The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
August 26, 2001

Sinai, Zion, and Calvary
Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-29

God is awful. Those three words sum up both this morning’s reading from Hebrews and my sermon. But I must warn you that I am using the word awful in an old and now, perhaps, outdated sense. God is awful, meaning awe and full. God is not just awe-some, but awe-full, or better, God invokes from us a sense of awe. An encounter with the triune God is a fearful and wonderful thing which fills you with awe.

In the selection read from Hebrews this morning, we get three images of God, each connected to a mountain. The three mountains of God are Sinai, Zion, and Calvary. Only Zion is named in the reading, but all three of these mountains overshadow the words in Hebrews. While these are real places, which you can go visit today, the author of Hebrews is talking about spiritual geography. Each mountain presented a fuller picture of God without superceding the image that came before it.

The first mountain is Sinai, the mountain of Moses and the ten commandments. Sinai was in the wild, untamed expanse of wilderness the Hebrews crossed as they left Egypt. This is the place our reading from Hebrews describes saying, “You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken them.”

That is tightly packed description of Mount Sinai using images taken from the Exodus account of God’s teaching being given to the people through Moses. God’s teaching, called the Torah, is for Judaism the means to commune with a personal and loving God. Yet, the encounter with God on Mount Sinai is an encounter with a mighty and dreadful presence, the unseen deity atop a mountain. God wants contact with the people of Israel and God is approachable, but barely so. God is Holy and this encounter with the holy leaves people trembling with fear. The people do not approach God themselves, but through Moses, who serves as a go-between, a mediator.

The German theologian Rudolph Otto wrote an important work on the Holy (The Idea of the Holy) in which he described “the Holy” as a fearsome and fascinating mystery (using the Latin mysterium tremendum et fascinans). This is the image of God on Mount Sinai. God is fearsome and yet fascinating. The people of Israel are both drawn to and fearful of God on Sinai.

The second mountain in our reading today is Zion. This mountain inside the city of Jerusalem has long been associated with the Temple Mount. Zion is the premier place to worship the God of Israel. At the Temple on Mount Zion, the priests served as mediators between God and the people in their role of offering sacrifices to God.

The author of Hebrews calls Zion the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Unlike Sinai in the wilderness, Zion was a known hill within the walled city. God’s presence had moved from the unknown to the familiar. The God of the desert let his presence rest among the people. Now, don’t misunderstand the Temple itself. The idea that God’s presence was felt in the Temple in a special way never kept the Jews from thinking that God was everywhere. God did not live in the Temple the way we live in our homes. The Jews said that God’s name, his essence dwelt in Zion. His presence could always be felt on Zion, but not because God was only on Zion. In the same way, we can feel God’s presence in a particular way in church, but we do not have to go to church to feel God’s presence.

Lastly, the author of Hebrews refers to Jesus as the mediator of the new covenant, which brings us to Calvary, the mountain where Jesus was crucified. Jesus sealed the new covenant with his blood shed on Calvary ending the need for the Temple sacrifices on Zion and connecting us to God as the earlier covenant on Mount Sinai had done. No longer do we approach God through Moses or the priests. We now approach God through God the son, Jesus.

Our reading from Hebrews says that we have come, “to the blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” We need to pause a moment to understand that concept. Whose blood speaks better than Abel’s? and what did Abel’s blood say?

First, let’s look at Abel’s blood. Genesis tells the story of Cain killing his brother Abel. God tells Cain, “Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood.” Abel’s blood cried out for justice through revenge.

The use of the term “sprinkled blood” is an allusion to the Temple worship on Mount Zion. There, priests sacrificed animals to God and sprinkled the animal’s blood on the altar. Once a year, the priest sprinkled sacrificial blood on the covering of the Ark of the Covenant itself. The priests offered this sprinkled blood to make the people one with God again after their sins.

Scripture makes it clear that the hearts of the faithful were of a much greater concern than the sacrifices themselves. For example, Psalm 50 says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High. Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” So, God was more concerned with the people knowing that all they had was a gift from God and their thankfulness for that than with the blood sacrifices. Yet, this sacrificial system was the way the People of Israel kept the covenant made on Mount Sinai with God on the Temple Mount, Zion.

With that knowledge, let’s try to untangled all the meaning packed into the statement, that we have come “to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” The old covenant called for animal sacrifices. That sprinkled blood of the animals paid the price for human sin and error. But the blood of Jesus was a much more worthy offer. Jesus was God in human flesh and as a human was, like Abel, killed unjustly. And yet, Jesus’ blood shed on Calvary cried out not for vengeance, but for love. Jesus’ sprinkled blood cried out “enough” to the sacrificial system, saying that his death paid the price of sin once, and for all.

After this theological tour through the geographical places of Sinai, Zion, and Calvary, what do we have? Where are we? The author of Hebrews would say that, in a theological sense, we are gathered here today on Mount Zion. We Christians are back in the paradise of Eden thanks to the blood Jesus shed on Calvary. We stand ready to receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken, as the kingdom of heaven is beyond the sifting that takes place in this world. And as we gather here to worship, we are, in the words of Hebrews “to give thanks, by which we offer to God our acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.”

Each of the three mountains, Sinai, Zion, and Calvary, is a place to fill you with awe. From the darkness hovering over Sinai, to the incense shrouded sanctuary in the Temple on Zion, to the darkness enveloped Calvary, each speaks of an encounter with the Holy.

In the series of children’s books, The Chronicles of Narnia, the lion Aslan represents Jesus. One of the children in the books asks if the lion Aslan is safe. He is told, “Oh no, he is not tame, but he is good.” Yes, we can sing, “What a friend we have in Jesus” and mean it, but a true encounter with the Holy invokes in us reverence and awe. God is awful in the sense of filling us with a sense of awe.

The judgment of God is not the judgment of an uncaring Lord who looks down on you with contempt for falling short of all the demands made on you. The judgment of God comes as we encounter pure love. In encountering pure love, we see, all too clearly, the ways we have failed God in not living into that love. Judgment comes as we, ourselves, realize how we have disappointed God. That will be an awful encounter with an awe-full, loving God.

There is no barrier between you and God. You do not need Moses on Sinai or the priests on Zion. You have Jesus the Christ on Calvary. Jesus is not safe or tame. Jesus is good. Jesus’ blood speaks a better word than Abel’s blood or the sprinkled blood of thousands of sacrifices. We can approach the living God here and now. You can awe-filled encounter God through prayer, through song, and through the bread and wine of communion. But approach with reverence and awe, for our God is an awe-full God.

Amen.