Dave Johnson
Sermon: “The Highest of the Mountains” (Isaiah 2:1-5)
December 1, 2013
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the first day of the new church. During the season of Advent, the scripture passages each Sunday focus on both anticipating the celebration of the first coming of Jesus at Christmas, while also focusing on anticipating the Second Coming of Jesus—when, as we prayed in the collect for today, Jesus “shall come again in his glorious majesty.”
Advent is a season of new beginnings, a time to hit the “restart” button in your life—and this is comforting because as Bruce Springsteen sings, “Everybody has a reason to begin again” (from the song “Long Walk Home” on Magic, 2007).
In today’s reading from the second chapter of Isaiah, the great Old Testament prophet who lived about seven centuries before Christ, points both to what happened during Jesus’ first coming and what will happen at His Second Coming:
“In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all nations shall stream to it… (The Lord) shall judge between the nations…nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:2 and 4).
In this sermon, I am going to focus on the phrase “the highest of the mountains.”
Throughout the Bible significant events happen on mountains. In the Old Testament Noah’s ark rested on a mountain, Abraham nearly offered his son Isaac on a mountain, Moses received the Ten Commandments on a mountain, Elijah the prophet fled for refuge to a mountain, and Jerusalem was built on Mount Zion.
In the New Testament we read that Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, was transfigured on a mountain, and often retreated privately to the mountains to pray.
There is something about the mountains that helps us feel connected with the presence of God, especially in times of trouble, as we read in Psalm 121:
“I lift my eyes up to the mountains; where does my help come from?My help comes from the LORD,the maker of heaven and earth” (verses 1-2).
Last weekend, I was in Southern California for my youngest sister’s wedding which I had the privilege of officiating. After the reception, I drove east a couple hours to the Mojave Desert and last Sunday spent most of the day in Joshua Tree National Park, an unforgettable experience.
At the visitor’s center I was talking with one of the park rangers—“This is going to sound really nerdy, but you know The Joshua Tree album by U2? Is the actual Joshua tree from the photos on the album cover in the park?” The ranger laughed, “I actually get asked that a lot,” and continued, “The actual tree from the album cover is located north of here near Death Valley, and unfortunately it is now fallen. There is a simple rock marker near where it once stood.”
The northern section of Joshua Tree National Park is in the Mojave Desert and is quite mountainous. A couples miles into the park I pulled over and hiked for a couple hours and climbed a mountain—and I’ll admit it—I listened to U2’s classic 1987 album The Joshua Tree on my iPod as I did so. I remained at the top of the mountain for awhile, watching the shadows of the clouds skirt over the desert landscape, with more mountain ranges visible in the distance.
In that place I could feel the intellectual knots in my mind and the emotional knots in my heart begin to untangle a bit. I could also see hundreds of Joshua trees.
Joshua Tree National Park is named from the species of tree Mormon pioneers in the 1850’s named the Joshua tree after the Old Testament leader Joshua, whose up-stretched arms summoned the Israelites to the Promised Land. The Joshua tree is the distinct natural marker of the high Mojave Desert. It takes about 60 years to mature and can live over 500 years. At one point in the park there are Joshua trees as far as you can see, and it is comforting because it is a sign of long-lasting life in a place that is literally high and dry.
On one of the markers on the side of the road I read the following:
“The Joshua tree reaches the southern edge of its range in Joshua Tree National Park. The edge marks the transition from the Mojave Desert to the Colorado Desert—as you move from the Mojave to the Colorado, Joshua trees fade away.”
And that sign was exactly right, because as I continued driving south through the park and descended in elevation, there were no more Joshua trees to be seen.
But I could still see the mountains.
Our lives are filled with metaphorical mountains.
That mountain may be a personal goal of some kind—perhaps gaining a promotion, completing a degree, running a marathon, starting a business, getting married, or building a house.
Reaching the summit of these mountains is often accompanied by a sense of satisfaction that is often fleeting and followed by a sense of depression or disillusionment.
In his riveting book, Into Thin Air (1997), Jon Krakauer describes how he felt when he finally climbed to the summit of none other than Mt. Everest:
“Reaching the top of Everest is supposed to trigger a surge of intense elation; against long odds, after all, I had just attained a goal I’d coveted since childhood. But the summit was really only the halfway point. Any impulse I might have felt toward self-congratulation was extinguished by overwhelming apprehension about the long, dangerous descent that lay ahead” (189).
Maybe you have felt that way after reaching the summits of “personal goal” mountains you have climbed.
For others, the highest mountains in their lives are internal—perhaps an ingrained lack of self-confidence, a susceptibility to addictive behaviors, or intense anxiety.
The Southern writer Shelby Foote vulnerably described his internal mountain of anxiety in a letter he wrote to his friend and fellow Southern writer, Walker Percy:
“Anxiety…the inability to choose or act, is a hell beyond anything I suspected. Formerly I could tell myself it was just a nervous reaction to a situation that harrowed me. Now it’s something far worse. It’s not a reaction; it’s a condition” (The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy, p. 94).
Perhaps you are daunted by an internal mountain in your life.
For some people climbing the metaphorical mountain means reaching a place of power over others.
Perhaps like some of you, when I was young my friends and I used to play the children’s game “King of the Mountain.” There was a high steep hill in the backyard of one of my friends and we would gather at the top and wrestle and push and pull each other down with the goal of being the last one standing at the top and thus becoming the “King of the Mountain.” Of course, no one’s “reign” lasted more than a moment— you could hardly take a deep breath before you found yourself pushed or pulled from the top.
Unfortunately that lust for power over others isn’t just reserved for childhood games; it marks some people their whole lives.
In the early 19th century literary critic William Hazlitt, while writing about Shakespeare’s tragic play Coriolanus poignantly describes this:
“It is the assumption of a right to insult or oppress others that carries an imposing air of superiority with it. We had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man: the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave” (Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom, p. 577).
But scaling the mountain of power can end up being self-destructive.
I’ve always enjoyed gangster movies, and one of my favorites is the 1949 classic White Heat starring James Cagney as the deranged gangster Cody Jarrett who was obsessed with power. (He also had serious issues with his mother, but that’s another sermon for another time J). At the end of the film Jarrett is cornered by the police and refuses to surrender. “Come and get me!” he yells at the police. The police begin shooting and Jarrett is hit by a couple bullets and begins laughing.
He is at the top of a huge gas storage tank and instead of shooting back at the police, he begins shooting the tank, sending the police running for their lives. He stands facing the sky and screams out to his dead mother, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” right before the gas tank explodes.
As the flames hurl into the sky two of the police officers sum it all up, “Cody Jarrett…he finally got to the top of the world…and it blew right up in his face.”
Perhaps you’ve been pulled or pushed from the top of some mountain of power in your life, or maybe you’ve found that being at the top is not all it’s cracked up to be as it has blown up in your face.
When Jesus came to earth the first time, He was tempted by Satan in the wilderness to bow before him in order to be the King of the Mountain, and He was tempted to throw Himself from a mountain peak in order to test God.
But Jesus overcame both of those temptations. In fact, when it came to power, to establishing what Isaiah called “the highest of the mountains” Jesus taught something utterly contrary to what was expected. “45The Son of Man came not to be served,” Jesus said, referring to Himself, “but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
In fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy of the Lord judging between the nations, Jesus took the judgment of the world upon Himself.
On the cross Jesus did not lift up a sword against anyone, He lifted up his arms on the cross on “the highest of the mountains,” Calvary, and prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
On the cross Jesus became not the King of the Mountain, but the King of Mercy.
And on the cross Jesus fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy about all the nations streaming to “the highest of the mountains,” just as He said He would—“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people* to myself” (John 12:32)—and that includes “tyrants and slaves”… and you and me.
And at His Second Coming Jesus “shall come again in his glorious majesty” and establish once and for all a kingdom of peace, where as Isaiah described, “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.”
But right now we live in between Jesus’ first coming and Second coming, in between the “already” of Jesus’ death and resurrection and the “not yet” of His eternal reign of peace. Right now we live in a time when nation is still lifting up sword against nation, a time when people are still learning war.
And as we begin a new church year on this first Sunday of Advent, perhaps you are feeling “high and dry,” or disillusioned after reaching the top of a “personal goal” mountain of some kind, or daunted by an internal mountain that appears impossible to climb.
Or perhaps playing “King of the Mountain” has left you wounded and worn out.
The good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ, the King of Mercy, fully knows you, fully loves you, and fully forgives you—and He beckons you to the eternal Promised Land.
His grace enables you to begin again today, to press the “restart” button in your life.
And God will lift your eyes up to “the highest of the mountains,” all the way to the cross, the ultimate Joshua Tree that regardless of what desert you’re in, never fades away.
Amen.
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