up to allowing others to see you and to somehow feel as though they have been seen, too, because someone else knows their pain. And in moments of such vulnerable honesty, you can almost begin to see the face of Christ on the cross, the face of God in each other. The God who was with Moses on that mountain and simultaneously with the people at the bottom. It s then that your blurry eyes, your closed eyes, your tear-filled eyes begin to see again. As Thomas Merton said, you don t first see and then act. You act and then you begin to see. It is when you embrace 1 Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss, 20. each other, lean into each other, hope and hurt and climb on with each other, that you begin to see. (How will we begin to know who God is if we don t begin to be something of what God is? We are God s presence to each other.) 2 The light of Christ is in each of you, and sharing life with each other, having eyes to see each other, not just your own pains but the disappointments and unfulfilled dreams of others, makes that light of hope grow brighter in each of you. You are God s presence to each other. In one of his poems, Gerard Manley Hopkins writes: Chríst for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces. 3 Christ plays in ten thousand places. In hopes and dreams, in love and memories, in pain and loss and disappointment. In nature, on mountains, and down below, in parted waters and rocks that cry out, in the smiles and tears and ice cream mustachioed faces, Christ plays in ten thousand places Gerard Manley Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire. 4

5 Having eyes to see is certainly about having faith in God, trusting in God s past and future faithfulness. But having eyes to see is also about right now about seeing the people God has called you to love, about seeing the light of Christ, about seeing the face of God, right in front of you, or next door to you, or in the classroom across the hall from you. 5 Whoever has eyes, let them see. Amen.