Present

DEUTERONOMY 34:1-12

Transitions are always difficult. What is known swaps for what is unknown. Familiarity trades places with unfamiliarity. There is a real sense of wandering around in the dark. 

You wake up in the middle of the night. You rise from bed. The once easy landscape of the bedroom is suddenly a minefield of unseen obstacles and hazards that might suddenly reveal themselves in a barked shin.

That is what transition feels like.

Moses faces an ultimate transition. He is at the end of the line despite the fact that the people he has led for forty years still have a long way to go. He is at the River Jordan. God shows him the other side, but reminds Moses that he will never set foot within it. Joshua will lead the people across the river. The loss is palpable. Moses loses his place in so many ways—he is no longer the leader; he will not see a promise kept; he will not be in charge; he will not be the Man…I imagine Moses, sitting on the hillside, looking over the new home for his people, tears sliding down his cheeks—it is not his—any of it.

But God is present. God is right there with Moses. God will be with Moses each step toward Moses’ end. That is sure and certain because God has been with Moses each step until this moment. To us, this end seems unfair, but that misses the presence of grace that kept Moses going for forty years, and even before that momentous journey. God led the people. God fed the people. God kept the people. God was there. So, God is here.

God is with us in each and every transition—as close as sitting on a hillside next to us. 

That presence may not make a transition any easier, but it does help to know we do not face our transitions on our own. 

Remember that as we deal with the inevitable changes that come. We move from one phase of life to another. We move within our jobs and from job to job. We watch children grow and parents age. Our health can become nearly whimsical as it changes, bringing all manner of consequence. Relationships evolve and morph, sometimes well and sometimes not. So much is unknown. So much is still unmapped. So much feels like stumbling around in the bedroom after midnight—we know the landscape, but we can’t see it—what is lurking there to trip us up? Who will be our Joshua?

Well, that all waits to be seen…

Frustrating, no?

But…there is someone with us—God is in this place!

God is here. God is now. God is always present. With each breath, God is with us. When God first encountered Moses forty years before our passage, Moses asked God’s name. God simply told Moses, I AM. Scholars have debated for centuries as to how to translate that I AM. We will never be able to actually render that Hebrew YHWH into anything in English. All we can know—and this was God’s intent—Moses no more grasped that YHWH than we do—is that God IS. That’s about all the sense we can get from that YHWH. God is active—God is a verb. God is a relationship. God is always now. That means that everything we hope in God is right here, right now—alive, kicking, and working.

But where is the evidence?

Ah, now there’s a conundrum.

But not really.

We are part of a community of faith. As Presbyterians, that community defines our existence. We are connected—members with one another, no matter which congregation they belong to—for all of our congregations are connected to one another—that is the definition of a presbytery. In other words, no church is their statistical report—rather, every church is as large as the presbytery. This framework is how we embody our existence as Reformed Christians. We are there for one another as God is there for all of us, ideally. 

For and church in Sacramento Presbytery this morning, that means that you are not the gathered band of hardy souls worshipping together in a particular sanctuary—you are 8000 strong. I remind you of the message in Acts 2 as the first Pentecost was winding to a close—

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

The presbytery is here for you.

We are in this together. We will walk beside you. We will walk with you. We will offer what is needed.

You are not alone. We will be the presence of God for all, for that is what God calls us to be.

Transitions are hard. Sometimes, they hurt. But you are not alone. God is here. God is here because we are here. We are here for one another. We are here for one another because God is here.