And so we come to Deuteronomy, the fifth and final book of the Pentateuch (the Book of the Law, or Torah). Most of Deuteronomy is the speech made by Moses to the people of Israel as they camped on the plains of the Jordan, anticipating the invasion of Canaan.

We’ll look at Deuteronomy in three parts, the first being chapters 1-11. Essentially, this is just one big recap on the previous two months readings! But much more than that, it is a powerful example of how the act of corporate remembering can fashion and fortify a community’s identity.

Moses’ gripping recount is a masterful display of political rhetoric. Highlighting all of Israel’s significant failures he recaps with lucidity the dire consequences metered on the community. From the Golden Calf at Horeb (Sinai) to the Baal of Peor, infidelity is recalled and from the Rebellion at Kadesh Barnea to his own mistake at the Rock at Meribah, disobedience is retold. The punishments suffered by his listeners, their parents and grandparents – still, no doubt, raw in their memory – are emphatically linked to the stubbornness and defiance of this ‘stiff-necked people’.

Imagine yourself an Israelite at this juncture in history. Before you lies the Promised Land towards which your whole life has been geared. Behind you lies the wilderness in which such great suffering met you and your family. You know that your parents were made to turn back into the desert because they didn’t have the guts to face the Anakites. Yet, you don’t feel you have the guts either!

Here is Moses – mistrusted, yes, but undisputedly a man with whom God has spoken – affirming in no uncertain terms that if you repeat the mistakes of your ancestors, you can be absolutely sure the same fate will meet you too. And not just in terms of facing the giants of Jericho. For the rest of your life, as you and your people spread throughout the region, if you so much as look at another god, or even at another woman who follows another god, you can be sure that you’ll wish you’d never been born!

Don’t believe him? Remember the last forty years since your people left Egypt! Still thinking of turning away?

But this corporate recollection is not only designed to put the fear of God into the wayward Israelites. It is also full of incentives. If you do all this then ‘none of your children will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. The Lord will keep you free from every disease’ (7:14-15). And throughout the speech, amidst instructions to carry on remembering the events of their history, the Israelites are reminded of their liberation from Egypt and their liberator God, who is clearly, as their past history displays, able to deliver on his promises.

We can sense the passion of Moses’ words, the immediacy of his voice. This is his valedictory moment and all the desire and belief of his last forty years comes spilling out in fervent conviction. The future of Israel hangs in the balance and should they stray, even a little bit, their identity will dilute and they will simply be assimilated by their neighbours. Yahweh will be forgotten and his Law, the fabulously alternative manifesto, will be lost.

Now for us, one thing is clear. Had there not been this die-hard Yahweh-loyalist stream within the Israelite community, the world today would likely be a different place, such is the impact of Judeo-Christian ethics on modern life. Yet as always with the Old Testament Law, there are various aspects which should be called into question – not least the outlandish promise from Moses that if the law is kept, no human and animal would be childless and no disease be found among them. Jesus is clear in Luke 13 that the link between sin and human suffering is not as the Old Testament would have us believe.

However, there is something about the desperation within these first eleven chapters of Deuteronomy, that Israel remember Yahweh in everything, that arrests our attention and, for me at least, questions my commitment to God and inspires me to re-consider him.

Maybe every generation believes they are at an important juncture in history, but I figure to myself, if the church doesn’t keep the story of Jesus alive in a way that the 21st century world can understand and love, then it will simply be confined to history and assimilated by its neighbouring doctrines. If I don’t care enough about following God in a world that doesn’t know him then who will, and might I end up forgetting him myself, along with others, as we happily decide we can do life fine without him?

It’s the sacred act of remembering Jesus, in the Lord’s Supper, but also in all sorts of other ways, that keeps us connected to the life-transforming story of which we are now an important part. There’s just too much at stake for us to forget.

Question for reflection:

1. What one thing could you do this week – whether at home / church / work / school – to help you remember Jesus and how he inspires you?

Suggestion to aid reflection:

Make a list of all the things you can think of that would be worse in your life / community if Jesus wasn’t part of it. Decide on the top three. Write them down or print them out and stick them somewhere visible. Make these things your inspiration for why you must remember Jesus and keep his story alive.