Sermon preached on Sunday 15th February, Sunday next before Lent

By Peter Evans​​

 

Readings

 

Exodus 24: 12 – 18

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12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.”

 

13 Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. 14 He said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them.”

 

15 When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, 16 and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud. 17 To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. 18 Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

 

Matthew 17: 1 – 9

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After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

4 Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

6 When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” 8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

 

The Talk

 

Do you ever watch the TV programme “Pointless”. They ask 100 people a question and then the contestants have to guess which answer nobody got right. Well, if you asked 100 people which was the most famous mountain in the world, what do you think they would say.

 

Well, I’m pretty sure it has to be Everest in the Himalayas. It’s 29,031 feet and 8 and half inches high. Or 8,848m and 86 cm high. Or pretty much five and half miles high. And quite how they manage to measure it to nearest half inch or centimetre is beyond me. And it excludes the snow and ice covering the peak.

 

But there you have it. It’s an awfully long way up. And down again.

 

It sits in the border between Nepal and Tibet, and of course, it has local names, Sagarmatha in Nepali and Chomolungma in Tibetan.

 

And if you’ve got a spare £27,000, you can book a tour to the top. And enjoy a nice queue on the way.

 

But why do people climb mountains? Because they’re there – or so the saying goes (attr. George Mallory). And in our own way, I’m sure that’s something that most of us have done at some point or another, climbed up a hill or mountain.

 

And we do it to get to the top. To see the view, to experience the reward of having made the effort. And for those of us who’ve done it a few times, we’ll have all had the frustration of false tops. That feeling of having slogged up from the valley, thinking you can see the top, then getting there only to discover it’s further on. And that can happen two or three times on some walks. But the view is always worth it. Except for when it’s cloudy.

 

You will have noticed that both our readings today involved climbing mountains.

 

Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a mountain to reveal his divine glory. And Moses climbs Mount Sinai to receive the law from God. Moses is a regular visitor to the top of Mount Sinai, at least seven and maybe eight times. Right near the beginning of the story of Moses, at the start of Exodus, Moses is on Mount Sinai where he meets with God in the burning bush. And even at this early stage, it is described as the mountain of God, a holy place. And as Moses meets God in the burning bush, God calls Moses to lead His people to freedom from slavery and when they enter the promised land, to come back to Mount Sinai to worship.

 

Before the start of this reading, Moses has already been up Mount Sinai a few times. He has written down various laws that God has given him and passed these on to the people.

 

But then Moses is called up the mountain again, for a sixth time. And this time is a little different. Because it is on this sixth visit that God gives Moses the ten commandments, written by God himself onto tablets of stone.

 

And Moses stayed at the top of the mountain for forty days and forty nights. So many times in the bible, it talks about forty days and forty nights. It was the period that Jesus spent in the desert, for example. It was used to describe a period of spiritual preparation. Lent starts on this coming Wednesday, and lent is 40 days long (the period of lent excludes the Sundays, hence 40, not 46).

 

But it doesn’t really matter whether 40 days is literally true or not. We know it was a long time. Because while Moses was up the mountain, the people of Israel thought he was gone for too long and that he probably wasn’t coming back. In fact Moses was up the mountain on this trip for seven and a half chapters of Exodus.

 

So long in fact that the people of Israel made a golden calf and started to worship that instead. God was not pleased as you might expect – you can read the story in Exodus 32 when God tells Moses to come down the mountain to deal with the mess that’s developing.

 

But there is another important point to this story.

 

Moses was on the top of a mountain in the presence of God. This would have been a truly amazing experience. Losing track of time would have been right up there. Moses would have been simply enjoying God’s presence.

 

It’s a similar story in the gospel reading. We don’t know how long they were up there, but we do know that the three disciples are awestruck. They are in the presence of God as Jesus in divine form.

 

Peter, as always, the one who is clumsiest in so many ways, was being impetuous, and suggests building three shelters. Building shelters was a way of honouring guests, or visitors or people of importance.

 

But you get the impression that what Peter said was out of awkwardness, feeling that he needed to say something. In fact Luke’s gospel adds that Peter did not know what he was saying. 

 

It also suggests that Peter still had not grasped that Jesus was truly divine as building three shelters suggested parity between, Jesus (as the son of God), the law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah).

 

And this is really strange, because a few days earlier, in chapter 16, there is that famous conversation between Jesus and Peter:

 

“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Simon Peter answered:

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven”

 

And at this point, Peter appears to fully understand the importance of who Jesus is. Yet by the transfiguration a few days later, he seems unsure, despite witnessing Jesus in divine form. 

 

And Peter’s behaviour later in the gospels and indeed into Acts suggests it took him an awfully long time to properly catch on. We should perhaps take some encouragement from Peter. He was not the smartest apostle, carried quite a lot of baggage and yet God chose him and greatly used him for His kingdom.

 

Moses, Peter, James and John have all had mountaintop experiences. Time spent in the presence of God, where they have come close to Him, seen His power and glory. Experienced God’s majesty first hand.

 

But the question is this. Did they get the mountaintop experience because they themselves were extra special? Well. I don’t think so. It is true that all of them were called to serve by God, Moses to lead the people of Israel, and Peter to become leader of the Christian church. But this was not because they were extra holy. They were flawed just like the rest of us.

 

They were less than perfect. Just as we are. We all fall short in some way.

 

Moses, Peter, James and John may have all had a mountaintop experience. But It was not because they were super holy. Each one of them fell short in some way. Moses killed a man in anger, lacked faith by striking the rock twice at Meribah and broke the tablets on which God had just written the ten commandments. Peter, in addition to the three shelters incident denied Jesus three times, cut off a servants ear and rebuked Jesus. James and John were a pretty arrogant pair, seeking power and influence, wanting to call down fire on the Samaritans and stopping others from doing work in Jesus’ name.

 

For sure these were holy people in one sense, but they were flawed and human just like we are.

 

And yet God gave them a mountaintop experience. That experience of coming so close to Him.

 

We too may sometimes say that we have had a mountain top experience. It is a time of divine revelation, of experiencing God’s love and awesome power. A time when the world around us recedes.

 

We come into God's presence. Our sinful natures recede. Because the closer we come to God the less we can contemplate or imagine being sinful. And time slows down. Moses was at the top of Mount Sinai for nearly 6 weeks, but maybe it was longer. Long enough for the people to think he was not coming back.

 

And it need be no different for us. Imagine that if every time we came to church we didn’t want to go home because being in God’s presence was so compelling.

 

It does happen. A few weeks ago, I visited another church, which I do from time to time. And they are usually nice services, worth going along to. But four weeks ago was different.

 

It had all the usual ingredients, hymns and songs, praise, prayer and teaching. Nothing out of the ordinary, so to speak.

 

But as the service progressed, something was different. It was an experience of knowing that God was present and feeling uplifted, and touched by His love. As it happens, it was a communion service and we were using the standard liturgy.

 

There’s a point where the words go like this:

 

The Lord is here.

His spirit is with us.

 

But the person leading the service said:

The Lord IS here.

And we all thought

“yes, we know He is”.

 

And I’m certain it was something that we all thought. It was just amazing.

 

And like Moses on the top of Mount Sinai, and maybe like the disciples seeing the transfiguration, we lost of track of time. It was an hour and 50 mins by the time we were done. The time just flew by. When the service finished people were looking around at each other with looks of amazement on their faces.

 

It was, genuinely, a mountaintop experience. We had truly felt like we were in God’s presence, and the world around us and our sinful natures had receded.

 

It really was such a blessing.

 

And for all of us, it may sometimes happen that God chooses to bless us in this way. I don’t believe that it’s something we can seek, or manufacture, because we don’t know when God will invite us to the mountaintop. It is entirely in His hands.

 

But I do believe we should seek God’s face. Come to worship with an open heart. And be open to His Holy Spirit. To make space for God. Set time aside for prayer. Have places to go where we are less likely to be distracted. And sometimes there may even be a special place where we know we are more likely to hear what God has to say. Where we know we can feel God’s touch.

 

Many of you will know that Dr Martin Luther King Jr made a speech which is often referred to as the mountaintop speech.

 

It’s a very long speech, but as always with Dr King, it was full of passion and longing. In it, he describes the many, many challenges faced by the civil rights movement over the decades. He knows too, that his life is under threat. But he is also sure that this is the best time for him to be alive.

 

Security was foremost. Even the plane on which he had flown to Memphis to make this speech had been searched, placed under armed guard and searched again to make sure it was safe to fly. And at the end of his speech, he finishes with the following:

 

“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

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And I don't mind.

 

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

 

And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!”

 

He has been to the mountaintop, and it has given him a remarkable peace and assurance that he is doing the right thing, held in God’s love. (And for those of you who know your history, Dr Martin Luther King Jr was shot and killed the next day.)

 

If it so happens that we are blessed with a mountaintop experience, it is not because we are perfect, we are still flawed, it is not to give us that podium glow “look at me – I’ve won”. It is to equip us, to remind us how wonderful God is, and to inspire us in our calling as Christians. It is to give us that little glimpse of heaven to take with us as we live our lives for Him. To know as a reality that Jesus is alive and reigns.

 

We are called to serve, to build God’s Kingdom, as were Moses, Peter, James and John.

 

God will be with us as we serve, whether we are aware of His presence or not. God will be with us in the valleys where life is difficult, God is with us in the humdrum of everyday life on the plains. And every now and again God gives us that picture of heaven  - time spent on the mountaintop that we’ll carry with us for the rest of our lives.

 

Amen.