ascent

 

Some of my friends go for a run on Sunday mornings, from the pub carpark across the street from St Nic’s, and I’m usually done taking the first service and setting up for the second in time to go across and chat with them before they set off. But I am on holiday, back home yesterday but not back to work until tomorrow, so this morning I ran with them.

At 15 kilometres, or 9 miles, it was fully 50% further than my distance-of-choice, but it was the relentless hour-long ascent that really got me—and got me thinking theologically. (You can take the boy out of church, but you can’t take the church out of the boy...)

In the imagination of the Bible, mountains (which can be actual mountains, or hills, or high places) are places of encounter with gods. Moses encounters Yahweh on Mount Sinai. Elijah encounters Yahweh on Mount Horeb. Centuries, millennia even, later, Moses and Elijah return, encountering Jesus on Mount Tabor. Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. The composer of Psalm 121 looks around at the high places where people went to encounter Canaanite gods, and asks, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord. This particular psalm is a Psalm of Ascents, a psalm sung by pilgrims on the 1000 metre, or 3500 foot, climb from Jericho up to Jerusalem.

It is on a mountain where Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount, and on a mountain where he feeds five thousand men, plus women and children.

And Jesus said to his disciples that faith can move a mountain and throw it into the sea. Somewhere along the line, we have got muddled as to what that means. We have reframed mountains as seemingly immovable obstacles, that can be overcome by faith. We sing songs on this theme. This misses the point, entirely. Mountains are places of divine encounter. In the same biblical imagination, the sea represents chaos, the dwelling-place of chaos demons such as Rahab, Yam, Tiamat, Leviathan, and Behemoth. Yahweh is depicted walking the ocean depths, while Jesus walks on (top of) the water of the Sea of Galilee. Both images speak of mastery over chaos.

Jesus says, faith can bring the mountain-top experience of encounter with God—experiencing the divine glory, or felt weight of God’s presence—to bear in the places of chaos.

Elsewhere, Jesus also said that faith can replant a ‘mulberry’ tree in the sea. Again, in biblical imagination, trees represent people; and the ‘mulberry’ tree was associated with healing properties. Jesus’ claim is that faith should cause us to transplant ourselves into the places of chaos, as healing presences.

So today, I ran. Today, I climbed, up, up. Today, I pushed through the strong urge to Regret My Life Choices, and thought about the places where we experience chaos, and the encounter with the divine that faith can bring to bear there, because encounter with the divine is meant to transform us in some ‘visible’—visibly different—way.

Tomorrow, when I return to the valley—to the place where people live within the shadow of death; to the places of bitter tears, which might just be transformed into a place of joy—may my encounter with God on a rain-soaked hill today make all the difference. May the mountain be levelled so that the valley can be raised up. May the mountain be moved into the sea.

 

139

 

In a couple of weeks’ time, I shall be preaching on Psalm 139 (text below). The psalm—or song—rejoices in life lived in intimate nearness to God’s presence, from the womb to the grave. In the experience of being known, and loved, by One whose love for us causes them to want to know us fully. Of discovering that God is alongside us in the highs and lows of life, in ecstatic joy and in the depths of despair. And that this God, who is beyond our capacity to know, is nonetheless knowable.

For Christians, this God does not only know us from the outside, from beyond human life, as we might study and learn about the way of life of other species with whom we share this planet. We proclaim that in the man Jesus, born of the woman Mary, the eternal Word of God took on human nature, becoming what God loved. The God who is with us from our mother’s womb and will be with us in our grave, or urn, has known both womb and tomb firsthand, as one of us. And has broken out of both.

Ignatian spirituality invites us to take time each day to ask ourselves, where have we been attentive to, aware of, the presence of God with us, in the joy and sorrows of our hours? And where has that presence been hidden from us?

The psalm takes a turn towards the end, the psalmist crying out to God to bring an end to the wicked. It is a raw and heartfelt prayer, and one that God chooses to answer in a stunning way. Rather than slaying the wicked, God allows the wicked to slay the innocent One—God’s very self in our midst, become one of us—and as they do so, from the executioners’ scaffold, proclaims, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ And forgiveness is so disarming that the power of the bloodthirsty, which is their ability to draw us into their own game, is broken. Forgiveness does not proclaim, ‘what you did is okay,’ but, ‘what you did has no hold over me.’

The psalm concludes with a declaration of perfect hatred against God’s enemies. As Paul will write to the church in Ephesus (Ephesians 6.12) our enemies are not flesh and blood—not other human beings—but spiritual realities that hold us captive and obscure our vision of God. To hate such things is to desire to have nothing whatsoever to do with them, to distance ourselves from them.

Such enemies include:

For the older generation in particular:

Pervasive sadness—grief is an appropriate response to loss, but pervasive sadness chokes gratitude and wonder.

The belief that we are responsible for providing for ourselves in our old age—which fosters a scarcity mindset, causes us to hoard our resources, and prevents generosity.

For people of any age:

Chronic pain—which can turn us in on ourselves, and away from the source of life that sustains us even in our pain.

Among younger people in particular:

Anxiety—which pulls us in every which way at once, away from the present moment, the moment, whether high or low, where we might discover again God with us; where we might find stillness, rest, peace, wholeness.

P*rn*graphy—available from every mobile phone, desensitizing is towards and dehumanising how we see others, into a commodity for consumption, and so desensitizing and dehumanising ourselves.

Distraction—whether the insatiable demand to be productive and never rest, or the exponential availability of entertainment, including the idol of social media. An idol is a good thing that has been accepted as an ultimate thing; a thing that promises what it cannot deliver, and demands more and more of ourselves without ever being sated in its appetite for consuming us.

If you want to be set free from any of these enemies of the soul, free to learn to be aware of God’s nearness, I would love to pray for you and with you.

If you would like to experience something of the pilgrimage through life, accompanied by God and God’s people, you are welcome to join us at St Nicholas’ church (other local churches are available).

Psalm 139

To the leader. Of David. A Psalm.

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and night wraps itself around me,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.
19 O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
20 those who speak of you maliciously
and lift themselves up against you for evil!
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
24 See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

(Psalm 139, NRSVue translation)