The View From Mt. Nebo

I find it terribly ironic that God has given us a place to live on Mount Nebo. In Deuteronomy 34 God takes Moses up Mount Nebo to see the promised land that he will never be allowed to enter in. It is another story of God's people that emphasizes the importance of our journey and that no place on this Earth, physically, ideologically, or socially is our final destination. Our final destination is the presence of God through Jesus only. But there is something that we are striving for, a promised land we have an innate need to seek out. The various forms of what I call "Alternative Communities of Faith" are doing just that. Emerging Church, Open Church, House Churches are all seeking that promised land, living in the real presence and promise of God here in this place. I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, "The Cost of Discipleship" and seem to have found an instant identification in the area of frustration I have had specifically with the Emerging Church and Open Church communities. There are several places just in the introduction that I feel Bonhoeffer's frustration when he writes,

"...It is no use in taking refuge in abstract discussion, or trying to make excuses, so let us get back to the Scriptures, to the Word and call of Jesus Christ himself. Let us try to get away from the poverty and pettiness of our own little convictions and problems, and seek the wealth and splendour which are vouchsafed to us in Jesus Christ."

That is what I seek, to get out of "discussing" what is "wrong" with the world and the "established church" or the traditional minded Christian and get into Jesus Christ through the Word and call. I think the temptation of being on top of Mount Nebo is to want now what we see and cannot have at the moment. In the process of longing for the promise we collapse into blabbering heaps that constantly jibber about what is wrong with the other guy. We are on the constant defensive waiting to react against the next critic of our movement.

I am frustrated with God today. We have been brought to Mount Nebo; gazing across the plain at the promised land. Intimate fellowship with a group of serious disciples committed to the "Word and call of Christ". What Bonhoeffer envisioned when he directed an illegal Church Training College on a Baltic peninsula seeking to establish a "community life". Or as G. Leibholz writes in the Memoir of the book;

"...how in the twentieth (twenty-first) century a Christian life should be lived in a spirit of genuine brotherhood, and how such life could naturally and freely grow if there were only men who entirely belonged to the Lord and, therefore, in brotherly love to one another."

Yes, I can see it, the promise of God fulfilled for me but across the plain. Down there in a valley that is still very far away. The temptation is to fall into criticism of the established church and defending myself against real or imagined attacks. Yes, standing in view of the promise while still in the midst of the wilderness wandering is an almost embarrassing place to be. But the vision is mine, given to me and I will wait on God while trying my best to think and respond in love to all those who are trying their best to seek and fulfill the vision God has given them. Moses may have died on the journey but he lives in the promised land!