The Season of Creation comes to a close this week with a vision of God’s holy mountain; a vision that offers us a path of hope for the future and calls us to live justly and in partnership with God
It is seldom possible to look toward the mountains on a clear day anywhere and not be awestruck by beauty and strength and grandeur.
Mountains, in scripture, are where humans draw nearer to the divine.
The bible records many mountaintop moments: Moses received the ten commandments on the top of a mountain. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gave the people some of the greatest wisdom in the Sermon on the Mount. Later, Jesus’ face shone like the sun on the top of a mountain as his awestruck disciples watched him converse with Moses and Elijah.
Mountains are set apart. They are sacred; in the book of Isaiah, they offer us an image of the true expansiveness of God’s vision for our world.
As the Season of Creation comes to a close with a vision of God’s holy mountain, we are reminded that, living in the midst of climate crisis and COVID-19, we have an even greater desire to find hope for the future.
Isaiah’s words offer us a blueprint for what is possible; the ways we are called to be part of God’s story, creating hope, renewal and rebirth. Most people have experienced the grandeur, mystery, challenge, invitation, awe of mountains. Even for those who have experienced painful or difficult things on mountains – or who find mountains oppressive – still the sense of them can be powerful.
Isaiah 65:17-25 - The Message
“Pay close attention now: I’m creating new heavens and a new earth.
All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten.
Look ahead with joy. Anticipate what I’m creating:
I’ll create Jerusalem as sheer joy, create my people as pure delight.
I’ll take joy in Jerusalem, take delight in my people:
No more sounds of weeping in the city, no cries of anguish;
No more babies dying in the cradle, or old people who don’t enjoy a full lifetime;
One-hundredth birthdays will be considered normal - anything less will seem like a cheat.
They’ll build houses and move in. They’ll plant fields and eat what they grow.
No more building a house that some outsider takes over, no more planting fields
that some enemy confiscates,
For my people will be as long-lived as trees, my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.
They won’t work and have nothing come of it, they won’t have children snatched out from under them.
For they themselves are plantings blessed by God, with their children and grandchildren likewise God-blessed.
Before they call out, I’ll answer.
Before they’ve finished speaking, I’ll have heard.
Wolf and lamb will graze the same meadow, lion and ox eat straw from the same trough, but snakes—they’ll get a diet of dirt!
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill anywhere on my Holy Mountain,” says God.
As you face the next mountain in your life, I would invite you to pause, turn around and look backwards to all the mountains you have already conquered and remember that we are not alone.
Shalom
Pastor Beryl