6/14/53

Scripture: (Read Psalm 121)

Text: Obadiah, verse 3; “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?”

Something about a high hill, or a mountain, excites the imagination of many people, and beckons some to climb. The Israelites of Biblical times used to sing, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills” and immediately reminded themselves that their help came from the Lord who created those hills, and all the earth. Their neighbors, the Samaritans, carried the idea further by insisting that it was better to worship God on a mountain than in a temple erected in ever-so-fine a city.

Take a group of boys camping among hills, or in the canyons of some mountain area, and see how soon they are scrambling to get to the top of the nearest hill. They just have to see the top of it; and, if they are unprepared, may have, for their own safety, to be restrained from going headlong right on toward the crest of the next hill above it.

I recall a high, and slender, formation in a valley of the West Maui mountains in Hawaii, called the Iao Valley Needle. Viewed from down stream, one would suppose it to be so precipitous as to be absolutely unscalable. But viewed from upstream at a different angle, the eye detected slopes that excited the possibility that one could, with care, strength and time, get to the top. And it was said that one party had made the climb. A young high school age fellow from Virginia, visiting the island more than 35 years ago, was fired with a wild desire to get to the top of that “needle.” He challenged me to climb it with him on the last day of his stay there (I was about 30 at the time.) And so we tried it. After working for nearly a half day we knew we must turn back, for he was to sail on a steamer that night. At the highest point of our climb, he was sure we were near the top -- that it was just over that hump ahead. I was equally sure that we could not be over halfway up, if that far. Reluctantly, he tied his white handkerchief to the top of a ti plant where it could be seen from below, and we worked our way back down. Looking back later, we could see that handkerchief no more than one-third of the way to the top. We had worked over the easiest third of the distance to the summit! Fully two-thirds of the distance to the top was unconquered!

Many grown men, and some women, will go to extraordinary lengths of preparation and endurance, to scale a particularly high and inaccessible mountain. A man who had suffered serious damage to his hands and feet, crippling him for life, nevertheless showed no regret. He had know the mountain climber’s satisfaction of having reached the top of one of nature’s most inaccessible heights. And the freezing of his hands and feet on the perilous return trip was a price he paid without complaint, for that conquest.

At a time when Britain’s queen was being crowned, and her coronation was crowding the space in every newspaper, it was also front page news at the same time that at long last a party of climbers had reached the summit of Mount Everest, highest mountain peak in the world. For years upon end, people have tried to scale that mountain. Modest fortunes have been spent in equipment and preparation. Numerous folk have died in the attempt. Scores, perhaps hundreds, have manned the camps along the way up, which have been absolutely essential to the effort of two or three of the hardiest individuals who might make the summit. Now at last a party had reported success. And during the next weeks, they would be patiently and persistently and perilously making their way back down the wild slopes to safety and fame.

Why do people try to scale the heights of a mountain? Why do they try other heights of prominence in living? Why does anybody want to go to the moon? What is this urge to attempt the difficult and to try the well-nigh impossible?

Perhaps it is a part of growing. And all of us grow, so long as we live. Children grow swiftly, like the budding of leaves in spring, and the opening of blossoms in summer. Youth surges forward to maturity in experience and accomplishment. People can and should grow even in advanced age. For every age has its changes. And each change is fraught with the possibility of some kind of betterment. Someone remarked that the older the missionary Stanley Jones got, the better man be became. And he was quite a man, for quite a day! Of course there are perils and temptations in the way of the various kinds of climbing and aspiration which we try. We had better be aware of them.

If you want to read one of the really short books of the Bible, try Obadiah. The Old Testament book of Obadiah has only one chapter, of 21 verses. It is little known to most of us, and we pay more attention to the books of greater length and more easily understood precept. Frank E. Gaebeleim, who was headmaster of StonyBrook School at StonyBrook, New York, gave this book of the Bible, and its background, some serious study. The third verse of the book had intrigued his attention: Here is how it reads: “The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, whose dwelling is high, who say in your heart, ‘who will bring me down to the ground?’” These words, it seems, were written about 2500 years ago. For their understanding, we turn our imagination from the green beauty and clear lakes of Wisconsin to the barren hills of Palestine in the Near East.

The Holy Land has mountainous country, and is marked by great extremes of topographical relief. To the north of that land is Mount Herman, nearly 10,000 feet high, with snow streaking its summit. Some revere it as the traditional site of the transfiguration. Then there is the deeply cleft valley of the Jordan River, winding down from the Lake of Galilee to the Dead Sea, 1,292 feet below the level of the Mediterranean Ocean. The Dead Sea is called the lowest body of water on the land-surface of the earth. To the south of the Dead Sea is a parched wilderness said to be something like the Dakota Badlands -- a region of desert and weirdly-shaped rock. In the midst of that wilderness is set the remains of a city very strange to us. It is a city of an old world. Isaiah called it Sela, and it was later known as Petra. This city was the capital of Edom, the nation descended from Esau. And when you remember the enmity that grew up between the brothers Esau and Jacob over Jacob’s trickery and Esau’s carelessness of the birthright from their father, Isaac, you can understand the implacable enmity that existed between Edom, descended from Esau, and the twelve tribes of Israel, descended from Jacob.

The site of this remarkable city was lost to modern knowledge until 1812. In that year, Johann Ludwig Burkhardt, a Swiss archaeologist, disguised as an Arab, and guided by natives on the pretense of seeking the tomb of Aaron, rediscovered it. After following a certain canyon, so narrow in places that men might proceed only in single file, Burkhardt’s party came upon a city carved out of the very rock of the canyon. He saw the elaborate facades of great buildings, vast ruins clinging to the cliffs of rock in brilliant red color.

This was Petra, described by a poet as a “rose red city, half as old as time” It was against this city of Petra that Obadiah spoke. In so doing, he set his finger on that deadly sin, perhaps the deadliest of all sins, pride. “The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, whose dwelling is high, who say in your heart, ‘who will bring me down to the ground?’”

An experienced mountain climber translates this strange text, coming out of the driest of Palestinian hills, into modern times. He considers the danger of pride in mountain-climbing. Of course he does not refer to the innocent and commendable feeling of accomplishment which anyone has after a good climb, either among the hills of a mountain range or up any other worthy hill of human dignity. That kind of satisfaction is a valid reward of a job well done -- the pride of good craftsmanship.

But there is another kind of pride that inserts its way into climbing. It is the attitude that violates the rules of safety, and plays fast and loose with ethics, in order to gain a summit, or to out-do another party. It is the pride that overestimates man and underestimates mountain. It has led to many a tragedy in the high places. It is necessary to remember that one who is not humbled by a great mountain, who has not felt his own human littleness and his dependence on something greater than himself, has missed the message of the mountains.

Here and there, one finds a person who seems arrogant at the surmounting of a great obstacle, or the opening of a great discovery. But, by and large, those who have accomplished a truly great piece of climbing are surprisingly humble of spirit. If they had not been so they would likely have been killed by false pride long before history had any chance to record their great achievements.

Pilgrims from Europe to New England gave thanks for the chance to climb freely, by the grace of God. And they started a custom of thanksgiving which we still try as a nation to remember. Not every party of mountaineers literally falls to their knees or sings a song of praise to Almighty God when reaching such a height as the summit of Mount McKinley. But most climbers, breathing the clear, rarefied air, and viewing the scenes, near and distant, from a mountain peak of their own careful scaling, feel a sense of awe and reverent respect for a greatness that is all but oblivious to their own carefully-hoarded and carefully-expended strength.

Let us look beyond ourselves, in this setting of Wisconsin beauty, or from the summit of our mountain peaks of accomplishment. One of the delights of high climbing is a vast view, unfolding other hills and valleys to a panoramic gaze. By implication, we can see that this word of Obadiah, and indeed the Bible as a whole, bids us look at the world from higher ground than the sidewalks of ordinary life.

What, then, is this “pride of heart” of which the prophet spoke in reference to Petra so long ago? Is it not the very spirit of our age? It is the spirit of all who say in effect: “We can get along very well without God, thank you.” It is a spirit vividly expressed in a poem called “Mastery” by Sara Teasdale, who writes:

I would not have a god come in

To shield me suddenly from sin,

And set my house of life to rights;

Nor angels with bright burning wings

Ordering my earthly thoughts and things;

Rather my own frail guttering lights

Windblown and nearly beaten out,

Rather the terror of the nights

And long sick groping after doubt.

Rather be lost than let my soul

Slip vaguely from my own control -

Of my own spirit let me be

In sole, though feeble, mastery.

Well, if each of us had the integrity of a god, perhaps it were happy and well for us to want no aid save our own pride in ordering all our lives. However, none of us are that good!

Time was, when I used to sing, with more gusto than intelligence, the “Invictus” which ends, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” But by this time I have had the God of things as they are say “No” to me often enough; and patiently, persistently, say to me, “This way,” often enough to make me more fully aware that I’m not genius enough to know all the right answers, even for myself - let alone for anybody else.

Obadiah speaks of a pride of heart that not only repudiates God, but goes on to forget Him entirely. It arrogates to itself the glory which belongs to the deity. Through trust in self, it by-passes the rightful worship of God and ignores His redemption.

It is easy for our democracy to criticize a communist state for its atheism, while there is an appalling amount of atheism by default among us. At the same time, it is extremely sobering to note that at a time when a large proportion of our nation is nominally to be found in the membership of the churches, we tend to a reaction that puts on the blinds and hobbles the feet of liberal thinking. Must we endure a growing thought control - we who have so detested that kind of thing in totalitarian nations? Are men to be allowed to decide what conscience for all shall be? Have we lost our basic trust in free, adventurous climbing after truth in a democratic, cooperative, interdependent frame of living?

Our Bible bids us look to the hills, and beyond them to the Lord of the hills, for it is from the Maker of the hills that our help comes. To do this is not merely advisable; it is essential! If we do not do this, our love of nature is a snare; if we do not do this, our democracy, like all other governments, falls into the tyranny of man’s wrongful pride.

We’ve been told by some that this atomic age is the most important time in the history of the earth. It is not. The most important time in history was some 1900 years ago when a young man named Jesus, who loved the hills and went to them to pray and meditate, lived a marvelously perfected life for 33 years, died for God’s righteousness and for all of us, and has reappeared in the experience of uncounted redeemed souls ever since.

It is nothing less than the spirit of faith that, acknowledging our human need and God’s gracious provision for our need, looks for salvation and peace and power to the Lord of the hills who alone is our Strength and our Redeemer.

(end)

-------------------

Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, June 14, 1953

Wisconsin Rapids, June 2, 1968

Wood County Infirmary, June 26, 1968

Mellen, Wisconsin, August 3, 1969

Babcock and Nekoosa, Wisconsin, August 10, 1969

Waioli Hiu’ia Church, January 30, 1972