“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…” (Heb. 12:22).
Our reading this morning from Hebrews brings us close to God, on two mountaintops: Mount Sinai, where God revealed himself to Moses; and Mount Zion, King David’s stronghold in Jerusalem. Both were places of encounter with God, where God drew near to the People of Israel. People on “the Mountain” at Sewanee, of course, have “mountaintop experiences” all the time: in fact, everything qualifies under this heading! But you know what I mean about the “mountaintop experience”: a transformative spiritual event that takes place before we return to the workaday valley of life.
We trace this expression back to Mount Sinai, which figures first in our reading. “You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them” (Heb. 12:18-19). Hebrews, here, is looking back to Moses’ experience on the mountain, as recounted in Exodus. The People of God have been liberated from slavery in Egypt, and now they draw near as God delivers the commandments. “When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and stood at a distance… while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was” (Ex. 19:18, 21). They begged to be spared from hearing the voice of God. The encounter with God was fearsome, not to be taken for granted.
The backward glance before moving ahead is a characteristic stance for the Hebrew people, and this effect is reproduced in the second place of encounter in our reading today: Mount Zion, the fortress captured by King David at the beginning of his reign and which then became his capital. Years later, David’s son Solomon built the Temple on the heights immediately north of the stronghold: a dwelling place fit for God, whose throne was in heaven but whose footstool was on the earth. The Temple was the house of God, where the People drew near to worship.
By tradition, Mount Zion was also Mount Moriah, the place where, centuries before, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. In this way, the mountain was a place of profound and fearful encounter with God. Isaac was spared at the last moment, but this note of sacrifice is also sounded in our reading, “For our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29).
The point of this backward glance, however, is to point above and ahead, to “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22). Remember how it said at the beginning of our reading that we have not come near to something that can be touched? There’s a reality that lies behind these mountaintop experiences, and that is what St. Paul calls, in Galatians, “the Jerusalem above” (Gal. 4:26). It’s not the earthly mountain, with clouds and darkness and all the rest, that we have approached, but the spiritual reality that undergirds it.
It is this heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, that St. John in Revelation sees coming down out of heaven from God (Rev. 21:2). The places of encounter with God, the mountaintop experiences that we hear about in our reading, are reflections of a heavenly reality that is much greater, and which we can scarcely describe. Sinai and Jerusalem are markers that point to what is above and ahead: the kingdom that is still to come. It’s what our writer says is “a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28). We are heirs of this kingdom, citizens of this commonwealth, which is even now drawing near.
When the author of Hebrews says that we “have come” (Heb. 12:18 & 22) to the spiritual reality, he speaks advisedly. The word used here is the same word that in other contexts means “conversion,” and here in our reading it carries with it that association. In other words, it is by coming to Christ, to “the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb. 12:24), that we approach the mountaintop. It’s by our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, and by our sharing in his body and blood, that we draw near to the heavenly Jerusalem; that we become “living members” of the Body of Christ, as it says in the Prayer Book. What is unseen becomes tangible in the holy mysteries we celebrate today.
Members of St. James’ Church: this morning, we stand on holy ground! In our worship today, we remember our baptism, and we share spiritual gifts in the sacrament of the altar. We too are encountering God in a “mountaintop experience” that brings us close to what is above and ahead: the spiritual reality that is even now present in our midst.
