"Ascending The Mountain Of God"

Sermon Preached By The Rev. Bruce Sanguin
December 2, 2007
Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 24: 36-44

The caption read: ‘Peace in the Holy Land possible, Bush says’. There it was buried on page 11 of the Globe and Mail in Thursday’s paper. I had to search diligently to find anything about these new Middle East talks being brokered by President Bush. The last round of serious talks took place seven years ago, so this current lack of media interest is itself interesting. Do I detect the scent of cynicism in the air? Let’s face it. Everybody knows that this is the President’s last-ditch attempt to leave a legacy as a peacemaker. The irony is so profound and obvious that it need not be spelled out. CBC TV interviewed Palestinians and Israelis to get their take on the initiative. To a person, cynicism prevailed – and who can blame them? Everybody knows that the more meaningful and relevant the agreement is, the more likelihood there is that fundamentalists on both sides will try to derail it. We’ve been here before, and there really isn’t much reason for hope.

But what about the passage from the New Testament reading this morning, in which Jesus tells his followers to stay awake: the Son of Man – the divine – breaks in at an unexpected hour? Who knows? Maybe the President will win a Nobel Peace prize before it’s all said and done. There is biblical precedent for this kind of surprising turnaround. David, a murderer and an adulterer, goes on to become the greatest king in Israel’s history. Peter, who denied Jesus three times when the chips were down, becomes the head of the church. Paul, who persecuted followers of Jesus, sees the light and spends the rest of his days spreading the light of Christ. It could happen. The divine comes at an unexpected hour after all.

In our Bible study this week, we decided that cynicism was way too easy. It protects our hearts from being broken and defends us against any expectation that things are going to improve. This past week I watched that delightful film, As Good As It Gets, with Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson. Nicholson plays the role Melvin, a bigoted, misanthropic novelist, paralyzed by obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hunt plays the role of Carol, a single mom, who works as a waitress at the restaurant where Melvin has the same breakfast, at the same time, at the same table, every single morning of his miserable life.

Carol has a very sick eight-year old son. She can’t afford to take him to a specialist on what she makes as a waitress. Out of the blue, Melvin gives Carol the money she needs for her son to see the specialist. It changes her life and leaves her very confused, because outwardly Melvin is the same crusty old curmudgeon. Out of the blue, he begins to fall for Carol. Over dinner one evening, she opens her heart just a little and tells him he looks nice. Then, she asks him to give her a compliment. He starts very slowly. The best he can do is to tell her that he absolutely hates taking medication for his illness. She waits. Well, he has started taking his medication. She waits. “Well”, Melvin says to her, “you make me want to be a better man.” The Son of Man – the divine – appears at an unexpected hour and in unexpected ways.

The prophet Isaiah is also a poet. As such, he imagines his way into a future that nobody, except perhaps himself, thought possible. “Many peoples shall come to the mountain of the Lord, so that God may teach us God’s way and we may walk in God’s paths…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 any more” (Isaiah 2:2-5). If anything, the situation back then in the Middle East was worse than it is today. Most would have scorned his imagination as fanciful.

In an essay entitled, Countering War with Wonder: Poetry and Peace in the Visionary Poetics of William Blake, Canadian poet and writer, our very own Susan McCaslin, presents the 19^th century English poet and artist’s strategy for peace. “He stated that if every man and every woman were engaged in acts of creative imagination, then war would eventually cease and we would have already commenced the task of building the New Jerusalem, a community based in mutual forgiveness.” By “Imagination”, Susan points out that Blake meant “the act of seeing with what the east called the “Third Eye, and what Blake called the Four-fold Vision.” This is when the mind, body, emotions, and creative imagination are integrated by the Mind that gave birth to the cosmos.

We play a role in helping the Mind that gave birth to the cosmos break unexpectedly into our despair and cynicism. It begins by not being afraid to imagine peace breaking out in the world and love breaking out in our hearts. Isaiah gets caught up in the ecstasy of the divine mind. Instruments of violence – swords and spears – are transformed into instruments of life – plowshares and pruning hooks. Using Christian language we can open ourselves to Christ – the Mind that gave birth to the Universe. Genuinely open yourself to the Christ and your life will change. Don’t believe me? Try it some time. I know we don’t talk like this in the “liberal” church, but why on earth would we deny ourselves access to the Mind and Heart that gave birth to the universe? If we open ourselves to the Christ, we will know ourselves to be centers of creativity, of imagination, and of a love we didn’t think possible. Our purpose, we will discover is to imagine, and then birth, a new creation into being – a new creation that is both within and without.

Isaiah opened to this infinite Creative power, and imagines nations streaming to Jerusalem, the city of peace, to learn the ways of peace. The people ascend the mountain of the Lord to be in the presence of the divine. This metaphor of ascending the mountain to be in the presence of God is common to all religious traditions. You remember the story of Jesus’ transfiguration – Jesus takes three disciples up a mountain where they witness Jesus in conversation with the ancient prophets Moses and Elijah. The spiritual journey is about making a conscious ascent up the mountain of our God, so that we can gain a divine perspective on our personal and collective lives.

As we engage in intentional spiritual practice we move through stages of consciousness, with each successive stage characterized by a heightened awareness. When Jesus tells his followers to “stay awake”, he’s not suggesting that his disciples should never sleep. It’s a metaphor about becoming more and more conscious, increasingly compassionate, and expanding our capacity to imagine and then manifest a Christ-shaped life.

Jesus uses the analogy of people before the biblical flood. They were eating and sleeping, and going to work, and living out the daily dramas of their lives. According the Genesis, they were also exceedingly violent. But they were asleep standing up. They were oblivious to the reality that there are higher stages of consciousness. From their level of consciousness, violence was simply a necessity. But war is a crisis of consciousness. It’s always caused and then sustained by men who are functioning at a very low level of spiritual intelligence. They cannot imagine any other alternative.  In Isaiah’s words, all they know is how to study war. So, returning to my opening comments, I don’t want to limit the capacity of divine love and compassion to sweep through President Bush and these Middle East talks at an unexpected hour. But as long as they are asleep to higher levels of consciousness, the likelihood of this happening is limited. 

I walked into the Centre for Peace a few months ago to find a woman sitting in a chair in the hall looking quite blissful. I asked her if I could help. It was a silly question, because clearly she didn’t need help. She told me that she had never been in the Centre before but she felt the presence of what she called in her religious tradition “Shiva” energy. She felt surrounded by a field of peace and she just wanted to take it in for a few minutes. Peter and others who spend much time at the Centre will tell you that this is common feedback. The Centre is filled day and night with yoga, Tai Chi, sacred chanting, and corporations that are visioning how they can create a better world with their product. There are meditation groups and acting groups that laugh and dance. There are Bible Study groups and book studies, and New Age gatherings. There are healing sessions and counseling sessions. Somebody stop me. To walk into the Center is to ascend the mountain of our God. There is a field that has been created by people with loving intention.

In church we participate in and create a Christ field. People have been known to walk in to worship and weep for the first four Sundays. They can’t tell you why, but my strong hunch is that it is overwhelming to be ascending the mountain of God in a place where prayer is valid. It is an awakening, an intimation of a deeper purpose. This is the best reason for coming to church regularly. Guilt is the absolute worst. It’s an ascent to a higher level of consciousness – if we’re doing our job. Each one of you brings with you every Sunday your experience of the divine, and contributes it to the field of Christ consciousness. When some soul sits down and finds herself weeping unexpectedly, it is because this Christ field is waking her up and calling her to ascend even higher.

Imagine that your life is about ascending the mountain of our God. And that as you reach higher levels, you contribute to a divine field of consciousness being established on earth, that others then are drawn into – like what happens at the Center for Peace and in church on Sunday morning. When you look at all the unexpected breakthroughs of historic importance, from the overthrow of the British Empire by Gandhi, to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, to the break up of Soviet Russia, the feminist movement and gay rights, to name a few, they didn’t happen out of thin air. They happened unexpectedly, yes, because we thought inequity and oppression were intransigent – just part of the human condition. But every one of these breakthrough moments was preceded by some soul and or a collective of souls imagining a new and different future. Someone ascended to a higher level of consciousness, an elevation on the mountain of the Holy, that enabled him or her to gain a new and liberating perspective on injustice.

When you engage in intentional spiritual practices, whether through being at worship, reading a book that gives you a fresh perspective, meditation, acts of compassion and kindness, you are contributing to Isaiah’s vision of turning spears into pruning hooks and swords into plows. You are laying down fresh furrows from which God’s future may grow, and the Holy may break in at an “unexpected hour”.