The Rappahannock River starts about 1800 feet up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Someone has climbed up there and found the precise point where it pops out of a hole in the ground. How many millions of living things take their life from that particular mountain?
We know that the mountaintop or even hilltop can be thought of as a holy place because its high. Most of us still imagine, no matter how hard we might try to avoid it, that heaven is up in the sky. So a hill or a mountain, logically, would be closer to heaven.
But mountains and hills are also where water comes from. Fresh water, in most parts of the world, comes to communities from high ground, where weather systems form and ice freezes and then melts down through soil and rock into dark underground streams which then emerges somewhere and flows down into rivers and streams to wash things clean and quench thirst and water crops.
Thousands of years ago when the God of our bible was an idea being formed among a people in what is now Iraq, it is thought that Yahweh was originally worshipped as a mountain god. And later when Abraham and Jacob were sojourning in what is now Israel, the places they established for worship and sacrifice were the tops of mountains, the so-called high places. And even later, when Solomon had established the center of worship to be Jerusalem, the city itself was set up on what we would probably call a hill, the "holy hill" mentioned in today's psalm, which is also known as Mount Zion.
Our psalm this morning is an entrance hymn, meant to be sung by the congregation as it enters the temple, or when gathering in synagogue. The opening question uses two images, the first is the tabernacle tent that the wandering Hebrews used for worship during the Exodus before they reached the promised land. The other is the holy hill where the temple was finally established, Mount Zion. And the question is not just who can enter, but who can stay.
The psalm is an entrance hymn for worship, and yet, interestingly enough it doesn't say that worship qualifies one to live in the temple. Worship, the psalmist seems to be saying, doesn't qualify us for fellowship with God. Then and now, some of us might equate closeness to God with spending lots of time doing church stuff. We might see, as do many church teachers, the sacraments as making us worthy of fellowship with God. Getting baptized, taking the Lord's Supper.
Back then, many Jews had the idea that one had to live in the profane world and that made it necessary and unavoidable that one had to get dirty. Going to the temple was a way of getting clean again. You went in, prayed the right prayer, did the right ritual, made the right offering, and walked out right with God. I think lots of us Christians think of worship that way today.
But this psalmist is on to us, as indeed are many of the prophets. He answers his opening question with a list of qualifications for fellowship with God. It's not what we do in the temple, he says, that makes us right with God; it's what we do before we get there.
Put another way, the blessing of God, like the Rappahannock River, begins far up there in the darkness and heights, but it makes itself known out here, on the plains, in the low places, where it spreads out and gives life to millions of creatures. We can call the mountain of God home when we are doing what God is doing in creation. We can live with God up there if we are joining with God down here.
The psalmist asks "Who may dwell on your holy hill?" And one of his answers is "Those who stand by their oath even to their hurt."
God stands by God's oath even to God's hurt. Paul talks about the cross, about the lowliness of God's revelation. God chose the execution of a pretender to the throne, the legal punishment of an insurrectionist, the crucifixion, as the supreme revelation of God's presence in the world. Think of this now.
Many people see this as simple self-sacrifice, a sin offering for humankind, and there is perhaps an element of that. But the reason Jesus was crucified was that he insisted in worshiping God rather than Caesar. He was crucified because he accepted the royal title God gave him and honored his promise to God to be God's servant, no matter what human authority came along and demanded he give it up. He stood by his oath even to his hurt.
He did not accept the widely-held wisdom that you have to get dirty to make it in the world, that you have to sometimes give up your pie-in-the-sky dreams of the kingdom of heaven for the practical challenges of survival. He gave himself to the dream with a passion. We even call his trial and his death his passion, because that's what it was.
The cross is a revelation not only of the fullness of being truly human, but it is also the fullest revelation of who God is, the God who blesses all of creation, even when those God made to be God's image ignore and reject God. The body of Jesus hanging on the cross as a pretender to the throne of the world is the perfect image of how humankind treats God.
When Jesus calls his inner circle to join him higher up on the mountain, he is not sharing a general blessing with the crowds who are following him. He is blessing his disciples decision to follow him, their passion, their great hunger for fellowship with God, their offering of their lives to stand by their covenant oaths. They are entering the new covenant, which calls disciples to do as Jesus did, to receive God's Spirit, to embody God in the world, even though it might cost them their reputations, their security and even their safety.
It is a foolish and a stupid thing to keep one's promise even when it brings one ruin. It is ridiculous to love and honor and bless people that just keep disappointing you. It defies common sense to stand by your oath when it gets you nowhere but a cross. It is the height of idiocy to love people who hate you.
It is, for example, a foolish and ridiculous thing to send thousands of gallons of fresh water down from the Blue Ridge Mountains to give life to thousands of people who never even thank you, who indeed grab your resources, hoard them, and take them away from those who really need them. Nevertheless, you keep on sending this blessing to those who ungratefully misuse it.
But that's who you are, God. Ridiculous.
Who may abide on God's holy hill?
Only the ridiculous.
Amen.
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