Sermon transcript:
One of the most iconic scenes in all of film comes at the end of the original Planet of the Apes. I’m sure some of you can picture it. For most of the movie, astronaut George Taylor believes he and the other astronauts have landed on a distant planet inhabited by intelligent apes and primitive humans. Taylor spends much of the movie trying to answer one question: Where are we? Near the end, Taylor and his companion Nova are riding along a beach when they come upon something half-buried in the sand. At first, they can’t tell what it is. Then Taylor realizes: it is the Statue of Liberty. Its head and torch are sticking out of the sand. Suddenly, the question “Where are we?” is answered. They aren’t on another planet; they are on Earth. But that answer raises a much more disturbing question: How did we get here? What happened to the planet? How did we get here?
That is the question at the centre of our scripture this morning. For centuries, Christians tended to read Deuteronomy as a historical account of Moses speaking to the Israelites just before they entered the promised land. But biblical scholars now understand Deuteronomy differently. It is not simply a record of what Moses said; it is historical interpretation.1 In other words, the scripture was written looking backwards centuries after the time of Moses in the sixth century BCE. So, it is shaped by what had happened to Israel in the intervening years.
And what had happened was devastating. Jerusalem had been destroyed. The temple had been destroyed. The people had been taken into exile in Babylon. Looking around at the ruins of their world, they were asking a question much like George Taylor’s: How did we get here? How did we get from the promised land to exile? From abundance to devastation? From being a people with their own kings to being ruled by a foreign power?
How did we get here? That question changes how we hear the words from Deuteronomy: “Take care that you do not forget God.” “When you have had plenty to eat, and have built fine houses to live in, when your flocks and herds, your silver and gold, and all your possessions increase, do not grow proud and forget God.” Looking back through the experience of devastation, these words are not simply about obedience. They are about remembering. How did Israel get here? Part of the answer was that they had forgotten. Forgetting lead to ingratitude. They had forgotten their dependence on God. They had forgotten that their lives were gifts. They had forgotten their most fundamental relationship: their covenant with God.
How did we get here? It is a question I find myself asking a lot. How did we get to a place where, even knowing what we know, we continue to warm the planet and damage the natural world? How did we get to a place where encampments and panhandling have become increasingly normal? How did we get to a place where
the technologies we create may threaten our own well-being, and yet we continue moving in that direction? Part of the answer, I think, is that we have forgotten something Israel forgot. We have forgotten that our lives are grounded in grace. And you don’t have to be particularly religious to understand what that means.
Grace means that life is, first and foremost, a gift. I am here because I have received. I am alive because life has been given to me. I did not earn my existence. I entered a world that was here before me and will continue after me. I depend on other people. I depend on the earth. I depend on countless things I did not create and
cannot control. This does not mean that hard work doesn’t matter. Of course it does. But beneath all our effort is something we so easily forget: We are recipients before we are achievers. It is the grounding of what it means to be a person of faith and the reality of what it means to be human.
When we forget this, life becomes a competition. If everything I have is something I earned, then I have every reason to protect what is mine. If everything is scarce, I need to make sure I get my share. If everyone else is a competitor, I need to get ahead. And when we see the world this way, everything becomes a resource to be
managed. Other people become resources to be used. The earth becomes a resource to be exploited. We have forgotten who we are, that we exist within a relationship defined by grace, that we are recipients before we are achievers. Gratitude has no place.
Our faith story does not only ask, “How did we get here?” It also asks, “How do we get out of here?” “How do we find our way back from exile?” Deuteronomy’s answer is simple: Remember. Remember the wilderness. Remember the hunger. Remember the manna. Remember the water. Remember that you depended on
something beyond yourself. And now that you have arrived in a place of abundance, do not forget. Remember.
Remembering is not nostalgia. Remembering changes how we see the present. The earth is no longer simply a resource; it is home. Other people are no longer simply competitors; they are neighbours. A stranger is no longer someone who might take something from me; they are another person whose life, like mine, is a gift. When we remember that we exist in a relationship defined by grace, that we are recipients before we ever achieve anything, we see ourselves as part of something larger. We see ourselves held within relationships of interdependence. When we remember, we become capable of generosity, sharing, humility, and reverence. Remembering changes how we relate to others and to creation. This is at least part of the answer to how we get out of our own exile, out of the disconnected, fearful, ego-centred, hubristic condition we find ourselves in.
And near the end of Deuteronomy, Moses will say: “I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life.”2 Choose life. That is what gratitude does: it is the choice of life over death. Perhaps someday a young person will look around and see a world where everyone has a home, where technology serves human flourishing, and where humanity lives in harmony with creation. And they will look back at our time and ask an elder: “How did we get here?” And the answer will be: We remembered who we are–recipients. We remembered that our lives are gifts. We remembered that we belong to one another and to the earth. We chose gratitude. And so, we chose life. May it be so.
Rev. Joe Gaspar
Citations:
1 The leading scholar on this theory being Martin Noth. A good summary can be found here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuteronomist#Deuteronomy or in Walter Breuggemann’s book Reverberation’s of Faith: A Theological handbook of Old Testament Themes, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville Kentucky, 2002, p, 53-54.
2 Deuteronomy 30: 19-20 (Inclusive Bible)