Sermonstudio

Heroes are a part of the human experience. They motivate, stimulate, encourage, and provide role models. There's something about looking up to the one who did something that is so far beyond most everyone's reach or ability. "Wow! I could never do that!" we say.

All through the Olympics my wife and I joked about what we would look like if we tried to jump off the ski jump or leap into the air with skates on! It's remarkable what some people are able to do, and do it with grace and apparent ease. Can you do a back flip on a narrow beam of wood and leather? I still say it's impossible, even though I've seen it with my own eyes.

Some of that hero stuff was going on in the story we heard read this morning. Here's Moses, who's already a hero from leading the Hebrews out of Egypt. Now we see him, with Joshua, climbing up a mountain to be with God. The mountain becomes covered with a cloud, the glory of God, for six days, and then, on the seventh day Moses is called to go into the cloud to receive the commandments.

What struck me this last time I read this portion of scripture was the seventeenth verse: "Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel."

To the people of Israel, gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai, not only did they see a cloud, they saw a fire; and not only was it a fire, it was a "devouring fire." From where they stood at the bottom of the mountain, God looked like a frightening, flaming, consuming inferno.

Now put this together with the words of Saint Paul in the New Testament, whose mind and heart had been grasped by the spirit of Jesus. In speaking to the people of Athens about God, Paul said this: "... indeed [God] is not far from each one of us. For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.' "

For centuries people have sought to carry out commandments of God brought to them by their heroic holy people, and in doing so have felt very close to their guilt and fear and frustration over not being able to carry out the rules, but have felt very far from the One whose anger they were trying to avoid by carrying out those rules.

And then there is the other reaction to this distant God. Out of ignorance and fear there are those who simply conjure up what they hope God might be, which is usually a warm, cuddly grandpa, whose only desire is to make you happy.

A fearful, unapproachable, fire-breathing God, or a harmless, comfortable, wimp. Such are the usual images of God, when experienced ... at a distance.

I think it was during Desert Storm that the song "From A Distance" came out, sung by Bette Midler. It was a beautiful song, sung on the radio, sung in religious gatherings. It grabbed our longing for peace and indeed how peaceful and in harmony the earth looks ... from a distance.

Unfortunately the concluding part of the song, while sounding beautiful, carried a content of enormous heresy and, even worse, I wonder how many people even felt the jolt. Remember how it ended? "God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us ... from a distance."

Now for Edward Herbert, the father of Deism, and Voltaire, both of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Thomas Paine, an American, also in the late eighteenth century, this song could have been their theme song. You see, Deism is one of the religious views of the Enlightenment which taught that God or the Deity created the world and then left it to itself, not intervening in any way in the affairs of nature or humanity. Yes, there's a God, says Deism, but to say that is only a philosophical statement about where the world comes from, not a statement of faith or trust in a present Spirit who cares and empowers and loves all created beings today. Deism teaches that, at best, God is watching us, at a distance.

This is not the present, loving God whom we come to know in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It describes our feelings of God's absence at times, for sure, but how we feel at our worst moments is not the foundation on which we build our whole understanding of God.

In fact, you see, the "success" of Moses and Joshua on Mount Sinai, and Peter, James and John with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration may not just be the fact that they were special (which they were!). What may in fact be a major part of their "success" at having a mountaintop experience is how they got to where they had that experience.

Think about it. They climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed. They had a goal of climbing that mountain and meeting the Lord. Meanwhile, the people were down on the plain, doing their thing and admiring their leaders who were putting some sweat and trust into their walk with God.

I don't pretend to say that if I put in the same effort as Scott Hamilton, I, too, could do a triple jump. But I'll bet I would amaze my family and friends and myself with how much I could do on skates if I put the same effort and time in it as Scott did. The question is motivation.

God is watching us, but if it is at a distance, frankly, I could care less. For I need One upon whom I can lean and turn to for real live help and guidance and strength. A God at a distance doesn't do it, and that's what Jesus came to explain to those trying to please a distant, angry-appearing God with their careful following of kosher laws and Sabbath regulations. Such rule-following does little when your life is on the line. When your life is on the line, you need solid reason to hope.

On December 17, 1927, off Provincetown, Massachusetts, the US destroyer Paulding rammed the US submarine S-4. In one of the most harrowing rescue attempts known to this part of the world, divers went up and down in gale force winds trying everything possible to rescue the six remaining men trapped in the forward torpedo room. The other 30 men had already died in other parts of the ship. In the blackness of that small space, with carbon dioxide levels ever rising, Morse code messages were sent from divers to trapped men and back again, tapped out with wrenches and hammers. One of the last messages from the forward torpedo room was tapped out by Lieutenant Graham Fitch, "Is there any hope?" The answer they received back was, "There is hope." And everything possible was done to save them, though time and rough seas finally doomed them. Not Navy rules of order but hope is what they lived on, in those final hours of blackness.

Remember when Dorothy and her friends went to find the Wizard of Oz to get her back to Kansas and provide her friends with appropriate body parts? Remember how, filled with hope, she approached the Wizard, and then little Toto pulled back a curtain, revealing a pudgy old man, moving levers and talking into a microphone. She discovered that the great Wizard was only a little man with a fancy machine. Remember how devastated she was? "You mean there isn't any Wizard? You mean there is no hope to get back to Kansas?"

In fact, when the little Totos of experience and friendships and study pull back the curtain, exposing our imagined wimpy God or our wrathful, fiery God, we find a God like Jesus. But we find not a powerless pretender, but rather a gentle Lord, worthy of our praise and worship, and wielding power and justice in ways far beyond our most ardent efforts to understand.

There is hope and there is a One like Jesus revealed. And that One lives not far away but closer than our very breath, in life and in life beyond this life. It's just that we may need to do some mountain climbing together to close the distance.