This week we continue our mini-series on the “State of the Church” as we explore those things that keep us from living fully into God’s kingdom, both personally and as a church family. What is God calling us to do together? Come, and let us answer that question together.
Important note: We regret to inform you, due to a technical malfunction, an audio/video version of this sermon is not available. Below is a transcript of today’s sermon by Pastor Melody Merida. (There is also a PDF version available under resources for printing or off-line reading.)
If you would rather watch a previous sermon by Pastor Melody, please click here for an archive of her other great messages.
Moving Mountains
Pastor Melody Merida
Several years ago now, around 2009-2010, a member of our congregation received what can only be described as a prophetic message about the mission of this church. She shared while leading worship one Sunday that during the worship service she expressly heard God tell her that this congregation would move mountains and with that verbal message came a visual image of a stark, imposing mountain range standing tall with a peaceful valley at its base. We might not have thought too terribly much about it, except that someone else approached me after that worship service and said “I have to tell you that I received a very similar message with a very similar image at almost the exact same time.” And both of these women were stable, intelligent women who gave us no reason to doubt them. Jeff and I would have conversations about what it meant, what were those mountains? Was the valley a good place or not? We just didn’t know, but we did know that it felt as if God was trying to tell us something, trying to work in and through us to take us over the mountain.
Now fast forward from that time in our church history years ago to Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015. I stopped Jeff in the hallway near my office and asked him what he was preaching about on Sunday the 8th, last Sunday. He told me that it was the annual state of the church sermon but that there was a twist with a call for us to knock down the metaphorical walls that might keep people away from our faith community. He told me about Shellye’s request for him to march around the sanctuary 7 times with her and declare victory, calling for the walls that keep people from God to come crashing down. A sight and practice similar to the Old Testament story of Joshua and the Israelites at Jericho. When Jeff told me about this, I laughed. Not because I thought it was funny, although I would have like to have seen Shellye and Jeff marching around the sanctuary, but that wasn’t why I was laughing. I was laughing at the irony of God. Jeff asked me what I was laughing at. I told him that I had been awakened in the middle of the night the night before with a very clear picture of what I was going to say today. It was really weird. I told Jeff a bit about what I thought I wanted to say today and I wondered aloud if it might be too redundant given Jeff’s words about the walls of Jericho and how they manifest in our church, in our lives. But as we talked more and I thought more about it, it felt very clear to me that this was the movement of the spirit, asking us a family to think about what gets in our way. So, I ask your patience with me today as I share with you something that might, at first glance, sound familiar to what we heard last week. But let’s just see where the spirit leads anyway.
Let’s begin with prayer.
I’d like for you to join me, if you will, in a bit of visual imagery this morning. Picture in your mind’s eye, that you are standing at the sheer rock face of a mountain. Now suppose that you know that God has something amazing for you on the other side, in fact, imagine that everyone you love needs you to climb that mountain and get to the other side. Imagine that lives are at stake and if you don’t climb that mountain then those lives will wither away and die. So, this is a task that must be completed. But, its super steep. It’s kind of impossible. You are the most scared you’ve ever been in your life. Now, look behind you and see the valley in which you are standing. The valley is good and safe and not impossible. The valley is home. Sure, it isn’t perfect, but its comfortable. You know that valley like the back of your hand. But that mountain, its brand new to you. You don’t even know where to begin. But you continue to hear God calling you to get past that mountain, to leave the valley you know and to climb. In fact, you even start to imagine what it would be like to get to the other side. Think about how it would feel to look back at the great heights you climbed and know that you accomplished something remarkable; that you kept going even when you desperately wanted to stop. Now, are you excited about the possibility of getting over that mountain? Feel that excitement! And just as you reach up to take hold of the rock face and begin your endeavor, you stop yourself. Now, there’s another voice you hear, it’s not the voice of God calling you. It’s a different voice that says, “wait, what if you fall?” And the voice says, “the valley is working out just fine for you. It’s too much of a risk to leave this comfortable place. You probably won’t make it anyway, I mean, do you see how high this thing is?” You’ve not succeeded at much in your life, so you’ll probably fail at this too.” The voice has convinced you. That hand that you were reaching up slowly drops to your side. Resigned to the valley, you lower your head, and turn away from the mountain.
But before you walk away from the mountain, take a quick glance back and look closely at the rock face of the mountain. I hope you see something there that you might not have noticed before. Imagine that on the side of that mountain in Mount Rushmore style, is the perfectly carved image of your gorgeous face, because that negative voice you heard was coming from you. That mountain that God was calling you to climb, that mountain that the very well-being of others is dependent upon, is you. The mountain never has been the world out there; it’s the world in here. I say again, the mountain is an interior creation that has nothing to do with the exterior world in which we live. All this time we’ve been deceived, thinking that the valley was the real place our souls belonged, the real home. But it isn’t true. The valley is the world out there that calls us to abandon the mountain, to live comfortably and obliviously in the valley of nothingness. To give in to the fear, anger, hatred, celebrity obsession, and greed, that is so prevalent it may as well be the grass growing under our feet in the valley. But it isn’t real, it’s just a distraction. And that mountain voice is meant to deceive you and me into staying put in a valley we know, instinctively, is eating our very souls.
In the movie, “The Maze Runner”, based upon the book by the same name, a young man named Thomas wakes up inside an underground service elevator with no memory of his identity. A group of other teenage boys greet him in a large grassy area called the Glade that is enclosed by tall, stone walls. Every month, a new boy and new supplies arrive in the elevator. The boys, called Gladers, have formed a rudimentary society. Alby, their leader and the first to arrive in the Glade, says every boy eventually recalls his name, but none remember their past.
Those tall stone walls surrounding the glade are not just any walls; they’re the inner walls of a massive maze. During the day, the maze door is opened and designated Runners search the Maze for an escape route, but they have to return before nightfall when the entrance closes. The Maze is home to huge, horrible, deadly mechanical monsters called Grievers who roam the maze at night. The boys who run the maze looking for a way out must always leave the maze at sundown when the entrance closes and the grievers are released. If the boys are still in the maze at sundown, they’re as good as dead; no one has ever survived a night in the maze. The walls keep the boys in the glade and the grievers out.
One evening, shortly after Thomas arrives, just as the sun is going down and the massive stone walls of the maze door begin to close, Thomas runs into the maze to try to save two boys who weren’t going to make it out in time. So now instead of 2, there are 3 boys trapped in the maze for what is sure to be a long and deadly night. But that night shapes up much differently than all the nights before. Thomas does something no other boy has managed to do; he destroys one of the grievers. When the sun comes up and the entrance to the maze opens onto the glade, the rest of the boys are stunned to find their three friends on the other side, alive.
But one of the leaders in the glade, Gally, is not pleased. Gally’s concerned that Thomas has jeopardized the fragile peace between the Gladers and the Grievers and he wants Thomas to be punished. Gally calls a meeting with all the boys in the glade to make his case against Thomas. “For three years, we’ve coexisted with these things,” he says, “and now you’ve destroyed one of them. Who knows what this could mean for us?”
But Thomas and the other gladers are determined to escape their captivity. Eventually, after some daytime searching, Thomas and another boy find a way out of the maze, toward freedom. They return to the glade to get the others and prepare for a sunrise escape, but before they can escape, they are attacked. As night falls, instead of the one maze door closing, as it has done every night for 3 years, several maze doors open onto the glade and dozens of grievers pour in. Several of the gladers do not survive the attack.
The next morning, as the sun comes up over the ravaged glade, Gally and his friends, grab Thomas and a few other boys, and tie them up to offer them as offerings to the grievers in the hopes that everything will go back to “normal” if the grievers are appeased. But Thomas and his friends break free. In a dramatic scene near the end, the gladers are standing at the entrance to the maze, and Thomas invites all those who want to escape the glade to come with him, through the maze. He knows the way to freedom, to what he vaguely remembers is home. But Gally will have none of it. Passionately he pleads with the other boys, “we are already home”, Gally says. “Look around you, look at our glade. This is the only way. All we have to do is give the grievers what they want and everything will go back to the way it was. We can stay in the glade; everything just needs to go back to normal. We can’t leave. I belong to the maze, we all do.” “We don’t belong here. This place isn’t our home. We were put here, we were trapped here. At least out there, we have a choice.” Thomas leads the way through the maze toward freedom while Gally stays behind in the glade, refusing to leave his valley prison. And in the end, it costs him his life.
Yes, its science fiction, but, for some of us, it may as well be our own documentary. So many of us live in the captivity of our glade, a glade of our own creation based upon societal expectations and norms, based upon our fears, worries, or pride and we never realize what type of freedom might be on the other side of the walls, on the other side of our mountains. When God tries to reveal a means of escape for us, out of fear we reject it. We don’t want to fail or maybe we don’t know how to succeed. Maybe we want things to be easy. We just want things to be “normal”. Well, “normal” isn’t even real. It’s a human construct that doesn’t actually exist. God intentionally created you and me and all humanity to be anything but normal. Normal is just a word concocted to control another and to limit the possibilities of the kingdom of God. And, likewise, abnormal is just made up too.
Speaking of abnormal, I’m reminded of a joke I recently heard. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Britney Spears. Britney Spears who? Knock, knock. Who’s there? Britney Spears. Britney Spears who? Oops, I did it again.
When we hear Britney’s name we are conditioned now to think “abnormal”, “weirdo”, “odd”. After all, that’s the message we have received in our valley. Speaking of odd, I’m reminded of another joke. There once was a man named Odd. People constantly made fun of him because of his name. Odd decided that he wanted to have the last word. He devised a brilliant plan. His final instructions about his burial were to make sure that the huge gravestone at his burial site was left completely blank. Now, when people pass by the burial site, they point and say, “That’s Odd.”
Odd, weird, abnormal, freak, failure—they don’t exist. Poet Dominic Owen Mallary said, “The most important lesson I have learned is that what we see as “normal” living is truly a travesty of our potential. Refuse normalcy. Beauty is everywhere, love is endless, and joy bleeds from our everyday existence. Embrace it. Every day contains a universe of potential; exhaust it. Live and love so immensely that when death comes there is nothing left for it to take.”
Or to put it into a Christian context, Bishop John Shelby Spong says, “I see Jesus as a life that is able somehow to affirm his and our humanity so deeply that you and I begin to be free to lay down the security barriers that each of us builds around ourselves to enhance our survival. Our faith is about calling you to live, calling you to the fullness of humanity.”
In our scripture reading for today, Matthew chapter 17, we heard the story of a father whose epileptic son needed healing. The disciples of Jesus tried to heal the boy but they were unable to do so. Jesus grows frustrated that after all the time he has spent with the disciples that they still don’t get it. The interaction between Jesus and his disciples goes something like this, I’m paraphrasing here, “Come on you guys, how many times do we have to go over this? You exhaust me! Then Jesus proceeds to cure the boy himself while the disciples watch in amazement. When they’re alone, the disciples ask Jesus to explain where they went wrong. Jesus tells them they were unable to heal the boy because they lacked faith. Then he says, “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’
Let’s be clear, the kind of faith Jesus is talking about here isn’t the pie in the sky faith that reduces the message to the idea that if you just believe hard enough you can make anything you want happen. We’re not talking about simplified faith that says cancer doctors be damned, my faith will cure me of cancer. Instead, this is the kind of faith that says, even when I can’t make exactly what I want to happen, I will still live into the fullness of my humanity and I will not shrink back into the valley of captivity. It is faith that says to mountains, move from here to there, and i they move. And in their place the kingdom of God emerges.
Now imagine that each one of us do that kind of mountain moving. Imagine the way the kingdom of God could break through in our city. Imagine that nothing would be impossible for us as a body of believers. I believe that God has called this church to something far beyond what we have even scratched the surface of seeing, to live into the fullness of our humanity together. And I’m not talking about me or Jeff or David or any one person, I’m talking about us, collectively. It doesn’t do us any good to come to church each Sunday, dragging our mountains in here with us. All that does is create a range the size of the Swiss Alps for all of us to overcome.
That mountain that Erin and April saw and called our church to overcome it is still present for us. I believe that we have not yet climbed it. For years now, we’ve been in a place of stillness in what we might call our valley. But the time has come for us to leave the glade. The time has come for us all to gather up our faith, to put our collective mustard seeds together, and to say to the mountains of our own making, move and be cast into the sea because we are being called to the other side. Move and be cast into the sea because the health of my very soul depends on getting out of this valley, getting to the other side of the mountain that imprisons me, imprisons us. Move and be cast into the sea because there are folks in Indianapolis and beyond who need me to live into the fullness of my humanity so that the kingdom of God can come pouring into my life, and into this community.
I believe that the work we have been doing as a church has brought us to this place where we recognize that we can’t stay in the valley anymore. So now is the time for us to take the next step into who God is calling us to be. There is an energy building in this place that we haven’t seen in years. There is something happening here. And we better be ready for it. In the words of Curtis Mayfield, “People get ready, there’s a train comin’.” It’s comin, are you ready?
So, what do we do to get ready, what do we do to get out of the valley of our own creation? I have a few ideas that might help us. The first being that we have to confront our personal mountains so that we as a community can then confront our collective mountains. Let me give you an example of what I mean.
I have something of a reputation as a crier, here at the church. In fact, I’ve even been called Tammy Faye, from this very pulpit. It must just be the way I express emotion because I cry when I’m happy, sad, moved, angry, passionate—you name it. If I’m feeling an emotion, it’s a safe bet that I’ll be crying. I can’t tell you how uncomfortable that is for me. I especially hate that I cry in worship. You see, I hate being vulnerable. So there are times when I have sat right here in worship and tried my hardest not to be moved by the music or the scripture or the prayer or the sermon. I’ve developed tools to distract myself from being in the moment so that I don’t lose control of my emotions. The scary thing for me was, some time ago, I noticed that I was starting to use those same tools in my own personal worship time. And I started using those tools in my interactions with people because I didn’t want to show vulnerability. It keeps me from being authentic with God and with others. It is a mountain that I have created that stands in front of me and I know for a fact that the only one who keeps it there is me. It’s my face on the side of that mountain that says it’s pathetic to cry and its weak to be vulnerable. And so I stand at the base of my mountain, trapped in my valley of nothingness, and wonder why it’s not moving, and wonder why am I not living into my fullest potential as a child of God. That’s one of my mountains I’m confronting. What is yours?
I ask that because until we all come to terms with our personal mountains we can never come to terms with the mountains we must face together as a congregation. We don’t have to reach perfection, but let’s try to deal with our own stuff so that it doesn’t get in the way of the kingdom of God. That means some self-examination is necessary for all of us. Let’s face our personal mountains as individuals so that we can move mountains together. For me, as I said, it’s about vulnerability. What about you? Is it fear that keeps you just surviving? Is it pride? Is it wounds of the past? Is it anger? Whatever it is, when you see your mug on the side of your mountain telling you lies like “you can’t, you won’t, you’re too good for, or you’re not good enough for”, try the second step to move your mountain—rebuke it. Rebuke is just a fancy bible word for refuse, tell it off, reprimand it. And once you’ve called out that personal mountain, the next step is to develop a plan to move it out of your way. For some people that might be therapy, for some it might mean restoring old relationships or maybe letting relationships go, or maybe it means forgiving yourself or someone else, maybe it’s about creating positive affirmations for yourself to remind yourself of your human potential. Whatever it is, have a written plan to move it out of your way. So, the first thing to do to move your mountain is to recognize where that mountain is coming from, then to rebuke it to strip away its power, then create a plan for moving it out of your way, and then, finally, live into your plan. Then repeat those steps over and over and over again for each new personal mountain that appears.
And once we all begin that personal work, we can start identifying mountains in our church’s way. We can stop any gossip or negative talk, we can give grace to each other, we can make room for people and worship styles different from me and what I am comfortable with. Because those are mountains currently standing in our way.
God has called this congregation to open doors that currently are closed, to minister to the long forgotten, to show love in a hurting world, to be as diverse as God’s kingdom is diverse. To stop trying to merely enhance our survival and instead live into the fullness of life together. And god is calling me and you to do these things as individuals too. The church is only effective at being Jesus as the people of the church are effective at being Jesus. God has given this church the message that we will move mountains, that we can tell those mountains to get out of our way and they will be gone. Do you believe that? If you believe it, then put it to practice in your own life, and I must put it to practice in my life. Because, friends, we’ve got work to do together. We need you. I need you. We need each other.
Let me close with this. Last week Jeff asked us to consider what might be the walls that create barriers that keep us from being the people we are called to be. And today, very similarly, I’m asking us to consider what mountain creations we have made or that through experience formed around us that keep us from leaving the comfortable prison of the valley. Together, we’ve got to move those mountains. Together we can be beautifully abnormal, because, I tell ya, there’s nothing normal about the kingdom of God. Let’s be weirdos! Let’s leave the safety and complacency of the valley. It’s hard work, for sure. There’s nothing easy about bucking the system, even when it’s a system we helped create. But together we can do it. Let’s face our personal mountains as individuals so that we can also move mountains together.
I want you to go back to that earlier image I asked you to consider or maybe it’s a word or phrase that best represents what it is that holds you back. See it in your mind’s eye looming before you again, only this time maybe you have a sense of what it is. Imagine yourself at its widest place again. But this time is different than before because now you are in beast mode. You own that mountain. That mountains got nothing on you. And in beast mode, I want you to channel Katy Perry. Stay with me now. I want you channel Katy Perry and say to your mountain, in all seriousness,
“I used to bite my tongue and hold my breath
Scared to rock the boat and make a mess
So I sat quietly, agreed politely
I guess I forgot I had a choice
I let you push me past the breaking point
I stood for nothing, so I fell for everything
You held me down, but I got up
Already brushing off the dust
You hear my voice, your hear that sound
Like thunder, gonna shake the ground
You held me down, but I got up
Get ready ’cause I had enough
I see it all, I see it now
I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter
Dancing through the fire
‘Cause I am a champion, and you’re gonna hear me roar
Louder, louder than a lion
‘Cause I am a champion, and you’re gonna hear me roar!”
Church, are you ready to roar? Are you ready to move mountains? If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’ Amen.