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This Sunday, the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, we will begin a new sermon series on the Book of Deuteronomy. The series is entitled Words for People on the Border.  Caught between wilderness and promised land, the community is confronted with a 'borderland' moment in which they must be "redefined in terms of their origin, purpose, and destiny" (Brueggerman, Deuteronomy, 24). The book is thought to have several authors, with one narrator writing from the border of Babylonian Exile. With this in mind, Deanna Thompson adds, "Deuteronomy insists that it is possible to move from the death of exile back to life in right relationship to God" (Thompson, Deuteronomy, 7). This series will run until the end of November and the start of Advent. 

The text we will explore together is Deuteronomy 1:1-8 in which the book begins with an aged and weathered Moses speaking God's words to all Israel. The speech is set on the banks of the Jordan River, in the Wilderness, on the border of the Promised Land. The words are spoken with a Sankofa sensibility, urging the people to look backward to their history of Exodus and Covenant in order to step forward into a promised, but unrealized future.

Has wilderness wandering prepared the people for the new thing God is about to do? What will be required of the people to enter into the new land? How does their history shape their identity? 

Loop Church is part of the Christian Reformed Church of North America and worships in Chicago, IL at 410 S. Michigan Ave. in the Fine Arts Building.