Sermon at Saint Margaret’s Anglican Church, Budapest (2026.10.04)Pentecost 22 (Proper 25), Year A

Sermon at Saint Margaret’s Anglican Church, Budapest (2026.10.04)

Pentecost 22 (Proper 25), Year A

Deut 34:1-12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thess 2:1-8; Matt 22:34-46

Our first Reading today – the conclusion of Moses’ life with quite literally a mountaintop experience – is one of the most poignant moments in Scripture. Something about the life of Moses, this towering hero of our faith despite being deeply flawed (like all the other biblical heroes, both before and after Jesus), summiting Mount Nebo in his old age and gazing over at the Promised Land in the distance, whilst knowing that he himself will never enter into it, stirs something up in me deep down.

As a young man I was bothered by it. It felt unfair that due to one moment of losing his cool, he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land. For 40 years he had shepherded this ungrateful and obstinate people through the wilderness of doubt, defiance, idolatry, complaint and rebellion, and in the final year he finally snapped, his patience running out as he shouted his frustration with these “rebels”, taking his staff and striking the rock at Meribah – twice for good measure – to miraculously provide water to the angry mob.

I’m guessing the Hebrew text omits the choice words Moses might have uttered in his frustration…

Granted, in his anger Moses took credit for the miracle instead of attributing it to God, implying that it was through his own power that water gushed forth. But still, the punishment, at least on the surface, seems excessive.

It is a tension that has a long history, and there is an extensive Midrashic tradition in which Moses pleads with God to be allowed to enter the Promised Land. A Midrash is an imaginative rabbinical story that creatively fills in the gaps of Scripture to get at the “why” question. In one of them, Moses tries his best to barter with God, gradually negotiating down until at one point he pleads to be transformed into an animal or bird, just so that he can physically touch the soil of the land (Misrash Tanchuma).

In another Midrash (Midrash Petirat Moshe), God commands an angel to lock all the gates of Heaven so that Moses’ prayers cannot ascend and reach him – given the risk that they might cause God to change His mind (see Dan’s sermon on Moses’ intercession two weeks ago)!

Both get at the same tension of Moses not being allowed into the Promised Land despite all that he has been through and done. It somehow doesn’t feel right.

As I’ve grown older though, this account of the LORD bringing Moses up onto Mount Nebo and showing him the land He swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, increasingly captures a different part of my heart. The first half of the sentence – “I have let you see it with your eyes,” counterbalances the second, “But you shall not cross over there” (Deut 34:4).

Now Moses had seen a lot in his life. Beginning with his birth in Egypt when Pharaoh had ordered the killing of all newborn boys born to Hebrew parents, Moses was famously placed in a basket on the Nile River and ended up being adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. Thus, not only did Moses miraculously survive, but grew up in the Royal Palace and received the best education Egypt had to offer – including, crucially, how to read and write!

40 years later, in a fit of rage and perhaps a bit of mid-life crisis, Moses struck and killed an Egyptian taskmaster he saw beating a Hebrew slave. Every epic hero has a tragic flaw that results in their undoing, and for Moses, it was striking things out of anger. This first time led to a long exile in Midian, and like so often in our own lives, God uses even the difficult seasons to shape us in important ways.

There in the land of Midian, Moses met his wife, had two sons, and spent the next 40 years tending sheep, a significant vocational stepping stone for many a biblical leader called to lead God’s people. One day after celebrating his 80th birthday, searching for better pastures and perhaps meaning to his life, Moses ended up seeing a burning bush, an encounter with God that would shape the rest of his life. Better late than never.

Called to return to Egypt, confront Pharoah, and liberate the Israelites from their slavery, Moses saw the power of God at work first-hand: in the Ten Plagues, the parting of the Red Sea (Sea of Reeds), the pillar of fire, the manna and quail, even fresh water pouring forth from boulders in the desert.

He also saw the frailty of humanity – the constant grumbling and complaining, the short memory of God’s mighty power and provision for them, and the resulting fear and anxiety that drove the Israelites to idolatry time and time again.

Most importantly Moses saw God – not face to face, but askance, as the glory of God passed him by.

Having seen so much over the course of his 120-year life, climbing Mount Nebo was also a gift from God – a special grace to see the fruit of so many years of blood, sweat and tears; a glimpse into the future of how God would make good on his promise. To know that his labour was not in vain.

In the words of Yeats, “An aged man is but a paltry thing; a tattered coat upon a stick…” Moses was anything but. “His sight was unimpaired and his vigour had not abated” (Deut 34:7). It wasn’t because of Moses’ failing health that he needed to hand the baton on, but rather because he had completed the distance he had been asked to run.

In the words of one commentator:

“His life was lived before God, in obedience to him and in fellowship with him. There was, in fact, none like Moses, neither before nor after, whether as prophet or as powerful leader—until the coming of the one who was ‘more than a prophet’, Jesus Christ. The final tribute to Moses was that he followed God faithfully to the end of his life.” (Gordon McConville, NICOT)

In the end, God’s plans and purposes extend far beyond the scope of any one human life, even a life as great as Moses’.

Verse 5 says simply, “Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the LORD’S command” or more literally in Hebrew, “He died at God’s mouth” (34:5).

A Midrash interpreted this to mean that Moses died with a kiss from God, which eventually became a Jewish idiom, “death by a kiss”, meaning a quick, painless death in old age (see J. H. Tigay, JPS Torah Commentary).

In the beautiful but haunting words of the Psalmist, our lives are “but a breath” (Ps 39:5). As I approach the 50th mark of my own life, I find myself less interested in the question of fairness and far more interested in the question of finishing well.

Our lives are indeed but a breath, and the single greatest question is whether we will have followed God faithfully to the end. Hopefully, when the curtain descends on our own lives, we too will have “run the race with perseverance.” And maybe, just maybe, we too will be granted the gift of receiving death by a kiss.

Amen.