Monday, October 30, 2017

Is it enough? (Sermon from Oct 29, 2017)

Reading:  Deuteronomy 34:1-12


(Moses has led the people out of slavery in Egypt, through the Red Sea, through the wilderness, all the way to the edge of the Promised Land.  All that’s left of the fearsome forty-year journey is to cross the Jordan River.  Before doing that, Moses does as he has done all along the way: he goes alone up a mountain, to be with God.  There, God shows him the whole of the Promised Land on the other side of the river; and then God breaks the news that Moses will not be entering it.  Rather, he will die and be buried where he is.)

Was it enough?

Was it enough just to see the Promised Land, for Moses to be able to die happy?

There’s something in us and in our culture that says No. 

Moses worked so hard and waited so long.  He led the people towards it – out from slavery, through the Red Sea, and then for forty years through the desert.  Through trial after trial Moses helped them learn to believe in the Promised Land and in their coming to it.  He took upon himself the fearsome danger of meeting God face to face in the dark cloud at the top of Mt Sinai, to be able to bring down to the people the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law which would help them live well and prosper in the land when they came to it.

And now they are here.  After forty years of ego-killing and soul-shaping desert journey, the people have followed Moses to the east bank of the Jordan River.  They are gathered on the plains of Moab ready to cross the Jordan at his signal.  One last time Moses goes up a mountain with God – this time Mount Nebo.  He goes to the very top summit – the pisgah as it’s called in Hebrew, and there God shows him all the land laid out before him – what a wondrous and welcome sight that must have been.  And God says, “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.”

“Say what?” we might imagine Moses saying. 

Has Moses not earned it?  Does he not deserve to lead the people through the Jordan?  Even if he is not the one now to organize the people in inhabiting the land, does he not deserve at least to feel the soil of the promised land of Canaan beneath his feet?  Maybe retire to a Canaanite villa, and just enjoy the fruits of his labour?  Go for a cruise on Lake Galilee?  Play a few rounds of golf with his buddies?  Isn’t that what we see as an ideal retirement?  What we work all our lives for?  And then at least be buried in the land he believed in, and led the people to?

*  *  *  *
   
On April 3, 1968 a modern Moses – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech at Mason Temple, the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tennessee.  It’s known now as his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, because after tracing and celebrating the progress of freedom for all people nurtured by God through the ages, now struggling to emerge in a new way in America in his time, he ends it with these words:

“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 mountaintop.  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 so 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!!”

Those were the last words Rev. Martin Luther King spoke in public, because the next day he was shot and killed on the balcony of his Memphis motel room.  As he imagined might happen (because he knew the story of God’s people), he didn’t get to the land and the kind of society of equality for all that he saw coming step by step through history, that he helped people learn to believe in, and that he worked, struggled and suffered so much to lead them towards.  He died and was buried without ever feeling the sun of that new day on his skin, and the ground of that new world beneath his feet.

And yet, he said, “I’m so 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!!”

It was enough just to see it. 

Is that what Moses felt?  Is that what we feel, too, when we find ourselves caught up, as they were, in the movement and the desire of God in our time?  As King said, “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.”

*  *  *  *

I’ve been thinking a lot about Gord Downie the last couple of weeks.  Gord Downie was a poet, an activist, a song-writer and a singer – lead singer of The Tragically Hip, a band he and some high school friends formed in Kingston 33 years ago.  Since his death just two weeks ago at age 53 of inoperable brain cancer, I cannot count the number of coffee-shop conversations about him I have overheard, the number of radio and TV specials and documentaries that have been aired, the number of days every second song on the radio seems to be one by The Tragically Hip, and the number of Facebook posts, blogs, tweets, and newspaper and magazine stories about him that have been written.

Gord Downie has become a national icon.  Many say it’s because he was at heart a story-teller who told the ordinary, everyday stories of all our lives.  Someone who put up on stage the stories of our lives as individuals trying to make sense of life, and of our life as a country trying to work out what kind of people we are and want to be on the face of the Earth.

And one story in particular stands out because it’s the one he completely committed himself to tell once he knew he was dying.  He called it “Secret Path” and it’s the story of Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old Anishinaabe boy who died in late Oct,  1966 in the northern Ontario wilderness after escaping a residential school in Kenora and trying to walk home alone 400 miles away.  In Gord’s hands and through the final months of his life, Chanie’s story became a series of songs and an illustrated book, a movie and also a concert on stage. 

And this wasn’t just a one-off at the end, a last-minute whim.  I saw something recently about a concert The Hip put on in 2012 at a community centre in Fort Albany First Nation – a mostly-Cree community on James Bay just south of Attawapiskat in northern Ontario.  And who knows how many other things like that they did?   

Over the years, Gord came to care deeply about the history and the current state of Canada’s First Nations.  So it made perfect sense that at the band’s final concert and his last chance to say something on that big a stage, he chose to speak about Canada choosing to live towards a better future of real truth and reconciliation with the people of the First Nations.  Then he gave his final months to do all he could to embed the story of Chanie Wenjack in the heart of the country he loved.

And was it enough?  Without getting to live in the new day himself, was it enough for him to die happy?

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “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.”

That probably isn’t exactly how Gord Downie would have phrased it.  But without worrying about precisely what vocabulary we use, isn’t that how we all are called to live?

And in the end, isn’t using whatever we have and whatever we are to help the world in our time be a little bit closer to what God desires it to be, enough?

And not only enough, might it even be the only thing?

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