(Moses has led the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and all the way through a fearsome wilderness. Through fearsome and terrifying encounters with God, which no one else is capable of, he has been able to teach the people what they need to know to live well as a people in the Promised Land. Now they are about to enter that land. All they have to do is cross through the Jordan River when Moses gives them the signal ... when God tells Moses that the people will cross over, but he will not. God takes Moses up to a mountain where he can see the Promised Land laid out before him, but he himself will not set foot in it. He will die -- and does die, and God buries him in an unknown spot outside the Promised Land. But telling the story even 700 years later, the people still remember Moses, and ask themselves if there has ever been another prophet like him.)
What struck the people of Israel -- and has struck me, is that Moses alone among the whole people of Israel was the one who was able to see God face to face. The one who was able to go up the mountain, enter the dark cloud, risk the thunder and lightning, and go in to be with God in the dreadful tent of meeting. And because of it, Moses was able to bring to the people what they needed to hear and to know, to be able to live well as a people on the face of the Earth -- to be the kind of people God set them free from slavery to be.
And while thinking about all that, I have not been able to stop thinking about Gord Downie.
Is it simply because he's everywhere and inescapable right now? More continually present to us now in his death, than he was in life?
Or is there actually something about him that connects with the Moses story? Or about the Moses story that connects with him?
Is there something about us -- who we are, and what we need, and what we long for as human beings, that Moses and Gord Downie each touch in their own way?
What do you think?
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