Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Pentecost +24 – Year A

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

What are you seeing that you are not going to accomplish?

This is a most un-American, anti-positivist question. In places where kids are overscheduled and incessantly prepared for success, we don't catch a picture larger than ourselves. The same resistance to this question arises in religion precisely at the points where issues of tradition and salvation intersect. We yearn for a right answer from the past to care for our uncertainty and for a correct interpretation of signs to equate the present with the future.

To see beyond actually opens us to the unexpected ways in which we engage each moment along the way. Through all the dry times and hungry times and doubting times and unfaithful times we are strengthened. Through all the high times and satisfying times and times of certainty and surety come the next moments wherein we are humbled.

Can you catch a loving glimpse of G*D, of Neighbor? Just a snapshot? Just a quiet word? In that glimpse you have an insight into a larger world than expected. Such a quest is found in clarifying our expectations by looking again at our entitlements and finding them less than we had counted on; investigating again our hopes and finding in them more reality than we had first noticed. What is Messiah if not connected with my life? What is G*D if not a partner, a neighbor? What is a Neighbor if not a revelation of G*D? What is our Self if not connected with Christ?

Thank you Moses for setting a larger context. Thank you Joshua for attending to the details. Thank You for taking your part in gazing farther and carrying forward.

So, again, what are you seeing that you are not going to accomplish?