Deuteronomy 26:1-11

This week’s Gospel Reading takes us into the wilderness with Jesus. Our first reading—Deuteronomy 26:1-11—also took place in the wilderness, but it anticipated a time on the other side, in “the land.”

Throughout the Bible the wilderness is a place of trial, temptation, testing, even suffering. But there is also a clarity to the wilderness. In the wilderness, there is no reliable source of food. Dangers lurk behind every rock. During those times of trial and temptation, the follower of God has to make a significant choice: will I trust God or will I return to a place of security? When we make the choice to remain in the wilderness, we must enter a place of utter dependency on God’s provision to enable us to survive.

However, none of us stays in the wilderness forever (nor does the Bible suggest that we should), and when we reach the Promised Land new dangers emerge. When food is plentiful and shelters offer us protection, the question of who is sustaining our lives becomes less clear. We plant, fertilize, weed, and harvest. We build tents, homes, cities, and walls. It begins to look like we are our own source of life. The uncertainty of the wilderness is replaced with a different uncertainty: do I even actually need God?

Every year, the church calendar leads us into a willful wilderness in the season of Lent. This season calls us to remember the effect that sin has on us and on our world. The high hopes that came with Advent, with the incarnation, are dashed as we encounter the inherent sinfulness of humanity and begin to look ahead to our response to the presence of God in our midst: a crucifixion. “The journey through Lent is a way to place ourselves before God humbled, bringing in our hands no price whereby we can purchase our salvation. It is a way to confess our inadequacy before God, to strip ourselves bare of all pretenses to righteousness, to come before God in dust and ashes.”[1]

At the end of Deuteronomy, Moses was giving one last message to the Israelites. They were about to leave the clarity of the wilderness and enter the Promised Land. The opening words of chapter 26 speak to a key moment in the yearly routine of the Israelites—the time of harvest. The first harvest was the culmination of an incredible journey and lots of work—clearing land, cultivating soil, planting, building supports—settling. Each year’s harvest would continue to be the result of a lot of work. But each year would bring more security, more understanding of how to flourish in this new land, more distance from the journey of their ancestors—in general, more settled-ness.

It might seem that a prayer following the harvest would include some sort of gratitude for rain at the right time or reflection on God’s role to keep nature in check. However, Moses gave the Israelites a different kind of response to bring to God upon the offering of the firstfruits of the harvest—a restatement of their identity: “My father was a wandering Aramean…” Every year at the harvest, the Israelites were required to re-tell their story.

In the following chapters, Moses gave a long list of blessings and curses. “Things will go well in the land if you live like this. However, if you do these things, you will come to ruin.”

Why would this newly birthed nation ever deviate from the plan God laid out for them through Moses? In his commentary on this section of Deuteronomy, entitled “The Pursuit of Happiness,” Rabbi David Fohrman looks at the role that joy plays in the faithfulness of the Israelites.[2] After the recitation of blessings and curses, there is a little phrase: “Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity…” (28:47). Rabbi Fohrman shines the spotlight on this little verse. All of these actions that result in blessing, all of these actions that result in curse—are, at their core, born of joy or dissatisfaction.

When we are settled in “the land,” it is easier with each passing year to forget who made all of this possible. It is easy to forget who is the source of our food and our security.

In his book, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer invites the believers into a noonday prayer of thankfulness for work and fruitfulness. He wrote, “The work is commanded, indeed, but the bread is God’s free and gracious gift. We cannot simply take it for granted that our work provides us with bread; this is rather God’s order of grace.”[3]

The Israelites were commanded to remember their history at every harvest. They were commanded to remember every year that though they come before God with the firstfruits of their harvest, they are really coming before God empty-handed, recipients of God’s graceful provision.

This is the posture of Christians in the season of Lent. Though most of us have food, security, and wealth, these are not the result of our hard work; they are the result of God’s gracious gift. God is the only true source of life.

When we remember this truth, as we do each year at Lent—although the reality of our sinfulness is a source of sadness—the door opens to true joy. Our joy is born of taking the time to remember that all that we have is a free and gracious gift of the God who saves and redeems us.

We do not need to leave the Promised Land to return to the clarity of the wilderness; we just need to keep telling our stories to remember who we are and who God is.

[1] Dennis Bratcher, “The Season of Lent,” www.crivoice.org/cylent.html, 2018.

[2] David Fohrman, “Nitzavim: The Pursuit of Happiness,” https://www.alephbeta.org/playlist/parshat-nitzavim-finding-happiness, 2019.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 72.