River Road Church Baptist

February 6, 2005

Dr. Michael J. Clingenpeel

“The Mountain and The Cloud ”

This morning’s Bible story is a simple one. God invites Moses to climb Mount Sinai. Moses does as instructed. A cloud covers the mountain. On the mountain, in the cloud, Moses meets God.

In her classic book titled Worship, Evelyn Underhill defines worship as “the response of the creature to the eternal.” She adds to that definition these words: “Worship is an acknowledge of transcendence, that is to say a reality independent of the worshipper, which is always colored by mystery.”

By that definition, Exodus chapter 24 is about worship. There are Moses and God; creature and the eternal. There is transcendence, the reality independent of the worshipper, and there is mystery, deep and thick. There is a man and God, and the mountain and the cloud where the two meet. This morning I want to talk with you about the mountain, the place of worship, and the cloud, the presence we meet in worship. First…the mountain.

The land of the Bible is marked by mountains. The great events of Bible history, the great personalities of the Bible, seem to be associated with mountains. Noah’s boat came to rest on Mount Ararat; Abraham offered up his son Isaac on Mount Moriah; God sent down fire from heaven to consume the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. On Mount Gilboah the Philistines killed Saul and Jonathan. On Mount Gilead, Gideon amassed his small army. On Mount Tabor, Jesus was transfigured. On a hill called Calvary Jesus was crucified, and on the Mount of Olives Jesus ascended into heaven. Mountains are important in the Bible.

The Hebrew people were not a seafaring people. They feared the ocean, but they loved the land, especially the mountains. “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills from whence my help comes,” wrote the Psalmist. Moses was a man of three mountains. There was Mount Sinai, on which this story from Exodus chapter 24 takes place, where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. There was Mount Nebo, where Moses stood and looked over into the Promised Land. There was Mount Tabor, where he appeared along with Elijah to Jesus and the disciples. These are what one person has called “memory sites,” places where the sacred story happened and is kept alive, places associated with the presence of God; places where earth and heaven meet.

Worship centers in a place. A church like this church, a sanctuary like this sanctuary, is a memory site. It is a sacred space dedicated to remembering the acts of God. Every week when we gather in this place we remember who God is and what God has done for us. Every month we re-enact a feast of memory in which we recall the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, a sacrificial grace. On top of this building is a steeple. When you walk outside this morning, look up at that steeple against the blue sky. It is impressive. It is like a mountain. It stands tall above all that surrounds it. It reminds us that when we gather in this place, we acknowledge transcendence; a reality that is colored by mystery.

Is it possible to worship outside of church? Across the years, I have been asked this question on numerous occasions, mostly by golfers, hunters, fisherman and people who have homes at the river or on the beach. They tell me it is easier to find God in nature than it is inside the walls of a building. There is some truth there. I have been to many churches where I did not worship very well. I have also been in nature and seen in nature the way in which God has shaped and chiseled the world in which we live and have stood in awe at the creative and wondrous power of God.

When I was pastor at Franklin Baptist Church, I followed a pastor who retired after 32 years in that congregation. Do you detect a familiar theme here? One day he and I were talking with a man who was a member of the church; a man who spent most of his Sundays in the woods hunting. The man trotted out that familiar line, “I worship God best in the woods.” My predecessor did not miss a moment. Looking at this friend he said to him, “Then when you die we’ll call the forest ranger to perform your funeral.” It could be the golf pro, insert whatever you want. You can say things like that when you’re retired or when you plan to retire the following week.

Too many people in our society try to be churchless, worshipless Christians. It doesn’t work. We need a place where we come to worship. Moses and company went up a mountain at the invitation of God. Before there was a tabernacle, before there was a temple, worship still had a place. It was an act of drawing away from that which is mundane and routine to a place where the physical meets the spiritual and the collision of the two sends sparks of grace soaring in all directions.

In addition to the mountain there is the cloud. In the Bible, clouds are signs of the presence of God. When the Hebrews are wandering in the wilderness, they are led by a pillar of cloud day by day. When Jesus is transfigured on the mountain, a cloud covers the mountain. Paul said, “At the end of time, all the people alive and dead will be caught up together in the clouds.” Clouds convey mystery. They obscure one’s view. They are here one moment, gone the next moment. Worship is always colored by mystery, wrote Underhill. Encountering that mystery produces awe and wonder. Our culture is quickly losing its sense of mystery. We have become casual, nonchalant, blasé about God. It carries over into the way that our culture conducts our worship.

Over the past dozen years or so, I have been in literally hundreds of Baptist churches in Virginia. My experience has taught me that River Road Church is a very different church than most other Baptist churches in our state. We conduct worship here differently than most Baptist churches conduct worship. The rationale for the way we conduct worship here at River Road lies at the heart of Evelyn Underhill’s definition of worship. If worship is the acknowledgement of transcendence; a transcendence which is more or less colored by mystery, then we need to use forms of worship that remind us that God is other, sovereign, Lord over time and place, the One whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. The way we worship reflects our understanding of God. God is in the cloud. God is a mysterious presence.

Mystery cannot be explained, but mystery can be felt. In the cloud, Moses could not explain God, but Moses sensed the presence of God. God may be transcendent, but God is also immanent. God is near enough for us to feel and sense and touch palpably the presence of God.

More often than not the kind of worship that senses God’s presence requires patience.

There is a lovely set of lines in the text that was read a few moments ago that go like this, “Moses went up on the mountain and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai and the cloud covered it six days, and on the seventh day God called Moses out of the cloud.” Did you hear that? Six days Moses sat waiting on God to speak. Six lonely, barren days. Nothing, silence, utter silence. Six days where Moses saw only the shadows and felt only the cool swirling mists of the cloud. Six days in thick, thick mystery. You and I do not dictate the terms of God’s presence and of our relationship with God. God speaks when God chooses to speak and to whom God chooses to speak. Worship requires patience. It cannot be turned on like a switch on the wall. Sometimes we sit in silence six days, six weeks or six months and do not sense the mystery of God’s presence around us, yet in our society, we get restless if we have to worship one hour a week. We demand instant inspiration and entertainment. Worship requires patience. Worship involves sitting in silent mystery waiting on the Lord to speak.

“And on that seventh day God spoke to Moses and told him to walk. Walk higher up the mountain, God told Moses. Walk deeper into the cloud.” In the final volume of his Chronicles of Narnia, titled The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis describes how the children enter into that mythical land of Narnia through a wardrobe. The entrance into the land is narrow, but the land as they enter it is larger. It is the land of Aslan – a lion who is the figure for God. Here is what the children discover as they walk deeper into the land. The farther they travel into Aslan’s kingdom the bigger it becomes. The higher Moses walked up the mountain and the deeper Moses walked into the cloud, the bigger God became.

Worship is an invitation to go higher and deeper into the mystery of God, and the result is that God gets bigger and more powerful and more tender and more available to us when we do.

God invites you to come to the mountain and to enter the cloud; to acknowledge the transcendence and the mystery of the One who has come near to us – to the life, the death, and the resurrection of His Son, Jesus the Christ. May we pray?

We have a sense, O God, that we are only tapping a portion of the vast meaning of worship. Help us as we attempt to do so to find a Presence that compels us to go deeper still. Through Christ we pray, Amen.


MC; lmk, mt