SCRIPTURE: Deuteronomy 34:1-12
TEXT: THEME: INTRODUCTION When Moses was born, midwives saved his life by letting him live. When his parents set him in a basket in the river, Pharaoh’s daughter drew him out of the water and raised him in the palace. Later when he was called by God to free the Israelites out of the bonds of slavery, God leads him back into the Palace to negotiate with Pharaoh. He was God’s tour guide in the wilderness, and provided escape, food, water and protection for God’s people. A survivor for 40 years and he fostered Israel’s relationship with God in the wilderness. The promise land is across the next river. So God takes Moses up to the mountain and shows him the horizon. SCRIPTURE There are three horizons in this passage. One is of the ancestral land from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. One is of heaven, dwelling with God and lastly, one is of a new mission that Is being laid out with a new leader. On the edge of the 40-year wilderness is a great expanse of land for their taking. These will become generationally contested lands of conflict, blessing, unrest and promise. Moses’ life has been in proximity with God. Heaven, so to speak, is not a place as much as it is a place with God. Moses was God’s prophet, God’s leader of the people, God’s liberating agent, and God’s human portrait for the people’s understanding. Genesis takes the people of God into Egypt. The book of Exodus delivers these people out of Egypt and back to the edge of their ancestral lands of Canaan. These lands were promised to Abraham and Sara and their descendants. This promise holds true today as a tangible sign of God and God’s people. The rest of the stories in Pentecost will be one battle, after another in regaining the real estate lost after being absent for the last 400 years. It will show God being with Israel and how this is what God wants, but…just because this is good for Israel then why isn’t it good for everybody else? Could re-habitation of ancestral lands have been accomplished in some other way? Sitting back in Babylon writing their history, could the authors also be writing in a future hope for in returning to Judea? Complete military dominance proves who is right. But We are still reeling from the ramification of colonization practices that followed these patterns. The wars that erupt between Israel and Palestine are like that of an active volcano. APPLICATION What is the horizon of peace in the land with neighbors that we see? What is the horizon of peace with God that we see? What is the horizon of a mission that brings the peace of God into the world look like? Maybe the 85-year-old Israeli hostage saying ‘shalom’ to her Hamas captor, as they leave is not propaganda but her understanding of what it means to be God’s prophet in this time and space. The political nation of Israel whose citizens are made up the spiritual people who wrestle with God. (I Stopped here to pray for peace between Israel and Hamas) As I look over my last 33 years of ministry, I wanted church growth, but that didn’t work out, I wanted new people and we got lot of broken people, we ventured into providing services to the deaf community, which was important as many still remember our sign language vocabulary, we have a food pantry, a Preschool, and music ministry that continues. In recent years we been surviving under the shelter of God, so when God takes me up to the mountain top to see our future, it is not about inhabiting the land as far as my eye can see, but it is about seeing hurt in each of these pockets of our community. It is about seeing good in each one of these pockets of the community and it is about seeing us, in some way, through offerings, our members, our jobs as being a part of each one of those pockets of our community. When the missionary came, it could be seen that they came to conquer the islands for Christ. But now, 200 years later, we don’t need to have a Joshua to militarily dominate us into submission, but we need a Jesus who comes to dwell among us, who lives the peace of God among us, with us and through us. The mission field is not about surviving to be there in the future. The mission field is about being out there bearing the peace of God with us where ever we go. In what we do, in how we live, in our work and in the relationships we foster. This is Living the three horizons in one. For the Wailuku Parish, we don’t need one church to dominate us, but we need a vision of mission that incorporates all of who we are into a common mission of being. Not one pastor but many, not one culture but many, not one setting but many, not one language but many, If Legion can do this to wreak havoc in one person’s life and threaten an entire community, the church can do this to be a blessing by being many people who carry the name of Jesus with us and make changes that transform our community. So if the church can exhibit this change, by working together, doing something different, then we can be an example for our community to change to do things differently and to try something new. But if we are still waiting for something to happen in our horizon, we may have to die on this side of the river and lose our opportunity to do something amazing today. CONCLUSION War, violence, military dominance, systems of oppression take away our ability to connect with each other across boundaries and we become like the people of Noah’s day and cease to see the humanity in each other. We lose our connections as human beings. Destruction by chaos is not the answer to start over. Forgiveness is. This is the vision Jesus gives us in the horizon.
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