The Mountaintop

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

Rev. Dr. David Williams; 02.26.17

Scripture Lesson:  Exodus 24:12-18

Years ago, in the rolling green hill country of Wales, I went for a hike.  I was in seventh grade, out on a multi-day middle school field trip, and the country impossibly lush, and we were on a day hike.  Meaning, all day, from morning till the first dimming of dusk.  The goal...a craggy, rocky outcropping overlooking a valley, a valley that was striated with streams and fields, ponds and lakes.  

It took nearly four hours to reach the summit, as the little group of twelve and thirteen year olds splashed along muddy trails and clambered over rocks, following paths where we could find them.  We’d scraggle across fields, clambering over cattle gates and wandering through fields where the cows would eye the chattering, jabbering gaggle of loud young primates with faint suspicion.   It was probably our accents.  

It was exciting, and even though the 4G signal was terrible out there in the wilds, no one complained about it, it being 1981 and all.  

We did what you used to do, back when the netmind wasn’t constantly present.  We talked.  We laughed.  And we took it in, the day a misty cool mix of clouds, interspersed with occasional bursts of sun.  

As we came within five minutes of the summit, a thousand feet above the valley floor, there was a long way around and a short way.  The long way, a technical path.  The short way, a rocky cliff face covered in dense gorse and bracken.  I and a few others went the short way, clambering hand over hand, clinging to the growth on side of the face for the last twenty meters like fetal kangaroos wriggling upward towards their mother’s pouch.

“Don’t fall,” said one of our teachers, before looking away and continuing up the path.  It was 1981.  Things were different.

At the top of the crag, we could look out over the valley.  The sky had cleared, and the day was beautiful.  There, set out before us, our whole day’s hike, every path, every stream, every field and tree laid out like like a meticulously designed diorama.  It was the memory of the hike we had just taken, and a reminder of just how far we had to go, our whole day, laid out in a single vision.

It’s hard not to be drawn to high places, to those points where you can look out over the world and see it as it is.

It’s the appeal of the mountaintop, the grand vista, the vantage point where the muddle all around you fades away and the scope and scale of things becomes clear.  You’re on the top of the world, and below you, you can see the interconnection of things.

Those moments can change us.  Shift our vision.  

Here on this Transfiguration Sunday, we find ourselves on the mountaintop.  It’s the story of Exodus, and we are deep into the tale of the flight of the people of Israel from Egypt.   They’re out of slavery, and Pharaoh’s armies have done drownded in pursuit.  Into the wilderness they’ve gone, eating manna and quail, fighting off attackers.  It’s been a difficult journey.  So, of course, they’ve been complaining constantly, bickering and kvetching right up to the foot of Mount Sinai.

When we get to that mountain, the whole flow of the story changes.  It’s no longer just a journey through the wilderness.  it’s about the receiving of God’s instructions on how to live, both in the land of the promise and wherever the Jewish people might find themselves.  Moses heads up onto Mount Sinai, alone, where he encounters his Maker in a cloud of mystery.  

The Ten Commandments are received, and the covenant with Israel is sealed, a covenant that begins with the calling of Moses and that has its fruition up on the mountain top, right there on the cusp of earth and heaven.

It’s a straightforward set of principles that Moses brings back down with him, a set of instructions that tell us how to stand in relationship to our Creator, and how to stand in relationship with one another.  Or, as Jesus summarized them:  Love God with all your heart and mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.

They’re not some lofty, distant abstraction, one that has nothing to do with the reality of existence.    Those commandments, affirmed in their intent by Jesus, give us that mountaintop view of our lives.

We need those high places, those spaces in our existence where we can look out across the span of our lives and get some sense of where we stand relative to the purpose God has for all of us.  

It’s the primary challenge we face as we move from day to day to day in our lives, as we check one expectation against the next, just happily bopping along until one day we bop right out of this mortal coil.

It’s so easy to be shortsighted, to look to this moment and not see where you have been and what tomorrow might bring.  It’s so easy to play small ball, to be so consumed by the demands of our anxious immediacy that we are constantly in a state of reaction to whatever it is we are encountering.

That has always been a challenge for humankind.  The challenges of day to day survival make it difficult to stop and take stock of where we stand.  If you’re struggling to make bricks for Pharaoh, it’s a little hard to take time off for a brickmaker’s sabbatical.

The demands of our net-age culture reinforce this.

If we never stop, never look out to see where we are and where we’re headed, never allowing ourselves to catch our breath and really grasp the why of what we’re doing.

That, in large part, is the reason for the season that begins this upcoming Wednesday.  We start the season of Lent, a time set aside as different, a mountaintop time when we can consider the paths of our lives against the paths of discipleship.

We can look down at that diorama, considering where we have been, and ask ourselves: is this the journey of faith?  Are we living by the standards of compassion and justice that Jesus places before us?

From that, our questioning needs to to stir us to action, action that we can reinforce in this season of discipleship.

Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.