We all come from our time away from the gathering of the Church, a whole week. Many of us have faced difficulties, change, new things to learn, work, and joy. We know ourselves as children of God, in pilgrimage throughout our life on earth, until we come to meet our Maker.
The great Cuban storyteller, Onelio Jorge Cardoso, is the author of the tale Francisca y la muerte, -Francis and Death. Briefly, and freely, told, it is the story of Francisca, an elderly lady from a rural town in Cuba.
Francisca had retired as a school teacher, and always led a very busy life, before and since. She sung in the local choir, helped with after-school tutoring, tended to her garden and chickens, visited her ailing sister across town, attended meetings and events with the local community, spent lots of time with her grandchildren, and was learning to paint with watercolors. She went everywhere, and she walked everywhere.
One day, however, as it must happen to us all, Death came to town, looking for Francisca. It was her turn.
So Death went to Francisca’s house, early in the morning, confident to find her there.
But no. Francisca was gone. Not in the house, or the backyard, or the garden. She was just gone.
So Death walked around the block and ran into a neighbor.
--¿‘Francisca, you say?”, said the neighbor. “I saw her leaving her house very, very early, on her way to visit with her sister” --- Which, as we now know, was all the way across town.
So off went Death. The sun was rising, so was the humidity, and Death, with all those robes, and carrying that heavy scythe, was feeling the heat.
Death finally made it to the sister’s house. –
“Oh I am so sorry, ¡Francisca just left!”, said the sister. “She had a meeting with the local garden group, somewhere downtown”.
O brother, Death thought. This was supposed to have been an easy one.
Off he went -and so Death spent all day, chasing Francisca around town, walking from the garden to the school, from the theater to the market, from the clinic back to the school…
By sunset, Death was exhausted from walking, de-hydrated, out of breath. He sat in the town’s square. Suddenly -a tight pain in the chest, blurry vision -and Death dropped dead from a heart attack. -----
Meanwhile, Francisca was reaching her home, back from the clinic --and a neighbor greeted her:
--“Francisca! You are always so busy. ¡You are never going to die!”.
--“Not today”, replied Francisca. “Not today”.
But seriously. I do not know how many years Francisca went on to live. But it is true that we often associate a long life, with a sense of fulfillment, completion, wisdom, purpose.
May you live to 120 is a common blessing among Jews, based on the life and times of Moses.
Our first reading marks the end of the Exodus, the wandering of Israel in search for freedom and purpose, the end of the search for the Promised Land. This reading from Deuteronomy also marks the ending of the Torah or Law of Israel, the first Five Books of our Bibles.
And, as we know, it also marks the end of Moses’s earthly life:
“Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequalled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.”
Moses died in Mount Nebo, in the region directly east of the Jordan River and just northeast of the Dead Sea, in what is today the country or kingdom of Jordan. This much we are told.
But what was this view that Moses looked at before he died?
As Deuteronomy says, Moses could see: 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.
So I looked on the internet for some photos of Mount Nebo. (screen presentation)
Moses is so deeply revered by Christians, and one could say, even more so by the Jewish people, because of his place as the greatest prophet in Israel, his leadership of the people before and during the Exodus from Egypt, and his role in the giving of the Law, or Torah. We Christians look back to Moses and one could say to the whole of the life of Israel, as a place of revelation of the roots and overall context for the becoming of Jesus of Nazareth, and therefore our own story as well.
The Law of Israel, the Torah of God, in its origins had a very pronounced accent of liberation, coming into life as it did at the pinnacle of the Exodus of Israel, by the hand of Yahweh, out to the Promised Land.
Unfortunately, as we know, the Torah eventually also became an object of legalistic speculation, a tool for exercising power, and a justification for social hierarchies of power in Israel.
In our Gospel for today, the question posed to Jesus by a Pharisee, ‘a lawyer’, is visibly within this shape of legalistic arguing, and I think that it was meant to disqualify the authority of Jesus as teacher of the Law. Or, as the Gospel so eloquently puts it, the lawyer asked Jesus this question ‘to test him’.
“Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?”, --by all accounts, a popular topic of discussion among students of the Torah -¿which of the 613 commandments in the Law is the most important one? In our own context, the question could be instead, “¿Which is the best Gospel?”. Or, “¿Who is the best writer, Peter, or Paul?” And so on.
Jesus’ response, at first hearing, does pass the purity standards of the Pharisees -God is above everything, and so should our love for God be above everything. However, it is the bridge that Jesus makes, “and the second is like unto it”, what was likely to set off the ‘blasphemy’ radars in our dear friends the Pharisees.
We know, however, that seeking a right relationship with and responding to the love of God by means of loving our neighbors is the key human response to the message of the Scriptures -of which, for both Jesus and Pharisees, the Law was a key component. Indeed, for Christians, as John Newman wrote, “the way we define our neighbor -who is my, your neighbor- reveals the kind of God in whom one believes”.
This vital point, made by Jesus in our reading from Matthew, was likely lost to the Pharisees, in their also likely inner struggle in reconciling their zeal for the Law with the Love they are being spoken about.
And I mean, and I believe Jesus meant it first --Love not necessarily a sense, a feeling, a passion, but a purpose of fidelity to the covenant, a thing of our wills and our actions, a way of life or, maybe, a way of seeking to live on earth while hoping for heaven. To live on earth as if our lives in heaving hung on it.
Speaking of hanging -when Jesus says “on these two commandments hang all the Law, and the Prophets”.
On the one hand, Rabbis or Teachers of the Law say that the whole world hangs on the Torah, “even on the proper balance of every word in it”. Worship of God, works of charity, truth, peace -they all rest and hang on the Law.
On the other hand, in our reading from Matthew, Jesus flips this relationship, and makes the Law depend on those actions which speak to the character of the Law: love. That thing of our wills and our actions, that way of seeking to live on earth while hoping for heaven -indeed, to live on earth as if our lives in heaven hung on it.
After a life of struggle, faith, falling and rising, moving and rising, Moses met his Creator.
So did our ancestors -and so did Francisca, busy life and all. And so will we all.
In both life and death, however, just like Moses and Israel, we know that we are being led, we see the divine hand of Jesus piloting our lives, as we move, by grace, out of the slavery of death and to eternal life, that promised land of the reign of God.
That leading, however, happens here, starts here, and already reveals its grace here, among us. As we gather as church to be fed from the Scriptures, to be nourished in the Eucharist, we are being led.
But even beyond that. We are called to be Jesus to each other, and indeed we often struggle to be Jesus to each other, and we also struggle to discern Jesus in each other. But that is the point: we struggle, we persist in loving God with all our heart, and soul, and mind, and our neighbour as ourselves. And so we should. Nobody said it would be easy. We are told, however, that it is holy. Worth the struggle and the love. And our calling as Christians.
Let us pray. Lord God our redeemer, who heard the cry of your people and sent your servant Moses to lead them out of slavery, free us from the tyranny of sin and death, and by the leading of your Spirit, bring us to our promised land; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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