Come Up to the Mountain

Reading the Word

From Exodus: The LORD said to Moses, "I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after."... The LORD said to Moses, "Go down and warn the people not to break through to the LORD to look; otherwise many of them will perish... You set bounds around the mountain and consecrate it... Then Moses went down from the mountain to the people... The LORD said to him, "Go down, and come back up; but when the people go up to break through, you shall not let them break through, for if they break through even to peer, the LORD will break out against them."

From Matthew: And just then some people were carrying a paralyzed man lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven." Then some of the scribes said to themselves, "This man is blaspheming." But Jesus, aware of their thoughts, said, "Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Stand up and walk'? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" - he then said to the paralytic - "Stand up, take your bed and go to your home." And he stood up and went to his home. When the crowds saw it, they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings.

From Psalm 42: "As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?... Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me."

Reflection

There is distance, and there is distance.

At Sinai, God sets boundaries. The people may not touch the mountain, not the edges, not the base. If a person or even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with arrows. Thunder and lightning, a thick cloud, a blast of a trumpet so loud the people trembled. This is the terror of holiness: the overwhelming sense that God is God and we are not, that approach without preparation is fatal. The mountain is fenced off for their own protection. The people cannot come up. Only Moses.

And then, in Matthew, God comes down the mountain all the way to a bed.

Four people carry a paralyzed man to Jesus, and the house is so full they cannot get through the door, so they go to the roof. They dig through it. They lower their friend on his mat into the middle of the gathering, dust and debris still falling. No one asks permission. And Jesus, the same divine presence that thundered from Sinai, sees their audacity and calls it faith. "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven."

The scribes are scandalized, but not for the reason we might think. In their theology, God's forgiveness belonged in the proper channels, the temple, the sacrifices, the system. Forgiveness announced on a rooftop dust pile, without priest or offering? That is blasphemy. It is Sinai's fence relocated into the middle of a house, and this carpenter's son just stepped over it.

But that is precisely the gospel. The distance of Sinai was never meant to be permanent. It was pedagogy; a people learning that God is not tame, so that when God came close, they would recognize the weight of what was approaching. And when God did come close, in Jesus, the terrifying holiness did not disappear. It became forgiveness. The mountain did not get smaller. It got portable. It stood up, took its bed, and walked home.

The psalmist sits between these two moments, and his longing makes sense of both. "Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts." The psalmist knows God as thunder, the waves and billows that go over him like the cloud on Sinai. But he also thirsts, like a deer for streams. He does not want a tame God. He wants the living God, the one whose depths are dangerous and whose water is life.

For the Christian faith, this is a necessary balance. We rightly emphasize the God who welcomes, who lowers barriers, who forgives without earning. But the gospel is only awesome, only actually good news, if the one who says "your sins are forgiven" carries the weight of Sinai. Cheap welcome is just etiquette. What the paralyzed man receives is the thunder of God, bent over a rooftop hole in the shape of a friend's faith, saying: the fence is down, and you are welcome anyway.

The crowds glorified God "who had given such authority to human beings." That is the scandal and the hope: the authority of Sinai now lives in human hands, human communities, human forgiveness. When we forgive, the mountain moves. When we carry someone who cannot carry themselves, the cloud descends.

Prayer

O God of the thunder and the stream, we confess that we have domesticated you, fenced you into comfortable places, forgotten that your approach is weighty.

But you have come down the mountain. You have stood in the dust of our rooftops. You have said to the ones we would have made wait in proper channels: take heart, your sins are forgiven.

Give us awe without terror, and welcome without cheapness. Give us faith like friends who dig through roofs. Give us hands willing to carry, mouths willing to forgive, lives in which your thunder becomes someone's healing.

Deep calls to deep. Answer our thirst with your living water. In the name of Jesus, Immanuel, we pray. Amen.

For Today

Where have you fenced God off? In your thinking, in your church, in yourself? Whose mat are you being called to carry through a crowd, even if it means digging through the roof? And when you forgive someone today, can you believe that the authority of the mountain is in your hands?

Blessing

May the God of the thundering mountain come down to where you lie.

May your sins be forgiven before you can earn it, and your bed be lifted before you can argue.

And may the deep of God call to the deep of you, until you stand up and walk home whole.