{"id":1073,"date":"2020-06-07T08:02:32","date_gmt":"2020-06-07T12:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=1073"},"modified":"2020-06-07T08:02:36","modified_gmt":"2020-06-07T12:02:36","slug":"aint-no-mountain-high-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/07\/aint-no-mountain-high-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"A’int No Mountain High Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor \u2022 \u00a92020 All Rights Reserved<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Trinity Sunday\/A \u2022 June 7, 2020<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Genesis 1:1-2:4a<\/a> \u2022 Matthew 28:16-20<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Climbing up the mountain children
I didn\u2019t come here for to stay
If I never more see you again,
Gonna see you on the Judgement Day<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Do you know this song? It\u2019s in the style of a spiritual. Spirituals used religious metaphors to signal slaves and call them to take the risks of seeking freedom. It\u2019s striking how often mountains figure in our faith tradition. Ancient people looked up and believed they were looking toward God. So to get higher was to get closer to God, draw nearer divinity. Isn\u2019t that our hope? Isn\u2019t that why we come to worship? Today, let\u2019s listen to these two stories from scripture and let them help us climb the mountain toward God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take that long, long story that open Genesis, the book of beginnings. Did you follow it as we read it this morning? When you listen to a song, there are two parts: you listen to the lyrics and you also listen to the music. It\u2019s the same way with this story. The words are the lyrics; the rhythm and balance is the music. It starts out with what our translation calls \u201cthe formless void\u201d; in Hebrew, the \u201cTohu Bohu\u201d, absence of anything and then\u2014light. The light is divided\u2014night and day. There\u2019s a place: now it\u2019s divided, above, below\u2014sky and world. It\u2019s divided: Earth and seas. On the earth, plants, in the sky lights\u2014time and fruitfulness. In the sea, creatures of every kind, in the air, birds of every kind. On the land, animals and cattle, which is to say animals that live mutually with humanity. Finally: us\u2014humankind, gendered and made in the image of God. What we hear if we listen more to the music than the lyrics is an amazing, ultimate ordering, a place for everything, everything in its place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It reminds me of being a boy in the room I shared with my brother. We had closets, desks, and some storage areas. And we had, almost always, an amazing mess of toys, dirty clothes, books, magazines, half-built plastic models and what I can only describe as \u201cInteresting Stuff\u201d\u2014a special rock, some shell brought back from a beach. My mom would tell us to clean up and we would, in the way boys clean up, which is to say we\u2019d dump stuff into the closets and push it under the bed. But every once in a while, often on a summer day, my mother, in the way of mothers who are never fooled and knew exactly what we\u2019d done, would appear in our room and tell us that today we were going to really clean. We knew what really clean meant: everything came out from under the beds, everything came out from the closet and then, bit by bit, my mother would help us put it all away, dirty clothes to the laundry, beds made without lumps, toys and models on shelves, trash thrown out and Interesting Things examined and put into a box. She brought order and even though we whined about the process, at the end we loved it. She\u2019d stand in the doorway, arms crossed and say, \u201cNow that\u2019s the way this room should be. Try to keep it this way, at least for a little while.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what this story in Genesis is about. People who want to argue about it as a scientific description of how things came to be are missing the song it means to sing. This isn\u2019t about how things came to be, it\u2019s about how things are meant to be, all in order: night, day, animals, cattle, human beings, ordered by a loving God, everything in its place, everything dancing together to the music of God\u2019s order, just as a choir sings together to the music of the organ. Now there are various names for this order. When it comes to everything, we call it creation; when it comes to human beings, we call it justice. It\u2019s where God is always trying to move us, and the pathway there is the mountain we are meant to climb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to climb it because, just like my brother and I, on the whole we are messy children. We are meant to be caretakers of creation; we wander off and become consumers instead. We are meant to live in the equality of mutually, equally being made in the image of God, recognizing that image in each other. Instead, we create hierarchies, we compete to be better than others and, in our pride, we use our strength to create systems that oppress some and benefit others. Hierarchy always involves coercion and coercion is violence. Violence disorders the balance, the order, God created and like the pressure under a volcano, it gets stored up until finally the coerced erupt against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what\u2019s going on right now. The violence of American racism has built up to a breaking point. What\u2019s stunning isn\u2019t that a black man was killed by a policeman kneeling on his neck, it\u2019s that the police officer assumed he could get away with it. What\u2019s stunning is that this wasn\u2019t isolated but part of a a pattern that went on before and after and continues. What\u2019s different today, this week, isn\u2019t the violence of oppression, it is the reaction against it. The volcano has erupted but the eruption was a long time coming and it won\u2019t be solved by better containment. No matter how many demonstrators are beaten, no matter how many people are tear gassed, no matter how many soldiers are deployed, there won\u2019t be peace until there is justice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A long time ago, when May was small, she had a problem and needed to help. She seriously and carefully explained the problem and then came to what she wanted and said, \u201cThat\u2019s where you come in.\u201d Clearly today we need someone to stand, like a mother at the doorway of a messy room, to clean things up. And that\u2019s where you come in. Yes: we are meant to be part of the solution to putting things back in order. Just like my mother, God has a plan and the plan is in the other story we read this morning. It begins with God seeing the disorder of the world and coming to us, like my mother coming into the room. The signature act of God in Jesus is resurrection. Resurrection is God transcending violence. The cross is all the world\u2019s violence, all the police on someone\u2019s neck, all the politicians refusing to help the needy and helping friends get the benefits of God\u2019s creation. The cross is domination; the resurrection is the solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other story we read today pictures Jesus with his disciples on a mountain. \u201cNow the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.\u201d [Matthew 28:16]. Jesus tells them to do three things: make disciples, baptize, teach his commandments. Those commandments start with the power of forgiveness and what is forgiveness? It\u2019s the intentional act of saying, \u201cLet\u2019s start new.\u201d It\u2019s the do-over after a missed opportunity, it\u2019s the refusal to store up grievance and let it become resentment. Baptism is the symbol of this, the symbolic washing that gets rid of the dirt of the past. His ultimate command is love, loving the image of God where ever it\u2019s found, whether in God or in God\u2019s image, the person you meet, the person you haven\u2019t met. To make disciples simply means to help someone else start to live this way, usually because they\u2019ve been inspired by the example you set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a disordered moment. The regular rhythms of life are off because of the pandemic and the measures we are all taking to defend against it. We can\u2019t choose whether to live in a time of pandemic; we can choose how we live. We can understand that wearing a mask is a way of saying to others, to strangers in a store, \u201cI care about you\u2014you\u2019re a child of God, I\u2019m keeping you safe, honoring your health.\u201d We can\u2019t choose whether we live in a racist culture but we can choose how we live in it. We can use our politics, our money, our social media, our lives to say, to others, \u201cI care about you\u2014you\u2019re a child of God, I\u2019m going to do what I can to keep you safe.\u201d That\u2019s being a disciple; that\u2019s teaching Jesus way of love by example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhere, someone is rolling their eyes at this, I\u2019m sure. Somewhere, someone is thinking it will never work. I imagine some days my mother stood in the doorway and thought, \u201cHow will they ever clean this up?\u201d Jesus started with 12 disciples; here he is, just a short time later, and already he\u2019s lost one\u2014there are only 11 left to gather in Galilee. But it doesn\u2019t stop him. He knows the truth that our politics always forgets, the one Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so eloquently voiced when he said, \u201cDarkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.\u201d In all the time since that moment in Galilee, there have been plenty of failures. Christians have busily built their own systems of domination and others have had to fight to restore justice. But God never stops trying, never stops coming to clean up. There\u2019s another mountain song that reminds me of this. It\u2019s meant to be a love song but I think of it as God\u2019s love song for us and it begins, \u201cA\u2019int no mountain high enough, a\u2019int no river wide enough, to keep me from you.\u201d That\u2019s the message of the resurrection: there is no power, no principality, nothing that can ultimately overcome God\u2019s hope. When we live in justice, care for creation and each other, appreciate the image of God in creation and and all people, then we are part of God\u2019s plan. Isn\u2019t it time to clean up today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor \u2022 \u00a92020 All Rights Reserved Trinity Sunday\/A \u2022 June 7, 2020 Genesis 1:1-2:4a \u2022 Matthew 28:16-20 Climbing up the mountain childrenI didn\u2019t come here for to stayIf I never more see you again,Gonna see you on the Judgement Day Do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[192,235,98,10,234],"class_list":["post-1073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","tag-discipleship","tag-domination","tag-hope","tag-mountain","tag-trinity-sunday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1074,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions\/1074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}