Come to the Mountain
Have you ever found yourself surprised by sitting still? I mean, really still, and honestly surprised? I went through this phase for a while where I would come home, park my car and just sit there for a moment. I would just sit there in the car.
The first couple of times I did this were almost involuntary. I’d discover that I was sitting quietly…and the sensation was so strange to me. But I’d just sit there. I’d take notice of my breathing…not to control it but to simply notice it.
In
Out
There would be sunlight coming in through the windshield. Even today I can remember a sweatshirt I wore one time as I sat there in my car. I remember how it felt against my skin. The days were cool. I remember that as well.
I would sit there. Still.
Everything was so vivid…colors in the leaves and grass, the feel of my clothing, and the sounds of the city all around me. In those small moments everything found a place. They were holy moments. And wholly unexpected. They were little trips to the mountaintop.
Those days were very busy days for me. I was working two jobs and not making enough money. I was drowning in my own life. Every day my mind was racing, obsessing on something. Activity led to activity led to activity.
Then these moments came like some divine intervention.
And their gentle stillness was a surprise;
a welcome and much needed gift.
Gradually, they showed me how the life I was leading was unmanageable, incapable of leading me to God’s peace. I learned to cultivate these times. I learned to find other moments to be still and aware. I learned to find holy moments for myself…to pack my own bags and journey to the mountaintop. When you hear me talk about Christian discipline, liturgy, prayer…This is what I’m talking about.
This is the first Sunday of Advent. This is the day when we come together and mark our calendars. We begin a countdown to the Birth of Christ. It is a season set aside so that we might make ourselves ready for the coming Christ.
We still ourselves.
We sit quietly.
We wait.
We have come together to begin a spiritual journey, a shared journey, of waiting for God.
We are being taught to expect the miraculous through the Advent discipline waiting for the birth of God in the world and in our hearts. It’s a beautiful time in the life of the church.
But the scriptures we encounter this morning push us around. If you are visiting with us this morning for the first time, maybe you find these scriptures surprising…Matthew especially…But we are talking about the birth of God in the world…and such an encounter is often disruptive life changing. In their wisdom, Isaiah and Jesus understand that the encounter with God is always the encounter with God’s judgment.
“The God who loves and redeems us,” says theologian A.K.M. Adam “also cares enough to hold us to judgment.”
So now we have to ask ourselves a difficult question. Are we here this morning to be comforted or to be made comfortable?
This is the First Sunday of Advent,
the first Sunday of the season where we once again prepare for God’s arrival.
We are asked to slow down,
to find moments of gentleness,
to find moments of peace.
Sometimes, however, I have to stop and ask myself if this search is a search for what will make me comfortable or if it is a search for what will comfort me. Because there is a difference.
Do you understand what I am getting at? I find it difficult to explain.
The Laz-y Boy chair is comfortable. But does it really comfort? Perhaps. Perhaps it can assuage that part of our soul that bears wounds. But I doubt it. Then, I’m not sure that this metaphor really works.
I once heard this little saying in relation to chocolate chip cookies: “Bad for you, but good to you!” Somewhere in there is the truth I’m getting at. Do we know what is good to us? Do we know what is good for us? Can we tell the difference? It’s hard to say.
Life with God is a little more complicated than a chocolate chip cookie or a a Laz-y Boy recliner.
Sometimes we come to church in Advent looking to be comforted. We come looking for hope. What is startling, perhaps, is that the hope that God offers is not always what we think it should be. It does not come in packages that we always recognize. It does not come in what makes us comfortable. It may not be found in the familiar carols and hymns,
or in children’s pageants,
or in lights and greenery. Instead it will be found in the millennia old prophetic words of Isaiah.
It will be found in words like “arbitrator.”
The mystery of God’s coming, God’s living with us, might indeed be comforting. But it is never comfortable because the encounter with God changes who we are. It asks us to change how we live in even the most simple of ways.
This is the Good News of the Gospel. We will all be changed.
To come to the Mountain, to stand before Isaiah’s “arbitrator” is to be changed…to be judged, found wanting, and to be transformed. We will turn our swords into ploughshares, our spears into pruning hooks. Weapons become gardening tools. What destroys is transformed into what nurtures into what brings growth. We will study war no more.
God transforms us into peacemakers. In the end, this is God’s desire.
The promise is for all nations. The promise is for all people.
The messiah that is to come is the messiah to all people. The arbitration God offers that results in peace is for all people. This is true. This is absolute. But we cannot know the time. We cannot know the hour. We must be ready for such a decision, for such judgment. We must search our own souls for the things within us that make for peace and nurture those things.
We must make time to be still.
We must make time to be gentle.
We must make time to step away from our scheduled, regimented lives, and step into the unknown, the unscheduled, and the seemingly arbitrary work of God. This is Advent.
Ask yourself. What in your life is a sword? What is a spear? What in your life does not make for peace? Take time during Advent. Lift those things up to God. Give those things over to God’s judgment. Let God transform those things into something new. Let God undo what has been done, and turn your life into what makes for peace.
This is what the mountaintop is all about. God is a God of mountaintops. The mountain of the Lord…Mt. Harmon, Mt. Tabor, Mt. Sainai…God is a God of heights, of mountaintops. The scriptures beg us to come to the mountain and stand on the edge of some high precipice. We have to look out into a future that we cannot control, that we cannot dictate. This is life. There are ways we can pitch in, align ourselves.
Matthew makes it very clear that our present participation in God's future is essential to Christian identity. The hour is "unexpected." So we must be ready. There are no signs or portents. There are no tealeaves to read. There is only our work and our prayer.
This is the first Sunday of Advent. And here the prophet’s words meet us. Here Jesus’ own words challenge us. But they beg of us the same thing: Come to the Mountain.
Come to the Mountain.
Encounter God’s truth.
Proclaim, “God is with us!”
Be willing to be uncomfortable
to sit still
to be surprised..to be judged.
to be changed.
And in this, you may find comfort.
Come to the mountain.
Amen.
Here is a link to the lectionary. |
