The Mountain of Longing

When the great cathedrals of Europe were built, they rose inch by inch, stone by carefully chiseled stone, over the course of generations. There’s a story—whether perfectly factual or not, it rings true—of a mason who spent his entire working life shaping ribs for a vaulted ceiling he would never see. Thirty years at the same workbench, tracing the architect’s lines on rough blocks, shaving each curve until it matched the template, carving a tiny flourish in the part that would be hidden in the darkness a hundred feet above the nave. Someone asked him, “Why put so much care into a piece no one will ever see?” He answered, “Because One will see. And because a child yet unborn will stand beneath that ceiling and sing.”

That is holy longing: devoting your life to the beauty God has promised—even when you won’t live long enough to stand under the finished vault. Longing is not the same as grasping. Grasping clutches. Longing opens its hands. Grasping says, “I must have this now.” Holy longing says, “I am content to be a faithful stone-shaper in God’s long project. Others can set the arch. God will get the glory.”

We are continuing our sermon series “Summer in the Mountains” where we have been looking at different mountaintop experiences that people had in scripture, and seeing how we have similar experiences today.

Today we climb Mount Nebo, the mountain of longing. We stand with Moses at the end of a long obedient life and look out over a promise he will not personally enter—not yet. And we are going to learn how to live when the ache of a good desire meets the boundary of our brief years.

Now to set the scene with you, we are at a point just before the Israelites enter into the promised land. Their leader Moses — who has led them out of slavery in Egypt, received the covenant law from God, and has subsequently travelled through the wilderness leading these people — is at the end of his life.

And what a life it was. There were great highs and great lows. Most of those lows had to do with the wandering hearts and loyalties of the people whom he was leading. The Israelites struggled under Moses’s authority. They didn’t like the life that God had given to them on this side of slavery. They weren’t where they wanted to be as a people. They wanted the promised land, and God was slow to give it to them.

God decided they were not ready yet. Their inability to stay loyal to God and to Moses showed God that they had some growing up to do. And Moses had to be the bad guy in their eyes. Moses had to communicate this truth to them. They were what God called a “stiff necked people.” Stubborn.

But God and Moses still wanted the best for them. They wanted to give them the promise that had been made to them and to their ancestors. That promise was a land to call home and a legacy of greatness and prosperity.

Finally at the end of their wandering journey, they stand just on the outskirts of the promised land. All that separates the people of Israel from the land promised to them was the Jordan River, and God’s permission to enter. And it is here that Mt. Nebo sits. And Moses climbs it.

Deuteronomy 34:1–7 NRSV

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain—that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees—as far as Zoar. 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.” Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day. Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated.

What tenderness fills this scene. God shows Moses the land. The verbs slow down—God names regions, valleys, forests, the far horizon. Moses sees the promise—and then, “Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there… at the LORD’s command,” literally “at the mouth of the LORD,” as if he died with the breath of God on his face. And then this astonishing line: “He was buried… but no one knows his burial place.” God, who formed Moses in the bulrushes and carried him through plagues and sea and wilderness, now becomes his undertaker. The One who called him friend lays him to rest. The story honors a faithful life—and it acknowledges an ache that remains.

Why does Moses not enter? The Torah points to the Meribah incident, when Moses struck the rock in anger rather than speaking to it as God commanded. But Deuteronomy 34 is not a scolding. It is a benediction. The emphasis falls not on Moses’ failure but on God’s faithfulness and on the handoff to Moses’s protege Joshua. The last chapter of Moses’ life is written in the ink of grace.

So what does this mountain teach us about the life of holy longing?

It says that Holy Longing enlarges our horizon beyond our lifetime.

God says to Moses, “This is the land I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (v. 4). The promise predates Moses by centuries and will continue after him for generations. Moses’ calling was never to be the owner of the promise but a servant within it—“Moses, the servant of the LORD” (v. 5). Holy longing stretches our imagination beyond our personal timeline. It frees us from the tyranny of needing to see all the results now.

Hebrews 11 puts Moses in a great procession of saints who “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them” (Heb. 11:13). They waved across the valley to a future secured by God. They shaped stones others would set.

Friends, in a culture allergic to waiting, where everything is on-demand, the Church is called to be a people of long obedience. Parents who plant gospel seeds they may not harvest. Teachers who speak blessing into children who will not thank them until they are forty. Church members who invest in a community that will outlive them. Activists for justice who work for a city they may never see fully renewed. Pastors (like me) who labor for a congregation our grandkids will inherit. We do this because the promise is bigger than any one of us.

This reality is baked into the history of this church. The building you are sitting in holds this type of legacy. In 1925 when this building was being constructed, Rev. John Hendry could not wait to preach the first sermon from its pulpit and see all of the good work that would happen here. He could see the construction of the church from his home, the parsonage which used to be on site. But John never preached from this pulpit. He passed away before construction was complete.

But I imagine in those final days of his life he looked out at this building as Moses had looked on the promised land, knowing that he had poured himself into one of God’s projects that would bless generations. And it has. Because here we are.

Psalm 90:12 NRSV

So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.

Counting our days doesn’t shrink our hope; it right-sizes it. Our days are limited; God’s faithfulness is not. Wisdom is joyfully participating in a promise we cannot complete.

Participating in a promise we can not complete teaches us something important: Holy longing rests in presence more than outcomes.

The most precious gift Moses receives on Nebo is not a view but Presence. God is right there. “At the LORD’s command” Moses dies, and the Lord himself buries him (vv. 5–6). The grave is unmarked, as if to say: the point is not the monument; the point is the God who keeps company with his friends.

There is a line Methodist people love to repeat from John Wesley’s final moments: “The best of all is, God is with us.” That’s the secret on Nebo. Not, “The best of all is, I finally got what I asked for,” but God with us—in the ache, in the limits, in the handoff. When Presence becomes the treasure, we are free to trust God with the outcomes.

Moses’ eyes are “unimpaired” and his “vigor had not abated” (v. 7). He is not worn out and bitter. He is clear-eyed, heart-strong, at peace. Holy longing does that. It purifies the heart of the feverish demand to be the finisher, and it replaces it with a deeper hunger: “If your Presence will not go, do not carry us up from here” (Exod. 33:15). Better the wilderness with God than the vineyards without Him.

For us Wesleyans, this is the way of holiness—not a clenched jaw perfectionism, but love made whole by steady communion. Holiness is the life in which the ache of longing is held inside the warmth of God’s companionship. We seek God in the means of grace—prayer, Scripture, the Lord’s Supper, Christian conferencing, works of mercy—not to manipulate results, but to dwell with the God who is our result.

Lastly, what we must understand about Holy longing is this: Holy Longing passes the work to others with a blessing.

Deuteronomy 34:9 NRSV

Joshua son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Deuteronomy 34 doesn’t end in grief; it ends in handoff. Holy longing refuses to clutch the baton. It blesses the next runner. Moses cannot go across; Joshua must. The people mourn Moses, and then they move.

It is no small thing to bless the person who will do what you dreamed of doing. Parents feel this when grown children step into vocations beyond them. Founders feel this when successors lead the organization to places they imagined but could not reach. Pastors feel this when, after years of sowing, someone else reaps. The flesh wants to say, “But this was my vision.” Holy longing says, “Thanks be to God—now take the next faithful step.”

Wesley’s heart burned with this. He gathered bands and classes not to center himself but to multiply holiness of heart and life in ordinary people, in every town and field. He famously said, “I look upon all the world as my parish,” which wasn’t permission to control it; it was the freedom to bless it with the gospel wherever he found himself. And when he died, the Methodist movement did not end. It spread. That’s holy longing at work: vision released to others, in the Spirit’s power.

There is one more mountain that reframes Nebo. In the Gospels, Jesus climbs a high mountain—the Mount of Transfiguration—and Moses appears there with Elijah, speaking with Jesus in glory (Matt. 17:1–3; Mark 9:2–4; Luke 9:28–31). Think of it: Moses, who viewed the land from a distance, now stands in it beside the true and better Joshua—Yeshua/Jesus—the One who will lead the whole world into God’s rest. Moses’ longing is not mocked; it is fulfilled in Christ.

And there is yet another mountain—Calvary—where Jesus bears every unfulfilled ache, every deferred hope, every tear, every wilderness wandering, and he carries them through death into resurrection life. Because of Jesus, no faithful longing is wasted. Nothing given in love is lost. The cathedral will be finished, not by our strength but by His. The child yet unborn will stand beneath the vault and sing, because Christ is risen and is making all things new.

So if you are living with longing—longing for a healed relationship, for justice in your neighborhood, for a prodigal to come home, for a congregation renewed, for a body made whole—do not despise the ache. Let it become worship. Let it anchor you in the Presence. Let it move you to invest in others. And trust that in Jesus every holy longing will find its Yes and Amen.