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Today marks the last of the Moses stories. For weeks we have been following Moses and the people of Israel in their pilgrimage, and exploring Moses’s immense stature as a spiritual leader. We have also seen similarities between him and Jesus. Today I want to call attention to one, last similarity. We read, “Then Moses, servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab…. He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab… but no one knows his burial place to this day.” How amazing! A man of such stature and no one knows where he is buried! Neither does anyone know Jesus’ burial place. If you have been to Jerusalem you were probably taken to visit two places, each having a plausible claim to be Jesus’ tomb. But even supposing the true place could be identified, his was an empty tomb. The point in common is this: no one can worship a tomb they cannot find; nor can they worship an empty tomb. Tomb worship is out, either for Moses or Jesus.
Tomb worship is common among certain, unorthodox sects in Muslim countries; but I want to extend the meaning here to describe any backward-looking faith, any faith that looks to the dead. To give you a sense of tomb worship, the example of “Babette’s Feast” springs to mind. This is a film, familiar, I hope, to many of you, that is based on a short story by Isaac Dinesen. The film, set inj the 1870’s, follows a pious little community that lives in an isolated, coastal village in northern Norway. The community formed originally around an ascetical, saintly man they called the Dean. After the Dean died, however, he continued to be the center of their lives. True, they did not literally worship his tomb, but they worshiped his memory and revered his portrait. The film opens with a scene showing a long line of herring fillets, hung drying on a line. Scene after scene reinforces that symbol of dessication. We see piety but no joy. Surface calm, no real peace. Duty in place of love. No children. Their lives like their diet of herring and hard bread vary scarcely at all.
The Dean had two daughters, now well into middle age. They served as his acolytes when they were young, never married, and serve as his acolytes still. One stormy night a refugee from the Paris Commune arrives on their doorstep; it is Babette, fleeing for her life. She begs to be allowed to live with them as their servant. Clearly they are not in a position to be able to pay her, and she offers to serve for free. Twelve years pass. Then Babette learns that she has won the French lottery – 10,000 francs. She can return to Paris and never again work a day in her life. Instead, she begs the sisters to let her prepare a dinner to celebrate the Dean’s 100th birthday. Reluctantly, for they fear anything new or unknown, they agree.
Also unknown to the sisters, Babette used to be the most acclaimed chef in all of France. Over the weeks that follow, she plans and then carries out a dinner that is fully the equal of dinners she used to serve at her restaurant in Paris. The little community tastes wine for the first time, out of crystal wine glasses, on a candle be-studded table, and not merely wine, but the greatest of the great vintages. They taste foods they never dreamed of, including turtle soup, and dishes that made Babette famous back when she presided over the Café Anglais. When the joyous dinner, made up of many courses, is complete, and all the guests have gone, and the sisters are alone with Babette in the kitchen, they learn to their dismay that Babette’s feast cost exactly 10,000 French francs. She has sacrificed everything.
The film shows the amazing transformation of the little community as the feast progresses. They are no longer focused on the past, but the present draws them into its abundance. Even when the feast ends the new life carries on, as the guests leave, laughing and happy, with old resentments forgiven. A great blanket of snow has fallen while they were inside, as if to symbolize the advent of a fresh, new world.
The theologian, Jaroslav Pelikan, said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” The little community, when it worshiped the Dean’s tomb, illustrates the latter – the dead faith of the living, which Pelikan calls traditionalism. I am bringing all this up to show, by contrast, the nature of faith in Christ – the living faith of our forebears. They passed on to us a faith that can meet the challenges of changing times and bring us to life in turn. Our faith lives, because it is centered, not in the past, not on a tomb, but in the present, in a living Presence, Jesus Christ.
Jesus tried to get at this issue of tradition vs. traditionalism with his question to the Pharisees, “Whose son is the Messiah?” He knew what they believed, and he wanted to release them from the choke hold that false belief held on their faith. They answered as he knew they would, “The son of David” – in other words, the son of the dead, the son of the past. Jesus pointed out that David, himself, had called the Messiah “Lord;” and not only that, but the Messiah sat on the right hand of God – God’s own feast-maker, as it were. The Pharisees may have been against Jesus, but he was not against them. He did his best to draw them into a living faith, his faith, his disciples’ faith, and the faith he invites all of us to enter and enjoy.
The contrast is between a herd mentality, with its pressure to conform and be as like as possible – between that and a mind-set that values individuality and diversity. Do not make a mistake. Jesus’ faith is not about individualism; in fact, the opposite. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and one of the leading theologians of our day, points out that Jesus’ whole mission is to re-create the community of God’s love. (1) Each one’s individuality matters, because each one of us has a unique way of making God real for others. Babette lived for twelve years, overlooked as a mere serving woman, until one day, by chance, she was able to offer her gift to the community. Williams says that your gift is there so that you can help another become a giver in turn. So true! Look at Babette’s gift. It was received and a gift given in turn when the members of the community spontaneously forgave each other the wrongs that they had been harboring for years. The peace and joy that followed had nothing to do with an absence of conflict or rivalry; rather, it arose from the active presence of giving and receiving, loving and nurturing.
I will close with one last contrast. What do tomb worshipers have in common? What holds them together? Isn’t it the dead one? Even if it is someone as great as King David, he is still dead, static, unchanging. What holds us together, as worshipers of the living Christ? What do we have in common? Isn’t it the Holy Spirit? The living, ever-present Spirit of Christ? We breathe the same spiritual air. We cannot breathe that same Holy Air and remain isolated individuals. A mighty oak has thousands of leaves, but no two leaves are alike. So, too, we are distinct, but dependent, unique but integral to a larger pattern. It is a pattern of mutual giving, mutual nourishment, mutual dependence. Mutual delight. Mutual forgiveness. We stand in a long, proud line of tradition, not traditionalism, always changing, because always moving, without beginning or end, giving, receiving and giving in turn. Amen.
!. Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2007. Page 100
