The Unfinished Life

Matthew 22:34-36

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

  

Today’s story is another reminder that God keeps the promises God makes to us.  God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their descendants would be numerous and would inhabit a land of their own.  After escaping from slavery in Egypt, they wandered for 40 years, learning to trust in God.  But finally God leads them North to the East side of the Jordan River, to the land promised them.

Moses has been their leader ever since they left Egypt.  He’s reportedly 120 years old, with eyes still sharp and a body still strong.  He’s remembered as a leader especially close to God (he knew God “face to face”) and capable of powerful leadership.  But he died and was buried on the East side of the Jordan.  He never made it across into the promised land. 

 

Our story today places Moses up on the cliffs, looking across the Jordan into the promised land.  The text lingers, directing our gaze across the broad sweep of the land being given to Israel.  The area described is present day Israel and Palestine, a corridor of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.  The description is so vast that it’s clear it’s a view intended for us, those reading the story.

What might Moses have been thinking, high up on this cliff, looking into the land of promise?  Was he filled with a sense of failure, disappointment or complaint?  Did he feel like an athlete who competed with his team all season, only to be left off the team as they entered the championship game?

The text suggests something different.  Instead, he was filled with a sense of gratitude and accomplishment for God’s sustenance along the way.  He has been on a great journey: he led the people out of the slavery of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and through the wilderness for 40 long and difficult years.  His life was a life of pilgrimage.  His job was to lead a journey.  And he was on the way with God’s people when they were learning how to be God’s people, formed by the wisdom of the law for a distinctive life amidst other people who worshiped different gods.

The 2007 movie The Bucket List, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson is a story of ageing men approaching the end of their lives.  And rather than go quietly into the night, they decide for the adventure of accomplishing a few of their life-long dreams.  So now your “bucket list” refers to things you want to do before you die.

But your bucket list isn’t just for your retirement years later in life.  You can check things off your bucket list any time.  What’s on yours?  Is there a place you’ve always wanted to visit?  Something you wanted to experience or accomplish?  A trade or skill you wanted to acquire?  Someone you’ve wanted to meet?  Maybe you dream of a huge, beautiful garden; of spending more time with grandkids, or learning to paint.  Like many of you, I don’t have any formal list.  But I do have things I want to do in life: visiting England and Spain would be up there; I have plans to write a book or two; I’d like to start a brewery or pub, and to build a house just like I want it.

I probably won’t get to do everything on my bucket list.  Maybe you won’t either.  But even if we did, I doubt it would lend our lives the sense of closure and accomplishment we thought it would.  Life never really gets finished.

Moses gets to the river and can see the promised land but doesn’t enter it.  He lived an unfinished life.  So do we.  At the end of each day, each week, season, and year, there are always things left undone.  And at the end of our lives, there will be much left unfinished.  The test to see whether you have received from God your unfinished life is whether you can rest.  It’s right there in the middle of the Ten Commandments Israel received in the wilderness.  Resting from work and worry each evening as we sleep; resting from work and worry for one day each week – these are ways our lives are to be different from those around us.  And if you don’t believe me, perhaps you have drunk so deeply from the well of American success and busyness and perpetual distraction that you cannot imagine living any other way.

This is also a story about leadership.  Moses taught the people that God would go with them into the promised land, even though he himself would not.  And God would bless and lead them through a different leader named Joshua.  This is a good reminder to us never to become so attached to one leader that we can’t imagine life without them.  We should be grateful for those who lead us well.  But we should also remember that it is God who accompanies us on our journey through life.  And God will use different people to lead us.  Different leaders will emerge at different times for special reasons.  The text offers no hint of jealousy or competition between Moses and Joshua.  Instead, we see a generous handing off of leadership from Moses to Joshua. 

Moses enacts this glad sharing of leadership by laying hands on Joshua to bless him and pray for him.  We’ll enact this same ritual not long from now when we ordain new elders and deacons for leadership in our congregation.  When we ordain and install new elders and deacons for service, we don’t ask them to serve for life.  We ask them to serve for a term of three years.  They are asked to play a particular leadership role for three years.  And at the end of that three years, they step out of that role to allow space for new leaders to emerge.  And this isn’t something competitive.  We lay hands on our new leaders as a way of blessing them with full authority to lead us.

The end of Moses’ life teaches us that receiving from God our unfinished life is connected to our willingness to play our own role in life and not covet someone else’s role.  I don’t mean that once you’re in a life role you’re stuck with it.  Our roles are continually shifting, and you can use your God-given imagination and energy to seek different roles than the ones you now have.  But at any particular time, playing our roles can be dispiriting and confusing.

We may wonder why we didn’t get someone else’s life.  A sibling, friend, co-worker or neighbor may be living the life we wish we had.  Their course might seem easier.  They weren’t given the difficult challenges placed on our path.  Rather than complain or protest that Joshua was to lead Israel into the land of promise, Moses lays his hands on him to bless him, pray for him, and thereby signals to the people that God has gifted this new leader for the task at hand.  Moses’ role was different than Joshua’s role, and Moses was able to receive that role with gratitude.

Cheering on the Royals in the World Series might help us relate to this story in terms of teamwork.  The Royals have succeeded this year because they play as a team.  They have distinctive and specific roles to play.  Starting pitchers begin the game. Middle relievers take over if the starters get in trouble.  Then Herrerra pitches the seventh, Davis the eighth, and Holland the ninth.  Aoki plays right field until he’s replaced in the line-up by Dyson, who plays center while Cain moves over to right field.  Butler bats DH, but if he reaches base late in the game, Terrence Gore, a much faster player, pinch runs for him. 

Life isn’t all that different from good teamwork.  The life of any community depends on a variety of people willing to play different roles for the good of the whole.  One of the reasons we find it hard to receive and live an unfinished life is that we wanted to play some other role, and not the role we’ve been asked to play.  It’s difficult to find joy and peace in the role we’re playing at any given time. 

Yet even the giants of our faith tradition lived unfishined lives.  Jesus’ ministry was in many ways an unfinished life, however blasphemous that might sound.  He healed and taught many.  But not everyone.  However popular he was in some Galilean villages, most that needed healing didn’t get it.  Violent and powerful political tyrants were left in place to continue harming and using their subjects.  Even his prayer from the cross – “It is finished” – concerns the specific work he was given to do.  Clearly God’s kingdom of love, justice, and peace was not fully established.  When he died, there were many more people to heal and teach. 

The apostle Paul and the other early missionaries of the church accomplished much.  Yet their lives and work were unfinished.  They started churches throughout the Mediterranean.  But these were mostly small little communities, representing only a few of the many inhabited places.  Most people in the Roman Empire new nothing of these fledgling little congregations.  They were, as churches still are, signs of God’s kingdom of love and justice, but those signs exist within a great sea of misery and pain.

So we stand in a great tradition of folks called to be faithful with unfinished and unfinishable lives.  Perhaps you came here today carrying some anxiety or stress related to something you haven’t accomplished or finished.  Maybe it’s a particular project.  Or maybe it’s something deeper – that your life didn’t take the shape you’d hoped.  The experience of stress and anxiety aren’t always signs of unfaithfulness to God, but they can be.  When we stand on the cliffs, looking across the Jordan, we will be tempted to define ourselves in terms of performance and accomplishments.

But the good news of Jesus Christ is that the central story of our lives isn’t what we get done.  The story of Moses’ life is the story of our lives – that we are loved by God.  That’s what gives to our lives depth, richness, beauty and meaning.  God has loved us into a new family, forgiven and freed from slavery of all kinds.  Created and called into a community of people to live in a distinctive way, we can now trust in God on the journey of being delivered from harms, to help and serve others.

So I want to challenge you to get better at the practice of Sabbath keeping.  I invite you to stop more, and rest more.  Go to bed on time even if there’s more to do.  Guard a day of rest even when your list of projects is long.  If your life has become centered in the destructive American success myth – always doing, performing, accomplishing – then lay that idol down today.  And begin to practice courageous Sabbath keeping.  Learn the importance of rest in a life that will always remain unfinished.  Find joy and satisfaction in your own role in life, leaving others free to live their own roles as well.  Knowing your story and trusting God is what enables you to rest.  And the practice of resting enacts what you’re learning – that you belong to God.