Tuesday, 9 February 2016

I'm going to the mountain to kneel down and pray... (Transcript of Sermon St Bartholomew Norton lee Moor 07/02/16)

St Bartholomew Norton le Moor 07/02/2016

Exodus 34.29-35 2 Corinthians 3.12 - 4.2 Luke 9.28-36

It has been said that over time some people begin to look like the pets they own.

Now whether that is true or not, I do not know, although I must confess to having seen some people particular in the horse world….

What I have noticed however, is that in some photographs how much my wife and I are beginning to look alike after thirty years of being married.

The idea being of course is that we become like that which we worship, adore or someone or something we spend a lot of time with.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that when Moses had been in God’s presence something of that radiant glory would rub off onto Moses.

However, notice that Moses was not aware of this. Therefore, it is no good looking in the mirror trying to discern if you are looking holy or full of God’s presence.

That is for others to notice and hopefully not to puff us up with pride but to mention it to us to give us encouragement.

I have it said of me recently that I looked like a man of prayer and indeed in my home church in Stafford I have been drawn into a small group who plan our regular Parish Prayer Days.  

1 Thessalonians 5.11

Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

Moses was to encounter God in quite a different way on top of a mountain with Jesus and Elijah.

One of those mysterious moments when the curtain of heaven is pulled back and we get a tiny glimpse of the reality of life and of God.

C.S. Lewis referred to this world as it currently stands as ‘shadow lands’ – the really real world is just beyond, yet not in some distance way up the bright blue sky, here among us but in a mostly unseen dimension.

I love the story of Elisha, Elijah’s successor, battling it out with the Syrians and particularly this part of the story we find in 2 Kings 6.

Elisha’s servant wakes up one morning to find the enemy surrounding them and is just a tad concerned – well, in modern parlance we might say he was wetting himself.

The story continues like this…

So, Elisha answered, "Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." Then Elisha prayed and said, "O LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see." And the LORD opened the servant's eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

You may say to me, as people often do, Gordon this world is so full of wickedness and people have given up attending church and believing in God, what hope do we have? We are struggling to pay our parish share let alone tell people about Jesus.

That is why we need to go the mountain – that is why we need to spend time and more time and yet more time in God’s presence.

However, please do not think I am saying you should be in this building 24/7 – for God is as much out there in the world as He is in here.

That was a mistake made by the Jews of Jesus’ day. They could not imagine God operating outside of the Temple and their sacrificial system.

St Paul writing to the Corinthians says, ‘a veil lies over their hearts whenever the old covenant is read.’

He goes on to say, ‘but whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.’

Of course it is good to remind ourselves that the first ones to ‘turn to the Lord’ where Jews, like Paul himself who had a veil removed and saw the glory of God on the road to Damascus.

A few years ago, my wife and I climbed up Mount Tide in Tenerife. We got our timing all badly wrong and by the time we reached the top, the cable cars taking people up and down had stopped operating. However, we needed to get off the mountain, we simply could not stay there, and the prospect of a six-hour walk back through the gathering darkness was not overly appealing.



If we are to spend time with God on the mountain then equally there is a time to get off the mountain and take the message out to the people.

This what Moses did, coming down from the mountain and proclaiming the Law.

If you read on a few verses from our Gospel passage, we have the story of the young epileptic boy whom the disciples could not heal. Down the mountain and into ministry.

When Paul was knocked off his donkey on the way to Damascus and had a vision of Jesus, he did not simply tuck it away as another good after dinner story.  It changed his life and turned him around 180 degrees. A veil indeed was lifted for Paul, all the Hebrew Scriptures, and the Prophets he had studied so assiduously suddenly found a completely new illumination. 

My own life was completely knocked of course when I became a Christian at the age of 24 on the 1st January 1975. It is a story for another time save to say that within eighteen months I found myself having been squeezed out of my job, divorced for being a Christian and having to leave the family home that included our two-year-old daughter.

Let me ask you this, what is your story?

Have you been the mountain top, met with Jesus, and seen things in completely new way, the way you do when you are high up and above everything.

Like Elisha’s servant, we need to learn to see with the eyes of faith – and through the eyes of faith we can say along with Mother Julian;

‘All will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.’

Why? 

Because of another mountain Jesus climbed, and became glorified in a very different kind of way.

He climbed the hill of Golgotha taking all the ills and the evils of this world.

He climbed the hill of Golgotha and took your sin and my sin and all the wrong things we do or say.

He climbed the hill of Golgotha so that the numerous sacrifices of the old Temple system could be wonderfully fulfilled and find their completion as the pure sacrificial Lamb of God was slain.

We go to the mountain and we come down again not with the Law of Moses and the Old Covenant but with the new and living way offered by Christ.

‘I have come, said Jesus, that you may have life and life in all its fullness.’

In his book ‘The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis said, ‘why do Christians look like they are going through Lent rather than celebrating Easter?’

Well, from this coming Wednesday we will be going through Lent.  Much in the same as we sought to travel in heart and mind to Bethlehem to  celebrate the birth of the Christ child so we now  seek to journey in heart and mind as Jesus sets his face like flint towards Jerusalem.

As Jesus travels purposefully towards Jerusalem, many of his disciples begin to fall away.

Then Jesus said to them all: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. Luke 9.23
How does that work out for you and for me on a daily basis?

A person going to the cross has nothing at all, not even a veil to cover their nakedness and shame.

Have we truly handed over to God everything?

Lent provides us with a good opportunity for a stock take. To give back to God anything we may have been holding on to, or even handed over at one time only to take it back later.

St Augustine said, if Jesus is not Lord of all then he is not Lord at all.’

Lord of our finances, Lord of our relationships, Lord of our work, Lord of our homes and our cars, Lord of each and everything that makes up our lives.

Again, from the passage we read from Corinthians…

‘Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit is there is freedom.’

Those of us who have had the veil lifted, who have seen a glimpse of God’s glory, we who have tasted and seen and know that the Lord is good and have found freedom in Christ.

Those of us who reflect the Lord’s glory and are being transformed into Jesus’ likeness, with an ever-increasing glory – we are called to be Christ’s ambassadors.

We are those who speak out and demonstrate a different way of being in the world.

We are those who as St Paul says in Romans 12.2

“Have not let the world squeeze us into its mould, but instead have allowed ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.”



We are those who have been to the mountain and caught a glimpse of the glory of Jesus and the really real world that one day will be fully revealed when as we read in the Book of Revelation, heaven will come down to earth, the two will become conjoined and God will reign for evermore.

Therefore, if we consider the world is full of darkness, sin, and wickedness then maybe it is because as one Christian songwriter put it, ‘the world is living in the dark because the Church is asleep in the light.’

Are you ready to climb that mountain?

Let us pray…

O Saviour Christ, in whose way of love lays the secret of all life,
and the hope of all people, we pray for quiet courage to match this hour.
We did not choose to be born or to live in such an age;
but let its problems challenge us, its discoveries exhilarate us,
its injustices anger us, it possibilities inspire us, and its vigour renew us.
Pour out upon us a fresh indwelling of the Holy Spirit;
make us bold and courageous in sharing faith
in both word and deed for your Kingdom’s sake we ask. Amen