The Mountain Vision

Yesterday on our way back from spending time with our family up north we stopped at Target.

I stopped for a second and looked around.

I realized that it had started.

It does every year.

Almost immediately after Thanksgiving it starts.

The pace quickens.

We know that time is limited.

There is lots to do.

For the next 25 days we will be shopping, wrapping, cleaning, cooking.

We will be going to parties or hosting them.

We will be doing what we do this time of year.

All to provide something for our loved ones, and for ourselves.

Cultural Christmas is about finding joy during a season when the sun is out less.

It is a meant to give us joy.

I hope it does for you.

But this morning as we gather here in this place I want us to take a moment to pause.

To leave all the things that need to get done, that weigh on this time of year, and I want us to take a deep breath.

Because we don't come here to be busy.

We don't come here because we can't see through gloom to find joy.

We come because we have a vision for a new world.

This is not how we talk about Christmas in our culture.

As people of faith this is part of our Christmas.

It is the vision that Isaiah gives us this morning.

It is the mountain where all people come to learn about God.

It is the place of peace.

The place where we beat our guns into plowshares.

Where we lay our weapons down and study war no more.

It is more than merely our own comfort and joy, although it includes it.

It is the world transformed before our eyes.

It is a world different from the one we experience now.

That is what we wait for.

And that is what we hope for in this time.

I was thinking about this vision of the world.

It is the vision that we need together this morning.

I know that tomorrow we will go out and do all the other stuff.

But while we are together today let us not lose sight of what we are about.

I want to share some visions I had this week about this mountain top experience that God promises us.

This past week we hosted Family Promise.

It is a small piece of helping people that experience homelessness.

But when we started it, I would go around town talking about it with people.

And I would sometimes be asked, "What if there are no people that need this program?"

My response every time was, "That would be fantastic!"

We didn't help start family promise so that we could have a program for homeless people.

We started it in hopes that one day it wouldn't be needed.

That every family could get a good paying job, have affordable housing, and have health care.

I don't know if you have talked to any of the families that stay here but I can tell you that you can make all the right decisions and still experience homelessness.

That is the vision of the world I want to live in.

Not one where we have families moving around every week and living on a cot.

Not one where people like me "volunteer" to help.

Of course we don't live in that world yet.

So the faithful response is to volunteer.

The faithful response is to do what is in our hands to do.

But that is not the end of it, because I believe in God's faithfulness to the vision of a better world.

In this season when we celebrate a family who couldn't find room in the inn, when we celebrate the birth of our homeless savior, let us have a vision of a better world with Jesus.

Let us be faithful to that world, to the mountain where we all go to learn about God's ways.

This week I came across this classic coke commercial.

(Play video)

How many people remember this commercial.

Funny thing is that I wasn't even born when this commercial first aired, but I still remember it.

I know that the point of it is to make us buy Coke.

But it also gives a vision of the world on a mountain.

It is a vision of harmony.

A vision of people from different religions, nations, races, cultures coming together.

Isn't that our vision of God's future.

That is what is so amazing about Isaiah vision is that a prophet of Israel tells people that the promise of God isn't just for Israel, but for "all nations".

In this season when we celebrate the birth of our savior who came for all people, when we remember a middle eastern Jewish man who was the son of God, let us hold to the vision of the mountain that includes us all and that holds us all.

And when I say all, I mean it.

Not just the ones we like, but all of them.

To be faithful to God's vision is to have it include all people.

Because this time of year is about peace.

The prince of peace is coming into the world.

God is faithful to the vision of all people coming to the mountain.

And finally I want us to think about all the preparations we will go through this season.

I want us to think about what is it all for?

Is it to simply satisfy some need in us to feel better?

Or is something else going on.

Do we do it because we are creating a small slice of the mountain here in our lives?

We are searching for the deeper meaning.

We are searching for the mountaintop.

The place where God will find us, and restore us.

The place where we will learn God's ways.

Is it that we are searching for peace?

And peace seems to be so far from us.

Within our homes, within our hearts.

Within our world.

We are searching for peace.

Can it be that what we really need is justice?

We need the world to be more equitable so that we don't feel this guilty.

We need the world to be good not just for my family, but really for all families.

We need the mountain top.

We need the vision of what the world can be when we learn the ways of God.

A world where all are fed, clothed, and cared for.

A world where all are at peace.

A world where all are included.

That is what we wait for this season.

That is what we ask God for us to be faithful to this season.

And we believe that God is faithful to our world.

I don't know if we can stop the quickening of the pace.

I don't know if I can even stop it in my life, forget the rest of the world.

But what I do know is that I can make this season about more than that.

Here in this place with you, we can wait for something more.

we can be faithful to something deeper.

we can celebrate God's faithfulness to a better world.

So this Christmas season may we be faithful.

May we celebrate that God is faithful.

And may we share Isaiah's vision of all people going up the mountain to learn God's ways.

Amen