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Before I went to seminary and was serving with my mentor in Helena, MT, I started a 20s and 30s group for our church. This wasn’t something I had planned but really fell into the right circumstances to do.
Over the course of the year, I found this ministry was doing a lot of good, so I wanted to make sure it continued. I asked around and prayed a lot about it, and finally one of our members stepped forth and said she’d take over the role of leadership.
I was so relieved, and I also wanted to help with the transition. I asked her to take over leadership while I supplied support for her.
Which of course led to her first idea for the group. I don’t remember exactly what the event was, but I do remember being skeptical. I almost even said something.
Then I realized that if she was going to be leader, she would have to do things her way. I’ve very glad I did that because her idea got the most turnout we had had in quite some time. I knew for certain then I had left the group in good hands.
Transition is the theme in our passage from Deuteronomy today. The Israelites are getting ready, after 40 years in the wilderness, to head to the Land God has promised them. Joshua is getting ready to take over leadership of God’s People. Moses is preparing to die.
It is here in this context that we see Moses on the top of the mountain looking out on the Land God promised to his people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is the land the next generation will enter and make their home. God has allowed Moses to see it just before he dies.
What is missing from this passage is why Moses isn’t entering the Land of Promise with them. He may be well advanced in years at this point, but that hasn’t stopped him from wandering in the wilderness with them for 40 years at this point.
At the start of this month, we got the story of how Moses struck the rock at Horeb and water poured out for the Israelites. This is after the grumbled against God for their lack of water.
Some time after this, the Israelites complain about their lack of water again. This time God tells Moses to do something different, for God never does the same thing twice, as we see with Aslan in C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian. This time, God tells Moses to yell at the rock to yield its water. God did this so that the Israelites would know that it was God taking care of them, not the method they used to get the water out of the rock.
Instead, Moses struck the rock like he had before, disobeying God’s command. In this moment, Moses showed that he was no better at obedience than the Israelites complaining against God all this time.
Because they had complained so much against the Lord, God told the Israelites they would travel 40 years in the Wilderness, time enough for a whole generation to die off, before they could enter the Land of Promise. Because Moses, it turns out, was no better, he would join them. Yet for his service to God, and for God’s compassion for him, he was the only one of his generation who got to see the Land of the Holy One before they entered.
When it comes to leadership in the church, we must at times be willing to give over our own power and ways of doing things for the next group of leaders to be able to come in and do the work God has given them to do. If we can do that, then we will get to see things greater than we could have thought of or imagined. If not, then we will face the same fate as the Israelites as God waits for our time to end before enacting God’s plan. The Lord is our refuge, “from one generation to another” as our Psalm tells us, but only if we let God be our refuge.
Now it’s tempting to look back. We see that at the end of our reading from Deuteronomy today. There we hear praise for Moses as the greatest prophet there has ever been. It’s not that this praise is not deserved. Moses did help bring the Israelites out of Egypt. He helped bring them the Law. He helped get their community and society started. He was the one who helped everything begin, and we are right to honor that.
Yet Joshua is the one that got the Israelites to the land promised to them. Joshua is the one who, as we will see in two weeks time, who leads a group that is no longer complaining, but who says “The Lord our God we will serve, and Him we will obey.” It’s Joshua whose name will one day be given to a young man, the son of a technon, a craftsman, who will once again lead the way forward on the foundation of the Torah, the very books we have been reading from this past Season after Pentecost. That foundation is the summary of the Law found in the Two Great Commandments, the very same summary we hear at the start of our service and at the start of our Gospel this morning. That young man who is Joshua’s namesake is also heir to King David. He is known the world over by the Greek version of His name. That man’s name is Jesus.
We should respect what has come before, those who have helped us journey through the 40 year wilderness. We should also respect those who come after to lead us to the place that God has promised. My hope is that we can all come to a place where we do not grumble against our Lord, but where great leaders of our Faith can say they were “gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her children” as Paul says to the Thessalonians who loved him so much. Don’t be left behind due to stubbornness and the inability to change like the Israelites of old. Instead, be open to what God is working in us so that you might see the future of what God has planned.