This story of Moses just before he dies (Deuteronomy 34) resonates strongly for me. Not because I’m about to die, but like Moses, I have a group of people with whom I’ve been wandering, leading on a journey; and like Moses, I am coming to terms with the fact that I won’t be with those people for the next stage of the journey.
I suspect that many of the Israelites at that point might have been concerned about their future. Will they survive without Moses leading them? Will they still know God’s presence with them without Moses reminding them? What will become of them? And Moses might well be asking himself the same questions. What will happen to these people when I am no longer with them? What will happen to these people after I am gone? I’m not trying to say that I’m as good as Moses but that I find myself in a similar situation.
Last week, we looked at the story of the twelve spies being sent into Canaan (Deuteronomy 13). They came back and said that it is indeed a land of milk and honey, but the people there are frightening and hostile and it’s all too dangerous, and in the end the people decided to head back into the wilderness rather than face those fears. Well, when we come to today’s story, it’s now thirty-eight years later. The Israelites have been wandering for thirty-eight years. All but two of those young leaders who went as spies the last time have since passed away. It’s a whole new generation and they’re back at the border of Canaan once more. And Moses has got to be wondering: will they chicken out again? Will they fail once more to meet the challenge? Will they decide to go back into the wilderness to die?
But this time, before Moses leaves them, God gives him a vision. Far beyond the human eye can see, God shows Moses all of the promised land: from one extreme to the other. And God says this is what I have in store for you. God gives Moses a vision of what can be. God gives Moses a dream for him to share with the people before he leaves them.
Dreams are powerful things. Dreams are inspiring. It’s said that the book by Jules Verne entitled From the Earth to the Moon was what inspired scientists to dream of landing on the moon, and that dream enabled it to happen about 100 years later, and that landing in turn has inspired others to dream bigger and further.
Most of us are familiar with Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech: So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. … I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
Likewise, Ghandhi, Mandela, Mabo, each had a dream for a better future for their respective peoples, a dream that inspired their people. We can look throughout history and across the world to see how dreams of what could be, have inspired people to greatness.
People get inspired by dreams.
God gives Moses a vision, a dream of what can be, to inspire the people going forward. Even though he doesn’t get to be part of the dream, he gets to be the one who inspires future generations.
I wonder if we still know how to dream. Sometimes I wonder if our dreams are too small to be truly inspiring. I get the sense with the Israelites out in the wilderness that a lot of the time, their dream was limited to simply being about survival. The first time they came to the promised land, it was too much to claim this great land. Their dream was simply to survive and so they wandered back into the wilderness.
I sometimes get that same sense with us as a church. Whether it be at a national level, at a Presbytery level, or even at a congregational level, our conversations get so caught up with simply surviving that anything more than that just seems to be too much. It becomes almost impossible for us to imagine anything more than that. But it’s hard to inspire people with a dream that is simply about survival. No one is going to be inspired to be part of a group whose main objective is to still be around in ten years or twenty years or however long.
Or sometimes our dreams get confused with our nostalgia. We saw that with the Israelites in the wilderness. Whenever things got hard, they would dream of what life was like back in Egypt. “Moses has brought us into the wilderness to die. Remember back in Egypt we were safe.” “We’re going to starve out here in the wilderness. Remember when we had meat to eat back in Egypt.” Too often the Israelites’ dreams were simply about wanting what they had when life seemed easier.
Unfortunately, when I talk with church people about their dreams for the church, too often what I hear instead is nostalgia. I wish we could have a big Sunday School again. I remember when we had a thriving youth group. I remember when church was bigger and better. And just as no one is going to be inspired by a dream of survival, neither is anyone going to be inspired by a dream based in the past. What happened in the past can serve as inspiration for the future, but it shouldn’t serve as our dream for the future. Instead our stories of the past should inspire us to dream bigger, more courageously into an even brighter future.
Earlier on, we sang the words, “I will sing the wondrous story.” But that story isn’t finished. That story isn’t stuck in the past. Jesus’ story in our lives is still ongoing and we are part of it going into the future.
I wonder if you’ve ever heard of The Royal Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things. It’s a great example of what small dreams can look like. Have a quick look at it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFrdqQZ8FFc When our dreams are too small, they leave us with no sense of purpose, uninspired and lost. But when Moses addresses the Israelites for the last time, he shares with them God’s dream; it is a dream huge and rich and full of promise. It is a dream big enough to inspire them and their future generations.
At this point, I have a confession to make. I’ve still got a couple of months before I finish up as the minister here at Noranda, so there’s still time, but God hasn’t given me a grand vision for what’s ahead for the people of Noranda Uniting. Or at least, not specifically. But in another sense, we have already been given a dream of what could be.
We often say the Lord’s Prayer together, which includes the words “May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as in heaven.” In Jesus’ preaching, he often says to them, to us: Repent because the Kingdom of Heaven is within your reach. I wonder what the kingdom of heaven would look like? What would it look like if heaven was here on earth? How would we recognise it? How would we know if that prayer has been answered? I wonder what that would look like in our local context. What would it look like if Noranda and the surrounding suburbs was just like heaven? I wonder what it would look like for Noranda Uniting to be involved in that future? Take a moment to ponder that. Take a moment to dream.
…………………… DREAM ……………………………..
Whatever you have imagined, that’s the vision, the dream, that I would love to leave you with. That’s the future I believe in for each one of you, and for Noranda Uniting as a whole. That’s the dream that I want for you to inspire others with. I don’t care if you end up having a big Sunday School or youth group again. I don’t care if you get another minister and have 150 people every Sunday in church. I don’t care if your Tuesday Fellowship or your Craft Group flourishes. None of that is important unless it is enabling the dream and hope for our neighbourhood, for God’s heavenly kingdom to come.
In our other bible story (Matthew 22:36-40), Jesus tells them that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul; and that the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbour as yourself. The reason this is relevant for today is that in Mark’s version of the story, the earlier version of the story (Mark 12:28-34), the teacher who asks Jesus the question also comments on this answer, not only agreeing with Jesus but commenting that these two commandments are more important than any acts of worship.
And Jesus says to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
That’s the secret to the dream. That’s how we get to the kingdom. To love God with all that we’ve got, holding nothing back. And to love our neighbours, the strangers who we don’t know, as much as we love ourselves and those who are a part of us. It’s a big ask, but the dream is worth it. If I can leave Noranda Uniting with each one of you carrying that dream then, like Moses, I can go into my next life in peace.
Amen.