The Mountain Pilgrimage

This sermon was preached at our Sunday morning service on 3rd March 2019, shortly before the start of Lent. The Gospel that morning was Luke 9:28-36, and the Old Testament reading was Exodus 34:29-35.

 

I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with the Comic Relief Kilimanjaro climb on the BBC over the past week? Nine celebrities, including BBC Breakfast’s Dan Walker, Strictly Come Dancing judge, Shirley Ballas and Pointless quiz-host Alexander Armstrong have been recreating the original Comic Relief celebrity mountain climb from 10 years ago.

To all accounts, it’s been a gruelling journey up Africa’s highest mountain. There’ll be a documentary on TV on 13^th March which should make for interesting viewing!

Mount Kilimanjiro

I must be honest, though, there’s not many of these celebrity endurance charity tasks that gain my attention. I’m aware David Walliams did some swimming a few years ago, and there was, of course, Eddie Izzard’s marathon of marathons for Sport Relief, but these mountain climbs seem to be in a different sphere for me; they pique my interest more. I think it’s that there’s just something compelling about a mountain, isn’t there? The author, Victoria Erickson, says that, although she loves “oceans, deserts, and other wild landscapes, it is only mountains that beckon me with that sort of painful magnetic pull to walk deeper and deeper into their beauty.” 

Mountains, it seems, call us. For thousands of years, pilgrims from all faiths have made journeys up holy mountains to meet with the divine, and the journey has changed them.

Throughout the Bible, mountains are there at key moments. We heard about two this morning – Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments, and an un-named mountain in the New Testament, which I’ll come onto in a moment. If you have a habit of reading the psalm for the day, you’d see another mountain referenced today too; Mount Zion, often used as a reference to the Promised Land, and linked with the Jewish temple.

The mountain in today’s Gospel reading is interesting, though. As I mentioned, it’s un-named, and that’s unusual – normally we get told the name of mountains in the Bible. I think the fact it’s un-named is probably because where the events in our reading happened isn’t important. What’s important is that they happened. It’s probably important that these events happened on a mountain – mountains in the Bible are signifiers that something powerful is happening – but the particular mountain in this case doesn’t matter.

But, what is the importance of this event? It’s actually important enough that we get to hear about it twice this year. It was only just under seven months ago that we heard it last, and we’ll hear it again in another five. That’s because it’s also the reading for the Feast of the Transfiguration, which is held at the beginning of August.

This moment of transfiguration that we hear about in our reading is a key sign in the Bible of the entirety of God’s plan. If the story of God and his people is a story, then this bit is the Reader’s Digest version. The whole story is brought together in this one moment that we’ve just heard; it references the sum of the Jewish faith that’s gone before, in bringing Elijah and Moses together, but not only that, we also have references in the passage to Christ’s baptism (when we hear God’s voice from Heaven), his crucifixion (when Moses and Elijah talk of Christ’s departure), and his resurrection and ascension (in Christ’s dazzling change of appearance). This is a key event, bringing the eternity of God’s story together in one fleeting moment.

I think that that bringing together of God’s entire eternal story into a finite period of time is one reason we’ve got this reading today, on the Sunday before the start of our holy season of Lent. In Lent, we’re encouraged to look at this whole story too. In this forty-day penitential period that mirrors both Christ’s wilderness journey, and also the journey of the Israelites in the desert, we also find ourselves contemplating Christ’s journey (both literal and metaphorical) towards Jerusalem, and his crucifixion, and, of course, the glorious events of Easter at the end of the season.

The events of the transfiguration are a reminder of the season to come for us; that one moment sums up our Lenten pilgrimage, and it refocuses our vision away from the temporal to the eternal.
And, of course, it all happened on a mountain.

Lent is a mountain. It’s a mountain, and the journey. In this coming season, we’re encouraged to be pilgrims, making our own way along the steep slopes and across the crags of the coming forty days. Mountain climbers will tell you that, although the mountain’s summit is their goal, it is the climb to the summit, rather than the summit itself that leaves them changed by their experience. If the aim of the celebrity Comic Relief climbers was purely to be on top of Kilimanjaro, then they could simply have been helicoptered in – they’d still have had a great view.
But that’s not the point; the point is the climb. 

And so it is with us and Lent. In Lent, we are on a pilgrimage up that mountain towards the summit of Easter. And we’ve got a choice: we can choose to bypass the climb, and helicopter ourselves into Easter Sunday.
Don’t get me wrong – I’ve done that some years; when I’ve been too busy, and life’s been hectic. In the end, you still get to Easter, and you still get the great view – it’s still meaningful.

Our other choice, though, is to take part in that climb. To take part in Lent. To go on the pilgrimage. It’s a harder journey, yes. And it asks us to put time aside for it. But, if we can do that, we’ll find the journey changes us. That journey prepares us for the mountain-top experience. It prepares us to get to the summit, with Moses on Sinai and Christ and the disciples on the un-named mountain, and be transfigured.

Transfigured. That word doesn’t just mean changed. To be transfigured is to be changed into something more beautiful, more elevated, more divine.

These important Biblical events take place on mountains for reasons; because humans need the journey. If we want to meet God, and be transfigured ourselves, we can’t just be helicoptered in; we need to climb the mountain.

And, I hope that’s a choice that something inside of you this morning is asking you to make?
There are plenty of ways we can do it, and it doesn’t need us to fly out to Africa. Here at St Michael’s over this Lenten season, there’s a good deal going on! As always, we’re here every Sunday morning, but maybe as part of your journey you want to make a commitment to meet God at some of our other services too? There’s always something happening on a Sunday evening, from Evensong to Taizé to our more modern 6 o’clock service and our theological discussions, which Rev’d Alex is leading tonight. And of course, we’re not limited to Sundays; there’s always our communion service on a Thursday morning too. On top of that, this Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, and this year we have two services in which you can mark the start of your Lenten journey; one in the morning and one in the evening. And, even more, there is also still time to sign up to our Tuesday evening Lent course – grab Rev’d Huw to find out more about that.

But also, the Church of England has other resources. I’ve talked a lot about pilgrimage and mountains this morning. The Church of England’s Lent course this year is actually called LentPilgrim, and, oddly enough, it’s based on the Sermon on the Mount: Pilgrimage and mountains. They’ve created a free app or can send you daily emails that will allow you to focus on daily reflections on Christ’s famous sermon. If, on the other hand, you’re more into paper than ones and zeros, there’s also a booklet that you can send off for, for less than £3. If you want any more details on any of this, please do ask me afterwards.

I really hope you’ll join me this year on our Lenten pilgrimage up the mountain. I’m excited to see how God will use this mountain-journey to transfigure us as a congregation; to change us into something more beautiful and more elevated, to make us more divine.
 

Amen