“Say To This Mountain”

Mark 11:1-25

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

February 9, 2003

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

            I know it’s pretty early to talk about Palm Sunday, but that’s where we have arrived in our survey of Mark’s gospel.  Mark’s gospel spends the last third of the book talking about the last week of Jesus’ life.  We’ll get to the triumphal entry in a few months, maybe after it thaws around here.  Today, I want to talk about mountains.

            Jesus told his disciples that they could say to a mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea.”  My mind immediately goes back to climbing Mount Jackson in Glacier National Park in Montana.  I was in high school.  My church youth group had been planning the trip for months.  I worked cutting the eight acres of grass at my home church all summer in order to pay for the trip.  The highlight was going to be climbing the mountain.  We trained for that hike.  We drove all the way across the country, cooped up in a hot van without air conditioning.  But it was all worth it if we could get to the top of Mount Jackson.  Summit fever had infected us and we braved many a trial for that reward.

            It took us two days to get to the mountain.  We had to hike up past Sperry Chalet in the high country, passing beautiful glacier-fed lakes.  I happened to be in better shape than much of the rest of the group.  When I was not way out front of everyone, I was carrying tents, ropes, sleeping bags and the such from some of the weaker members of the group.  We set up camp under a huge boulder on the banks of one of those lakes, right at the foot of the mountain. 

            I awakened in the middle of the night with the worst case of altitude sickness you can imagine: headaches, nausea, lethargy, the works.  I had to watch the others go up the mountain from the comfort of my sleeping bag.  I was furious.  I had lots of things to say to that Mountain.  I wanted to conquer it.  Instead I cursed it as it conquered me.

            There are other mountains in our lives, both physical and figurative.  What choice words might we say to those mountains?   And too often they conquer us.  Wouldn’t it be great to just say, “Be thrown into the sea”.  In other words, “be gone from your control over me.”

            Previously in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus laid waste the powers which had ordered society and had kept the privileged privileged and the outcast outcast.  He started by dismissing the authority of the scribes, the authority of the synagogue leadership, the authority of the reform-minded Pharisees, the authority of the military complex, the domination wrought by family power and of course he put into question the legitimacy of the government.  All of those structures could be viewed as Powers and Principalities.  For the purposes of this sermon, I want to call them Mountains.

Think about the mountains which we have:

            There is the mountain of family domination.

            The mountain of addiction

            The mountain of economic disparity

            The mountain of religious legalism

            The mountain of our own lack of faith.

            The mountain of culturally acceptable violence.

            The mountain of Racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ageism and the such.

We might want to say to those mountains a la Bob Barker “Come on down”. 

That is the message of Jesus in today’s scripture.  Jesus calls us to say to the mountains which hold us back and conquer us that they do not have power over us.  But we’re sick.  We have altitude sickness.  We’re stuck in our sleeping bags.  We can’t do it.

            Mountains are huge.  They are imposing.  They often have snow on top of them and hidden crevasses.  To go over them is to risk your life.  They make us sick.  We convince ourselves that they are too huge, these monoliths.  And of course, we are too tiny to say anything to them.

            The temple itself was located on a mountain.  It was on the summit of Mount Moriah in the center of Jerusalem.  In 70 CE the temple was destroyed.  Right around the time of the writing of Mark’s Gospel.  There is now the Muslim shrine of the Rock and a mosque on the temple mount.  Many Christian fundamentalists say that the temple needs to be rebuilt before Jesus can return.  This continues to be a hope of many a powerful Christian as they support Israel against their Muslim neighbors.

            People loved the Temple.  It was where God resided, where people could go to get cleansed and return to the family of the Jewish people.  People saved up and climbed the mountain to the temple for every High Holy Day they could. 

Jesus entered Jerusalem in today’s scripture and he undermined the very basis for the society of the Hebrew people, the temple.  He threw out the moneychangers and said that the temple is no longer important in order for people to follow God.  Jesus was telling the people that the temple is less important than your faith.  God is available to all, not only to those who can afford the temple taxes.  God is available to all, not only those considered clean by the temple authorities.  This is radical news.  It is good news, but it is scary news for those in positions of domination.

            I went to the great secular temple, which we call the State Capital on Thursday, just prior to the Governor’s state of the state address.  I was with a number of clergy and lay people organized by Bishop Nadean who were lobbying officials for the preservation of reproductive services.  But on this day I got to see the palace close up.  I got to look at the impressive and imposing stonework, the gold trim, the murals, and I even got to be there when the entire senate walked by on their way to the house chambers.  It all looked so liturgical, they were mostly all in their matching dark suits, matching skin color, and matching gender.  It was all so surreal.  And yet, I could not get over the beauty of this temple we have made in order to ensure that people would be cared for.  The news shared that day and the days to follow have hit many of us hard.  Cuts at the U, cuts to the HIV prevention, cuts to WIC programs, and these cuts are just the beginning. 

I attended a conference a week ago at the Pacific School of Religion about theology in public life.  The message of all of the speakers was that people of faith HAVE a voice, but presently, the loudest voice is not the voice that would be embraced by Jesus.  Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian priest and recognized as the father of liberation theology said at the conference, “Poverty is not a destination, it’s a condition.  Poverty is not misfortune, it’s injustice.  We need to go to the causes of poverty.  The early death of the poor is a theological question.”  To push the metaphor of this sermon, I would say, poverty is the avalanche that tumbles off the mountain of injustice.  I fear we may see more unjust death unless we find a way to move some mountains.

I’m glad we have Brian Rusche from The Joint Religious Legislative Coalition here today to speak with us at the forum about the best way for our voices be heard as the legislature makes these kinds of decisions, especially on the backs of the poor. 

            You see, the Temple then, as now, was big business.  In order to get into the temple mount, people had to exchange their Roman money into Hebrew money—that’s what the moneychangers did.  Then they had to use what little money they had to purchase doves in order to fulfill the sacrificial obligations of Judaism.  The moneychangers and the sellers of birds made a hefty profit from the faith of the poor people who were convinced that the only way to be holy was to go up to the mountain, spend your little funds on pigeons and be declared clean by a priest.  Jesus said, “enough of this”.  Quoting Jeremiah, he said “My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.”  Jeremiah also railed against those who were enamored by the temple.

            Jeremiah said, “If you truly amend your ways…if you truly act justly with one another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place…then I will dwell with you in this place…. But do not trust in these words “This is the Temple of the Lord, This is the temple of the Lord, This is the Temple of the Lord.”(Jeremiah 7:4-7)  These words fell on deaf ears for the first Temple was destroyed shortly thereafter.  And here was Jesus quoting Jeremiah just before the destruction of the second temple.

            It was a dangerous word that Jesus said when he said you can say to this mountain “be taken up and thrown into the sea.” 

            For he was not only talking about the Temple itself, but he was talking about the entire system the Temple cult had created—a system fraught with injustice and the supporter of oppression.  Jesus called for both of those mountains to come down.

But the important thing is what he says before that, “Have faith in God.”  This is a new aspect of living as a faithful person. 

            Have faith in GOD, not in this temple, not in this mountain.  Mountains move, but God doesn’t.  Have faith in God.  This temple, this mountain can be destroyed, but God cannot.  Have faith in God. We have a beautiful building here, this temple of ours, but ultimately it is temporary.  It is not where we have our faith.  We have faith in God.  That’s forever.  Government leaders are temporary, but God is forever.  Have faith in God.

            Faith will move mountains.  Faith, that’s the message of Mark’s Jesus. 

Faith that the ways of this world are not the final answers.  

Faith which calls into question the systems and structures of a sinful society.  Faith is the only way out.

            And the good news is that it is open and available to all of us for free.

Of course we can’t throw down mountains all by ourselves.  That is what the community of faith is for.  That is what this church is for.  My youth group took things out of my pack for the hike back down the Montana mountain those twenty-something years ago.  I needed them, just as they needed me on the way up. 

 

We have said to the mountain of homophobia that we will not close our doors to any one based upon their sexual orientation, social class, age, physical ability, race or sex.  Those mountains of exclusivism no longer have control over us.

Many of us have marched and lobbied on behalf of affordable housing, on behalf of clean air and water, on behalf of GLBT rights, on behalf of preserving religious freedom, on behalf of Iraqi children in the way of our bombing campaigns and sanctions paid for by our tax dollars.   We do this because we believe that these mountains can and should move. 

We now face saying to the mountain of violence and warfare that this solution makes no sense because it is no solution.  It throws gas on a fire.  Is it any wonder that we are in a stage orange alert when we have done precious little as a nation to get at the root causes of terrorism?  We have deluded ourselves to think that starting a preemptive war to obliterate a symptom of a larger problem is going to save us.  We need to have the faith that even this mountain can move.

A number of us have been attending presentations by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer from the University of St. Thomas.  He says that the most popular religion of the US, if not the world is not Christianity.  It’s not Islam.  It’s not Hinduism, Buddhism or even Judaism.   The religion that we all sacrifice to and believe will save us is violence.  It’s his compelling contention that the religion of violence is antithetical to the religion of Jesus, the one who called the mountains to come down by faith.

So sisters and brothers, have faith enough to speak to the mountains and say “come down.”

Have faith enough to believe that there is a better way.

The only faith that is worthwhile is a faith not tied to a place or a human person, but tied like a tether to God—like a lifeline.  That is the kind of faith that lays waste the mountains of this world and breathes life into our cynical selves.

So to the mountains of corrupt consumerism

            To the mountains of continual congressional constipation

            To the mountains of vicious violence

            To the mountains of military madness

To the mountains of hardened hearts, we say to those mountains, “Move”

“Get out of my way.”  The God-inspired is on the way, so you had better watch out.

And we go and tell it on the mountain that there is another way to live.  There is another way to love.  It is by not being so focused upon the mountains of this world, but on the one whose project it is to subvert the mountains.  With this kind of faith, mountains can move.

Sisters and brothers, Jesus calls us to a new kind of faith.  It’s a faith that can move mountains.  Our job is to find those mountains that have controlled us and that control us now.  Find those mountains and with faith in God almighty and the support of this community of faith, say the words of truth to the mountains so that all may live in freedom, can love with courage, can envision a world of peace.

Find those mountains, my friends.  Identify them and say to them, like Jesus, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea.”  For that’s the radical work of Jesus and our work as his disciples.