On This Mountain

A Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Lent

“I look to the mountains from where shall come my hope!“

Now, if you are familiar with the first line of Psalm 121, you know it actually reads: “I look to the mountains from where shall come my help.” But I want to talk about HOPE this morning and perhaps the best help we can ever receive is the gift of Radical Hope. So, I want to reflect with you a bit on Hope and Help and where the mountains stand in the midst of all it.

We are blessed to live here in Colorado, along the front range, in the shadow of Pike’s Peak, because every day, as we go about our ordinary responsibilities and duties, we can look up to the mountains and we can daily ask the question: Where do I place my hope?

I think there is a fundamental relationship between mountains and hope. Mountains stand fast. And hope is always an act of standing fast. Hope teaches us what it means to stand fast, like the mountains, in the midst of what can feel like so much chaos, uncertainty, and instability in our world and in our own personal lives.

But mountains are so much more than symbols of steadfastness. They also, and more importantly perhaps, symbolize the deepest heart-longing of our lives: To Know and To Be Known. The mountains rise up to remind us of the deepest longing of our lives: intimacy with God.

In the scriptures, whether it is Horeb or Sinai, Tabor or Calvary, mountains are the places where God touches the human and the human touches God. Mountains symbolize the reality that we are fully known, fully loved in God, and are called to give our lives to fully know and fully love our Creator through the creatures and the creation with which he has gifted us.

The mountain peak is where Divinity and Humanity intertwine; it is where heave meets earth; it is where the Creator meets his creatures; it is where the spiritual meets the material; it is where we undergo the transformative power of God as we discover our deepest longing met by the only One who can meet it.

Moses and Elijah, by their natures, were both mountain men. They both looked regularly to the mountains to find their help; to find their hope. Moses would ascend Sinai again and again. Yes, to receive the law, but more importantly to seek the face of the God he loved. Elijah would run to Horeb. Yes, due to fear for his own life, but also because his heart knew only there, on the mountain top is where he could meet the only One who knows him and loves him in the midst of his fear and fright.

Moses, on the mountain, would receive the very name of God. There is intimacy in knowing the name of any other person. There is total and complete intimacy in knowing the name of God! And Moses, whose longing would only deepen, would eventually pray that prayer that resonates in the depths of all our hearts: “Lord, let me see your face.”

Elijah too, afraid that everything he was called to do was collapsing around him and who he was called to be was being totally upended, climbed the mountain, expecting God to be a fierce force of fire, earthquake and wind, but rather found him as a “still, small, intimate voice.”

Jesus too was a mountain man. Today, in our gospel he ascends Mt. Tabor, a precursor of his ascent of Mt. Calvary. And he ascends so we all might become fully awake to who he is and who we are in him. On the mountain, he is transfigured and his total Divinity is made manifest through his limited Humanity. Reminding us that it is ONLY in our limited humanity, that God wants to make known the fullness of his Divinity. And Jesus ascends to finally, once and for all, fulfill the long, longing-hope of Moses and Elijah. They both receive, in its fullness, the deepest longing of their lives: They finally see the Face of God!

I look to the mountains from where shall come my HOPE? I may hope for good weather. I may hope for good health. I may hope for a better world. But we also are mountain men and women by nature. So our deepest longing is that Radical Hope that ravishes our hearts. It is that hope to be made “fully awake” to the deepest longing of our lives: To Know and To Be Known… to see the face of God and discover the unique face that is my own. Mountains standfast to remind us to standfast. Hope is the virtue of steadfastness. And we can stand fast because we know the God who planted this hope in us will bring it to fulfillment.