A
couple of the things that I think of as characteristic of Deuteronomy do not appear
in our chapters for today. Soon we will read about God’s love for Israel and
the command that we love God in return. There has not been a lot of love talk
to this point in the Old Testament, so I look forward to that in the next few
days. By chapter twelve, we will also get into the emphasis on sacrificing at
the ONE place that God will choose—the temple. Sacrifices anywhere else are
considered, almost by definition, idolatrous.
What
we do get in this passage is a clear lesson that God punishes those who are not
faithful and obedient, and God rewards those who are. As Moses surveys what
happens after the Hebrew people leave Mount Sinai, he reminds them that God
punished them with forty years of wandering in the desert for their refusal to
fight the Canaanites when God first told them to. We all know that it doesn’t
always work out that way. Sometimes unfaithful people prosper, and sometimes
very faithful people suffer. Still, I like Deuteronomy as long as we take the
long view. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, the moral arc of the universe is
long, but it bends towards justice.
The
commentary for today notes that Moses is reviewing the past failings of the
people. The commentator says, remembering our own past failings can be part of
spiritual growth, but that brooding over them can also be damaging. That is a
helpful point. We participate in the moral arc of the universe as it bends
towards justice when we learn from our mistakes. We do not when we get stuck,
obsessing about our mistakes rather than living into the future. The next step
for the Hebrew people who have been wandering in the wilderness for so long is
to enter the Promised Land and construct a model society. They fail at that in
many ways. But they do use their past mistakes as a springboard to future
action, at least theoretically informed by a theological vision of God’s
justice. I like that.
Fr. Harvey
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