Saturday, February 28

Scripture: Go up to the top of Pisgah and look around you to the west, to the north, to the south, and to the east. Look well, for you shall not cross over this Jordan.(Deuteronomy 3:27).

Observation: Moses continues his retelling of Israel’s wilderness journey. He tells of Israel’s conquest of two kingdoms called Bashan and Heshbon located to the east of the Jordan River. Two and a half tribes of Israel – Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh – claimed the territories of what formerly belonged to Bashan and Heshbon. These territories are not the Promised Land, but Moses permits Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh to claim these territories as their perpetual ancestral land under one condition: their men of fighting age must cross the Jordan River with the rest of the tribes of Israel and take full part in the military campaign to claim the Promised Land. The tribal leaders agree to this condition, and the territories becomes theirs. Moses then turns the narrative onto himself. All of Deuteronomy is one long sermon from Moses’ lips to Israel’s ears; this part of the sermon is a window into what it was like to be Moses. Moses says he asked God to allow him to cross the Jordan and enter the Promised Land, but God says no. Deuteronomy doesn’t cite what happened in Numbers, when Moses twice struck a rock instead of speaking to it as God had commanded, an act which God took to be selfish and rebellious and sufficient cause to deny Moses entry to the Promised Land. But Deuteronomy doesn’t remember that event. In Deuteronomy, God simply says no to Moses’ heartfelt desire to cross the Jordan; we’re not given a reason why. But what God does allow Moses is a climb to the top of a mountain called Pisgah and a panoramic view of the Promised Land from the mountain peak. While Moses never steps foot on the soil promised to him and his ancestors, at least he can feast his eyes on the land he longed to enter, the goal that become his life’s work, the vision he could never grasp but with God’s help he led his people to claim.

Application: Every spiritual and moral leader must end their journey as Moses does: with the unfinished business of a vision yet to become reality. The most obvious example is Martin Luther King, Jr., whose famous last sermon was based on this exact text in Deuteronomy, and who said he’d been to the mountain top himself, saw the Promised Land of full equality, liberty, and justice for all, but knew he would not see the dream fulfilled in his lifetime. Jesus Himself was this kind of leader. Jesus had a vision of God’s world the way it ought to be, a vision known to him and John the Baptist as the Kingdom of God, but they never saw the vision realized in their earthly lifetimes. Spiritual and moral leaders have a vision and are blessed by God to see the vision with greater clarity and conviction than the people they lead. The vision becomes the leader’s vocation and life’s work and compels the leader to lead. The vision takes hold of the leader’s life with such unyielding force that the leader must bring others along with them; the leader devotes their life to the struggle of shepherding the willing from the “here” of complacency to the “there” of the vision. Yet given the scale of the vision and the leader’s limited quantity of time on earth, unfinished work is guaranteed. The leader is haunted by the gap between what they are able to accomplish and where they hope their people will eventually end up, after the leader has gone But this gap makes the leader’s vision all the more urgent: it must be passed on like a baton to the next generation, and the next generation and so on, until the vision is fulfilled, because work of this magnitude is greater than one single person and more important than any earthly reward. The tenure of the leader must end; the vision of the leader mustendure, even if it costs the leader his or her life, and that is the blessing, and the curse, of leadership.

Prayer:

Today’s prayer comes from the poet Ted Loder and his book Guerillas of Grace. When I pray this prayer, I feel I am praying for the spirit of leadership, God willing.

“Guide Me into an Unclenched Moment”

Gentle me,

Holy One,

Into an unclenched moment,

 a deep breath,

  a letting go

   of heavy expectancies,

    of shriveling anxieties,

     of dead certainties,

that, softened by the silence,

 surrounded by the light,

  and open to the mystery,

I may be found by wholeness,

 upheld by the unfathomable,

  entranced by the simple,

   and filled with the joy,

    that is you.