Face to Face

The first thing to note this week is that there is an alternative reading for the Hebrew scriptures. That’s not an unusual occurrence. If you look at the Revised Common Lectionary, you’ll see that for much of the season after Pentecost, there are two psalms and two readings from the Hebrew scriptures. Some lectionary commentary series will use the alternate reading; others will use the first reading. But that is why you sometimes come up with different texts for the same week.

This week, the alternate reading might make more sense. The first text that we will look at in a moment is the end of the book of Deuteronomy, the death of Moses, and the beginning of the settlement of the Promised Land after the wilderness wandering. The alternate reading goes back to the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, which is where the second half of the Great Commandment comes from. The “love the Lord your God” comes from Exodus, but the “love your neighbor as yourself” comes from Leviticus. It is putting the two together that makes such a powerful statement. And as this is the reading from Matthew, you might want to use the alternate text as a way of grounding the gospel text historically.

However, we decided to stick with the reading from Deuteronomy. Remember, this short series is titled “The End in Sight,” and Deuteronomy gives us such rich images to allow us to talk about what it means to catch sight of our destination. It also can pair nicely with the gospel. Or at least we think so. But you’ll be the final arbiter of that one.

Deuteronomy 34 has Moses climbing yet another mountain. How many does that make now – you can go research that one if you want to. Suffice it to say, it is a lot. A regular occurrence, you might say. Moses liked hanging out on mountains. After all, it is where his best friend lived. Oh, sure, his best friend lived everywhere; but in the Hebrew scriptures, God seems to prefer mountains. So, of course, Moses spent a lot of time mountaineering. And not so much because it was there (the mountain) but because God was there.

This time, however, he climbs to take in the view. Like a couple of retirees on their vacation, Moses and God stood on top of that mountain while God pointed out all the highlights of the landscape before them. God even gave them the names of the tribes that would settle there, “Gilead as far as Dan.” Moses took in the sights, but he doesn’t have anything to say. It overwhelms him. That which was a dream was now right there in living color. You can’t blame him if a tear rolled down his cheek as he stared across the vista with his best friend. With all that they have been through together, you’d expect the moment to be somewhat emotional.

Then there’s that line that says that Moses won’t be going into that land. He was given the gift of seeing it, but he won’t set foot in it. It sounds like punishment, and it probably is—for his anger issues, for striking the rock when he was just supposed to touch it, or something like that. But you can’t help but wonder if, in the end, it is more of a kindness than a punishment. A quick scan through the next book in the sequence, the one named after Moses’s successor, shows that this settlement thing isn’t going to be a walk in the park. So, maybe instead of punishment, this is time off for sorta good behavior, for doing the best he could to lead a group of people who didn’t really want to be led. Maybe his friend said, “Rest now, Moses. You lived a life of loving God and loving neighbor, even when both were harder to love than you realized when you said yes in the first place.”

Moses is presented as the preeminent prophet, a man of power and wisdom. But what made him so unique was that he knew God face to face. Or rather that God knew him face to face. That’s probably the most incredible part of this brief eulogy at the end of Deuteronomy. All that stuff he could do and did do, all those years that he struggled with these people, and here his epitaph is that God knew him face to face.

When the disciples caught Jesus looking at them, I wonder if they thought of those words. As they were struggling to know who he was, as they caught a glimpse that somehow he was the son of God, the very real presence of God walking alongside them as they tromped around the countryside, did they hope that Jesus knew them face to face? What a gift to be graced by a God who knows us face to face.

That was the question behind the question that contentious day of teaching. It started with a story about a feast, a wedding banquet, and an invitation that some took lightly—to their regret. Then it was tag team question time, Pharisees and taxes, Sadducees and Resurrection and marriage, and then this one about commandments. The commandment. Matthew says the Pharisees gathered together, and then one came out with his question. Matthew says it was another test. But I wonder. Oh, sure it was a test; everything was a test; everything was trying to trip him up, trying to reduce him in the eyes of the crowds, trying to put him in his place. But I wonder if there was something more in the question. Mark seemed to think so; he tells the story a little differently (Mark 12:28-34). But then given that Jesus messes with their heads a bit with that epilogue about David and his son/Lord, maybe it was just a test.

Whatever is behind the question, Jesus does what Jesus does and gives us a life-giving answer, whether we choose to hear it or not. Whether they chose to hear it or not. It’s there in red and white – depending on the translation you use. He answers the question as if it were an honest one. As if the asker really wanted to know. He pulls from the tradition; he isn’t the first to declare these two statements, one from Exodus and the other from Leviticus, as preeminent when it comes to commandments. They couldn’t argue with this. They couldn’t point fingers and call him names when he leaned into the teaching that all of them knew. So, he was safe.

Except safe isn’t what he wanted. He wanted them to hear. He wanted them to see. This commandment, or these commandments, if you insist, are not simply laws to follow—like coming to a full stop at the sign and don’t speed through the yellow light. No, they are much more than that. Not just guides to a better life, they are the essence of life itself. This isn’t a pathway; it is the destination. This isn’t just some good advice for getting along in this world; this is about seeing God face to face. This is who we are supposed to be, not just what we are supposed to do. We are the ones who love God with all that is within us, and we are the ones who see our neighbors as an opportunity to love God more by loving them into wholeness and hope.

When Jesus answers this question, he is taking us all up to the mountain and showing the vista of the kingdom of God. “Can you see it,” he asks us. “Can you see the Promised Land? Where we all will live this commandment – this description of who and what we are and will be together. Can you see it?” Better yet, can you see yourself there? Can you see yourselves living that way—driven by love and not by the divisions that we’ve created for ourselves. Shaped by loving care for those who need us. Worshiping as though it was the most important thing we could be doing at any time of day or night, because it is. It is an outpouring of love that defines us, lifts us, and heals us.

And some questions won’t matter all that much anymore. That was the little tagline that Jesus throws out to the ones who still wanted to test him. He decides to test them back. “Who is in charge here?” is the question he asks them. Tradition? Heritage? Or the indwelling Spirit of God moving us forward into the Promised Land of hope and love?

As we draw closer, we’ll catch a glimpse of the one who knows us face to face.