On finishing our reading of the Torah

11/27

The final verses of the  Torah

 Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.
Deuteronomy 34:10

Well, we have finished. It took over 2 years,meeting every Monday night working our way through the Torah...the first five books fo the Bible...the Five Books of Moses  ....line by line. Some joined and  others left along the way but an intrepid crew saw it through. It is somewhat embarrassing to say that in over  40 years  of ministry , I've never read all these books  all the way  through. It was quite an adventure. Of course there's the story of Creation and the Patriarchs and the sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus and page after page of intricate descriptions of vestments and worship accoutrements and details of the ark and tons of acacia wood and enumerations of tribes and marching orders and long detailed laws covering every minute detail of life from eating to sex. 

Russ, Leila, Dion, and Marsha

The value of reading every word is allowing your head to swim. To get lost in the dance of detail. To ponder the unanswerable question as to why they wrote this book  this way when it was written centuries later to create a mythic history for a created people. Perhaps to convince a people to return to a land from which they had been taken away and from a land in which they ad now become comfortable. We  can understand it  as royal propaganda from the Solomon era empire. And we can see as we read the ongoing tension between what Wes Howard-Brook has called the two religions of the Bible, the religion of Covenant and Creation vs. the  religion of Empire. It's all there.

In the final chapters, we read Moses' farewell, And God's final words a  interaction  with Moses. Marsha points  out that after all Moses has gone through, after all he has done for God, it seems unfair for the sake of one relatively  minor  transgression (or even a big one) to not to be allowed to enter the Promised land. To have to be satisfied with just seeing it from the mountain top.

And it's easy to remember the words of Dr.KIng before his  assassination: 

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

There is something oh so common about getting a glimpse of the promised land and not being able to get there...

And we read of Moses' death and burial  in a place where no one would know...so it wouldn't become a shrine or a place  of pilgrimage or a place of violent contention like the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron,. He belongs to the  mountains.

In the end, what have we learned from our journey?
1. We do not take this journey alone. It's not about rugged individualism and self-made men  and women. No Ayn Rand Atlas Shrigging. It's about community. And our interrelatedness and mutual accountability and obligation. I remembered Native American friends in Oklahoma talking about how hard it was to  adjust to white education where "being better than.." was encouraged instead of everyone helping each other. The life  of a faith community is a team sport.

2. In our communities, there is an absolute obligation to protect and defend "the widow, the orphan and the stranger at your gate..". That obligation is woven into the very fabric of our scripture, it's in the DNA of our faith. To ignore that is to deny how we were created. And the story is clear...the society that does his will be woven together tightly, the ones that do not will be weak and divided and vulnerable and will be easily taken over. And exiled. The warning should be clear.

3. The experience of the journey, of life itself, is inherently and unavoidably tragic. It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, fair or not. It just is. As Rubem Alves has said, we need to e able to embrace life  in all its perplexity, paradox but most of all, profound  beauty.

4. Though we may not get to the Promised land, like Moses -- and Dr. King-- we know it's there. And  that what we do now helps us all move a little closer. And we can take comfort.. and even joy... in that knowledge. 

On Simchat Torah, our Jewish neighbors finish the last words of The Torah then open the scroll to the beginning  and start all over again. It's an unbroken cycle. The journey continues. And we are part of it.