Proper 25, Year A: Deuteronomy 34
“There’s always next year.” The famous last words of sports fans throughout the world. A simple google search will quickly claim it as the motto of the Dallas Cowboys, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Chicago Cubs, and the Cleveland Browns, to name a few, before you even have to scroll down. Sometimes it’s in solidarity and sometimes it’s a taunt, but to be fair, for most teams you do have to look to next year. And sometimes that’s a lot of “next years”. Similar to how the Israelites in today’s lesson from Deuteronomy have been wandering for 40 years, the Chicago Cubs waited 108 years between World Series wins. There were stories of people visiting the graves of grandparents who didn’t live to see a Cubs’ World Series victory, either leaving memorabilia after Game 7 or setting up grills and listening to the radio broadcast graveside. Israel couldn’t have a graveside barbecue with Moses. The text tells us we don’t know where he’s buried. Moses goes up the mountain, as Moses does, and