A Tale of Two Mountains
Back in 1958, when I was fit enough to climb to the top of an Egyptian pyramid, I traveled with a group of biblical scholars to visit the ancient sites of the Middle East. A highlight of the trip was our sojourn at Mt. Sinai, where Moses is reputed to have received the Ten Commandments. We stayed at the 4th century monastery of St. Catherine and the next day climbed to Sinai’s summit. Frankly, due to the shallowness of my faith at that young age, I felt nothing of the awe I should have felt where the Bible says thunder, lightning and trumpet blasts once signaled God’s descent before a bedazzled Moses. Nevertheless, the view was impressive.
Had I been Jewish I probably would have been more sensitive to the holiness of the place, because God’s descent upon Mt. Sinai remains the literal and spiritual high point of Jewish history. For by there bestowing upon Israel the Ten Commandments, God challenged us all to advance beyond the way we are toward the way we ought to be. No longer were we to behave toward each other like predators. Henceforth we were expected to be reverent human beings – reverent about who and what we are and about our origin out of a God who is so much more than an idol of our own making; reverent toward our parents, reverent toward the lives, relations and property of other people; reverent regarding truth. In other words we were summoned to become moral beings, conscious of our responsibility for the whole of God’s creation.
Everything in the Old Testament either builds up to that moment of moral challenge on Mt. Sinai or describes the consequences of our failure to live up to it, to wit: the misery that comes of greed, war, tyranny, deceit and our blind fascination with things and potentates that are beneath our dignity to adore. I think if I had had something of this Jewish appreciation of Mt. Sinai on that day I reached its summit, I might have fallen to my knees instead of vacantly wandered about taking in the view.
For us Christians, of course, Mt. Sinai remains as pivotal as it is for Judaism, a watershed moment in the maturation of the human race. But we are also heirs to what happened upon another mountain, the Mount of the Beatitudes. Matthew’s Gospel sees in Jesus a new Moses, bearing all the characteristics of his predecessor – including the ascent of a new Sinai where he shifts the Law of Moses into higher gear, deepening its demands, challenging us not to be simply just to one another but as mutually merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful.
And the wonderful thing about our Christian Sinai is – no Law inscribed in stone was delivered to us by a God too bedazzling to be looked upon! No! This time we were presented with God’s Law made flesh in the person of Christ! No longer did we have to read about how we ought to be. Now in Christ we could observe how we ought to be – contemplate God’s own life style made manifest in the words, the behavior, the graciousness of Jesus. Nor was that the end of it, for having perpetuated himself among us in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, Christ has made God’s life style something we may actually assimilate, imbibe. All of which seems to fulfill Moses’ own sense of how God’s Law might one day penetrate to our very core – when he said: This command which I enjoin on you is not somewhere up in the sky, that you should say, “Who will go up to get it for us, that we may carry it out?” Nor is it across the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross the sea to get it for us, that we may carry it out?” No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.