Deuteronomy 30:15-20 | Göttinger Predigten im Internet

Epiphany 6 | 12.02.2023 | Deuteronomy 30:15-20 | Samuel D. Zumwalt |

¹⁵“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. ¹⁶If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. ¹⁷But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, ¹⁸I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. ¹⁹I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life, that you and your offspring may live, ²⁰loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

HOLY COMMUNION: HOLY LIFE

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Oh, the places Moses has been in his 120 years. Adopted by an Egyptian princess and raised as a prince for forty years, Moses was given a world-class education. For the next forty years, Moses was a murderer and fugitive, a herder of flocks, and one who learned how to live and find water in an arid climate. Then, at 80, Moses was given the call for which God had been preparing him. Moses and Pharaoh had to do a proxy battle between the LORD God and Egypt’s gods. Don’t give Moses too much credit. At the end of ten plagues, Pharaoh has to let God’s people go. Then, for his final forty years, Moses has to listen to griping, complaining, and kvetching until only Joshua and Caleb are left from those born in Egypt. Moses won’t get to go to the Promised Land with the generations born in the Sinai wilderness. So close but so far, Moses’ goodbye sermon is Deuteronomy.

God’s two words, “No” and “Yes,” are clearly spoken by the weary prophet. We might think of Martin Luther’s Large Catechism explanation of the First Commandment: Whatever your heart clings to is your God. There is life for those who cling to the LORD God, but there is death for those who do not. There is blessing for those who walk in God’s ways and the very possession of the Promised Land, but there is a curse for those who worship other gods and serve them. Indeed, those who choose unwisely will not live long in the land. And is that not an echo of the Fourth Commandment? Those who fail to honor their parents will not live long in the land. After all, as the Psalmist will declare: “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof” (24:1). As Job will declare: “The LORD giveth, and the LORD taketh. Blessed be the name of the LORD” (1:21).

Having been unwisely schooled to believe that we are in the center, which is already begging after the “No” of the LORD God, we 21^st century folks would attribute greater agency to ourselves. Granting the Holy Spirit an assist, like one basketball player opening a path towards the basket for a driving, shooting guard, we would see ourselves as wiser than we are. Like any of the Lord Jesus’ traditional adversaries, the Pharisees and Sadducees, we easily see ourselves parsing His words and Moses’ until we are certain we have made our own way through the wilderness of this world. Following Jesus, like following Moses, is dreadfully constricting to us, who are certain that God’s Word is ours to improvise in ways that seem more appealingly out of the box.

Weary Moses, like my late German grandmother, grew too soon old before he grew wise. After 120 years, if he hasn’t seen it all, Moses has surely seen a lot. He can remember clearly his own failings, his own arrogance, his own certainty that he could do it “my way.” Moses can remember all his excuses, all his hot-headedness, and all his wrong turns, the very things that have brought him to this moment when he can only gaze into the Promised Land but not enter. Only at the end when he no longer wanted to be mediator between the LORD God and the people, only then, could Moses see, like a chess master, all the moves that the people would make once they entered a land filled with milk and honey, with houses they did not build, and with vineyards they did not plant. We can hear old Moses saying, “Little children, don’t go there. Don’t follow that script.” But the seductions of other gods and the guilty pleasures of their ways will repeatedly tempt and win the hearts of those who have received such grace and mercy from the one true God. The more things change. The more they stay the same. There is life, and there is death. The unholy trio is sin, death, and the devil.

Isn’t it just so alluring this idea that we can by the strength of our own hand and the power of our own will save ourselves? Isn’t that what Moses told us? We can choose? Isn’t it empowering to be the choosers? Like Henley’s poem, “Invictus,” the masters of our fate? The captains of our ship? Oh, yes, even of the Church? Now where was it we learned to ask that question, “Did God really say?” And, shouldn’t we be able to figure out on our own what to call God, yes, to give God a long overdue 21st century makeover? Isn’t all that old God language just so stifling? Isn’t all that old stuff about male and female, husband and wife, and what’s right and what’s wrong, and yes, words like LORD, isn’t that just the last vestiges of a sad, dying religion? And good riddance to that? Don’t we know better what is life giving? Maybe, regrettably, you have to break some eggs to make an omelet? So, can’t we choose this day what we mean by life even if it looks like death? Aren’t we the choosers?

Oh, how far could Moses see? How far? Could he see the LORD God who wandered forty years with His rebellious people, at last, taking on this our frail flesh, which because of Adam’s age-old rebellion is so prone to wander far from the throne of God? Could old man Moses look back from where he had come to see Elijah retreating to Sinai when wicked Queen Jezebel wanted to silence the Word of God that dared to tell her 400 prophets of Baal: “No?” Could ancient Moses then look forward to the verge of Jordan to catch a glimpse of Elijah’s successor John calling the children of God back to the very wilderness where the LORD God had made covenant with them by grace? Could exhausted father Moses see the Lamb of God, the Word made flesh, enter the Jordan to be the faithful Son of God that neither Moses nor Elijah could be, much less the foolish faithless ones? Could Moses see forward to another mountain where Elijah and he, the two greatest prophets of old, would speak with the Lamb of God about His bearing the curse that the rebellious people, then, and we rebellious people, now, keep calling down upon ourselves because this body of death keeps choosing death and not life? Could Moses see all the way to Calvary to see the death of death?

The way of life runs through death. The Lord Jesus says, “Whoever would save his or her life will lose it.” All those grandiose notions of choosing “my way” or even “our way” must be shocked into reality by the Lord Jesus’ “No way!” There is no way to His Father’s waiting arms than through Jesus. So, if bishops, theologians, or ordinary pew-sitters don’t want to say or pray, “Our Father?” Then, it’s “No way,” for them, because Jesus is both God and man. He is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. He is the only Way, and He teaches us to pray “Father,” to cry “Father,” yes, to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Now, no one has to use that language just as no one had to go to the Promised Land. I still remember my dear former parishioner in Waco being aghast and dumbfounded by neighbors who on their deathbed felt it would be dishonest to renounce their atheism. There’s no fool like an old fool who says in his heart, “There is no God.”

The way of life runs through death. In Holy Baptism, we are crucified with Christ. We are joined to His saving death and glorious resurrection. We die daily to ourselves. Perhaps standing under the shower head or reclining in the tub each day, we can ourselves ask the questions from the baptismal rite. “Do you renounce the devil? I do. Do you renounce his works? I do. Do you renounce his ways? I do. Do you believe in God the Father? I believe in God the Father… I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord… I believe in the Holy Spirit….” The way of life means the death of me daily in order that Christ Jesus may live in me. There is a clear difference between death and life.

I remember my older brother Norman, who descended further and further into the muck and mire of alcoholism. As a young man, he was so smart and charming and funny and entertaining. But each year like the great tragedian in C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce,” I was speaking less and less to my brother and more and more to a persona created by his chemicals. He could draw women and children close, and then throw them away effortlessly. When confronted about his choosing death, his damnable pride and ego could be so smug and biting. He didn’t need to go to a 12-step group to be laughed at by a bunch of old drunks. He could quit any time he wanted. He was a better writer with vodka, he said. And, then, when he was dying in his 45^th year, he said to me, “I wish I had listened.” But even that was a last gasp of the Norman we all dearly loved. With a body and mind ravaged by alcoholism and now under a lymphoma death sentence, Norman, at last, got months of legal drugs. His drug of choice had never been alcohol. In Height Ashbury during the Summer of Love, Norman discovered crystal meth, shooting it into his veins. How happy all that morphine made him as he was dying. Later, I asked my favorite ex-sister-in-law: “Did he ever make amends?” She laughed. Not one word of remorse to any of those he threw away. But perhaps to God? I hope so. My brother chose the way of death. And whenever I see that same smug look in someone’s eyes and that same dismissive attitude towards the idea of dying to oneself? I pray again, “Lord, have mercy!”

When the baptized come to the altar to receive Jesus, take a good look, a really good look at your empty hands. Luther said all we have to offer Jesus is our sin and our death. If you’re a drunk, we don’t offer grape juice. Jesus doesn’t. You can touch the Host to the Cup or lightly touch it inside, and Jesus is right here where He promised to be. When we receive Holy Communion, we receive His Holy Life that He has eternally shared with His Father and the Holy Spirit. He is LORD. He still says: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). It was a hard saying, then, and it’s a hard saying now. If you want life, you need Jesus. We don’t coerce anyone, says Luther in the Large Catechism. We offer life. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the only One who can save us. Don’t ever settle for death without Jesus.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

szumwalt@bellsouth.net

St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

Wilmington, North Carolina USA