God likes high places. Or, at least in our minds, he prefers a mountaintop perch. He’s like an eagle with a nest on a high cliff, barely visible to the naked eye. There are good reasons the ancients thought that mountains were the dwelling place of “the Most High God.” For one thing, the Divine Spirit was thought of as so far beyond us, out of reach, out of sight. For another, our very old relatives tended to think of heaven as a place up in the sky. And what comes closest to reaching the sky? A mountain, of course. So it was a safe bet to say “the God of the heavens” lived on a mountaintop. We understand, then, why Abraham went to a mountain to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Where else would he expect to make a sacrifice to God except on a mountain?
The Biblical record always shows the same preference for the divine zip code. Where did Moses, the curator of the stone tablets, receive those sacred commands? Atop a mountain. The Biblical writer speaks about lightning flashing around the top of the mountain and a cloud descending upon it so no one could see to the top. The description rivals any Hollywood cinematic effort: “On the morning of the third day there were peals of thunder and lightning, and a heavy cloud over the mountain, and a very loud blast of the sofar [read ram’s horn], so that all the people in the camp trembled. But Moses led the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stationed themselves at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke, because the Lord had come down upon it in fire. the smoke rose from it as though from a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently. The blast of the shofar grew louder and louder, while Moses was speaking and God was answering him with thunder.” Impressive, isn’t it? Even a little downright scary, like a particularly eerie episode of the 1960s show, “Dark Shadows.”
Poor Moses had to climb to the top to get those stone tablets, surely making him the patron saint of those thrill seeking climbers to the top of Mount Everest. We want to remember he was not a young man either. The Scriptures say he was 120 years old when he died shortly before the wandering Jews finally found their way out of the desert. And, given the fact that the slaves arrived at Mount Sinai three months after leaving Egypt and it took another forty years to get out of the desert, Moses, at 80 years of age, was no spring chicken when he headed up the mountain to meet God face to face. I hope he wore boots and not those sandals that were the in-thing back then.
I’m also assuming he didn’t suffer from fear of heights–not that we know of, anyway–because he had to turn right around and head back up just a short while after his first climb. You may recall he came down the mountain to find the natives had grown restless and had pooled their jewelry to make a very nice calf out of gold. Moses found them dancing around the statue like Spring Breakers in Florida around a bonfire after a few too many beers. Probably already tired from forty days and forty nights in the office, and with no coffee and not a shave the whole month long, he had a meltdown. He crashed the party, cussing like a sailor on the high seas, toppled the nice-looking artwork, and smashed to bits the two stone tablets, the latter probably without realizing it. When Moses cooled down–and it took a while, we can be sure–he had to return to the top of the mountain and ask God for another copy of those rules to live by. In fact, Scripture says Moses made eight solo trips to the top of the mountain. No wonder he died before he got to the Promised Land. The man was worn out. Interestingly, we’re told Moses breathed his last on another mountain, Mount Nebo. He had climbed it so he could get a glimpse of Canaan before he retired. It was the last climb for this veteran mountain climber. We’re told he was buried on top of that mountain.
He wasn’t the only mountain climber in the Hebrew texts. Elijah climbed a mountain because he wanted a similar theophany. This time God chose less pomp and ceremony and went with revealing himself in the tiny whisper of the wind, which probably was a let-down to Elijah, but did wonders for his heart problem. A later prophet, Isaiah, wrote so much about mountains till you thought he was a half-brother to Zebulun Pike of Pike’s Peak fame. Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah’s, began his prophecy with a word about mountains, “For see, the Lord goes out from his place and descending, treads upon the heights of the earth. The mountains melt under him and the valleys split open.”
Back in the day when I was studying all this stuff, there were snickers in the classroom when we learned that one of the earliest names for God in the Hebrew record was “El Shaddai,” which carries two meanings, mountains and breasts. Depending on how you chose to translate it, you ended up with either “God of the mountain” or “God of the breasts.” The common etymology of the two words shouldn’t be that difficult to see. If it is, just think “God of the mountains, which look like breasts.”
Christians, coming much later in history, still held onto the sacredness of mountains. Matthew had Jesus give his well-known “Sermon on the Mount” with a clear shout out to Moses. His fellow gospel writers have Jesus being transfigured on the mountain top, with Elijah and Moses both making an appearance so that the three disciples could be scared properly out of their wits. And, of course, the Resurrected Jesus led his disciples to a mountain and ascended into the heavens before their very eyes. As you can see, God and mountains have a long history. As a rule, it also is a good one.
All of this came to mind during a recent visit to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado where I went to see an old friend buried who had a summer place high up in the mountains. Like almost 10,000 feet high. Driving into Colorado, it doesn’t take long to see those mountains in the long distance. More miles and if you think you’re seeing snow on the tops, you’re right. The freeze line is so high that snow stays on the top year round, much like a cherry on top of a vanilla sundae, except this is white, not red. I spent a night at an old lodge that was a stop over for the stage coach one hundred and forty years ago. All I could think of was those horses having to climb that mountain. I don’t know how they did it. It was tough enough in a Chevrolet Tahoe.
The owner of the lodge gave me a newspaper because he said it had information about the mountains. The one article that caught my attention was about some rocks at the top of one of those mountains that was 1.4 billion years old. I never liked math in elementary school and I liked it less when I finished that article. Such a number of years is inconceivable. No wonder the ancients believed God lived on top of the mountain. They didn’t have the science, but they had the good sense to know that those mountains were as old as God himself.
I learned many things during my stay on that mountain. You get a different perspective on life from the top of a mountain. Perhaps the first and foremost lesson is just how small we are. We like to think of ourselves as the center of the world. Stand on a high mountain for five minutes and see if you still fall for that ruse. The truth hits you in the face like a pie hurled by someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum–we are small and weak and vulnerable and overshadowed and ill-equipped and out of breath most of the time and generally just not up to the fight. That is the starting place for the first lesson in life–God is God and we are not. We need to remind ourselves regularly that there is a radical distinction between Creator and creature. A short stay on a mountain makes the point as well as that daunting nun in second grade who could silence your smirk with a two second stare.
Almost everybody I met on the trip up the mountain talked about how you didn’t want to stay there during the winter. Apparently our smallness only gets magnified when the mountain goes into a deep freeze. Come winter and we realize just what a true force of nature is. Mother Nature pulls out all the stops and covers the mountains in layers of snow. Locals spoke with awe when speaking of the few and far between who bedded down and stayed during the winter months. One mistake and they would end up like the Tollund man who lived in the 4th century BCE and whose mummified body was found in a bog in Denmark in 1950, over two thousand years later. In other words, mountains can be humbling experiences, if not deadly.
As I said, I made the trip to see my friend buried on his beloved mountain. Over the years, he often spoke to me of his stay on that mountain during the summer months. He said he wanted to be buried there. He told me he found God there more easily than anywhere else in the world. He always was a smart man. I think he also figured out that if you want to get to heaven, you might as well have a head start by being buried on a mountain. It is a shorter distance to travel.
I know this. I’ll miss my friend every day of the rest of my life, but I am happy to know that he will have good company on that mountaintop. As the Psalmist says, “The peaks of the mountains are his.”
— Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 