Mountaintop Experience
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
The message from Isaiah for this first Advent Sunday is: “Get high!”
I toyed with, “Get High for Advent,” as a sermon title but then we’ve got to be careful what we put on that board out there in the public domain. And I don’t want to seem flippant or insensitive to serious issues.
But Isaiah is on to something extremely important when he says, “In the 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.
Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”
This is a vision of a mountaintop experience, and Isaiah invites us to share the experience. Get to the mountaintop; get to the high place. It’s important.
What does he mean by this trip to the mountaintop of the Lord’s house? What does he mean by getting high?
We can start by eliminating a couple of our more common definitions of what it means to seek the high ground. One of the most common is the military meaning. Getting to higher ground means gaining an advantage on your enemies.
When I was young I read about Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys
of the American Revolution, how they took the British by surprise at
It turns out another British army arrived from the north and put some
cannon up on a hill overlooking
High ground is important because it gives an advantage, and not just militarily. We often hear people talk about claiming the moral high ground. Watch the presidential debates and see how they maneuver to get the moral high ground. The goal is to get higher up than your opponents. Why? Same as with the army, so you can lob shells down on your enemies and they can’t fight back. You can look down your nose at others and they can’t touch you.
We know Isaiah’s not talking about that. A few verses later in this chapter, he tells us what we’ll find when we reach this high ground. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
You don’t lob shells from God’s mountaintop. It is not a place where you go to seek advantage over others. There is no war in this high place, there is only cooperation and peace. Getting high for Advent is not a call for us to grab the moral high ground.
Then there is the contemporary meaning of getting high. It means to have an intense and pleasurable emotional experience. Is Isaiah telling us to get a spiritual high in preparation for Christmas, to make this season an intense and pleasurable emotional experience?
No, he tells us that the purpose of this trip to the mountain is so that God may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths.” The goal is that we learn something, and learning is not an emotional outcome; it is a wisdom outcome.
The problem with getting high on anything, whether it is drugs or God, is that getting high is always temporary, self-centered, and addictive. When the experience is over, it leaves you unfulfilled; it leaves you craving more, craving another high. Our god becomes “the feeling” and we will go to the ends of the earth to get that feeling back. And when we get it back, our next goal is to get it back again.
Getting high never satisfies, it never accomplishes anything lasting. Christianity may be many things but one thing it should not be is a gateway drug to introduce people to the false and treacherous allure of instant personal gratification.
No, getting high for Advent is not a call for us to experience a spiritual high.
So what does Isaiah mean?
Well, like all metaphors it’s not easy to pin down. That’s why we have metaphors—to help us understand things we can’t easily define. Let me suggest some possible meanings of what Isaiah means when he urges us to get ourselves to the mountaintop.
1. Get to a healthier place. Throughout human history, people have understood the low places, the fens and marshes and the hollows and the caves and the mines and the deep valleys to be unhealthy places to live for any length of time.
Mountains have traditionally been places of refuge, of recovery. Places where the air is clean, the water is fresh. They are not places where large groups of people live, because they are places of isolation, not well suited to commerce. They are places where people go to get away from it all for awhile. Where we find peace and quiet, rest and relaxation, beauty and inspiration.
Perhaps Advent is a time to get away for awhile. To get away from the noise and pollution and traffic and stress of the day-to-day grind life and experience the beauty and inspiration of the quiet places.
I think Paul would second the motion. In the reading from Romans today, his advent advice is to get ourselves into a better place. Get away from those things that do our souls harm. Spend some time in the clean air and bright sunlight of God’s grace. Get away from the preoccupation with self and open up to a new world for awhile. Take extra time for quiet reflection. Get away from all the distractions so that you can hear what God is saying to you, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”
That’s one possibility.
Another is a safety issue. When the tsunamis hit the coast of
The gospel reading from Matthew makes reference to this in an interesting way. It talks about the story of Noah and the flood, how people were so stuck in their ways, in their ruts, in their tunnel vision that they did not see the flood was coming. And so they were washed away.
Had they paid attention to the signs, they would have known a flood was coming. They could have gone to higher ground; and when all the high ground was gone, they could have gone to the only thing that could rise above the water, to the place that is higher than the water, in the refuge of a boat.
As an interesting side note, these verses are often connected with an event known as the rapture, in which God supposedly will snatch all the faithful from the earth and leave unbelievers to flounder in the terror that sweeps the world. If you read the passage, though, those who get snatched up and taken away are not the wise and the faithful, they are the people who did not have the sense to get to high ground. They are not whisked away into God’s presence; they are carried to destruction.
Perhaps Isaiah’s message is a warning. When you know that floods are coming, you don’t want to spend too much time in the low areas.
There are times when we can get along fine without God. Some people can do it most of their lives. But in every life, rains come. Hardship, tragedy, disappointment. Without God, we become too preoccupied with ourselves to see what’s happening. We find ourselves caught in the low ground when the floods crash down and sweep us away.
Advent is the warning sign. Isaiah urges us to get to the high ground while we can, before it’s too late. Go up to the mountain of the Lord.
The third possibility is a little more Lutheran in perspective. We believe that we don’t save ourselves; that God saves us. Getting ourselves to higher ground sounds like saving ourselves is something we do.
How about the possibility that getting to a high place means getting to a place where God can more easily rescue us?
Think of it this way. Suppose you’re lost in a wilderness. You can’t save yourself. Rescue teams come looking for you; are you going to make it easy for them to find you or difficult? If you make it difficult, you suffer and your rescuers suffer. If you make it easy, you benefit, and so do the rescuers.
When you’re lost, it’s a good idea to where the ground is clearer, sightlines are better. Get out of the swamps and thick forests and shadows and ravines, and up to place where you can be seen.
We believe in the power of Jesus to save. That’s what Christmas is about. Yes, Jesus can find us and pull us out of the swamps and forest and shadows and ravines. Even when we are hopelessly lost, in utter darkness, going around in circles.
But when we make it difficult to be found, we suffer and God suffers. Advent is a time to get out of the darkness and shadows, and get away from the things that crowd out our access to God.
Those are all plausible explanation, but I’ve saved my favorite for last. One of the greatest advantages of high places is that you can see better. Down in the lowlands, you can’t see far with trees and hills right in front of your face.
Up high you get perspective. You can see tremendous vistas, you can see the lay of the land for mile after mile. You see how it all fits in. You see the big picture.
A mountaintop experience like that has the potential to change your life. Once you’ve been up on God’s mountain and seen the view, your whole understanding of the world changes. Your understanding of yourself changes. Getting up to the mountaintop of God gives a clear idea of where you are, how you fit in with God’s creation, how it all works together.
Isaiah’s call is to break out of our petty existence and day to day drudgery and get up to the mountaintop to see what God is all about.
No one expressed better this view of Isaiah’s invitation, than Martin Luther King. On his last night upon this earth, less than 24 hours before he was assassinated, these were the final words that he spoke in public:
“I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I have been to the mountaintop.
Like anybody I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place.
But I just want to do God’s will and He’s allowed me to go up to the mountaintop. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
That is heart of Isaiah’s invitation to come to the mountaintop. Come to God’s holy mountain. See the view from there. Get the fresh perspective, the big picture. See what God was all about when sent Jesus into the world. See the plan.
Isaiah gives us a preview of what we will see in our mountaintop experience. We will see that the time is coming, who knows when but it is coming, when the people shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
That time is coming. I know it’s coming, because I have been to the mountaintop and I have seen the promised land.
Unlike the addictive lure of spiritual emotional high, this mountaintop experience is not something you ever need to repeat. You can, but you don’t have to. You don’t keep going back because cool experience and you want it again, you know in your heart what is true. As Isaiah says, it’s helpful sometimes to get another look to remind us that the glory of the Lord is real, and it will all come together.
Once you’ve been to the mountaintop, you know what is true. You know where you are in this world. You know what God is about, how it all fits together. Knowing this makes all the difference in the world.
Before you do anything else this advent season, get to the high place. Go up to the mountaintop and see the promised land. That sight gives a freedom unlike anything we have ever experienced and it is a freedom that will last.
Go up to the mountaintop, if you haven’t been there already. Go where your eyes will see the glory of the coming of the Lord.