Beyond the Wilderness (3-6-2022) Deuteronomy 26.1-11

Imagine you are standing in a large crowd. You know the people gathered around you as you have been around them your entire life. And what a life it has been. Traveling around in the scrub desert areas and trying to eeek out a living in what is known as The Wilderness. Granted, you have not had it as difficult as it could have been. There has been food that has miraculously been given each morning. There has been cloud that provides a presence that God is with you at all times. And there is a hope that sustains you. That hope is that there is a better land that is coming soon. A land promised to be flowing with milk and honey. A land that will be yours rather than lands that one has to get permission to travel through.

And now it seems that the time is near. All the people are gathered together on the heights overlooking the land that has been promised to you. The one who has led you throughout the entire time of the wanderings, the man who talked to God face to face is standing on a higher piece of ground and is wanting to say something to the entire group, the nation that has been in the Wilderness for 40 years, or, a really, really long time.

The leader, Moses, raises his hand to get everyone’s attention, especially those who are to tell his words to those listening further away from his voice. They will be the ones who disseminate the message to those who cannot hear it from the front. And then he begins.

Moses tells the story of how they were redeemed by God from slavery in Egypt and how they were in the Wilderness. He gives them a creed to state every morning when they rise from their beds. And he gives them the law a second time (the word Deuteronomy means “second law”), the law that had been handed down on Mount Horeb.

As he continues, one can see that Moses is weary. He is old and the years have been hard on him. There is even the word coming from high up that he will not be the one leading them into the promised land. So, what he is doing is the next best thing that he can do: give the people the law and remind them who and whose they are.

And so, we come to the text for today. Moses has been giving them instructions on how to live in the land. Here he is telling them how to give worship in the time of the harvests. This was a time of the first fruits, the time when the first harvest was to be presented to the Lord. This was a time to give thanks for the gift of the land that God had given to the Hebrews. They were reminded that they did not acquire the land that gave the gifts of grain and fruits, but that it was a gift from God. The one bringing the first fruits was to make a liturgical statement that said: “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.”[1] This was to show that the proper attitude of worship as being adhered to.

But it was what comes next that I really want us to look into. What comes next is a confession of faith and history. A confession that expresses the attitude of whole hearted devotion to God. It begins, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…”[2] Here the worshiper states that Jacob was the one who began the nation. The adjective “wandering” can also be translated as destitute or perishing which explains why he went to Egypt. There he took his entire family, which we are told in Genesis numbered about 70 people. But in the time of the sojourn in Egypt the 70 grew so large that they were considered a nation. A nation that had to be dealt with by the Egyptians.

The confession moves on to tell the story of how the Hebrews were oppressed and put into slavery. And in their time of oppression, they cried out to the Lord. The Lord heard them and listened to them.

Then the Lord did something about what was happening to those in captivity. God “heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8 The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders…”[3]God led the Hebrews out of the land of Egypt and brought them through the Red Sea. There were many signs and wonders that were done in God’s name: the manna that appeared every morning and the quails that came in to bring meat. The sign of the water coming from a rock. But most of all the wonder of the Law coming down from the mountain and being given to the people in the camp. This was the ultimate wonder. That God would give them a code to live by that would see them through if they obeyed.

And now they stand on the cusp of the land that they were promised. A land flowing with milk and honey, two things that cannot be produced by any work that someone does on their own. These are things that can only come from God. This is what the Promised Land is. It is a gift from God.

At the end of this recital of the confession the person bringing the first fruits will say “So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”[4] That is the end of the confession and the creed. With that the person, the priests and the sojourners (or aliens) in the land will celebrate the bounty that is given by the Lord their God.

We have all kinds of liturgies that we follow in our lives. One we follow here in church with the liturgy of call to worship, confession, prayer of illumination and the affirmation of faith. Sometimes we do this with a sense of worship that it is intended to be. More often than not we do it with sort of a mindless going through the motions. But if we were to realize what those liturgies do for us, we would appreciate them more.

The liturgies make us who we are. But it is our confessions, our creeds, that tie us together with those around us and with those Christians in the world outside of Pilot Mountain. And we may say “Ah, what use are these creeds anyway?” Jaroslav Pelikan gave this defense of the creeds: “My faith life, like that of everyone else, fluctuates. There are ups and downs and hot spots and cold spots, and boredom and ennui and all the rest can be there. And so I’m not asked on a Sunday morning, “As of 9:20, what do you believe?” And then you sit down with a three-by-five index card saying, “Now let’s see. What do I believe today?” No, that’s not what they’re asking me. They’re asking me, “Are you a member of a community which now, for a millennium and a half, has said, ‘We believe in one God’?”[5]Are we a community of faith that says this very thing? In a few moments I will ask you to stand and state what we believe. Will we be like those in Deuteronomy who looked beyond the wilderness and stated what they believed to be their history and their faith in God? In a few minutes we will celebrate communion. Will we be like those who brought the first fruits as we are reminded of the gift of God for us in the bread and the cup?

Deanna Thompson has this to say about this creedal statement in Deuteronomy: “While the function of the confession of faith in chapter 6 is catechetical, intended to teach and instruct the Israelites and their children on who they are, whom they worship, and how they are to live, the function of the confession in chapter 26 is liturgical, focusing on how Israel will thank and praise God for their new life in the land.”[6] When we see that our liturgies are to praise God then they take on a whole new significance in our lives. They become vehicles of our adoration of God and of our thankfulness to God for the gifts that we have been given. The greatest gift that we have been given is not a first fruits, but eternal life. And like those in Deuteronomy, we are called to remember that all that we have is a gift from God. May we never forget this. Let us praise through our liturgies. Amen.

[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [3] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [4] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [5]Thompson, Deanna A. Deuteronomy. Ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. First edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014. Print. Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. [6]Thompson, Deanna A. Deuteronomy. Ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. First edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014. Print. Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible.