(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?
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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