VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAIN John M. Buchanan
Exodus 32:15-24, Luke 9:28-36 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
March 2, 1980 Columbus, Ohio

Just north west of the city in which I Spent my youth there is a dramatic ridge
in the Allegheny mountains. The grade is quite steep and actually begins inside the
city limits. Civil engineers still shake their heads over the nineteenth century
technical ingenuity which took the railroad up over those mountains around what rail-
road buffs know as the Horseshoe Curve. The ridge is the reason the city is there -
built to service the railroad at its most critical point in the East. If you have the
nerve for it you can drive up one of the mountains north of town and arrive at a
plateau on top, and if you are still inclined proceed out to the very edge where the
mountain juts out into the valley below. People take that drive for two reasons.
Young people go there on warm summer evenings when the moon is full for obvious reasons
Other people go there in the early evening when the sun is beginning to disappear over
the mountain and the long shadows of the ridge extend half way across the city below.
People who live in town must go up that mountain once a year or 80, 45 I still do when
I return, and I now know why. Because what you see from the mountain is entirely
different from what you see in the streets of the city. It was not a pretty town: it's
changed now, but it used to be a small, heavily industrial city, with narrow streets,
and rows of gray frame houses, interrupted occasionally by what is known locally as
“box car red", and through the middle of which runs what was then the largest railroad
freight yard in the world; alive with steam locomotives. Tt was dirty and noisy and
not very pretty.

But from that mountain it looked beautiful, nestled in the dramatic valley, ringed
by mountain reservoirs, neat, quiet, clean. I know now that it was important to go up
there because there was a dimension of the truth about the city available up there but
no where else; a dimension necessary to comprehend the whole, the reality, the essence
of the city. It was always a surprise to see it from the mountain. it was always good.

The significance of mountains for the human spirit is as old as the race itself.
From antiquity people have gone to the mountain to get away from what was happening in
the valley; for refreshment and renewal, and ultimately to encounter God. Perhaps it
was the proximity to the heavens: more probably, I like to think, it was because of the
new perspective, the fuller truth, that the mountain always provides. Whatever the
primal reason, Moses meets God on Mt Sinai and mountains continue to be the place where
deity and humanity meet throughout the Bible - Horeb, Hermon, the Mt. of Olives, a
hill called Calvary. In his last speech Martin Luther King said that he'd been to the
mountain and everybody knew what he meant.

The dynamic of being on the mountain top was expressed beautifully by Eunice
fietjens in a poem...

"But I shall go down from this airy space,
this swift, white peace, this stinging exultation,
And time will close about me .
and my soul stir to the rhythm of the daily round.
Yet having known, life will not press so close,
and always I shall feel time ravel thin about me.
For once E stood
In the white windy presence of eternity."
(Profiles from China, in
The Interpreter's Bible,
vol. 7, p.776).

-2.

The view from the mountain, really or metaphorically, reveals the truth in a way
not available elsewhere. It is necessary, therefore, to go to the mountain, and from
the vantage point of height and distance to see the whole picture.

And yet, the truth from the mountain is so big and so beautiful and so inspiring
that there is a sense in which it becomes a tempting distortion. By commanding a view
of the whole it actually blurs the details and the particulars. It is tempting, but
basically false to define a city slum with the view one enjoys from several thousand
feet. The view from the mountain of my youth did not alter the rest of the truth which
was basic human truth, which is to say railroad soot and unemployment and crime, divorce
and alcoholism. You can't see that from the mountain at all. In fact, if you could
stay up on the mountain you might never know any of it existed.

Thus two texts about important mountain top experiences, and the long journey back
down into the valley.

No one ever had more of a comedown than Moses. For forty days and nights he was
on the mountain top with God. At the end of that period he had the law, the structure
that would transform the wandering tribes of recently escaped slaves, into a nation.
There is no more important moment in the Old Testament than when Moses starts to walk
down from Mt Sinai. But in the valley, where the people are camped a bizarre scenario
is evolving. The people have become restless in Moses' absence. Aaron, second in
command, has constructed a small calf out of gold, the deity of the people in the
midst of whom they were now camped, and they have thrown quite a party. Delicately,
the text reads ~ "the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play."

(Exodus 32:6),

On his way down the mountain, beside himself I imagine, with the fact that he has
in his hands a direct word from the Lord, Moses hears the sounds of a celebration. At
first he thinks they're singing a victory song, a hymn, maybe. And then the awful
truth becomes clear. God's people, the beloved, blessed heirs of God's law, at the
highest, holiest moment in their history, are in a drunken stupor. That's quite a
comedown from the view from the mountain.

The New Testament text tells a similar story. ‘The event it describes is known as
the Transfiguration and Biblical scholars agree that it is one of the most important
occasions in the Gospel narrative. Quite intentionally Jesus took the inner circle of
disciples, his closest friends, Peter, James and John up onto @ mountain. What
happened next is a bit mystifying. The text indicates that His appearance changed.
The point, I have always felt, is that they saw Him differently. It is not unusual,
after all, to deal with a particular person on a daily basis, and then one day that
person does or says something that causes you to see and understand him in an entirely
new way. That's what transfiguration means, I believe. Clearly, the disciples of
Jesus were not sure about who He was until after the resurrection. That's why they're
interesting and human and important: they followed their instincts without concrete
proof. Jn any event, sometimes they could see more clearly than others. Sometimes
they knew He was something more than a carpenter-rabbi from Nazareth. Whatever
happened up on that mountain, for a moment at least, His closest friends saw a new
truth about Him. They would become confused again later but now, in that moment they knew

Peter's response is totally and predictably human. "It is well that we are here:
let us make three booths..." How familiar that sounds! Peter didn't want to come down
from his spiritual high. He wanted to memorialize the moment of truth: capture it,
pin it down permanently in a shrine to which he could return when the truth became
opaque once again. How understandably human this impetus to institutionalize the truth ;
to make a monument to this view from the mountain.

-3.

Jesus doesn't even acknowledge Peter's request. In fact, Luke is so embarrassed
by Peter's faux pas that he apologizes by suggesting that Peter really didn't know
what he was saying.

The sequence ends significantly with them coming down from the mountain and en-
countering the ever-present clamoring crowd, and a desperate father who had brought
an epileptic son to Jesus, A man so touchingly desperate that he almost insists on
our Lord's attention. "JI begged your disciples to cast it out and they could nor!!!
What a comedown ~- from the "white, windy presence of eternity" - to the desperate pleas
of a father: from the certainty of divine truth to the blunt reality of a little hoy
in the throes of an epileptic seizure: from the quiet serenity of the mountain to the
noisy human pain of the valley.

Truth, life and religion are all served well by a view from the mountain. Without
the mountain we might never see the whole picture, the whole and fragile truth. But
in each, it is the coming back down that matters.

That, I would submit, is a very important dynamic. Our instincts are to stay on
the mountain, to preserve our high moments and avoid the blunt reality of the valley as
long as possible. Our culture complies by providing a stream of escapist opportunities,
all carefully designed to convey the new gospel: life can be lived on the mountain. The
Playboy philosophy will one day, IE am convinced, be regarded as one of the formative
ideologies in the mid-twentieth century. It is, essentially, life - twenty-four hours
a day, on the mountain top of pleasure.

The trouble is that not many people actually live that life, except in fantasy.
Romance, for instance, may be greatly enhanced by an occasional quiet, intimate dinner
for two with a special bottle of wine to be shared, But the relationship will stand or
fall at a much more mundane level than that. Everybody needs a bit of romance. In-
tellignet people will plan for it to be part of their relationship. The reality of
marriage, however, has more to do with diapers, colic, little league, dusting the
furniture, doing the dishes, and paying the bills on time. Anybody can be happily
married during a candlelight dinner. If you can pull it off hanging wallpaper together,
it has been said, your love is real. The instinct for romance ig good. But learning
fo communicate, to love and care for one another, in tenderness and compassion is im-
perative and difficult - when things aren't very romantic, when you're tired and it's
been a long day or you're bored and irritated. ‘That's the valley. That's where a
lot of life is lived.

The instinct for the mountain top is expressed by the church as well. Langdon
Gilkey, University of Chicage theologian, in his book Naming the Whirlwind draws an
analogy with medieval German towns constructed at the foot of a castle. The castle
was built to institutionalize a certain social structure. The town was governed from
there. Ail important commerce and legal transactions happened there. But today all
the functions which used to occur within its walls happen elsewhere. The only people
who go there are tourists and the only commerce is in post cards. Wot a few voices
have suggested that the church is caught in the same dilemma. City churches particularly
built to institutionalize their strength and prominence in a certain moment of time,
Stand empty all over the country today. And those that are not empty are hanging on
for dear life to an age and mentality and urban situation long gone. The church in
the city, a subject of some immediacy and urgency here, must guard always against the
temptation to withdraw to its mountain top of ornate architecture, gorgeous music,
quality education, and magnificent past, ever higher and higher from the valley of
human need ail around it. Jesus brought His disciples down fram the heights to the
blunt reality of a sick little boy. So this, or any like congregation, must see

~&-

itself, its identity and its future no longer in terms of what used to be but in terms
of coming down from the high and holy moment of its worship life, for instance, to the
urgent human need immediately outside. While the disciples were enjoying their moment
of revelation, a sick little boy was waiting to be healed, And last Sunday, as we sat
in this sanctuary, a4 man was shot directly across the street. If we are to be the
church of Jesus Christ in this place, we must see our responsibilities in terms of both
of those events.

But the mountain is so fresh'and the air clear - and it's quiet there. What we want
from the church and our religion, frankly, is a little clarity, a bit of revelation, and
a respite from the noisy, busy valley in which we do our living. And at this point the
strong inclination to stay on the mountain becomes very subtle and very powerful. Religi
that is oriented toward mountain top experiences of salvation, certainty in matters of
dectrine, absolute clarity in matters of ethics - is popular religion today. The noisier
it is in the valley, the better the mountain looks. And a religion which can keep you
up there locks very good indeed. Commenting on one of the more prominent sect groups
within the church Gavin Reid writes: "They have created an almost totally absorbing
mini-world for its adherents. They have spawned their own breed of books. They seem to
have engendered a considerable number of conferences, conventions, special services and
small group meetings. They have their own magazines, their own personalities, their
own approved four star churches to which many will travel long distances on Sundays."

(A New Happiness, p.43). In effect, a lot of religion designs itself for life on the
mountain top and avoids all contact with the ambiguity of the life lived in the valley.

Sometimes we Presbyterians wish we could spend a Little more time on the mountain,
Sometimes we wonder why we have to be the experts in ambiguity: the ones always running
around in the conflicts and controversies in the valley. Sometimes we wonder why we
have to be the ones busy boycotting, picketing, protesting and pronouncing while others
seem to be enjoying the cool, serene and clear air of their ecclesiastical mountain.
Sometimes we feel inadequate when brother and sister Christians are so sure of what they
believe and what is right and wrong and when, exactly, the moment of salvation happened.
My guess is that most Presbyterians wonder what it would be like to be on the mountain
top of religious faith.

And I think you and I need to hear very clearly the Word of God in the story of the
Transfiguration. The religious experience of Peter, James and John did not begin on the
mountain, I think it very significant that not one of the disciples of Jesus had a
shattering, emotional salvation experience, Rather, they followed Him tentatively at
first; they did not understand Him fully, they did not have all the answers. And after
they had been following Him, He took them up in the mountain for a very brief experience
of confirmation, certainty and revelation. It didn't last long. Before they knew it
they were back down in the valley where life is lived. When Peter suggested that the
mountain top experience should be the norm, Jesus didn't even respond. Or rather, His
response was to push Peter back into life - into a poignant situation of human pain.
"There," He seems to be saying, "in the illness of the boy, the exquisite pain of his
father, the clamoring of the crowd; there is where religion must be and there, in my
name, is where I want you to be."

Frederick Buechner writes: "Who is this who asks us to fellow? We want to know
who he is before we follow him - and that is understandable enough except that the
truth of the matter is that it is only by first following him that we can begin to
find out who he is." (The Magnificent Defeat, p.98).

-5-

You and I have been called to follow Jesus Christ - in the valley of our own
lives, For most of us, most of the time, the setting is not going to be very
spectacular, [It is going to look suspiciously like a familiar office, living room,
dinner table and committee meeting, examination room, conference table, courtroom.
But that is where He wants us to be. That is where we live and love and sometimes
laugh and sometimes cry, That is where all the beauty and ambiguity and poignancy
and ecstacy of our lives is played out. That is where Jesus Christ calls us to
follow Him and that is where we can count on Him to be.

And then one day, I am convinced, we will be taken to some mountain, perhaps
only for a moment. But it will be enough and we will know, a rich, clear moment
of truth..."this swift, white peace, this stinging exultation"™ - and then back
down again, into the valley where life is lived and where Jesus Christ precedes us.
Amen,

We are grateful, Father, for moments of clear truth: for times of beauty and
revelation and inspiration, We are grateful for the sense of Your presence and
Your Love which we are given on occasions. But grant us, Father, the faith to
follow in the between times. Give us grace to fallow in the valley - through

Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.