Thus Says the Mountain
Withheld deep within each man is the responsibility to search deeply. There is an obligation in its space and time and hue where each individual must go. Depths claim mystery, grandeur, mass, weight, emotion, fear, wonder. Depths demand respect but can never conjure desire. Depths house speculation and entertain the masses. Depths become in themselves what we cannot become in our own selves. If depths, then, can become who we are outside our own being, what do they say of us?
There is a language to deepness. David claims, “Deep calls to deep…” What does deep say? What did David’s deep say? David’s deep cried out hope, sorrow, frustration, and the need for foundation; his deep calls out for an equally deep hopefulness, joy, grace, and bedrock. It is from the depths of sorrow that David can request the depths of joy. In other words, from deep calls for deep. From deep mystery calls for deep clarification. From deep joy calls for deep sharing of that joy. From deep study with the Lord comes deep sermons of the soul.
Well…that’s a deep subject.
At the beginning of November I left our fine Republic in pursuit of some snow and northern lights and headed to Norway. This trip was on the tail of a conference, and, as a result, my conference mate—Spencer the Church Administrator—became my chauffeur and delivered me to the cold, concrete, brazen DFW airport.
“...gracing the screen with my knowledgable fingers like lanky giraffes galloping upon the savannah.”
Upon arrival and seeking to avoid any human interaction, I tried my lot at the ticket kiosk. Let me take a moment to say that I love Alaskan Airlines (they’re not sponsoring this blog…but if you know someone who works there, mention it to them that my blog is wide open for their advertisement needs). However, at this moment in time, my beloved airline was having issues. Or it could have been due to the sketch travel agency I bought my ticket through, but, upon deeper investigation, I discovered that my flight was leaving out of Love Field, not DFW. The issue was my illiteracy. No problem though; Spencer was a spectacularly merciful driver and returned to pick me up and drop me off again. Arrival at the warm, welcoming, lovely DAL proved to be quite the challenge too—I entered and again sought out the beloved ticket producing kiosks. Because I was becoming well versed with the kiosks, I proudly, promptly, and metaphorically destroyed the machine with my quick fingers and assured typing, gracing the screen with my knowledgable fingers like lanky giraffes galloping upon the savannah. But. Nothing. Happened. No ticket. No magic. No pass go money.
I had to go to the front desk.
It was at the desk where I discovered that the real issues had indeed spawned from the sketchy travel agency. My flight, which was supposed to leave at 2:10 according to my email, had left a bountiful three hours prior. Alaskan put me on another plane for that evening (because they’re amazing), and I eventually left Dallas at midnight. Fast forward through Los Angeles (which was a lovely experience essentially walking through my pinterest boards) and the flight to Norway, and we are in the lovely, cold country of potatoes and fjords—cue the viking music. After the landing of the steel bird I boarded a steel Twinkie. Or bus if you prefer. This bus delivered me a mile from my hostel and I set out on foot with dead phone and back pack and trekked through the Norse darkness and snow for the surplus of an hour. I made it though, checked in, and, hope-filled, climbed my way up the stairs to my assigned bed. My warm, awaiting, plush oasis surrounded by 5 of my closest, soon-to-be-friends, who would greet me like a long lost brother.
Then I opened the door.
Daydreams fleeted as I was greeted by three men at least 70 years of age who spoke no English, and a smell in relation to that of rotting fried chicken…and old man. Decaying chicken and man. The smelly smell that smells smelly** was one of those smells that your nose didn’t get used to either. I smelled it my entirety of stay.
“I’ll just go to bed!” I thought. “Then I won’t smell it.” So sleep I did. Only to wake up at 3 am, unable to sleep or breathe. I took another dramamine and it’s normal powers had no effect over me, so soured by the smell I laid.
I used the sleepless hours to complain to God about the smell and to pray for people…but I mainly prayed about the smell. While I was praying/complaining, I heard a voice clearly speak and say, “Thus says the mountain…” Praying turned into puzzlement, and the complaining shifted from the smell to the smell and an open ended phrase. I wrestled with the Lord and got nowhere with either the phrase or the odor. Somewhere among the thoughts I fell asleep, then awoke before the sun shone and abandoned the room like it was a jr high dance.
The days that followed led me on a journey of asking and re-asking, “What does the mountain say?” Very poetically and cinematically, I gazed out my train window in silence, my stares begging the rising and falling mountains what their message contained. Tension between man, mound, and Maker increased as the trains marched on; then finally while journaling, my hand mindlessly wrote the phrase, “thus says the mountain: hypocrite.” The mountain just called me a casuist. A charlatan. And there I sat, fully aware of the weight of the Mountain-Maker’s message.
I, and we, will spend hundreds and thousands of dollars to scale and search the Earth over; traveling, vacationing, and seeking to leave our homes and responsibilities for a time; we leave one mountain to go climb another.
“The issue, though, is not in the peak hopping; it is in our neglecting or overlooking of our own soulscape.”
The issue, though, is not in the peak hopping; it is in our neglecting or overlooking of our own soulscape. Here I sat on a train traveling thousands of miles from home to gaze upon fjords, to climb mountains, to adventure into unfamiliar lands when I very well could have done the same in Texas. I have my own soul mountains and depths to discover, and if I ever want to change the view I can go climb with another person on their personal mountains. Travel in their valleys, turn over rocks, look for water, set up a perfect Kodak moment.
How often will man travel to see conquerable mountains and absorbable landscapes, yet will flee at the same notions of the soul? We will spend days and years seeking what will end, we will plan it out, prepare for it, save for it, but so often we don’t prepare ourselves to do the same with our and others’ eternal hearts.
From this, I began thinking of Jesus’ mountain story of the person with a log in their eye. If you’re visual like me, take a second and draw out on a piece of paper a cartoon man with a stump or branch coming out of his right eye and keep it in your bible to refer to. From the Matthew 7 parable a question rings out, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye and not your own?”
Once, when I was in 7th grade football, a piece of grass wedged itself between my pupil and my contact lens and I thought I was going to die. I could not imagine the pain of having a log in my eye. What is going on in the soul for one to be able to look past an excruciatingly painful eye-log and see a speck at a distance? I believe there is a deep embedded issue, and the overlooking of the log is an involuntary call from deep within. Deep pain calls for deep relief.
But prior to telling this part of the story, Jesus—in chapter 6—lays the groundwork for his message and sets the stage with the ideas of seeing and seeking—man sees treasure then seeks it. He then categorizes a couple of treasurers: the anxious and the judgmental. Often I feel we separate out these teachings and view the stories of anxiety and judgement about…well…anxiety and judgement. More fully, I believe Jesus was speaking more of these examples to drive home his lesson on treasure. In verses 22-23 of Matthew 6, Jesus says what your eye takes in is how you will be filled, light with light and dark with dark. Jesus has broken down a first step to defining our treasures. Is what we treasure light or dark? Is it clear or obstructed? He then says that no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other…or he will hate the one and treasure the other. Then he leads into talking about a master named anxiety.
“What do birds and lilies have to do with anxiety? Nothing. Literally nothing. Typical Jesus. That’s why they’re a perfect example for anxiety—they know nothing of it. ”
What does anxiousness tell us of treasure? What does the anxious man treasure? Control? Balance? Reserves? Safety? Being filled? Being covered? Warmth? What do birds and lilies have to do with anxiety? Nothing. Literally nothing. Typical Jesus. That’s why they’re a perfect example for anxiety—they know nothing of it. They don’t choose to not be anxious. They just aren’t. I think Jesus is saying something here. Choosing to be anxious or not anxious is not a choice at all, just like seeing the kingdom is not a matter of choosing, it’s a matter of seeking; and when we seek the Kingdom, tomorrow, and clothes, and health, and family, and desserts, and Christmas-presents-that-have-to-be–bought-for-the-crazy-grandmother-in-the-family end up becoming the birds whose songs fill the air and lilies who paint the fields. Anxiety turns from master into melody and masterpiece. In this story God doesn’t tell us to just not be anxious, he tells us that anxiousness is a matter of seeking things outside the Kingdom. And as a bonus, seeking the Kingdom is never a matter of anxiousness.
The next picture Jesus gives us of treasure is a gory one—a man with a stump in his eye (I imagine Old Iron Eye from Spongebob here). What does the judgmental man treasure? He sees righteousness, flaws, imperfection. What does he seek? Justice? Ease? Clarity? Peace? Harmony? Holiness?
Again, I feel we might get caught up believing this story is mainly about judgement and making sure we are not judgmental, or that Jesus might be calling out hypocrites in the crowd and among us; but eclipsed in all of this is Jesus’ desire to point out treasure.
If we’re being honest, and I had a log in my eye, I would imagine my first thought would not be anything in relation to you or your eye health. So a question I have is, “Why would the man immediately not take out the log?”
I think Jesus is making a point—“The man was not removing the log from his own eye because he treasures it. He treasures the idea of clarity, but doesn’t treasure the ability to see clearly.”
Cue in the talk on hypocrisy. He definitely had a log in his eye and was throwing shade at another’s speck, but I also feel his hypocrisy came from trying to make another holy when he himself wasn’t even wholly there. Not only were his intentions out of whack, but his place was skewed. Not to insult your intelligence, but when one eye of two doesn’t work, you can only half see. Isn’t that the definition of hypocrisy? We judge by only seeing half of what is going on. There are two people we see—ourselves, who we look beyond, and the other man whom we despise (v. 24).
A final thought on seeing—Jesus’ question, “why do you see the speck?” is introduced and left open ended and unanswered. He doesn’t ask, “how do you see,” but “why do you see?” I think Jesus is a genius, and does this knowing that all of our why’s are different. Why we see the ill in others varies, but overlooking our soul’s own logs and mountains and valleys is so common a practice to man and it always leaves us half full. Our clarity of the kingdom is skewed, our treasure is thrown before swine (because we can’t discern good treasure from bad), and we sit at the base of the mountain hypocritical, poor, and blind.
Treasure in the depths of the ocean can only be found by reaching the bottom. And logs float. Don’t expect to get very deep if you have a log in your eye. In fact, don’t go diving if you have a piece of wood in your eye. Go to the hospital. Go to church.
**shout out to all my Spongebob fans