St Paul’s United Church Sunday, February 6, 2005

More Than a Mountaintop – Rev. David Mundy

Exodus 24:12-18 Matthew 17:1-9

This morning I’m going to begin my message with a map of Israel in ancient times. I want to draw your attention to two geographical features, two mountaintops which are important aspects of our bible stories this morning. To the south in the arid wilderness of Sinai there is a mountain which has been identified as the place where Moses the leader of the people of Israel climbed up to receive direction from God, although the question mark is a reminder that we can never be sure of the specific locations of some of these events.

In the north, not far from the body of water known as the Sea of Galilee there is another mountain called Tabor which may have been the place where Jesus and three of his disciples had a holy encounter with two great figures of the faith, Moses and Elijah, both of whom had lived centuries before. Some scholars suggest that the mountain is actually a little farther to the north, Mount Hermon, which is almost nine thousand feet high.

Of course in both of these stories God is present and establishes a promise relationship which will lead the people into a new understanding of whom they will be in their life together.

In Moses’ case he has already climbed the mountain once to receive the laws which we call the Ten Commandments, along with a lengthy list of instructions and statutes. This time he goes up with his brother, Aaron, and other leaders including seventy elders who will eventually help to lift the burden of leadership from Moses’ shoulders.

When Jesus goes up his mountain, it is with three of the four young men he had called away from their fishing nets to be his disciples several years earlier. They are obviously confused and frightened when they see Jesus in conversation with Moses and Elijah. Their spiritual mentor and friend is changed before them, transfigured as we read here, by the glory of God. Their first inclination is to build some shelters to contain to try to contain what they are experiencing. Then they are truly terrified when the voice of God says “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well

pleased.”

It’s interesting that these two passages are included together in the lectionary for this day. Many cultures associate religious experience with going to the mountaintop, including the Native tradition of North America. When we lived in Northern Ontario, it was about an hour’s drive to a spot called Dreamer’s Rock. It was another half hour climb from the base to an indentation in the pink granite hilltop where for centuries young Native men and, eventually, women would sit and wait for visions in what is called the Dream Quest. On several occasions we took our Confirmation classes to that spot to ask them what they “saw” in terms of their future as Christians.

When we go to the hilltop or the mountaintop, we hope to get a better view, literally and metaphorically, so that when we make our descent into the everyday events of life we will have a sense of where we are going and what we need to accomplish. While it is important to have the example of the great leaders of faith, we also hear that both Moses and Jesus anticipate that others will bear witness to the glory they have seen.

Over the years I have gone to a number of interviews as part of the process of a call to a new pastorate. What has changed over the years is that congregations are now required to do what is called a needs assessment before they begin to look for a minister. It’s a way of getting faith communities to climb up for a better view and maybe even catch a glimpse of God in the process. The interviews today usually involve a host of questions asking how the candidate will help to implement the vision which has been developed. In some instances the expectations have been so high that I have actually said to search committees that my middle name is not Moses and that I can’t walk on water! Living in community is always a shared enterprise.

What are we hoping for when we come down from the mountaintop together to be the community of Christ? There are no stone tablets which tell us how to be Christ’s church for this moment and into the future. In fact, very little seems to be “carved in stone” these days. Much of what we hear about the direction of the institutional church these days is outdated almost as fast as it written down.

We are faced with the challenging and often contradictory reality that we are called to be both the tradition bearers and the innovators as God’s covenant people. After all we read scripture passages every Sunday morning that tell us of people who lived long ago and far away. We have decided that we aren’t going to make up our religion as we go along and that it is important to know our story But even though we can pore over a map of where these events may have taken place, we look and listen to receive more than a history lesson. Our hope is that we will be inspired to find our own landmarks and map out our own journey as the people who have experienced the presence of Christ.

That isn’t always easy for us to do and in fact we are often reluctant to get going because of what is probably the fear of the unfamiliar and unknown. We tend to follow the tried and true ways of doing things, not because they are better or more faithful, but because they are familiar. Often we’re not sure why we do what we do, other than it is our pattern.

It’s not just in the church that we do this and I’ll give you an example. Apparently the spacing for railway tracks in North America is exactly four feet eight and a half inches between the rails. I say apparently because I haven’t gone out with a tape measure and checked. That is a very precise measurement and it has to be consistent for the system to work, but where does it come from? Well, that spacing was inherited from the British, which makes sense because they colonized North America. Those British train tracks were, in turn, based on the spacing of wagons wheels, which were built to a common standard to follow the ruts that developed on dirt roads. Those wagons were constructed in accordance with Roman military chariots for which roads were first built across Europe. So, in the year of our Lord two thousand and five, trains travel across our continent employing a system modelled on a mode of conveyance that is thousands of years old.

We know that this isn’t going to change, although the world has changed around what was once the cutting edge of transportation. Some of you may be thinking that this is a good example of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” Of course we have found a host of other ways to “deliver the goods” that are versatile and responsive and fast – everything from airplanes to automobiles to the electronic information sharing that has largely replaced the mail car on those trains.

As a Christian community there are things we do which go back thousands of years and others which go back several generations but seem like millennia! While we honour those traditions where they deserve to be honoured we are also open to the new ways through which the glory of God will be revealed. It’s fair to say that we dishonour God when we are unwilling to let the Holy Spirit work in our midst and lead us to renewed life, even if we have our moments of fear and trepidation along the way. Later in the seventeenth chapter of Matthew, after Jesus and the disciples come back down from their glorious experience Jesus says to the disciples “for truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move: and nothing will be impossible for you.” We may not want to take this too literally, but it is the reminder that if we stay in our ruts it will be impossible to share the Good News of Christ effectively and in response to the needs of our community.

Earlier this week I was interviewed by two members of a team from another congregation here in Bowmanville. They are engaging in what is called a “community scan” which is a series of conversations with community leaders and social agencies and other churches and people on the street to ask what their perceptions are of the faith life of this community. They also want to hear what

The goal is to “plant” a new congregation in Bowmanville which will be responsive to the development of the last few years. The two women who came to interview me were pleasant, everyday members of their church who must believe that sharing the gospel of Christ is part of their calling as present-day disciples.

As Christ’s people we seek the courage to go to the mountaintop so that we can experience the glory of God and to come back down again into the challenging realities of everyday life. We have the challenge of interpreting the promise relationship God has made with us in Christ for our moment in history and in this place. It might be a stretch to suggest that our congregational meeting today is that opportunity. It can be one moment in our year when we attempt to have a more visionary outlook on who we can be together. St. Paul’s does have tremendous strengths as a congregation and we are encouraged to move mountains.

Our first scripture story this morning takes up the story of the exodus well into the wilderness, but we know the story of freedom has perhaps its most dramatic moment shortly after God’s people flee Egypt and realize that they must find a way through an imposing body of water which separates them from the wilderness and the journey to the promised land.

In the tradition of the rabbis it has been suggested that when Moses led the ragtag gang of slaves out of Egypt with the Pharaoh’s charioteers in hot pursuit he came to the Red Sea and struck the ground with his staff. Nothing happened, so he reached out and struck the surface of the water, but still the waters did not part. It was when the first of the people put a foot in the water that the miracle happened. The pathway opened and when they reached the other side those who had been slaves were free women and men and children and they danced in celebration before God.

Whether we are on the glorious mountaintop or finding our way along the path of day to day responsibility we can trust that Christ is with us, and shows us the way. Jesus’ message to us is still “do not be afraid.” Amen.