Richard Davenport

March 2, 2025 – The Transfiguration of Our Lord

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

                The book of Deuteronomy closes out an important chapter in the life of the Israelite people.  Moses has been the leading character in the story ever since the beginning of the book of Exodus.  Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and now Deuteronomy, all featuring Moses, front and center.  But now, at the end of Deuteronomy, his time is at an end.  The page turns and there’s a new character leading the people. We’ve seen Joshua a little bit thus far, but now he’ll take center stage as the story continues.

Unfortunately for Moses, his departure is rather bittersweet.  He had a bit of a tantrum earlier on where he deliberately disobeyed God’s command in front of all of the people.  God didn’t just cast him out, though he had every right to do so.  But, as a leader, Moses was even more responsible for setting a good example. If the prophet is able to disrespect God, everyone else will assume that kind of behavior is perfectly acceptable. 

God stops that idea before it has a chance to take hold.  We aren’t told how much conversation there was between Moses and the people as to why this was happening, but it was abundantly clear Moses had done something to deserve this.  The people of Israel as a whole had failed to trust God to protect them when the time came for them to finally enter the Promised Land, but a very few of them had been and were still faithful.  Joshua and Caleb are explicitly told they’ll go into the Promised Land.  The rest are told they won’t.  They’ll die in the wilderness because they refused to accept the gift God was offering them. 

Nothing is said specifically of Moses or Aaron.  Since they remained faithful throughout, they might have assumed they would arrive in the Promised Land as well, even though they weren’t mentioned.  Even if that was the case, neither of them made it.  We aren’t explicitly told why Aaron died, but Deuteronomy puts his death in the context of the whole golden calf debacle, so we can make some reasonable assumptions there.

Moses, however, we don’t have to speculate about.  God tells him directly that he won’t set foot in the Promised Land. His actions have brought about this consequence.  Even though he put in all of this work.  Even though he led the people from the very beginning, from the first moment he stepped before Pharaoh and declared that God’s people should be free to worship him, Moses has been guiding them, teaching them, dealing with their cares and complaints, praying for them, all of it, but now it’s all coming to an end. He won’t get to see it through. His moment of bad behavior has cost him everything.

His life ends up on the mountaintop.  He looks out at the Promised Land beyond the Jordan.  He sees the green fields and rolling hills.  He sees the abundance that is just over the river, waiting for him just out of reach.  He’ll never get to walk there, to taste the food grown there with his own hands, to have a house that’s his own.  He’ll never get to complete the journey.

We can only speculate what when on up on the mountaintop, beyond what little the text tells us.  God explained it to him, so it’s not like Moses could claim he was being unfairly punished.  We don’t know if there was more conversation or not, but it’s almost assured that Moses wondered.  “What if…? What would have happened if I had just listened, if I hadn’t done that?”  It’s almost assured that Moses regretted what he had done.  His life had come to a fork in the road and he had taken the wrong path.  Now that other path will never be taken.  There’s no going back to it.  Leading the people into the Promised Land will now forever be undone, at least by him. Forever undone, forever unfinished. 

It's, perhaps, good that Moses wouldn’t have to live with those regrets very long.  Sometimes when those things are left undone, you have the opportunity to go back to take care of them.  Things left undone don’t always have to stay undone.  But that opportunity doesn’t always come back around.

Everything about this scene speaks to regret, choices made that can’t be undone, things left undone that will never be done.  There isn’t a person in the world that doesn’t have some kind of regrets.  There isn’t one of us that doesn’t look back on our lives and think about how things could have been different.  There isn’t anyone that doesn’t think about the choices they’ve made and how they led down a bad path.

There’s a drive in each of us to build a legacy, something we can pass down. We want to be remembered for the things we’ve done and we want others to hold us in high esteem, not just now, but always.  We build the connections, the memories, the accomplishments, all of it part of who we are. Our regrets become a wound that never quite heals and may never heal.

Who would you be if you had made the right choices?  Where would you be?  You might be an entirely different person.  Following the path you’ve led has meant lost friends, even lost family. It’s meant joys and delights that could have been, but now may never be.  It means there is an ache in your soul that you learn to forget about most of the time, but every so often a photograph or a shared experience brings it all back and you feel those regrets as if they were fresh.

Moses, sitting on the mountaintop, looking out at the Promised Land that he’d only ever get to see and never feel.  Regrets?  I’m sure. There’s nothing to be done about them now.  The only thing left for him to do is trust God.  Moses made a bad choice, and sinful choice, and it changed his life for the worse. But, he is not forgotten.  He is not alone up there on the mountaintop.

Jesus walks up a mountaintop many years later.  It’s a different mountaintop.  A different time, a different place, different events going on. Yet, one thing connects them. Moses and God there on the mountaintop. Perhaps that’s not all that strange, since Moses and God have been on mountaintops before, a couple of times in fact. Moses went up Mt. Sinai and spent time with God.  Then Moses goes up Mt. Nebo at the end of his life, to spend time with God.  Now he is there again.  The gospels don’t name it, but it is a different mountain.  Here he is again, spending time with God. 

This meeting isn’t so strange, until we consider where it’s taking place. Moses went up on mountains before, yes, on the way to the Promised Land.  But, he was told he would die before ever setting foot in that land. Moses died.  Yet, here he is, standing on a mountaintop, talking to God in the Promised Land.  Moses’ sin barred him from the Promised Land.  What Moses and his sin were unable to do, Jesus does for him. 

Moses’ story wasn’t done.  His sin would have left him with nothing but disgrace, failure, and regret.  The Law declared and the law stood firm.  If that’s all there was, then Deuteronomy would rightly be the end of Moses.  But, then we have the Gospel, the good news.  There is more to the story.  Where mankind is endlessly disobedient, Jesus remains obedient and faithful.  The Law has nothing with which to convict Jesus, because he never breaks it. 

Moses dies, seeing how his actions led to this time and place.  He dies without crossing the Jordan with his people. He dies in sadness, but he also dies in faith.  His sin will not dictate his end.  In Christ, he is given a new beginning. 

At his transfiguration, Jesus displays just a tiny piece of his glory. He opens the door just a crack so that his divinity shines through into this mortal, sin-darkened world.  As he breaks down the barrier between God and man, heaven and earth, we see what awaits those who look to him for salvation.

Lent begins next week, and with it we see Jesus walking the path of sin. Sin leads to darkness.  Sin leads to death.  Sin leads to the loss of every good and perfect thing.  The rejection of God is the rejection of everything God gives, including eternal life in God’s good and perfect world.  Moses became the unfortunate object lesson in the consequences of sin, seeing God’s promised land and knowing it forever out of reach. 

Jesus walks the path of sin, but also walks the path of grace.  Sin leads from the world to the grave.  Grace leads out of the grave into the world once more. Moses dies in sin, but lives in grace. Moses is denied the Promised Land because of his sin, his rejection of God and his authority.  Christ undoes the power of sin.  For Moses, Mt. Nebo is no longer his end, for it is Christ who dies on a mountaintop in his place.  Moses is set free to follow God into the land that had been prepared for him.

We close out the Epiphany season and know that Lent is coming soon.  We know that we will be following Jesus as he shows us the place where our sin leads.  We too, will be travelling up the mountain, sentenced to death, sentenced to never see what God has in store for us.  In following him up the mountain, we die in our sin, but we die in Christ who forgives sin and whose divine grace shows us that, despite death, we still arrive in the Promised Land.  We still find our lives together with God in the good and perfect world he has made just for us. Transfiguration Sunday shows us that, even though Lent is coming, we know it will not be our end.  The light and life of Christ will lead us through Lent into a joyous Easter.