“A very wise and healthy decision”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Deuteronomy 1:1-18 (Forward, p. 69) CEV p. 165
I think that it is entirely fitting that Moses, immediately after began explaining God’s laws to His people and reviewing God’s promises to them, reminded them of how God had earlier taken care of the urgent needs of leadership by delegating and spreading out the responsibility among a number of people. Moses simply could not be expected to take care of all their issues and problems and settle their arguments all by himself; he needed some help, hence these appointments.
Notice three things about these appointments. Firstly, the people were to chose them from among themselves, a bottom up rather than a top down process—an early case, perhaps, of grassroots democracy. Thus, they were to be people that they knew and trusted.
Secondly, these leaders were not to be people of no experience or skill or ability, rank amateurs, you might say. They were to be people of experience with known wisdom and understanding. They were to be people of such depth as to be capable of handling a difficult task, and to do so with honesty, justice and fairness. They had to be people that could be trusted.
And thirdly, they were not all appointed to the same task. Some were to be military leaders, and some were to be appointed judges inn a legal sense. And even in the case of the military, they did not all have the same level of command. Some were to be in charge of small contingents, say ten or fifty, while others had larger groups of a hundred or a thousand. Presumably these assignments were also based on ability and experience.
The necessity of experience, wisdom and understanding, the necessity of maturity, was especially so in the case of those appointed as judges. They were, above all else, to be fair and impartial. They were not to ‘take sides’ or show partiality, whether based on nationality or country of origin (Israelite or foreigner), or on power and position. They were not to be swayed or intimidated by anyone, no matter who they were. Everyone was to be treated the case, and treated justly, and God would help them in this.
Furthermore, there was a court of appeal, a final arbiter, should they run into problems, and that was Moses himself. He would make the final decision. And one other thing, while the various tribes did the choosing of the judges, Moses undertook their training himself, making sure that they understood God’s laws and commands.
To me, all of this has some powerful implications for our lives today, whether in our homes, our churches and organizations, our communities, or our nation. Dispersed, delegated responsibility, shared workloads, are the only ‘way to go’, if we are to prevent burn-out and get the job done properly and efficiently. After all, it is more than just a spreading out of the responsibility and a sharing of the load: those, hopefully, that we delegate to will have unique and significant skills, experience and wisdom that they bring to the table, ones that would not have been utilized had we not shared the load. One other thing: seeing as these persons were chosen by their own people, it is possible that they themselves were not fully aware of their own abilities and needed to have them pointed out to them. (I find that this frequently happens in the church, and elsewhere. We are not always aware of our own gifts, things that we might bring to the table, so it falls to others to point them out to us). So, I think that the practice of Moses is a good one to follow: certainly, the work before us is too big for any one of us and needs to be shared. And certainly, God will bless us in this. Amen.
Forward notes: “You must not be partial in judging; hear out the small and the great alike; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s. Any case that is too hard for you, bring it to me, and I will hear it” (verse 17).
“The last of the five books of Moses begins with Moses spreading out his leadership among judges, changing the way the community relates to one another and solves disputes. There are jurisdictions of various sizes, an expectation of equal treatment regardless of ethnicity, and a fundamental humility needed amongst the people and their new leaders. Yet, scripture is clear: the ultimate judgment is God’s alone.
“With that reminder ringing in our ears, we turn to today’s gospel [Matthew 23:27-39] to see an exchange in the temple grow increasingly tense. Jesus ultimately unleashes a stinging rebuke on the scribes and the Pharisees for all manner of ugly sins and hypocrisies. The language is shifting to the apocalyptic, and Jesus crescendos into a rebuke of all of Israel. And what does that final judgment look like? Not fury and thunder but a reminder of how God longs to gather us, like a hen sheltering her brood under her wings.”
Moving Forward: “What does justice look like to you?”