Moses is Dead! Long live Moses!
by
the Reverend Dr. Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers, October 24, 1999; 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A;
Reception of New Members)
Deuteronomy 34:1–12 (OT, pp. 212–213);
Matthew 22:34–40 (NT, p. 25)
It's
now Tuesday,
and within three days, by Friday afternoon,
Jesus will be dead.
There's so little time left to him before dying;
and there's still so much for him to say about living.
Some
of those who oppose Jesus's teachings + his claim to authority,
who in a day or two will be calling for his death,
now approach him in the courtyard of the Jerusalem temple
and challenge him to identify what it is, in his opinion,
that lies at the heart of righteous living.
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
Which of the 613 delivered to us by the prophet Moses
is the most important?
Which of all the commandments
is to stand centermost in our lives?
Now,
the Gospel of Matthew has been preparing us to anticipate
that Jesus will answer this challenge brilliantly.
For throughout the gospel, Jesus is portrayed as a new Moses,
as one who has come, like Moses-of-old,
to proclaim, in this latter day, God's words to the people.
Indeed Jesus is portrayed as one who possesses even
more God-given authority than Moses-of-old himself.
As
an infant, Moses-of-old escaped the worst an evil king could do,
being saved from death by his family when the Pharaoh slaughtered
all the male Israelite children who were the age of Moses.
So, too, as Matthew paints the scene, the new Moses, baby Jesus,
escapes a slaughter of innocents, as Joseph and Mary and Jesus
flee from the troops of wicked King Herod to safety in Egypt.
Just
as Moses-of-old came up out of the land of Egypt,
so, too, the new Moses, Jesus, comes up out of the land of Egypt,
when he and his parents return to the Land of Promise
and settle in Nazareth.
Just
as Moses-of-old passed through the waters of the parted sea
before beginning his ministry of
proclaiming God's word to the people,
so, too, the new Moses, Jesus,
passes through the waters of baptism
before beginning his ministry of proclaiming God's word.
Just
as Moses-of-old fasted for forty days and forty nights (Exodus
34:28)
before bringing God's teachings to the people in Sinai,
so, too, the new Moses, Jesus, fasts for forty days + forty nights
before bringing God's teachings to the people in Galilee.
Just
as Moses-of-old was confronted by rival leaders
who felt he had claimed too much authority (Numbers 16),
so, too, the new Moses, Jesus, is confronted by opponents
who feel he has claimed too much authority,
as narrated in this morning's Second Lesson.
&
just as Moses-of-old is proclaimed in our First Lesson to have been
unequaled for the signs + wonders he performed in the name of God,
so, too, the new Moses, Jesus, is proclaimed to be such by Matthew.
Moses
is dead! But long live Moses!
For he and the words he taught live on and take new life in Jesus.
So,
after all that Matthew has been doing to prepare us in advance,
it should come as no surprise to us
that in this morning's Second Lesson
Jesus does respond brilliantly to his opponents' challenge,
swifltly abstracting from the 613 commandments
thought to have been spoken by Moses-of-old
two commandments that lie at the heart of them all:
"'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
This is the greatest and first commandment. (Dt. 6:5)
And a second is like it (Lev. 19:18):
'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"
Moses
is dead! But long live Moses!
For he and the words he taught live on and take new life in Jesus.
I
find it particularly poignant
that Jesus offers his concise abstract of Moses's commandments,
highlighting humankind's responsibility to love our neighbors,
including even, as Jesus makes clear earlier in the gospel,
those neighbors we consider our enemies (Mt. 5:43–44)—
I find it poignant that Jesus offers this highlighting
of God's commandment to love
even one's enemies
at a moment when he's confronted by persons
who'll soon be denouncing him to Pontius Pilate,
at a moment when he's having to face
the specter of his own imminent death.
Ironic
isn't it!
At the very time Jesus is entering the valley of the shadow of death,
he is able to identify for the world the source of abundant life—
namely, love of our Creator, to whom in life + in death we belong,
and love of our neighbor, to whom in life and in death
we are called to relate with justice and compassion.
Thus,
in our Second Lesson, Matthew presents a premier example
of a phenomenon noted by other authors as well: namely, that often
it's the specter of death that has the power to bring to mind
what's truly central to life and what's merely trivial;
that often it's the specter of death that summons us
to live most deeply and fully.
This
phenomenon is described powerfully
by the great 19th-century Russian author Leo Tolstoy
in his famous short story, "The Death of Ivan Ilych."
(Yes,
for those of you who're wondering, I do seem to be locked into
a 19th-century European Book-of-the-Month Club sermon cycle.
In August, it was Charles Dickens's Great Expectations.
In September, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.
And now in October, Leo Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilych.")
As
described by Tolstoy, the life of Ivan Ilych was certainly not one
that was centered on the words of Moses and of Jesus—
about love of God and love of neighbor.
Quite the contrary.
As
depicted by Tolstoy (translation
by Louise and Aylmer Maude),
Ivan Ilych had considered his duty to be
whatever those in authority said it was.
"From early youth [he] was attracted to people of high station
as a fly is drawn to the light, assimilating their ways and
views of life. He succumbed to
sensuality, to vanity
but always within limits"
He
rose through the ranks of magistrate, taking delight in the fact
"that everyone without exception,
even the most important and self-satisfied, was in his power,"
taking delight in the feeling
hat he would be "able to ruin anybody he wished to ruin"
In
due course, Ivan Ilych married Praskovya Federovna, a
"well-connected, sweet, pretty, + thoroughly correct young woman."
The
sweetness of married life soon turned sour, however,
after his wife became pregnant.
Thereafter, he came to require of marriage and family only
"those conveniences—dinner at home, housewife, and bed—which
it could give him, and above all that propriety of external forms
required by public opinion."
Otherwise, "if he met with antagonism and querulousness
[at home] he at once retired into
his separate fenced-off
world of official duties, where he found satisfaction."
Thus,
"he avoid[ed] his wife and children
as much as possible,
thr[e]w himself into his successful career
and, for the one real pleasure in his life, play[ed bridge] ."
[Ginger Grab, "The Relentless Teacher," Living Pulpit [July–September,
1998,
Vol. 7, no. 3), p. 6]
Feeling
he needed more money to support the lifestyle he desired,
Ivan Ilych set out to find a new, better-paying position
and having, with great good fortune, found it,
"Ivan Ilych was completely happy."
He
bought a new house and set out to redecorate it.
Oh,
"Once when mounting a step-ladder to show the upholsterer how
he wanted the hangings draped, he made a false step and slipped
The bruised place was painful but the pain soon passed"
The
results of his redecoration pleased Ivan Ilych immensely, yet:
"In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people
of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed
only in resembling others like themselves"
Ivan
Ilych's injury continued to hurt a bit when touched.
"But on the whole his life ran its course
as he believed life should do: easily, pleasantly, and decorously."
"The pleasures connected with his work were pleasures of
ambition; his social pleasures were those of vanity;
but Ivan Ilych's greatest pleasure was playing bridge."
And, of course, he "formed a circle of acquaintances among
the best people and kept at arm's length and shook off
the various shabby friends and relations"
Soon,
however, Ivan Ilych's physical discomfort increased.
"And his irritability became worse and worse"
"There was no deceiving himself: something terrible,
new, and more important than anything before in his life,
was taking place within him."
He
went from physician to physician, getting differing diagnoses
and contradictory medical instructions.
He wanted to continue to deny the seriousness of his injury, but
something inside of himself wouldn't allow him his old illusions;
something inside of himself pushed him toward facing the truth:
that "his life was poisoned," that he was dying.
Still he struggled against this awareness.
One moment he would recognize he was dying;
the next moment he would angrily deny it;
the next moment he would try to understand
what his death could possibly mean;
and the next moment he would try "to get back
into the former current of thoughts that had once
screened the thought of death from him" altogether.
But
finally, after much physical and mental suffering, Ivan Ilych
came to accept his vulnerability, looked death in its face—and wept.
In the release that followed, "he grew quiet
and not only ceased weeping but even held his breath
and became all attention.
It was as though he were listening not to an audible voice
but to the voice of his soul"
He began to review his life in earnest,
and except for his "first recollections of childhood"
"all that had then seemed joys now melted before his
sight and turned into something trivial + often nasty."
The thought forced itself upon him:
"'Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done.'"
This
thought was enormously painful to him, + he tried to dismiss it.
But at last, after a full month of struggle, he had to ask himself,
"'What if my whole life has really been wrong?'.",
lived on the wrong principles.
"It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts
to struggle against what was considered good
by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable
impulses which he had immediately suppressed,
might have been the real thing, and all the rest false."
He
then "began to pass his life in review in quite a new way."
And that night he saw clearly that
"all for which he had livedwas
not real at all, but
a terrible + huge deception which had hidden both life + death."
But what was the right thing to have done?
He didn't know.
His
pain intensifed, and for three days he screamed out horribly.
In
his delirium he had a vision of death as an invisible, resistless force
that was seeking to thrust him into a black sack that,
through its hole, appeared utterly dark and bottomless.
"Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side
and he fell through the hole and there at the bottom
[quite unexpectedly] was a light" that enabled him
to say to himself in peace:
"'Yes, it was all not the right thing, [my life,]'
'but that's no matter. [The right]
can [still] be done.'"
But still he didn't know what the right thing was.
Then he opened his eyes and saw
his son and wife at his bedside, both of whom
he'd loathed for most of his married life, + suddenly
he felt for them instead love, and compassion,
and sorrow.
On
his deathbed, two hours before his death, he felt love
for his neighbors + enemies—his family. And
then, having felt love,
when he sought his former accustomed fear of death
he did not find it.
"There was no fear because {, it seemed to him,]
there was no death.
In place of death there was light."
You
see, Ivan Ilych had discovered
that it is love that is the right and the real in life.
"'So that's what it is!' he suddenly exclaimed aloud. 'What joy!'"
"'Death is finished,' he said to himself.
'It is no more!'
Then he drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh,
stretched out, and died."
Ivan
Ilych discovered on his death bed, just two hours before he died,
that he had been living on the wrong principles.
He discovered just two hours before he died
what the right principle is.
He discovered it is love—not pleasure or propriety or power—
it is love that stands at the heart of life and cancels out death.
I
pray that all of us here this morning may learn that truth
long before our deaths.
"'Teacher,
which commandment in the law is the greatest?'"
Which is to stand centermost in our lives?
And Jesus, the new Moses, said,
"'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your mind.' And
'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"
Let
us pray:
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