Finding God On--and Off--the Mountain

Finding God...I didn't know he was lost!
This is the theme for camp this week where we will see that God actually found us, but that he makes himself known in the world around us in so many ways and through all three persons of the Trinity.
My family and I are going to camp--yep, all five of us--and we're meeting up with all of Susan's family and others for a total of about 70+/- souls in all. The Berghel's have been doing this each summer since 1968 and it's a great way to end the summer in Christian fellowship. I have the blessing of being their spiritual guide for the week. They call me "Dean". Below is the sermon I plan to preach on Sunday. If you are reading this and will be at camp stop now and wait for Sunday. I hope to deliver it with far more animation than the written word can convey.

Finding God On—and Off—the Mountain Exodus 3:12
Family Week 2 August 2, 2009 Camp Linn Haven, NC
Exodus 3:12 “He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.””
We go to camp for many reasons. We come to escape the heat of the low country. We come for the quiet time; away from phones and the e-mail. Even if that’s harder now with Wi-Fi and better cell coverage. We come to have some quality time with our family and our kids. Probably the one reason that sticks out in everyone’s mind is the beautiful location. We come here to get away from it all and hope to find something else, something refreshing, something that recharges the batteries, something that renews us before we go back to school or back to work and begin another year’s activity…until we return again next year
But, deep down, I think we come for another reason—to find God. We could go to lots of other places which would be just as fun, just as relaxing, just as beautiful. But, we chose to come to this place, nestled so beautifully in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Most of us already know God in our heart and minds, but we seem to misplace Him in our lives from time to time. We get so busy we push him aside—he seems to get lost in the shuffle. And, so, we come to Camp Linn Haven, knowing we will find him again.
When we see the beauty of the Blue Ridge, we see the hand of God at work so clearly. We see his majesty in the rock formations of Grandfather Mountain, and the great power he has placed in water at Linville falls. We experience the comfort of fellowship as we gather around a campfire for devotions or up on Flat Rock as the sun sets over that far-distant ridge. We even might find a quiet moment or two to pray and meditate as we walk the trails or sit quietly in a swing while others are sightseeing, or playing ball, or napping.
Mountains, historically, have been very good places to find God. Throughout the Bible we see God interacting with his people on mountains. God gave the 10 commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Solomon built the Lord’s temple on Mt. Zion. Jesus preached and gave his most famous sermon—the Sermon on the Mount—on an unnamed mountain in Galilee. He was transfigured on Mount Tabor and he prayed on the night of his passion on the Mount of Olives. In each of these instances God invited his people to follow him and meet him there in order to teach, instruct, and pray.
We also hear of other mountains in the Bible on which God was not found. In the days when they did not follow YHWH, the Israelites set up altars on the hilltops and mountains all around Israel dedicating them to a whole pantheon of gods, hoping to win their favor. When Israel split from Judah, the Samaritans built a temple on Mt. Bethel, seeking to please God there, hoping he would move his residence from Jerusalem. Even as far back as Genesis, we hear of early human attempts to approach God and even become his equal when they built a giant tower to heaven in a place we know as Babel.
But what about today? Where do we find God? How do we know him? How do we feel and experience his presence? How do we know he cares about us and our lives? Where is God when:
. We lose our jobs?
· We suffer the loss of a child?
· Our marriages are a mess or even dissolve?
· Our kids can’t seem to stay out of trouble or just don’t live up to the potential we see in them?
· Other people malign and hurt us with their words and actions and even destroy our reputation among others?
· Fellow Christians treat us in ways which are far from Christ-like
At times it just makes you want to scream, “WHERE IS HE?
What those latter attempts at Bethel and Babel all had in common with our vain attempts to find God was that they went looking to find God on their terms—and so do we. But finding God isn’t our job—He isn’t lost! No, instead, he comes to us and finds us! With the apostles and the patriarchs it was a very personal invitation, either by his own voice or by Jesus himself, or he would send an angel on his behalf. God found others through his prophets and judges in the Old Testament and through the Apostles and early evangelists in the New Testament. Through these hand-picked, human messengers he spread the Good News of his salvation to all who would listen and the Holy Spirit planted faith in those who would let him into their hearts. As these new believers then came together, united under the God who had saved and redeemed them, they became Israel (in the Old Testament) and the Church (in the New Testament).
In fact, God finds us in all sorts of peculiar places. Jesus found the woman at the well—at the well, doing one of her many chores for the day! He sent Philip to the Ethiopian Eunuch at a roadside rest area. He sent the apostles to their jailers in their cell block when an earthquake opened the bars which held them in. He came to Jonah by sending a fish which preserved him for three days until he repented and did as the Lord had initially asked. He comes to us in similar dire straights; he comes to us in the depths of our sorrow. He comes to us in the throws of agonizing pain and the height of our many crises.
But God also make sure that he is near us in the ordinary as well. In fact, the only means by which he bestows his forgiveness and grace upon us are by his Word and the Sacraments. And the symbols he uses for the sacraments are simple: water, bread, and wine. But there are other ways in which God gives testament to that grace even if those other things do not themselves provide saving grace. Each and every time we offer him a portion of that with which he has blessed us it is a testament to the great and abundant love he has for each of us, that he would send his son Jesus to die on the cross and raise him from the dead so that we could be redeemed from sin, death, and the power of the devil. In service to others we demonstrate that love in meaningful ways which have a temporal impact in the hope that it will make an eternal difference in someone’s life. We offer up prayers to our God; words formed by his very Holy Spirit and which He places in our hearts, even before they are formed on our lips or we are able to utter them from our tongues.
Historically, though, the Church, as a gathering of Christians, has always struggled with making such a complex God fit the simple, child-like, faith he gives its members. It heaps tradition and certain practices up in mounds around her. She builds large, expansive churches, rich in beauty and splendor, in which to worship Him. She has even taken the most simple symbol of his greatest gift to us—the cross—and made it out of gold, encrusting it with gems, layering it with tracery, filigree, lace, and bric-a-brac until the central core of what he did on that cross is lost in all its finery.
We here today are no different. Each of us has our own preferences for worship, prayer, offerings, service; things which make us comfortable, things which make us feel safe. But if our goal is to make ourselves feel safe, how are we different than Israel who wanted God to Come to them at Bethel, or those at Babel who wanted to make a name for themselves by being the first to climb a literal “stairway to heaven?”
Despite our selfish desires, God still wants us and he still seeks us. He is the one who created us and this earth. He is the one who redeemed us by the blood of his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the one that continues to make us holy in his sight through Christ by the power and work of the Holy Spirit who also joins us together as the Communion of Saints and bestows upon us the gifts of forgiveness of sins and everlasting life.
Camp Linn Haven in Linville, North Carolina is nothing special to God, yet it is of most importance to him. Jesus never set foot here, yet through him it was created and he redeemed it when he redeemed the rest of the world along with each one of us here today. Jesus did not die here, nor was this the site of the Resurrection. Yet, we have his simple, wooden, cross as evidence that his death and resurrection was for each of us gathered who are gathered here to thank and praise him. Jesus was not baptized in the waters of the River Linville, yet we remember his baptism as we remember our own baptisms whereby we were adopted into the family of God and by which we are washed clean of our sins and made holy again in his image.
And so it is, that here in this place and on this mountain that God’s prophesy to Moses is once again fulfilled. God is here. God is with us. He has given us his sign as is evidenced by our souls being brought out from our own little Egypt, that is, our sinful nature, carried across the Red Sea of life which was accomplished through the blood of Christ on the cross by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we may come here to our own little Mt. Sinai and serve God here on this mountain.
We have not found God, he has found us. This will be our theme for the week. And so I invite you to join us each morning at Bible study and each evening at devotions as we look at different ways in which God has come to us, and continues to reside in and through us, as we deconstruct the three persons who make up the one God we call the Trinity. In this holy name, Amen.