The Mountain of the Lord s House Seasons of Creation-2, Isaiah 2:1-4, Mark 3:13-15; 6:31-34, 39-46; 9:2-8 Robert Woody 9/27/15 Children s Sermon: Who likes mountains? I love mountains. Mountains are my favorite place to be and to visit. Just had a week long clergy retreat in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and then Julie and I went backpacking again up in the mountains in the Indian Peaks Wilderness area. Here are some pictures of our hike up to the mountains. [#1-5] Here s where we camped and some of the mountains and lakes that surrounded us for 4 days [#6-12] 1
Why are mountains so awesome? Big, tall, majestic, sometimes a little scary. When you are up on a mountain, you can see so much. There are no McDonalds. No highways, or streets or buildings or shopping malls, or traffic, or construction. No distractions, just beauty. Awesome trees and plants and flowers, and rocks and rivers and lakes. Here s some of the flowers we saw when we climbed up even higher. Awesome birds and animals that we rarely see anywhere else, except maybe in a cage in a zoo. This cow moose with two young ones hung around our camp for 2 days. Would you rather see a moose in the mountains, or in a zoo? When we encounter such awesomeness, what does it do to us? It lifts us our spirit, it makes us happy, it gives us joy, reminds us the world is bigger than anything we could get our arms around and it makes us think about God, the one who created all these awesome mountains and rivers and lakes and trees and animals. What is awe? It s a feeling we get when we see or feel or experience something that is amazing, beautiful, bigger than we can understand. It s being filled with respect and wonder and maybe a little bit of fear, almost overwhelming. Awe is what we feel when we come close to God. And when we feel awe it opens us up to God and draws us close to God. When we see something awesome like mountains, it often makes us more aware of God s presence, and we feel awe this respect and wonder and maybe some fear of God. So if mountains are where we can experience awe and come close to God, why don t we just go up on the mountain every Sunday for worship? We don t have any big mountains in or near San Antonio. And if we did, it would take hours to get up the mountains and they probably wouldn t allow us to build a big church and parking lot up on the mountain. So where do we go to worship? Here, on this campus and in this building. What do we call this building? A sanctuary, a place of worship. This is not on top of a mountain, but it is pretty awesome. Look how tall the ceilings are. Awesome. Look through the windows at the beautiful windows and all the beautiful trees and bushes and fountain. Awesome. And look at the amazing hangings and artwork. Awesome. Why did we make this and why do we keep it up as such an awesome place? So we can open up our hearts and minds and experience the wonder and awesomeness of God. Just like when we go up to the mountains. In some ways, a mountain is a like a sanctuary, where we can go and be filled with awe and be open to God. And a sanctuary is like a mountain, a place of awe, where we go to experience God. 2
So should we take care of this awesome sanctuary and campus or should we just let it wear out and get dirty and full of weeds? No way! We need to keep it awesomely beautiful. [let s say thanks to all those who work so hard to keep this place awesome.] What about the mountains? Should we take care of them and make sure we don t do things that destroy them and destroy their beauty? Absolutely! Adult Sermon: As most of you know, my favorite part of creation, other than people, is mountains. I love people more than mountains, but just barely. Here s a picture of a T-shirt Julie gave me while we were dating when she figured out how much I loved the mountains and what a holy place they were for me. When the T-shirt wore out, she framed it and its now on the wall in my office. Mountains are a sanctuary, a holy and mysterious place where we can encounter and connect with God, our Creator. But, are mountains or sanctuaries the only place God hangs out? No, but they are thin places, awesome places where we are more likely to be open to sensing and experiencing God s presence. When you go back and read the Old Testament stories, where are people most likely to encounter or experience God? On a mountain. Where did Moses first encounter God in the burning bush? On a mountain. As Moses led the people of Israel through the wilderness, where did he go to talk to God? On a mountain. Where did God reveal the 10 Commandments to shape and guide God s people? On a mountain. Where did Moses take the 70 elders of Israel to encounter God? On a mountain. Where did the prophet Elijah encounter the great wind of God? On a mountain. There is something about the awesomeness of mountains that make them a thin place where we are more likely to encounter, to experience, to hear the voice of God. The problem is, it s hard to get everyone up on the mountain on a regular basis to experience God. That puts a lot of pressure on the leader to be the only one who goes up the mountain to communicate with God, and then have to go back down and share what God has said. How did that work for Moses? Not an easy job. So what did the people of Israel do? After they had moved into the promise land, and settled down, with the leadership of David and Solomon they built a temple, a sanctuary, a man-made awesome place, where more of the people could come and regularly encounter God. It represented, and in some ways replaced, the holy mountains where Moses and other leaders had encountered God. They built the temple in Jerusalem, which was a high place in Israel, and they built it on the highest hill, or mount in the city. And the temple became their sanctuary, their holy place and they often referred to as Mount Zion. In our Old Testament reading Isaiah says, In days to come the mountain of the Lord s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. Was Isaiah talking about mountains, or was he talking about their Temple in Jerusalem? Yes. 3
The Temple mount served like Mount Saini as the awesome place where the leaders and people of Israel went to encounter and listen to their God. But in our Scripture, literal mountains continued to be important places for connecting with God. In the three short stories we included in our Gospel reading from Mark, we see Jesus attraction to mountains as the holy place where he could encounter God and receive God s wisdom, God s nurture and healing. When the time came for Jesus to choose the leadership team for his growing movement, the 12 apostles from his early group of followers, where did he go? [Jesus] went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message... When Jesus took his worn out disciples across the Sea of Galilee to a deserted place to rest, what happened? They were overwhelmed by thousands of people begging for Jesus to heal and teach them, and ultimately to feed them. No rest for the weary. So when Jesus, who must have been exhausted, finally dismissed the crowds and sent his disciples back across the lake, what did he do? He went up the mountain to pray. He s exhausted, so he decides to climb a mountain? Why not just pray on the shoreline, or in the boat? No, he hikes up the mountain to find a thin place, where he felt closest to God, where God could nurture and refill his soul. When it came time for Jesus to fully reveal who he was to his three head disciples, Peter, James and John, where did he take them? Jesus led them up a high mountain, apart, by themselves. The mountain of transfiguration. They experienced Moses and Elijah (the two Old Testament Mountain Men) talking to Jesus and they hear the voice of God, loud and clear This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him! For me, the place up in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, at the headwaters of the Middle St. Vrain River, that I ve now been to four times, twice with Seth and twice with Julie, is the Garden of Eden. It is the place where the beauty and wonder and the awesomeness of God and God s Creation has hit me more than anywhere else. I imagine having most of my ashes scattered out there in our beautiful courtyard. But I ve asked Julie to take a handful or to have Seth take a handful, and scatter them in my Garden of Eden, at the headwaters of the Middle St. Vrain, where I know, and feel God s presence. Mountains are also symbolically important in our relationship with God. For the people of Israel, the Temple became their Mount Zion, the place they went to find and encounter God. This sanctuary, this campus, are our mountain of Reconciliation. It is a place we come regularly in hopes of experiencing and 4
listening to God so God can guide us when we go back into our worlds. This place was designed to be awesome, awe-inspiring, so that we are drawn towards that thin place where the earthly and the divine come together and intermingle. Much of the awesomeness of this place resonates from the intentional connections with nature and creation. With trees, and flowers, and birds, and water, and rocks. It is not the only way, but one of the primary ways we find and connect with God is connecting with Creation. Whether it is sitting or walking in the courtyard or walking on the river, or going out to the back porch, where we can see the trees and flowers and hear the birds, we all need a place where the awesomeness of Creation, connects us with our Creator. That is why we are celebrating together the Season of Creation to remind us how important and how much we need Creation to experience and know our Creator. For me, as for many of the Old Testament prophets, the mountains are the icon, the peak of all of God s Creation. They represent and remind us of the awesomeness and wonder of all Creation. And they also remind us, that we cannot, as stewards of God s Creation, ignore and abuse the mountains, or any other part of creation. As I shared last year, despite the awesomeness and beauty of the mountains in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, there is also some in your face evidence of the consequences of climate change and global warming. The glaciers are disappearing. 9/8/2014 8/31/2015 I was shocked to see after only one year a noticeable difference in one of the disappearing glaciers at the head of the Middle St. Vrain. And the hike out was painful because again it was obvious that the Pinebark Beetle epidemic is spreading because of global warming. 5
As the climate warms, the hard freezes that used to kill off the beetles and kept them restricted to low altitude areas, are no longer happening in the higher elevations of Colorado and much of the Rockies. Every year we see more and more dead pine trees at higher and higher elevations. And you can look at the bark and see evidence of the Pinebark Beetles. I know we may not all on the same page as to what extent global warming is the result of human causes such as excessive CO2 emissions. But even if we are only contributing to 50% or 40% or even 25% of the problem, can we, as God s stewards, brush it off, ignore it? As God s stewards, we can t let this awesome sanctuary and campus deteriorate and fade away. Are we willing to also be stewards of all Creation? To do whatever we can, so that our children and grandchildren and future generations can experience the awesomeness of Creation, and hear the voice of their Creator? 6