The Mountains of Salvation
2011 Lent Series
Introduction
Let me begin by saying I have never been to the Holy Land. I have never seen the places we are going to consider during this series. Instead, we are making a spiritual journey to a place foreign and yet familiar. We are going to the mountains to get a change of perspective. We go to the deep places by looking up to these lofty heights.
From time immemorial, humanity has located the divine presence in the naturally spectacular formations of mountaintops and hilltops. We now know these wonders of altitude are formed by the tremendous power of geological forces deep in the earth. In the Bible, mountains play a significant role in the sacred history of our encounter with God. This is a dance, etched in stone, between the profoundly human and the holiness of God. Quite literally, a mountaintop is the point of grace where Earth and Heaven meet.
So we begin our pilgrimage to a few of the mountains of salvation history. We need only a spiritual curiosity in place of gear and equipment. We need only “lift our eyes unto the mountains from whence cometh our help.”
1. Mount Sinai–obedience
On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God; and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. And Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. And the LORD came down upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain; and the LORD called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. – Exodus 19
Mount Sinai is not a centrally located or prominent place. If it were up to us, I doubt we would have chosen it for what God did there. Something more familiar would have been nice. A lush and fertile formation situated in a scenic locale might have been a better choice.
Instead this craggy, isolated rock in the middle of nowhere with nothing around it is the place where the law of Moses is given. After leaving the civilized culture of Egypt this is where God has led His people. In this wasteland – both barren and spectacular – humanity is offered the incomparable privilege of a covenant with God. And here is where humanity learned what was required of us to be faithful to that covenant.
Mt. Sinai, then, wordlessly gives testimony to two inseparable messages. God has entered into a covenant with us and we are able to respond.
We are not robots who simply follow the commands with which we are programmed. Nor are we like grains of wheat blown in any and all directions. We encounter the presence of God's fidelity and are given, by the gift of our free will inspired by grace, the chance to respond in obedience.
Is our response perfect? No, obviously as human beings that is not possible or even required of us. What we celebrate is not our failure but simply the opportunity that God has given us. The awe-inspiring pyrotechnics of God's Voice on the mountain are dim in comparison with the marvel of God speaking to the heart of each believer.
Mt. Sinai becomes the place of this new obedience to God. The fear of offending God is fueled by an overwhelming experience of His love. The mountain trembled in the presence of his Majesty. The human heart trembles at the appearance of His mercy. Obedience is now the response of the whole human person to the revelation of God.
So in the desert there stands a mountain. It's not pretty and it is rough. It is the mountain of our obedience to God. It stands as a testimony not to our failures but more to the divinely inspired privilege we share.
Mount Sinai is the mountain of human capacity in the presence of divine revelation. It is the place that says, "we can do it.” Why? Because God said so."
2. The Sermon on the Mount
Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them. (Mat 5.1,2)
The Sermon on the Mount could have been well staged by any producer in Hollywood. This scene is dramatic in and of itself. The Speaker is audible and visible. The audience is physically receptive. And most significantly, the message has an unmistakable direction.
St. Luke's version is different. He sets it on a level field for his own reasons. St. Matthew wants us to see Jesus as the new Moses. What St. Matthew gives us is the Truth revealing the truth. This is not a proposition or a conversation; this is revelation. The new way and ‘why’ of the kingdom of God is revealed to the disciples of all time. More than a series of laws and rules, this is a revelation of the heart. Intention, emotion, and action are given a unity in the singular energy of Divine imitation. What we have done before and continue to do now have new reason. Without this revelation, there is no ultimate security. With it, our confidence goes beyond what we thought possible.
The truth is revealed and yet we rebel, ignore, and act against it. Why?
Let's go back to this setting. It is a revelation of truth from above. We are not consulted and our opinion is not considered. The truth of God's justice and mercy are immovable realities that irritate our creativity. If it were up to us, as often we think it should be, we would landscape the Sermon on the Mount into a Garden of Eden – and we all know how that one turned out! We would level the playing field to match our own virtues and vices so that little would be very wrong or very right. Our evaluations and judgments would be infallible. Our demands would be reasonable to the point of ineffectual. Our desire for what is comfortable would soon define what is good.
It is the imperfect condition of fallen human nature. We know from history how true this is whether we consult a textbook or a mirror. And this is a new high point of grace. In this season of reflection and repentance, none of what I have just pointed out is meant in condemnation. Our encounter with the truth does not accept or leave us in that sad condition. As much as this revelation does not require our opinion, it also refuses to accept our final damnation. As bad as our situation can be, that will never be a good enough reason for God to give up on us.
The human soul, when presented with divine truth, has the option -born of free will - to submit or not. From the earliest days of our first disobedience in the Garden of Eden, we have consistently rejected the truth of God's mercy. We are so convinced that we are so wrong. We define God's standards by picking and choosing our own as if they were God’s. The submission of faith admits that we stand under, not in opposition to, God's revelation.
It certainly is not a one-shot deal nor a once in a lifetime decision. It is something every Christian must decide every day throughout the day. And what a steep climb it is! Our progress is rarely spectacular even if our mistakes are. Our goal is to follow the advice of an experienced climber: don't look down; look up.
Prideful humanity wants to look down because that is where we come from and where our record of what we call ‘accomplishments’ stand in fragile order. Divine truth from above can appear as an avalanche threatening to eradicate who we are and the things we have. Don't worry and look up! From that lofty height God is not looking down on us as much as He is at the perfect vantage point to look into us.
He sees what we can not and encourages us to be more than we are.
But only if we look up.
Mts. Moriah and Zion – Confidence
Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, "My father!" And he said, "Here am I, my son." He said, "Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham said, "God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So they went both of them together. –Gen 22.6-8
You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel. - Heb 12.22-24
Our next mountain is really a cluster of hilltops. They are 30 miles east of the Mediterranean Sea. They form a ridge on which we find two of its most famous peaks: Mounts Moriah and Zion. Actually, many scholars seem to believe they are basically the same place.
Mt. Moriah is the location of Abraham offering Isaac. It is a place of pure confidence which led to a hard-to-imagine act of worship. And in God's plan, it became the center of the world because the true God was to be worshiped there.
Our first mountains are places where God comes to us. On Mt. Sinai, the Lord spoke to Moses and gave him the holy law. At the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sends forth His word of the kingdom to all the world. But on Moriah and Zion, we go to the Lord. We become pilgrims to our Pilgrim God. Up until now, salvation history has been on the move. From the Garden of Eden to Ur of the Chaldeas to Egypt to the Promised Land, God has been seeking us. It appears that things are now fixed on this geologically and commercially insignificant hillside. It's almost as if God had a map of the world and put a tack on this one spot around which everything else revolved.
But that's only how it appears. By anchoring our faith in this one place, God has brought us a step further than before.
Classic Catholic spirituality often refers to “eliciting a desire within us.” It is a brilliant psychological observation that human beings may appreciate good things they are given but will love them if we first desire them. We have a natural instinct to struggle for what we want. Often times, we value the struggle more than the result.
For example, there are business tycoons who, by the time they are 60, have accumulated more wealth than most could imagine. And yet we find them, still hard at work, well into their 80s. Clearly, the money is not the issue but the struggle to gain is. Or another example, a piece of cloth made by a machine producing hundreds of yards per hour is never as appreciated (or expensive) as something handmade. It seems the greatest human achievements are the results of a chosen decision to struggle.
In the spiritual life, given this human situation, what we choose is guided by grace. Using our God-given intellect and will, we cooperate with God as we elicit from ourselves the desires we believe are the ones He has led us to choose. This is the fire Abraham carried up the hill. This is the sacrificial knife he carried in the other hand.
The fire transforms what the knife will separate. What we see on Mount Moriah is pure worship. Abraham consecrated this place with absolute confidence in God and God, in turn, established on Mount Zion His absolute holiness. The fire of the Holy Spirit would transform the people who have been set apart by the sharp edged Word of God. By that same Holy Spirit, they would come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, and to offer the purest Sacrifice in spirit and in truth.
But climbing these mountains is a struggle. The purification needed is not our preference. If God were more like Santa Claus, he'd be a lot more popular! If we only had to sit back and passively grab what comes near us it would be so much nicer, wouldn't it? Imagine a God we could love without difficulty or a God loves us without a struggle! And where does that leave Isaac? He is free and without a burden. He doesn't carry the wood up the hill beside his father. It doesn't take a theologian to see that many years later, there would be another Son carrying the same thing up a nearby hill. Without the struggle to elicit from within what God desires, we echo the words of the Easter Exultet: what good would life have been to us if Christ had not come as our Redeemer!
We worship the God we struggle to know. At times we are determined and strong. At others, we are weak and sinful. Mere human effort alone will never get us up the mountainside. The gift of confidence alone can do that. The word implies a motion as it literally means “with faith.” A lack of movement toward God is a dead faith. Confidence is always going somewhere. It refuses to stop because of a mistake or not sure of itself. Confidence is humble enough to admit our failures and bold enough to assert that “God will provide” when we can find no possible reason. Our worship of God is the confident belief in His provision for our salvation.
It makes sense, then, to see the Eucharist, in the words of Vatican II, as the “source and summit” of our spiritual lives. By grace, we have the confidence to approach it and receive the confidence to live it. Our desires are slowly purified as we approach Who we hope to become. We say “Amen” to what we are and what we hope to be. So be confident in the struggle because God will provide. So…
Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.
King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.
Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.
Mount Calvary – Commendation
Today we find ourselves on Mount Calvary. Through the centuries, we have images of this incredibly significant place. We see dramatic silhouettes of three crosses on top of the mountain all by themselves. The movies portray and arduous climb accompanied by dramatic music.
The truth is, it really wasn't much of a hill. It was more of an outcrop of rock. It had two indentations that looked to the vivid imagination like a skull. It was used as a garbage dump outside the city walls. Even so, it has rightly captured the attention of the world. What it may lack in physical size is more than made up for by its spiritual meaning.
Our spiritual heritage places great value on the Cross. For us, it is a matter of redemption and identification. Without it, we are nothing; we have no hope and life has no meaning. And we all carry the cross even if it is rarely ever the same Cross. But those who follow Jesus Christ follow Him in the Royal Way of the Cross. And like Him, we carry it to Mount Calvary. Faith leads us to the same place.
If the challenge was extraordinary and dramatic, it would also be easier. A lone mountain – even a steep one – is at least obvious. Calvary is not. It is high enough only to demonstrate the cruel authority of the Roman empire. It is a strange place without beauty. Admission to its lowly vista requires a price no one finds easy to pay. It is the intention, action, and reality of putting ourselves in the Father’s hands. “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Sounds easy, doesn't it? Just repeat the phrase and we are as good as there. Well not really; there is a bit more to it than that.
Remember what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane just a little bit away from here? Remember the prayer Jesus prayed multiple times: Thy will be done? In the cool darkness the night before, what Jesus was offered was accepted today by the Father. Exposed and incapacitated, He prayed the same prayer even if the words are different. Imagining what would be required of Him was distressing but now it has happened, it is more real than ever. Calvary is the place where God takes us at our word.
There are no puzzles on Calvary, only mysteries. From this high place we look into the lowest depths of our souls. From the child whose pet goldfish was found floating to the elderly facing doctors who tell her the treatment would be too much, Calvary is the place of God encountering us precisely when we would rather be somewhere else. We may say ‘anything for God’ but we certainly do not mean it. Sure, it’s only a few steps but it is the steepest climb we will ever make.
Commending ourselves into the Father's hands demands the ultimate sacrifice: the human ego. If it were up to us, we would do things differently. We would tell God that we trust Him while asking not prove it. We would express our affection for Him and hope He would be happy with nothing more than our best wishes. This little bump in the road on the way into Jerusalem can potentially derail our noblest efforts and aspirations.
Most of us know and fear losing of our independence. The natural limits of time and the ever-growing deficit of the body diminish our self-reliability and self-sustaining activity. With each stage, with each step, the cross grows heavier. That little rise soon becomes an enormous mountain. And each little stone and step asks us to commend ourselves to the God whose will is being accomplished. In ways we do not know and for reasons we cannot comprehend, the will of God is made reality. Our steps and stumbles of faith bring us to the rock of Calvary itself.
The only necessary consolation is the unspoken assurance that we are exactly where we are supposed to be. Some people are stoics who comfort themselves with the harsh admission that things are the way they are because that's the way it is. Some are even moved to the point of acceptance knowing full well they are powerless to change these things. Christians go deeper as they look around and see Calvary as the place they may hate and which they know is the right place. Without faith, Calvary is just the way things are but with faith, Calvary is what things can truly be.
Grandma told us to “offer it up.” Generations worked hard for their families so they could offer up a little less. Our modern world goes way to far. It wants to landscape Calvary out of existence. Every potion and pill is designed to avoid commending anything of ourselves to the care of God. And with no ultimate solution to the difficulties of life, the only answer is the antiseptic isolation of remote hospital beds. People who suffer are deemed guilty by reason of their own negligence. They are condemned for not thinking positively and acting accordingly. With the authority of barroom philosophers they clearly have failed to realize the obvious solution: if they desired less, they would suffer less. Everything within them and around them cry out how wrong it is for them to be here.
There is never talk of offering or doing the will of God. In fact, those who do are seen as religious zealots or completely deluded. The challenge of Mount Calvary is the act of faith that says we are here because God has allowed us to be here. Our vocation is to commend ourselves, not to command God.
For each of us, our own Calvary is marked by the cross. Atop that little hill we enter its paradox when we discover who we are as we place ourselves in the hands of the Father. We treasure the truth that it is in giving ourselves we receive ourselves.
Calvary – wherever we find it - is our most costly loss and our richest gain - just as it was for Him. Mount Tabor– Real Glory
Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep but kept awake, and they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah" -- not knowing what he said. As he said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is my Son, my Chosen;* listen to him!" And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen. On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. - St. Luke 9.28-37
We have come to the last mountain of this series. Mount Tabor is the strangest of them all. What happened here is both fantastic and essential to our faith. The Transfiguration is the full glory of the Christmas miracle.
The first two mountains, Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount are places where God comes to meet us. The second two, Moriah and Zion, are the destinations of people looking for God. Mount Tabor is the glory of the meeting point for all pilgrims, human and divine. At Christmas, the beloved Son came into the world quietly in the middle of the night. On Mount Tabor, that same beloved Son is revealed in the brilliance of heavenly light. And by faith, we still walk in that same light shining brilliantly now as then.
The Father looks with favor on the Son in His sacred humanity. That humanity – our humanity – has a long history. Created in love and displaced by sin, this humanity has been far from perfect. It came close to extinction except for the fidelity of Noah. It has suffered as well as caused sorrow and death through the millennia of war and violence. And while a few, by God's grace, rose above, they did so weighed down by the lingering effects of their own weakness. David would sing the praises of the Lord even as his sin was ever before him. Jonah would preach the word effectively while he rebelled against the mercy God would show.
But all this would change beginning with that young woman from Nazareth. “Our tainted nature's solitary boast” would offer the gift of her own nature to the heavenly Father. As humanity tried to scale the heights of heaven and invariably slide back to our lowly place, the Father took hold of what she offered and raised up all of us with Him. It was our humanity, with all our scars and wounds, that was given a dignity and even a glory beyond any reasonable expectation.
Modern paganism emphasizes the discovery of God within confusing the image with the artist. It would see the Transfiguration validating the false doctrine that, simply put, we are God. Our faith understands that we are the subjects, not the agents, of the divine presence in ourselves. We believe in the grace of the incarnation. We hold that God's favor and choice began with Him because of our own efforts, that dignity was unreachable. It is our prayer, as the 7th Preface of Ordinary Time so beautifully says, “that you may see and love in us what you see in love in Christ.”
Moses and Elijah appear alongside the transfigured Christ. Both of these great figures of the Old Testament share one thing in common. Both of them are testimonies and witnesses to the sadness of infidelity. Moses was there when the people rebelled because of the hardness of their hearts. Elijah was there when the people ignored the offer of God's favor. And yet, both of them give equal witness to the possibility of glory. They are not blinded by the shame of human failure or divine perfection – real as they are.
Instead they speak with the glorified Christ only of the redemption of the first by the grace of the second.
In this mystical experience we see clearly our hard reality. The brilliance of heaven does not annihilate the tragedies of earth. The glory does not obscure the fallen. The Transfiguration transfigures what was there before instead of pretending it never existed.
I don't know of a better definition of hope. And this hope is scary. We know how gracious God is because we are so keenly aware of how unworthy we are. That is this strange darkness Peter, James, and John experience. On that mountaintop, these three would learn and teach us that faith is never as much about how we are wrong as much as it is about the mercy of God.
But this mountaintop revelation is not isolated. After all, true faith never is. St. Luke positions this account between two anchors of the Christian life. Prior to the Transfiguration, the disciples are given the essentials of Christian prayer. Coming down from the mountain, they encounter the crowd clamoring for healing and instruction.
It is only in prayer that our hearts seek the glory of God. It is only in service, that we bring the image of glory to the world. There is no convenient separation between the mystical and the mundane. St. Vincent De Paul once said that when we are praying and somebody needs something to eat, we should never fear that God is offended by leaving one of his works for another. It happens in this chapel all the time. We sing the praises of the Lord even as a Sister's beeper goes off. A visitor once asked me if I found it disturbing that the chirp of a pager would be followed by someone leaving. I reminded them of St. Vincent's quote and said that I would be more disturbed if God called and no one answered.
The Transfiguration is never a disfiguration. It does not neglect the glory of God seen so clearly in the needs of others. It transforms the sacrilege of indifference and the blasphemy of apathy. The light still shines from the top of Mount Tabor through the ages. The Father's voice from heaven was heard in the voice of the Son who walked this earth.
And every proclamation of the Gospel in our world today, whether by word or action or both, it still is.