Mount Sinai: Discovering the Presence of God

From the Summit Of Mt. Sinai

Sermon 1 of Mountains of the Bible Series

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Exodus 19:16-25

            In the summer of 2009, I found myself frustrated, depressed and flat.  My ministry had no life and my life contained little ministry.  I vacillated every day between anger and sadness.  Everything that I had always trusted seemed to let me down:  my ministry skills, my leadership ability, my faith, and especially my God.  I waited for God to open a new door for ministry and I wondered if it would ever happen.  For the first time in my life I started seeing a counselor to help me find my way through deep feelings of failure and disappointment. 

            That summer, our family traveled to the Grand

Canyon.  It was a marvelous road trip filled with unexpected surprises and family defining moments – like the day we met the real life Flo from the Disney movie Cars at the Midpoint Cafe on the old Route 66 outside of Amarillo

            One morning while staying in the Grand Canyon National Park, I woke up earlier than the family to join a Ranger led hike down in to the Canyon.  We met at the South Kaibab Trailhead and began hiking the 1.5 miles down to Cedar Point – a great view inside the canyon and a great place to turn around.  Like all Canyon hikes, the 1.5 miles down the trail was easy – it was all downhill.  I spent time marveling at the rock formations and asking the ranger tons of questions. 

            When we reached Cedar Point, the ranger dismissed

the group and allowed us to hike up on our own.  I found myself sitting on a rock outcropping reflecting on my life – especially my anger, sadness and disappointment.  I prayed deeply as the sun rose higher over the canyon walls and began to heat the day.  My life felt flat and my ministry felt dead.  I needed to experience God in a new way. 

            When you sit in the middle of the Grand Canyon, you realize there is only one way out – up.  What felt easy going down, but would not be so easy going up.  As I stared at the trail going back up to the trailhead, I prayed and dedicated my hike back up to God.  I asked God to allow the pain and burn in my thighs to burn away the anger and pain in my soul.

            Then, I started hiking.  Each step up I prayed – “Lord, burn within me.”  The hike up out of the Canyon was difficult.  The hike out of my depression and anger was even harder.  The burn in my thighs and the pounding of my heart were nothing to the poison I had allowed to penetrate my life.  When I finally reached the edge of the canyon, I stopped and looked back down from where I had come.  I was tired and sweaty, but I felt something new had begun. 

            My attempts to control my life, ministry, faith and future had been fruitless. That long hike out of the Canyon reminded me that the presence of God is much bigger and uncontrollable than I can ever imagine. 

            In 1979 movie a cinematic masterpiece called The Black Stallion arrived in movie theaters.  The movie begins across the ocean. In the early 20^th century a young boy and a wild black stallion are journeying to the US on an old ocean linear.  Deep into the ocean, a giant storm overwhelms the boat and the boy and the stallion both survive and make it to shore on a uninhabited island.  The first half of the movie has little dialogue.  The boy and the horse simply exist on the island.  The stallion represents all that is wild and untamed in the world – full of power and speed and danger.  The boy lives meekly on the island, trying to survive away from any parent or adult. 

            The movie depicts the relationship the boy and the stallion build – slowly and dangerously over time.  Soon, the two find a way to trust one another.  The boy is still meek and weak compared to the wildness and strength of the stallion but the trust they build allows them both to survive and to be rescued.   

            The movie conclusions with the boy and horse back in American society.  The boy rides the stallion in a horse race.  This is incredibly dangerous.  The boy latches himself on top of a powerful stallion who is unleashed to race the wind.  Yet, the danger grows less important the more deeply the relationship grows.  It’s like the horse and the boy have been created for this moment.  The untamed presence of the stallion brings fulfillment in the boy’s life. 

Scripture

            In Exodus 19, we catch a glimpse of the untamed presence of God a top Mount Sinai. 

Mt. Sinai

            It’s been 3 months since Moses led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt.  For three months, thousands of weak, hungry and frightened people have been walking through the hot, barren wildness now known as the Sinai.  Moses leads them to the plain in front of Mount Sinai on the southern tip of the ancient peninsula. 

            Moses is very familiar with this terrain and this mountain.  For years he worked as a shepherd in this wildness after his flight from Egypt.  In fact, it was here on this plain in front of Mount Horeb, another name for Sinai, that Moses first experienced the presence of God in the burning bush.  At this same spot, Yahweh called Moses to return to Egypt to deliver the slaves – his people – from the Pharaoh.  Now, the slaves are freed, Pharaoh sits in shame with much of his army destroyed, and Moses stands before the Mountain of God … again

            No one really knows the exact location of Mount Sinai.  Crag filled granite mountains fill the Sinai wilderness.   A few hundred years after Jesus, Coptic Christians from Ethiopia came to a mountain in the Sinai they believed to be this mountain and called it Gebel Musa (Mountain of Moses).  By any standards, this Mt. Sinai would be just another barren peak lost among the martian landscape of Southern Sinai. It is neither the highest mountain in the region, nor the most dramatic; there is no soaring, heaven-reaching apex, and it is rare to see anything resembling a divine shroud of clouds hugging its peak.

           

Monastery of St. Catherine

Yet, for over 1,500 years pilgrims have come to this mountain, now with an ancient monastery called St. Catherine’s, to visit a place connected to the Presence of God.  People like you and me, desperate for the presence of God, come looking for something, even if we don’t know what we are looking for. 

            When the Hebrews arrive at the foot of Mount Sinai they are desperate too.  Hungry, thirsty and dirty – they have been delivered from slavery into a vast wilderness with now hope for a future, no sense of community or family, and with little experience with the presence of God. 

            God begins a conversation with Moses to prepare these Hebrews to meet the God who has brought them out of Egypt.  Moses travels up and down the mountain speaking with God and speaking to the people.  At over 7,400 hundred feet, Moses hikes up almost 3000 feet in elevation every time he travels up Mount Sinai. 

            God tells Moses to command the people to prepare for his presence.  They are to wash their clothes and prepare their bodies for in three days God’s presence would arrive on the mountain for the people to experience.

            On the third day, our scripture passage says, “there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled.”

            These former slaves with dry tongues, loose skin and clean clothes stood at the place where God had called Moses and witnessed the presence of God descend onto the mountain in the form of a dark, heavy smoke.  The mountain shook and the air fill with the loud wail of a trumpet.  The generous God of the Exodus abruptly becomes the demanding God of the Sinai.  The mountain and all around it become heavy with a holy presence. 

            The scripture writer tries to describe in inadequate words the presence of God on this mountain.  All we see are fire and smoke, violent movement and loud trumpets – yet we sense that these words are too small to contain God’s presence. 

            Yahweh is an alien presence, a foreboding, threatening, de-stablizing other.  The writer wants to take us up in awe and terror, in the presence of the holy one who is beyond all. 

Mount Sinai is a dangerous environment, a place where the ordinariness of our human existence makes contact with the holy.  When this encounter takes place – when we experience the presence of God – we will never be the same. 

The theological term for what happens on Mount Sinai is theophany.  A Theophany is a visible appearance of God.  The burning bush is a theophany.  The still small voice that Elijah hears on this same mountain is a theophany.  The birth of Jesus is a theophany.  The arrival of the Holy Spirit in the upper room is a theophany. 

 For every theophany in the Bible we also see a cataclysmic confrontation that destabilizes all conventional certitudes.  When the presence of God arrives – all that we know or think we know gets turned on its head.  The theophany on Mount Sinai tells us to get ready when God shows up!

            Within the violence of this image of God on Mount Sinai, God summons Moses to the top of the mountain.  He has more information to give him.  Can you image Moses now – he’s used to climbing these 3000 feet to the top of the mountain, but now – he’s climbing with nothing to guide his way.  He’s alone on the mountain with all of the sounds and smells of the presence of God.  I can feel the terror through the pages in the simple words, “Moses went up.” 

            In the book The Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe, C.S. writes these words as the four children in Narnia are introduced to the idea of Aslan, the lion, the God figure.

            “Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion,” Mr. Beaver tells the children. 

"Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"...

"Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”

            There is nothing safe in this image of God’s presence on Mount Sinai.  Yet, God still draws us to his presence.  Moses still hikes up the mountain in the deep smoke to listen to Yahweh set the stage for the deliverance of the 10 Commandments in the next chapter. 

            As I think back on my time before my descent in the Grand Canyon, safe would be good word to describe my faith.  I wanted God to bring me a good life and a good ministry with not much work.   I just wanted to show up.  Yet, God had more he wanted to do in me.  God needed me to learn to trust his wild, untamed presence – like the boy and the Stallion.  Like the boy, I was learning there was little safe and much that is dangerous about seeking the presence of God.  Yet, God drew me to him and invited me to trust him in new ways. 

            How often have we domesticated our faith in Jesus?  We have attempted to bring God down to our size.  Rather than a wild stallion that could crush us or a violent storm or earthquake that could kill us, we make God in our own images.  We envision God as a kind old man, high in the sky that delivers goodies to us when we do well.  We make God into a traffic cop to keep us on the moral way.  We envision God as a boyfriend or girlfriend who just wants to make us happy.  None of these images gives God or us enough credit.  God is much bigger and uncontrollable than we can ever image.  Just as soon as we think we have God figured out – he goes out and call us to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, and to walk the extra mile.

            This week we have celebrated the beginning of our country.  I’ve thought about the number of individuals throughout American history who have risked their lives for the sake of pushing past the ordinary and the safe.  The pilgrims who ventured across a vast ocean on some tiny ships.  The colonists who set up small villages on the edges of civilizations that would one day become great cities.  The explorers who pushed past the cities of the Atlantic – deep into the Appalachians and across the Great prairie.   Our American story is full of stories of risk and adventure.  If these are our people - why have we allowed our faith lives to become so domesticated?

What would happen in our lives if we uncaged God to work and move in our lives?  What would happened if we climbed up the steep mountain of God into God’s presence?  Maybe God just might transform us more into the image of his son?  Maybe God would send us into unknown lands for his Kingdom.  Maybe God would call us to love with abandon this week at camp agape and VBS.  Maybe God wouldn’t let us stay where we are – he would invite us to something more. 

            This is the Gospel:  The untamed presence of God invites us to risk our lives in communion with him. 

            Last March, I woke at 5:00 am at a hotel on the

Wadi River Bed

Dead Sea.  I had 2 hours before our group would leave to explore the wilderness across the street.  With Jimbo Stapleton and ?? I walked up into the canyon across the street.  Another canyon worlds away from the American Southwest. 

We hiked up through the river bed and then turned to climb the steep ridge that ran beside the Dead Sea.  In a Martian landscape full of red, dry rocks, I hiked as hard as I could up the steep terrain. 

Trail up the Mountain

Soon, the rocks and the steepness got to me. I couldn’t go any further.  So, I traversed the mountain to the end of the ridge to see over the side.  In front of me the sun slowly, hazily, rose over the Dead Sea.  I gasped at the experience of God’s presence.  I had worked hard to arrive here, yet, I did not have the power to get where I wanted to go.  Still, God’s untamed presence found me.  I held on tight, this place was dangerous.

I could fall, I could twist my ankle or break my leg.  Yet – being here – meant that God had something new for me.  I had been healed from the anger and sadness and disappointment of years ago.  I God brought to see life from a new place of trust and hope.    Maybe today – God has something new and dangerous awaiting you as you explore your faith in Jesus as you seek the presence of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.