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 then never comes back down. The people fittingly mourn for Moses outside the promised land, in the place through which he led them.

Psalm 90, a portion of which we read today, is attributed to Moses. Some commenters suggest the attribution to Moses may be because of the tradition that recalls Moses as the one who asks God to turn from wrath in Exodus, as the author does in verse 13 of the psalm. Scholar Walter Brueggemann suggests the psalm be heard as though Moses were now at Pisgah, where he is in Deuteronomy 34, submitting to the reality that he will not enter the land but yearning nonetheless (110-111).

While Moses doesn’t get to enter the Land, there is a sense that his work is done. He has managed to lead God’s people through the wilderness to the edge of the Promised Land. No small feat. God has an excuse for not letting Moses enter the land - in Numbers 20, Moses strikes the rock to bring forth water instead of speaking to it, as God told him to do - but it feels like a flimsy excuse. God has forgiven - and will forgive - much greater things than what Moses did, and after all, this is Moses. After all he’s endured from his people, after all his faithfulness, surely God can extend his mercy and allow Moses to enter the Land.

But I can understand God’s reasoning as doing what’s best for the people. Moses’ choice to not do what God told him to do the way God told him to do it puts Moses on par with the rest of us. It’s not about God punishing our smallest mistake, it’s about Moses’ intentional choice to ignore God’s word (Bible Project). Additionally, Moses is already a pretty big deal. It’s easy to attach too much importance to a leader such as Moses. (Goldingay, 196) Letting Moses lead the people into the Land could very well lead the people to the idea that it is Moses that they need, not the Lord. But at some point, Moses will die. Having a transition of leadership prior to entering the Land gives the new leader, Joshua, the opportunity to have a big, feel-good accomplishment right off the bat. The hardships and the mourning of their great leader are in the past, not their first act in the Promised Land.

Humans have a propensity to lift up and idolize almost anything. Tradition tells us that God buried Moses, as the people could not find his body. Not knowing the location of the burial site prevents the people from building any kind of shrine on the site and prevents the site from becoming a place for pilgrimage. Therefore, with no site to idolize, the people are left to remember Moses, not by putting flowers on his grave, but by remembering his teaching. (Goldingay, 197)

Today’s text is not only the end of the book of Deuteronomy but of the entire Pentateuch, which is also called the Law (or Torah). One of the major themes of the Pentateuch is the promise of the land, first announced to Abraham in Genesis 12. Given this expectation, which is repeated over and over throughout the books of the Pentateuch, the end of Deuteronomy, with the death of Moses and the people still outside the land, seems rather unsatisfying. We like our stories wrapped up with a neat bow. As a result, Deuteronomy suspends readers in between the end of one story and the beginning of the next. On the one hand, the book comes to a fitting end because the organization of Israel is now complete. Israel is now the covenant people of the Lord. On the other hand, Israel’s life as the covenant people is only just beginning, and the land of promise remains just that - a promise. Yet, we’ve been through five books and several generations and still haven’t made it into the promised land. It feels like the end of an episode of the show Dragonball Z: if you’ve ever seen Dragonball Z, there is a ton of buildup, but the big exciting action will be next time. But the goal of Deuteronomy’s next time is not to get you to watch the next episode. It is that the outcome of the story depends ultimately on the readers, both ancient and modern. It invites us to be part of the next chapter, raising the question: Will Israel (and will we) really be the faithful covenant community? The ending calls more for sober reflection than celebration, for self-examination rather than self-congratulation, for spiritual soul-searching rather than contentment. (Mann, 167)

For all of us, eventually, there will not be a next season, whether because of changes in this life or moving on to the next life. Moses’ death reminds us that we all die before our work is done, or before we could achieve all we wish we could achieve (Goldingay, 194). This time of year, I tend to get preoccupied with death. Not really because of All Saints and All Souls days, on November 1 and 2, but because this All Saints Day will mark 10 years since my brother’s earthly remains were laid to rest. I was recently back in my hometown and, for some reason, didn’t visit his grave. It wasn’t really an active decision against visiting graves, it’s my family’s practice to visit the graves of all of our loved ones in that cemetery annually and I have actually enjoyed those visits as opportunities to share stories about loved ones I never met or only knew when I was a child. I just…didn’t. And as much as I love the joke about going to my brother’s grave to “visit” him, I know, as we all do, that he doesn’t live there. 

In the movie Coco, the souls in the Land of the Dead remain “alive” as long as there is someone in the Land of the Living who remembers them. Remains do not matter; it’s about remaining “alive” in one another’s hearts. So how do we keep “alive” those whom we love but see no longer? A teacher whose lessons remain in our hearts. A friend who we toast at their favorite restaurant. A grandparent whose china is unwrapped for special meals. I keep my brother alive by seeing him in the world around me. By noticing that my daughter has one eye that squints more when she smiles, just like he had. By telling my kids stories about their uncle Brad. By watching sports with an unhealthy amount of schadenfreude. In the same way that the people of Israel are being encouraged to remember Moses: not by sitting by his grave but by keeping his teachings, we are invited to remember our loved ones not by leaving their memories behind, but by keeping those memories in our hearts and continuing our lives with them as a part of who we are. In Billy Joel’s song Lullaby, he sings, “Someday your child will cry, but if you sing this lullaby, Then in your heart there will always be a part of me, Someday we’ll all be gone, But lullabies go on and on, They never die, That’s how you and I will be.” Amen.