St Margaret's Church Prestwich

Rev Sue preached this sermon on Sunday 22 September at St Gabriel’s. Here it is for your consideration:

I need mountains. I realised this first when, as a student, I lived in Cambridge. When I went out for a walk the land was completely flat and featureless, the paths straight. I remember a similar feeling later visiting my brother in Ontario, and finding the roads in the agricultural area where he lived all went either north-south or east-west, on a grid like the streets in New York. There were no hills to get in the way. It made navigation easy, but it was so boring. Somerset, where I grew up, has some good hills, but I was in my twenties before I visited the north of England and saw some real mountains. And I can never see them without wanting to climb them. I understand the reply that George Mallory gave to a reporter who asked him why he wanted to climb Mount Everest “Because it’s there”.

Mountains have always been seen as special, often holy places. It was on a mountain that Moses saw a bush that was on fire but never consumed and heard the voice of God telling him that it was holy ground, and on that same mountain years later that God gave Moses the 10 commandments, and his face shone with the glory of God. When the Israelites ceased to be a nomadic people in the Sinai desert, they settled in the hill country that became Israel and built their capital city Jerusalem on Mount Zion. This, of course, was for practical reasons – fortresses are usually built on hills so that they can defend themselves from above if they are attacked, but it was also the symbolism of being closer to God. So, we heard today in the reading from Isaiah that when God creates a new heaven and a new earth, it will be on God’s Holy Mountain. We are promised a time and place where children do not die, no one goes hungry and there will be peace, not only between the people who live there, but between even the animals – even the lions will become vegetarian. Just as when I see a mountain I feel a longing to climb it, this passage fills me with the desire for that future where we are promised justice, peace and contentment. Although it can never happen in this life, I am inspired to keep trying to make the world we have a better place. Because the message is one of hope.

Looking at mountains and climbing them are two different things. If you have ever been hill walking, you know how it goes. The path is quite easy at the bottom, maybe going through woods and over stiles until the climb proper begins. You make sure your water bottle is in your hand, because it’s thirsty work. From time to time, you stop and admire the view. You begin to tire, but you see the top of the hill ahead, and you push on. You reach the highest point you can see, and then see the next, steeper, climb in front of you. It wasn’t the top at all. This happens again, until with a final scramble you find yourself with the wind whistling around you as you proudly stand next to the trig point that tells you how far you have climbed. By now you have built up an appetite, and your sandwiches taste unexpectedly good, before you pick your way down the steeper slopes, careful not to turn an ankle on the loose stones.

And so, climbing has always been a metaphor for the Christian life. As the hymn says

“Father, hear the prayer we offer:

not for ease that prayer shall be,

and it goes on

but the steep and rugged pathway

may we tread rejoicingly.”

The reading from Romans talks about the way we become more like Christ. God has called us, for a purpose, and that he will help us to stay the course, holding onto our faith and growing as Christians, in spite of, or even because of all the hardships we face. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Yes, it is at times an uphill struggle, but we have the support of God himself. When we feel that we are not being the people God would have us be, when we mar that likeness in us, Christ himself prays for us, and nothing can separate us from that love. Why don’t you take home the service sheet and keep it safe, and whenever you feel downcast or far from God, read again those words of promise:

Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The gospel reading also speaks of our protection, but there is also a phrase that is easily missed.

Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.

To all creation. St Francis, as he so often did, took the words literally. As he was walking between two cities he noticed a flock of birds in the trees. So, he preached a sermon to them. They listened respectfully as he reminded them to always praise God by singing to him, for God had given them their beautiful feathers, the streams to drink from, the mountains for refuge and the trees to build their nests. The creator showers them with blessings, so they must be grateful by their continued praise. When he had finished, the birds flew away in the shape of the cross.

What would we preach to creation today? I think we would like to tell our poor, suffering planet and its many and varied inhabitants not to give up hope. We would apologise for the damage we human beings are doing, polluting the rivers and the atmosphere, bringing on climate change and the destruction of whole species. In the same chapter of Romans, just before the passage on the service sheet, Paul declares that “the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God”.   That is all of creation, the animals, plants, the rocks and the whole universe which will be redeemed alongside humankind. And we have come full circle, to the vision of a world where suffering (for all God’s creatures, and for the planet itself) is no more. It is a prophecy of the coming of the kingdom, in a life to come, but nevertheless it is our responsibility to bring kingdom values to the here and now.

We started with George Mallory, and I would finish with a quotation from him. He died in his attempt to climb Everest. For him the sheer joy he found in mountain climbing was what made life worth living, and even, when it came to it, dying. For us it is that exhilaration we feel when we read the words of Jesus, Paul and Isaiah promising a better future, and giving us hope to live by. Like St Francis preaching to the birds, we have work to do, but the motivation is our joy in the love Christ has for us and we for him.

Mallory wrote

So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.