a more generous reflection on Deut 30.9-14

The great thing about this "minor change" that I've made in my blogging practice is that i get to spend two full weeks with a set of readings; with this set of readings. I just re-read my somewhat abrasive entry on Moses' ability to kick the Israelites in the pants when he needed too. Then I re-read the passage, and today I'm at a different place. Today I am noting how close this passage is to the title of my blog "digging up my own foundation."

Moses is essentially fazing himself out. He is writing his own pink slip, or so he hopes. "You don't need some 'expert' to decipher God's commandments. You are fully capable of understanding them. God put them in terms you can understand." Moses may well be sick and tired of spoon-feeding a whiny lot of folk (as I assert in my previous post), but a more generous reading is he loves these people and wants to see them do it for themselves. "You don't need me," he tells the Israelites, "the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe."

Here again, Moses is a man after my own heart. He's got both sides of me in this one speech. Today I see in him the ability to dig up his own foundation. He sees the problems that will come with a leader-follower model. The people have become dependent on him to give them the word of God, but he knows in his heart of hearts that the people he has been called to lead (to serve) are also made in the image of God. They have heard the word enough times that they know it; its in their mouths and in their hearts for crying out loud. He's trying to empower them to take their faith seriously, to make the work of God their work, to live lives in the will of God without Moses always telling them what to do.

That's basically what my ministry is all about. "What will your ministry be?" That is the question on my heart. The people of St. Paul's Foley don't need me, they don't need Keith to be follows of Jesus, they can do it on their own. Its not so far away that we need to go get it for them, its not so difficult that they need us to decipher it for them. It is nice to have someone point us in the right direction, and that, I think is what Moses was called to, what Keith and I are called to, not, like Moses was doing - doing all the work for them; climbing the mountain, talking with God, leading the pack, all that. Point the people to God and God will take care of it from there; that's what Moses is telling me today.