Where is Moses?

St. Paul’s United Methodist Church
Deuteronomy 34: 1-12, Rev. Marianne Niesen, October 26, 2008

 

Moses is a towering Biblical figure. We meet him here at the end of his life. He has led the people out of Egypt through 40 years of wandering in the desert to the precipice of Mount Nebo, known as Pisgah. From there, he saw the promised land of milk and honey. Of course, there was no milk or honey visible from that vantage point. At best they saw the green plain of Jericho and the River Jordan meandering through a desert much like the one they had been in for 40 years. Still, that view heralded the end of a very long journey and it must have looked very good. Imagine for a moment the great elation that filled Moses’ heart as he saw the fulfillment of all he had worked for . . . and then imagine his feeling when he heard God say I’m letting you look at it, but I’m not letting you in . . . this is where it ends for you, Buddy.

Frederick Buechner, who has a wonderful way with words describes Moses like this:
 

Whenever Hollywood cranks out a movie about Moses, they always give the part to somebody like Charlton Heston in fake whiskers. The truth of it is he probably looked a lot more like Tevye the milkman.

Forty years of tramping around the wilderness with the Israelites was enough to take it out of anybody. When they weren’t rasing hell about running out of food, they were raising it about running out of water. They were always hankering after the fleshpots of Egypt and making bitter remarks about how they should have stayed home and let well enough alone. As soon as his back was turned, they started whooping it up around the Golden Calf, and when somebody stood up and said he ought to be thrown out, the motion was seconded by thousands. Any spare time he had left after taking care of things like that he spent trying to persuade God not to wipe them out altogether...

And then, of course, there was the hardest blow of all. When he finally had it all but made and got them as far as the top of Mt. Pisgah , where the whole Promised Land stretched out before them as far as the eye could see, God spoke up and said this was the place all right, but for reasons that were never made entirely clear, Moses was not to enter it with them. So he died there in his one hundred and twentieth year, and after a month of hanging around and wishing they’d treated him better, the Israelites went on without him.

Like Abraham before him and Noah before that, not to mention like a lot of others since, the figure of Moses breathing his last up there in the hills with his sore feet and aching back serves as a good reminder that when God puts the finger on people, their troubles have just begun.
 

And, indeed, Moses had trouble - right from the beginning of his life. Remember, that at the time of his birth, his people were slaves in Egypt and the Pharaoh had just announced a rather severe birth control policy. Baby girls could live. Baby boys were to be drowned. When baby Moses was born, his Mom hid him as long as she could and when that was no longer possible, she put him in a basket and set it afloat along the banks of the Nile where the daughter of Pharaoh found him and decided to adopt him - pressing one of the Hebrew mothers into service as a wet nurse - and that was none other than Moses’ own Mom. That’s a Hollywood storyline right from the beginning! (I just saw a billboard in Bozeman that quipped something like Don’t worry if you have problems. Remember Moses started out as a basket case.)

That unlikely beginning seemed to set a "now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t" theme for the remainder of Moses’ life. After two years of living as a toddler with his own family, Moses went to the Pharaoh’s palace to be raised with his adoptive Mom. Those were the years that Moses’ mother must have asked herself over and over, as Moms do, I wonder where Moses is now? I wonder what he’s eating, what he’s doing. I wonder if he remembers us. In the end, those were questions she had to leave to God. We, of course, know that all went well very well in the palace. Moses lived there as an honored prince for some 40 years until - as a prince of Egypt - he defended a Jewish slave who was being beaten by an Egyptian taskmaster. Actually, ‘defended’ is too mild. Moses killed the guy which, of course, was not a good thing for a prince of Egypt to do. Clearly, a career change was in order. So, to save his life, the guy who began as a basket case became a runaway.

Where is Moses? In the ‘land of Midian.’ He settled down. He took up shepherding. He even got married. All went well for another 40 years until the matter of the burning bush came up. As Moses went about minding his own business in the fields of Midian, tending flocks, finding lost sheep - doing what shepherds do - he noticed a bush, burning but not consumed. Consider this with me for a moment. In order for Moses to know that the bush was burning but not consumed, he had to watch it. One does not automatically assume that a slow burning bush is anything but a slow burning bush! He had to stop - look - ponder - watch - ponder - walk around it. He had to check what would have been a natural response - to respond immediately with water or dirt or something to put it out. He had to be open to the possibility of a miracle in the desert. Can’t you just hear his father-in-law asking where is Moses now? Oh, he’s out in the field watching a bush burn. I love this part of the story of Moses. I think this is where we discover what kind of leader God wanted. God wanted - and needed - someone observant, thoughtful, someone who would listen, someone who would hang in there for the long haul. God found it in Moses - who had apparently learned something about patience from the time he’d hauled off and killed the Egyptian. (That means there is hope for us all!) When Moses stopped, observed and pondered that bush, he heard the voice of God - a voice that told him he was on holy ground. A voice that sent him right back to Pharaoh with an impossible mission - to let the slaves go free. Where is Moses? Heading right back to the ‘lion’s den!’

So, imagine what happened to the economy of Egypt when the entire labor market disappeared. Undoubtedly, the Egyptian stock market took a plunge - and Pharaoh asked where did that Moses go? he heard, oh, he’s heading north, for the desert. And that’s where Moses would be for another 40 years - but these would be spent wandering, searching and leading a rather unruly group to a freedom they weren’t sure they wanted. He also spent time talking to God, receiving the law. It was a long haul for Moses. It was a difficult life and it all ended at Pisgah on Mount Nebo. He died there but no one knows his burial place to this day.

I was captivated by that line. I’ve been on Mount Nebo. I’ve seen the ‘promised land’ and Jericho from that vantage point. There is a church built there, of course, but I didn’t spend much time there. I spent it outside, imagining Moses. What went through his mind at the moment he looked at that scene? And then, as I looked at the mountain itself, I found myself wondering . . . it is not that big of a mountain. How could they not know where he was buried?

In the year 1226, another great wandering saint - Francis of Assisi - died. In those days it was quite a feather in the cap of a town to have a saint among them. So, when Francis died, the Assisians were desperate to be certain the people of the neighboring villages did not steal the body. In 1230, a huge church was built in Assisi to house the remains. When the time came for them to move the body from where it had been guarded for 4 years to its new resting place, great care was taken to keep the location of the burial vault a secret. In fact, the burial place was so secret that it went undiscovered for 600 years! By then, the strange custom of wanting a part of a saint for yourself had died out a bit.

Was that why those with Moses when he died kept his burial place a secret? After all, somebody had to know where he was buried! Moses was good but we can be certain he didn’t bury himself! So, why the secrecy? Fear for his bones? Or something else?

I think it was something else. Given the power and the prominence of Moses, his death on that mountain posed a very real threat to the journey to the promised land. People had fought with him, yes but they had also followed him. And he had not led them astray. He was a good leader. He had learned. From his days in the basket to his days in the palace to his days on the run to his days in the fields to his days by the bush to his days in the desert - he had learned and he had led. They knew that he knew God, had even seen God - although we are told it was only the backside of God. Still, Moses was everything God had asked him to be. And then he died and that could have been the end of the whole deal except for this one fact. With arms outstretched and eyes clearly focused, he did what he had always done. He pointed the way! Moses final gift, his final act of leadership was that act. He pointed the way forward and he gave no one a reason to stay behind.

For, that is precisely what they would have done. Even today, there would be a shrine where Moses is buried and we who are pilgrims today would visit there. Instead, those who dare, brave a rather long and torturous drive up a winding road to a windswept mountain top and we see not the grave of Moses but the vision of Moses. And if you go there, I am confident that what will happen for you is what happened for me . . . you’ll want to get on with it. You’ll want to see the promised land - Jericho and beyond. The secrecy about the burial place kept the focus where it was needed - on the vision for the future.

Again, hear Buechner’s words:
 

Way back when he was just getting started and when out of the burning bush God had collared him for the first time, (Moses) had asked God what God’s name was, and God had told him, so that from then on he could get in touch with God anytime he wanted. Nobody had ever known God’s name before Moses did, and nobody would ever have known it afterward except for his having passed it on; and with that thought in his heart up there on Pisgah, and with that name on his lips, and with the sunset in his whiskers, he became in the end a kind of burning bush himself.
 

Perhaps, in the end, that is our call - to become burning bushes. To become so on fire with the love and passion of God that those things for which God yearns become real in our day. We too need direction. We too have gotten a bit lost. We too grumble along our way. And, we have a tendency to like shrines, to yearn for the good old days. I don’t know for sure why Moses didn’t get to set foot in the promised land himself but it might have been so that the final memory people would have was of him pointing the way forward, literally yearning forward. A ‘prophetic action figure’! Don’t forget that, for the Israelites, the way forward led them to war. The oppressed became oppressors. The wanderers became settlers on someone else’s land. Maybe God let Moses die because Moses knew it was supposed to be different. Maybe Moses died because he knew that wasn’t God’s vision after all. God, who had asked so much of Moses already, spared him that tragedy.

Where is Moses? From the basket to the palace to the fields to the bush to the confrontation with Pharaoh to Mount Sinai to the desert to Pisgah on Mount Nebo. Where is Moses? Well, they say he died, but . . . the vision, the vision, we still have the vision. Moses gave us the vision and we hold it still. Many years after Moses, the disciples of Jesus had an amazing experience we call the Transfiguration. Peter, James and John were there and they saw their Moses, Jesus, on another mountaintop, in a conversation with the prophet Moses . Jesus became dazzling white in the process and, when it was over, do you remember what the disciples wanted to do? Build a shrine. Such a human response! From a burial place for Moses to a shrine for Jesus, sometimes we just want to stay where we are. But that is so not-Jesus, so not-Moses.

In the end, a good leader is one who moves people forward, who instills hope, whose vision empowers. That was Moses, that was Jesus and that is our challenge in our place and time. It really doesn’t matter where Moses was buried - never has - what mattered is where he was headed. And what matters for us is where we’re headed. The road will be long - from basket cases through economic downturns to desert wandering to bitter disappointment. Still, the promised land awaits! As Christians, our vision of that promised land must be that of Jesus . . . the kingdom of God where peace will come not through war and violence. The Israelites tried that. No, for Jesus, the Kingdom of God - peace on earth - will come through nonviolence and economic justice for all.

In the end, the question is not ‘where is Moses?’ but ‘where are we’? And, even better, where are we headed? Will we follow the vision to the promised land of Jesus?