Many years ago- nearly 20 at this point- I took a group of middle schoolers to a retreat in Indianapolis. The theme of the retreat was vaguely something about gardens and growth. I remember we sang “Inch by Inch” by Peter Paul and Mary and that everything we talked about was garden related. But what I remember the most is the service project we worked on. We loaded up vans and pulled off the side of the interstate in Indianapolis- somewhere near the intersection of I-65 and I-74- and we climbed out into the grassy area in the cloverleaf of an exit. And then? With an auger and some shovels, we planted over 1000 daffodil bulbs. Now, this was all in early fall, and we did all the work in just one day, and then we loaded right back up into church vans and returned to the retreat.
I don’t remember exactly where we did this work.
I have never seen the daffodils in bloom.
I don’t even know if they DID bloom.
I just know that we worked together, dug together, sweated together, planted together, and got so many blisters together. I know that we had beautiful fellowship and had a wonderful retreat together. And I think, whether they bloomed or not doesn’t even matter.
Today’s story from Deuteronomy is about unfinished business. After all of the events of the exodus- the plagues, the Red Sea, the whole business with the manna and the water from the rock, the Ten Commandments, the golden cow- it was finally time to enter the promised land. They get there and stand on the precipice of all they had longed for. They see it all, stretched before them. And then…
The LORD said to him, "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, 'I will give it to your descendants'; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there."
And then Moses dies. He drops dead right there overlooking the promised land.
This story always makes me so sad for Moses. It bothers me that he never gets to live in the promised land and see the fulfillment of his dreams. “This final chapter of Deuteronomy is a powerful reminder that all things come to an end. Moses had a long, fruitful, and at times challenging ministry. He remained faithful to his call. But there came a time when he needed to let go of the reins and let someone else take the community across the river into the Promised Land. Although, as we read in the Book of Exodus, the people didn’t always make Moses’ life easy, he prevailed. While God might have gotten frustrated, God remained faithful to the covenant promises. You would think Moses would get to cross over into the Promised Land, even if only for a short time. After all, these were his people, the people Moses formed as they wandered in the Wilderness. But according to the account in Deuteronomy, his journey ended at the river.” (Cornwall)
He dies with unfinished business before him, and the people enter the land with a new leader- Joshua. Joshua is who gets to celebrate the victory and lead the people into the promised land. It is Joshua who fulfills the promise and gets to see the fruits of Moses’ labor. Now the story tells us that this is because of the water in the desert story. No, not the one from a few weeks back when God told Moses to strike the rock. No, this one takes place later in the journey in Numbers. See, THIS time, God told Moses to speak to the rock and water would flow from it, but Moses whacked it with a stick instead. Now why wouldn’t he have hit it with his staff? When this scenario happened the first time, that’s what worked. Why would Moses do anything different the second time? And why would God change up the directions anyway? Well, that’s hard to say, but this time Moses hit the rock. This apparently made God pretty angry, and so God said Moses would never see the promised land. It seems a bit…harsh.
The journey from Egypt to the promised land had taken 40 years. Miriam had already died, Aaron is decrepit, and Moses is tired. And so on the precipice of a new beginning, there’s this moment where God is somewhat testing Moses- seeing if Moses is still listening and still on the same page as God, and Moses demonstrates that maybe his time of listening and obeying God is over. Moses had gotten to a point in his journey where he was comfortable and where he thought he knew what to expect from God. So when God changes things up a bit, Moses just does what he’s comfortable with.
What Moses failed to understand was that time had changed in one essential detail. He was facing a new generation. The people he confronted the first time were those who had spent much of their lives as slaves in Egypt. Those he now faced were born in freedom in the wilderness. (Sacks) The people- this group of people who had traveled for 40 years- were about to do something brand new. They were about to enter a new-to-them land and start a new life in a relationship with a God they had been introduced to along the way. This is perhaps NOT the time for a complacent leader who does what he’s always done. “A figure capable of leading slaves to freedom is not the same as one able to lead free human beings from a nomadic existence in the wilderness to the conquest and settlement of a land. These are different challenges, and they need different types of leadership. Indeed the whole biblical story of how a short journey took forty years teaches us just this truth. Great change does not take place overnight. It takes more than one generation – and therefore more than one type of leader. Moses could not become a Joshua, just as Joshua could not be another Moses. The fact that at a moment of crisis Moses reverted to an act that had been appropriate forty years before showed that time had come for the leadership to be handed on to a new generation.”(Sacks)
I don’t know if I agree that change in leadership meant that Moses also was prevented from moving forward with the people, but I also wonder if maybe that’s entirely the point. In my denomination, when a minister leaves a congregation, they agree to not go back for a while. They agree that weddings and funerals and Sunday preaching will all be handed over to the new pastor without interference from the former one. And not just interference, but without the looming presence of someone from the past. See, new leadership cannot flourish when old ways are present. New times, new places, and new opportunities require NEW leadership.
The people could not inhabit a new land and new possibilities with old leadership.
I am reminded of George Washington. After leading a fledgling nation through a revolution and the establishment of a new Government, he stepped aside rather than run for a third reelection. In his famous final address, he says, “Though in reviewing the incidents of my administration I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.”(Washington).
And although his language is a bit archaic, the sentiment is the same. He understood that it was time for someone else to lead. He had brought the nation through a great revolution and its first fragile years, others would have to take it the next place. What Washington did was establish the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power and a mature realization of when leadership must change. In the musical Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda had Washington put it this way, “If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on; It outlives me when I’m gone.”
Moses not going into the promised land teaches the people that they can move on. Even if this wasn’t Moses’ choice, but God’s, it teaches the same lesson: “A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.”(Trueblood) Moses and Washington both had to step aside for their nations to flourish. Both leaders understood that part of leadership is preparing and empowering the next generation to continue what was started.
Sometimes we plant trees that we never get to sit under. Sometimes we plant flowers we never get to see. It’s a powerful reminder that perhaps, it’s not always about us. Moses teaches us that. Washington teaches us that. Daffodils in Indianapolis can teach us that.