I want you to invite you to use your imagination and come with me to the edge of the Jordan River, in the territory of Moab in the area where the Jordan flows into the Dead Sea (Deuteronomy 1:5). The book of Deuteronomy records Moses’ final speech/sermon to the people of Israel before he turns over leadership to Joshua and right before Joshua leads the people into the Promise Land. The people of God stand right on the edge of what they have always hoped for. This is it, they are thinking. This is the moment we have all been waiting for. This is the moment that our parents told us about, this is what God has always promised: a land of our own, safety and protection from enemies, the chance to purify and secure the future of our ethnic identity. And finally, it was time.
In Deuteronomy, we get to listen in on the conversation between God and God’s people via Moses as they stand right on the verge of this cataclysmic and life-altering event. The theme of the entire 34 chapters is a call to remember.
Remember
Moses spends the entire sermon remembering (aloud) the story of Israel. If you remember the story over the previous forty plus years, there are some good moments but there are also, and perhaps mostly, moments of colossal failure. All of Chapter 9 and 10 record the specific atrocities of the golden calf worship and the stone tablets, as if they had just happened. God reminds them that Moses was so angry that he wanted to destroy the people. (9:13-15) The nation of Israel was commanded by God to tell these failure stories and not to allow a glossy finish to begin to settle over their history. God wants the history of their disobedience told over and over again. I can’t help but wonder why.
The key to changing the future is remembering the past.
Moses’ call to remember in Deuteronomy provides a helpful commentary on dealing with our own past (and present) failures. One such area is racism in America today.
When it comes to racism in America, I want to invite us to remember the distant and recent realities such as:
We add these distant and present realities to two current events.
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