Read Deuteronomy 34:1-12
How many of you have
ever had the opportunity to go to Disney World?
Pretty amazing right? My parents
took me and my sister when I was little and I remember the magical feeling the
place had as you enter from Tomorrow Land to Adventure Land in Magic Kingdom,
or when you see the Giant golf ball as I call it in Epcot. Last year on our
honeymoon Heather and I the wonderful opportunity to spend a day at Magic
Kingdom, and I have to say it is amazing how special the place can be even as
adults. Millions of people flood into this theme park every year, but I wonder
how many of them actually know the history of Disney World.
In 1955, Walt Disney opened Disneyland in California and
that theme park took off. Quickly however, businesses around the area took
advantage of all the tourists that were coming into the area, and shop after
shop went up around the park, surrounding the beautiful park with ugly
businesses signs and décor. Walt Disney hated this, and once he realized that
only 5% of tourists to Disneyland came from east of the Mississippi, Disney had
another idea. He was going to build a Disney World on the east coast. Disney
did not want the same thing that happened to Disney land happen to this new
theme park and so he scoured the country for large masses of land that he could
buy, and he found that land in a swampy unwanted area just outside of Orlando.
Walt Disney was a shrewd businessman however, this land he wanted to buy was
cheap enough now, but if word got out that Disney was planning to build a theme
park on this land, then the price would skyrocket and his dream of a Disney
World would be in jeopardy. So Disney set up a bunch of dummy businesses and
went around buying up all of the land. By the time people figured out what was
going on, it was too late, Disney was ready to build his theme park. He had a wonderful vision of making the Magic
Kingdom, a park based off of Disneyland but with its own differences a well. He
dreamed of another area in which you could seemingly travel the world and its
cultures, which eventually became a reality in Epcot. Disney put so much work
and effort, time and leadership into this great dream that he had, but sadly he died in 1966 from lung cancer,
before Disney world was completed. He never got to see his Magic Kingdom or his
Epcot, and he did not get to witness the ways in which the park would evolve
adding Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom over the years. Disney’s dream
became a reality and more, and yet for all the work that he put into it, he
never got to see it.
It is heartbreaking to put our heart in soul in to
something, and yet never see it come to completion. Nobody probably understands
this better than Moses, because that is the situation in which he finds himself
in today’s scripture. In our scripture we find Moses traveling up from the
plains of Moab to the peak of Mt. Pisgah. There on that peak he can see all
around him. At that moment God speaks to Moses an says, “Look there, that is
the valley of Jericho, and there’s
Judah, and Gilead, and Manessah.” This is the promised land that I promised I
would give to your descendants.” You can
almost imagine the excitement that Moses was feeling, he whole life’s journey
was really leading up to this moment, and finally in his old age he has
practically arrived. He could see the Promised Land that he had been dreaming
of for years and years. But then God tells him, “I have
let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” What
heartbreak, the people he had been leading are about to enter the Promised
Land, but the faithful leader of them was not going to make. And sure enough
Moses died, we are told that he died at 120 years, but his sight was unimpaired
and his vigor not abated. In other words Moses saw and understood all that God
showed to him on top of Mt. Pisgah, but
died and was buried just outside in the land of Moab. Moses was honored and
wept over by the Israelite people, but eventually they left his body, and his
burial site which is now unknown, and they continued on the journey.
Mt. Pisgah seemed to be the perfect place for this
happen. You can imagine that once you are at its peak, not only can you see
where you are going but you can also see where you came from. Moses could turn
around and be reminded of the remarkable journey that he lead. As he looked
back over the wilderness he could remember that at one point in his life he
actually lived a rather royal life; having been floated down the river and
rescued and raised by pharaoh’s daughter. He could remember how that life of
luxury shattered when he murdered the slave driver and how he had to flee for
his life. As he looked off into the wilderness behind him he can remember his
days as a shepherd and the day on which God spoke to him through the burning
bush. He could remember his desperate pleas with pharaoh to let his people go,
and he could remember the fear and devastation caused by the plagues. As he
looked out at the clouds from Mt. Pisgah he could remember the faithful cloud
of God that led the people across the Red Sea and then closed it behind them to
set them free from pharaoh’s army. He could remember the people cry for food in
the wilderness and how God provided Manna to eat. As Moses stood there on the
peak of Mt. Pisgah I’m sure he was reminded of his time ontop of Mt. Horeb
where he received from God the Ten Commandments, and he can remember the shock of the statue of
the golden calf that awaited him when he came down from that mount. As Moses
looked back to the wilderness from ontop of Mt. Pisgah, he was reminded of his
journey as a whole. He was reminded that at times no one believed him, at times
the journey was almost unbearable, but that he continued on because he had a
vision, he had a call from God of a Promised Land of milk and honey, and he was
going to do whatever it takes to get there.
As Moses stands on Mt. Pisgah and turns and faces the
valley of Jericho, he can finally see that Promised Land that he has spent most
of his life striving for. As he remembers all of the chaos that has happened in
his life, as he remembers all of the hardships he had faced, he can now see
right in front of him what it had all been for. That milk and honey is so close
that he can almost taste, but sadly poor Moses never gets to taste the
sweetness of the Promised Land. The great leader who held together this
sometimes ungrateful and unsatisfied group of Israelites, never got to take a
step into the Promised Land. It’s not fair. Shouldn’t someone who worked so
hard, who was so faithful to God get to at least experience what it is that he
had been working towards? Sometimes,
that’s just not the way it works. In fact as Christians, more than likely our
fate will be a similar one to Moses’s. We will spend our whole lives as
Christians working and serving the Lord, helping to build up and bring forth
the Kingdom of God. We will put our heart and soul into this work of discipleship,
we will keep focusing on the beautiful vision of the Kingdom come, but more
than likely we will die before we ever see it actualized. One of the hardest
parts about living a life in service to God, is that often we don’t get to see
what comes out of the hard labor that we put into the Church and into the
Kingdom of God.
I think it is remarkable that this scripture falls on
this Sunday of all Sundays. Later today we will be gathering together for our
Charge Conference, and what is Charge conference really but a chance to travel
up to the peak of Mt. Pisgah. It is a chance for us to stop in our journey as
the church and look back and see exactly where it is that we have come from;
but also an opportunity to forward towards that Promised Land, that Kingdom
Come that we have been striving towards. As we ourselves stand upon our own Mt.
Pisgah today we can look back and see where it is that we have come from. We
can remember our struggles and our conflicts that we have faced. We can
remember some of our frustrations with leadership in the church. We can
remember all of the countless meetings and hours of service fulfilling our
position as an officer of the church. Still, we can also remember the joys of
vacation Bible School, or revival. We can celebrate in the ways in which we
have reached out to our community and to our world. We also take time to
remember all of those who do not continue the journey with us, and now from
their labors rest. This charge conference, this Mt. Pisgah experience allows us
to look back and remember where it is that we have come from, both the good and
the bad, but it also reminds us that our journey is not yet complete.
Why do we do what we do for Charge Conference? Why does
the finance committee meet to plan a budget for the upcoming year? Why does the
lay leadership and Nominations committee help to select officers for the year
to come? Why does the Pastor parish relations committee meet to review how
things are going between the pastor and churches and make recommendations for the
coming year? Why do we audit our books, or double check the actions of our
trustees? We do it all because our journey is not yet complete. We do all these
things because we are still working towards that Kingdom Come. Now and then we
are given little glimpses of what that Kingdom will look like, but we have not
yet experienced what it will look like in its completion. Sadly the truth is
that for all of this work that we put into serving the Lord, for all of the
blood, sweat and tears that we have put into this church we will likely not see
what our labors have wrought. We are
almost all like farmers. We have dug up the ground, and boy was some of that
ground hard to break. We have scattered the seeds in the mission fields and
covered them for safety. We come and continue to water the seeds, we come and
pull the weeds that would threaten the future of those seeds, and we might get
to see a little sprout poke its head out of the ground, but rarely will we see
the fruits of our labors in its fullest. That is just the sad truth of being a
disciple of Christ, it’s a sad truth of being of member of the Church, of the
body of Christ; we will work our whole lives in service of God, we will spend
our lives serving the church, and like the little sprout, like Moses’s Mt.
Pisgah experience, we will sometimes get a glimpse of what it is that we are
working towards; but rarely do we experience it for ourselves.
This is a painful message to the world, but I think that
it is a message that makes us as Christians special. This world wants instant
gratification, this world wants to work and immediately reap the benefit of
their work for themselves. As Christians though, we do not work for ourselves.
We do not work for our own benefit, we don’t even work so that we may be saved.
We work because we know that through the power of Christ, this broken world can
be redeemed. We work because Christ has promised us a new heaven and a new
earth in which all things are made new. We work out of hope; not a hope for
ourselves, but a hope for the entire world that is given to us through the
power of and Lordship of Jesus Christ.
So when we have that Mt. Pisgah experience, when we come
to the point in which our journey is about to end, what do we do? Well, we
talked about Disney earlier, and so I’d like to take my advice from a Disney
movie. In the movie the Lion King, the King Mufasa sits on top a mountain with
his son Simba looking out at the Land before him and says, “Look Simba,
everything the light touches is our Kingdom. A King’s time as ruler rises and
falls like the Sun. One day Simba the sun will set on my time here, and will
rise with you.” This scene really is very much like our scripture, with
God showing Moses the light hitting the Promised Land, but reminding him that
his time has come. Though we are not kings this scene reminds us that the
Kingdom of God is before and that we are striving towards it, and yet the ebb
and flow of life means one day the light will set on us, and rise on another.
So when you are faced with your Mt. Pisgah experience, when you know you have come to a point in which you will not
get to see the fruits of your labors, my advice for you is to invite someone to
share in it with you. That though the sun may eventually set on you it may
continue to shine on those your have paved the path for. Though Walt Disney
died, others who were inspired by his
vision made Disney World what it is today. Though Moses did not get to cross
over into the Promised Land, he chose Joshua, a faithful servant to lead the
people into Jericho. Though we might never get to see the fruits of our labors,
when you are climbed that peak and sit ontop of Mt. Pisgah, looking behind to
see where you have come from, and looking ahead to see the future of the
Kingdom of God, bring someone with you, so that even when your journey and your
labor ends, the work that you started and the goal that you strive for still
remains.
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