A Glimpse from Pisgah

“I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it” [Deuteronomy 34:4b].

While I’ll confess that Moses isn’t my favorite OT character–I was always more a fan of Yul Brynner than Charlton Heston–part of me has alway felt Moses was short-changed in not being allowed to set his feet upon the Promised Land. He had, after all, with brother Aaron’s sometimes able assistance, shepherded the Israelites for 40 years through the wilderness. He brought them out of slavery in Egypt, then on to Mt. Sinai, where he eventually delivered the Ten Commandments. He led them through countless struggles and had saved the people from the justified wrath of Yahweh on more than one occasion.

When we come to this Sunday’s OT lesson — Deuteronomy 34:1-12 [the Old Testament reading for the Twenty-first Sunday After Pentecost, RCL, Year A] — the final verses of the final book of the Torah (or Pentateuch), Moses is 120 years old, and the children of Israel are on the cusp of entering the Promised Land, the holy “real estate” promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But, as I say, Moses won’t be allowed to taste the sweet milk and honey of Canaan. Instead, as our scripture lesson tells us, Yahweh shows him the Promised Land, and then Moses dies.

Yahweh’s justification for denying immigrant status to Moses had been signaled several chapters ahead of this week’s OT lesson. In Deuteronomy 32:48-52, Yahweh tells Moses that he (Moses) will die on a mountaintop before the people enter onto the land. This will be done because Moses and Aaron failed to show Yahweh’s holiness before the people at the waters of Meribah.

We might remember the Meribah scene from Numbers 20:1-13. More likely, we recall it in the Cecil B. DeMille blockbuster. It’s hot, the Israelites are tired and thirsty. There’s no water. And so, the Israelites do what they were good at doing: They blame Moses and they grumble. To remedy the situation, Yahweh tells Moses, along with Aaron, to assemble the folks at Meribah. Moses is to speak to the rock there, and it will bring forth water.

Moses, whose temper has been tried by the people perhaps one too many times, speaks instead to the people, saying “Listen, pray, rebels! Shall we (presumably he means he and Aaron) bring forth water for you from this rock?” [Numbers 20:10, emphasis mine]. Instead of speaking to the rock, on behalf of Yahweh, Moses strikes the rock with his staff. Indeed, the water flows, but Yahweh takes Moses aside and says that because Moses (and Aaron) did not show adequate faith in Yahweh, neither will be allowed to go into the new land with the people.

While one might quibble with Yahweh about whether the retaliation exceeded (significantly) the sin, this week’s lesson makes clear that Moses is taken to the mountaintop by Yahweh, where Moses is then allowed a powerful perspective upon the land, indeed, upon the future of Israel. He’s provided a sweeping panorama. He’s allowed to see that the promise made so long ago to Abraham is about to be fulfilled. The author of the NT book of Hebrews puts it quite well: Moses “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance [he] saw and greeted them” [Hebrews 11:13].

How many of us are content with seeing and greeting the promises, knowing that we may not actually share in them ourselves? Like you, I’m reminded of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who used this passage from Deuteronomy as the backdrop for the sermon he delivered — “I’ve been to the Mountaintop”–on April 3, 1968, they day before King would be struck down by the sniper’s bullet.

King, like Moses, recognized that he might never see the reconciliation of the races, he might not ever see a moment in which Americans were judged, not by the color of their skin, but the character of their hearts. King might not see it, but the promise was still there! The promise had been given to him on the mountaintop.

Seeing and greeting the promises — I shared a conversation recently with a close friend who has ably headed a family business now for more than 35 years. Founded by his grandfather, made very profitable by his father, my friend took the helm at a point when the world was radically changing. He took on the mantle of leadership when the only thing certain was that the “old” ways the company had utilized so successfully for so long would no longer work. My friend realized 35 years ago that both the company and the family would need to pivot if they were to survive and flourish. My friend jokes that he and the family “wandered around” in the wilderness for 35 years — five years shorter than did the Israelites. There are still challenges in the firm’s future, but the company is stronger because of its wilderness experience.

And yet, my friend’s time at the helm are over. A year or so ago, he says he was allowed a mountaintop experience of sorts by our Lord. It wasn’t as dramatic as that allowed to Moses, but my friend came to realize that his time of leadership was complete, that like Moses, he needed to pass the mantle on to others, and that he needed to perform one more important service for his family: He needed to exhibit faith that whatever any of them faced in the future, the Lord’s presence was sufficient for the challenge. Undergirded by Yahweh’s love, redeemed by the sacrificial love of Christ, my friend felt empowered to allow others to take the reins and lead on.

Seeing and greeting the promises — Our lesson from Deuteronomy speaks of the mountaintop upon which Moses made and completed his last journey with Yahweh. Like a number of the mountains in that region, it had several names. As mentioned in Deuteronomy, one of the names for the mountain upon which Moses died is Pisgah. Piecing together some family history, it seems our Great-grandfather Edward Leslie Crawford (1882-1949) likely had a mountaintop experience of his own in 1947 or 1948, in the hills of southern Gaston County, at a place also known as Pisgah.

He was part of the fourth generation that had endeavored to farm a modest-sized tract of land near Crowders Creek, not far from Pisgah Presbyterian Church, which had been established in 1796. At a time when a large family, particularly a family with lots of sons, might make the difference between a plentiful or a minimal annual harvest, Yahweh blessed Crawford and his wife not with sons, but with four daughters, the oldest of which was our Grandmother Lib.

As Crawford neared the end of his life, I suspect — I can’t say “I know,” because I had not even been born — he thought things had certainly not worked out the way he had planned. There had been no long periods of bumper crops, no cash saved up for rainy days. He had not been able to acquire additional property that might have provided additional income. His daughters had married, yet none to a man interested in farming. His would be the last Crawford generation to till and plow those fields of western North Carolina rocks and clay.

Seeing and greeting the promises — from what I’ve heard from family members all these years, our Great-grandfather and his wife, our Great-grandmother Crawford (who wouldn’t die until 1971, the year Jane and I married) kept a strong and abiding faith that while their years of farming had not worked out as planned, their own Promised Land had indeed been discovered. It was growing and thriving in the extended families of their daughters in ways they never could have imagined. From their special Pisgah promontory, they gazed out upon a landscape that reflected the goodness, mercy, and abiding love of Yahweh, whose sovereign power had always been sufficient, and would always remain so in the future.

As so, was Moses really short-changed? Were Grandmother Lib’s parents short-changed? I don’t think so. There’s an interesting translational “issue” with regard to Deuteronomy 34:5. Using Robert Alter’s splendid, new translation of the Hebrew Bible, we see:

And Moses, the LORD’s servant, died there in the land of Moab by the word of the Lord [emphasis added].

Alter allows that the words I’ve italicized literally mean, “by the mouth of the Lord,” I.e., by divine decree. And yet, the use of the word “mouth” later encouraged the authors of the Midrash — the ancient commentary of the Hebrew scriptures, dating back to the second century AD — to indicate that Moses died with the kiss of Yahweh on his lips.

Seeing and greeting the promises — what might you and I glimpse from Pisgah?