August 26, 2024
• Rev. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
August 25, 2024
Finding Your Mountain
“If You Want to Go Far”
Hebrews 13:1-3
There’s an old African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
In this series, Finding Your Mountain, we’ve talked about how the mountain is a spiritual metaphor for that part of ourselves that finds joy and delight. It is the way God made us and getting in touch with that makes us come alive. We’ve also talked about how this journey is like climbing a mountain. It takes training to acclimatize us for the spiritual atmosphere. We also said last week that like any journey, there are times it is hard. We go through wildernesses but this is also where we get glimpses of glory that keep us going, and our mountains make us sources of glory to others. Today we consider another important thought about this metaphor and that is the role community plays. Finding Your Mountain can sound like such an isolated, individual experience, but in reality we need others who help us in the journey of finding our mountains. You can climb solo, but you won’t go as high.
If you want to go far, go together.
That’s one thing you learn trekking in the Himalayas. There’s no such thing as getting to Everest Base Camp and saying, “I did it.” For one, you had sherpa guides who led you the whole way. They’ve traveled the route many times and know which ways to turn at forks in the road for which there are no signs. And then, you also had porters. Every morning you put your luggage pack, that weighs 33 lbs, outside your door. Young Nepali men come and pick these up and carry them on their backs so that by the time you arrive at the next place, the bags are already in your room. These are people we never met, yet we would have never made it without them.
That’s true of all of us. Think about it for a moment. When you turn on the faucet in your house and water comes out, that means people somewhere are doing their jobs. We put our trash bins on the street before leaving in the morning and when we get home the bins are empty. Why? Because people we don’t know empty them. Every time you meet a total stranger you never know if it could be someone you depend on.
Perhaps this is why the writer of Hebrews said, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.” It is a reminder that we’re all connected in an interdependent web.
Kylee Larson is preaching today at Midtown. When we talked about this sermon and this idea of interdependence, Kylee mentioned a podcast she heard recently in which she learned how scientists have discovered that trees have what is called a mycorrhizal network. This is a fungus that forms around roots and helps protect trees but also allows trees to communicate with each other through their root system. If a tree is threatened by a disease or drought for instance, it shares this with other trees that might begin protecting themselves. Scientists say you could call it the “Wood-wide Web.” God has built into the fabric of creation an interdependence, an ability to endure by looking after each other.
If you want to go far, go together.
This is a good place to mention our churchwide retreat. We want to share this sabbatical experience with the whole congregation, so mark your calendars for March 7-9, 2025. Spiritual Director, Amy Oden will be with us to lead us in a Finding Your Mountain experience at Epworth Retreat Center in northern Indiana which has the Bishop Mike and Marcia Coyner Discipleship Center. This will be a chance to get better connected to each other as a community.
This idea of going far together was the message of the writer of Hebrews at the end of his letter. After spending twelve chapters in deep theological debate, the writer closes with a series of admonitions that begin with this, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters.” This was a popular metaphor for the church in the New Testament. In fact, the most popular. Rather than referring to the church as an organization or institution, the church is always described as a family.
Show of hands, how many of you have or had siblings growing up? There were brothers and/or sisters in your family? Okay, if you had a sibling or siblings, how many of you got to choose those persons? You got to choose your brother or sister? Silly question isn’t it? We don’t choose our siblings, they are chosen for us. So one final question, for those of you with brothers or sisters, how many of you found it easy to love them all the time?
It’s a bit like the 4-year-old boy whose parents brought home a new baby brother. They had him sit down then gently placed the new brother on his lap. He stared at the baby a long time without response. The mother said, “You told us you wanted a baby brother, what do you think?” The boy replied, “I think I change my mind.”
I imagine we all feel like changing our minds about family at times, but think about what this metaphor says about the church. We are to love people we don’t chose, and we are to love them not just when its easy to love them, but when it might be hard to love them. When we are the least lovable is when we need love the most. And just like families aren’t perfect, churches aren’t perfect. Churches can be dysfunctional, but if we’ve been hurt in community, then we have to heal in community.”
Churches are meant to be healing places. When the writer says, “Keep on loving people as brothers and sisters,” it was a reminder that everyone around us needs love. Everyone needs understanding and compassion. Everyone is in need of some kind of healing.
If we want to go far, go together.
BUT, this doesn’t mean we look at people as victims. They aren’t just recipients of our charity. We need them as well. We are to look at others as people who can bless us. Look at the writer’s next words, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Heb. 13:2) Now what do angels do in the Bible? They help people. Most of the time angels come to bless. A great reason for showing hospitality to strangers is because they can bless us in some way.
This is one of the things I took away from my sabbatical. In my journal I noted words I want to keep with me. One of them is attentiveness, particularly, attentiveness to people. I had several experiences of receiving blessings from strangers. Let me share two quick ones.
We stayed several nights in the village of Namche Bazaar to acclimatize our bodies to the altitude. We did a hike that morning and when we got back to the hotel it was cold and rainy, so I took a book and sat next to a heater in the dining room. It was warm and I was comfortable and happy. I was reading an autobiography by Sir Edmund Hilary, the first person to summit Everest in 1953 with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. While sitting there, a girl who worked at the hotel walked by cleaning tables. She said, “Hello.” I could have easily said, “Hi,” turned back to my book, but instead I looked up and said, “Hi, how are you?” That question paused her. She smiled and said, “I’m fine,” and then she looked at my book and said, “Edmund Hilary. His son is here right now.” I said, “Excuse me? What did you just say?” She said, “Peter Hilary, Edmund Hilary’s son is staying in the hotel right now, maybe you will see him.”
I couldn’t believe it. The next morning at breakfast I knew it was him the moment he walked in. I went up and asked if he was Peter Hilary. He nodded, then said, “Are you Rob Fuquay?” He didn’t really say that, I had to introduce myself. But he was so kind. We talked about his father, about the Himalayas. He told us about Everest. He was gracious to sign my book. When he sat to eat, we got this picture. Over his shoulder is the iconic picture of his father and Tenzing Norgay right after they summited Everest.
It was an amazing blessing I won’t forget, and it happened because I took a moment to ask a girl how she was doing.
Then, another quick example. We started our trek late because planes weren’t flying out of Kathmandu. That’s when we had to take the helicopter, but because we were behind arriving, we ended up staying in a different village from what was planned. It made me feel like we had missed out on something. Until a few days later. We were sitting next to another group at breakfast. One of the guys said they had a strange thing happen their first night. In the middle of the night when he was sound asleep, he was awakened and told they had to evacuate because the building caught fire. I asked where this happened and learned it was the same place we were scheduled to say. I found out I did miss out, on being in a burning building!
By paying attention to someone, I discovered how fortunate I was. I wasn’t missing out on any blessings. In fact, it made me realize how much I need others to experience blessing. If I just become more attentive to others. So I want to be more attentive. What if we saw every person not just as an object of our goodwill, but someone who can bless us? What if we looked at the stranger in the store, the cashier at the service station, the clerk in the store, what if we looked at all people as folks we depend on for blessing? What would that require? Maybe a curiosity to get to know others? A desire to learn from others, no matter who they are?
If you want to go far, go together.
This leads to one last observation about this passage. After reminding us of our interdependence, and that others possess blessings we need, the writer ends this admonition saying, “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them, those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.” (Hebrews 13:3)
This may be the toughest part of this passage. The writer says we must get proximate to people’s pain. We must be willing to enter their experience.
John Wesley is the founder of the Methodist Church. When you read some of his sermons you can’t help but wonder how the Methodist movement ever took off. Wesley could be harsh and critical. He didn’t varnish the truth. For example, in a sermon titled Ón Visiting the Sick, now that sounds harmless enough doesn’t? Wesley said…
It’s a wonder when you read things like that, that the Methodist Church ever grew, but people were willing to hear it. Some reacted to it, but most heard truth in it, and said, “Yes, that’s the kind of community the world needs. One that gets out of their comfort zones and gets close to others who face life from a different place.
The other night our Governing Board heard a bold presentation from Shelly Clasen for our Hub for Hope and what we might do as a congregation to have full impact on our city. It will mean we draw close to people in need. During the discussion board member Scott Severns talked about a meeting happening just down the hall regarding housing. Indiana has one of the lowest standards in America for tenant rights. Our church hosts meetings like this to learn stories of people forced out of their houses and families with small children made homeless. He pointed out how this is something the church should care about. And maybe we won’t like the politics that surrounds issues like this, but at the end of the day its about people. Getting to know people in need and how they came to be there, and hearing God say, “I want to use you to change that.”
Sometimes this is how we find our mountains. It comes out of the blue. We thought we were pursuing something that would bring a blissful joy to us personally, but then we got close to human needs and discovered, no, doing something about this is now my mountain.
Let me close with this story about Edmund Hilary. The area around Everest is known as the Khumbu Region inhabited by the sherpa people who are adapted to live at these high altitudes. Hilary is known among these people as the King of the Khumbu, but it has nothing to do with his summitting Mt. Everest. In the years following the 1953 expedition, whenever Hilary returned to Nepal for different climbing expeditions, he stayed with sherpa friends. He became more aware of their conditions, that most villages didn’t have electricity or running water or schools or hospitals.
Though Hilary didn’t have big resources, he had big influence. He started raising money around the world to create a Foundation (Himalayan Trust) for providing these needed services. Climbing to Base Camp we saw numerous signs in different places for Hilary Hospitals or schools. This became Hilary’s new mountain in life. He spent the rest of his life devoted to this work, and it continues. This is why his son, Peter, was there.
You never know how just living in proximity to others we find our own mountain.