The view from the mountain

I’m sitting in a tea house deep in the mountains of Nepal as I write this, part of a team called Everest for Kids that’s hiking to the Mt. Everest base camp. Our goal is to raise money so children whose families can’t afford the fees will be able to spend a week at one of our great MB camps in B.C.

It turns out we’re also on a journey back in time. The Nepali tea house network is a relic of the old salt trade between Tibet and India. Even with modern concessions such as micro fabrics and occasional faint solar/battery powered electric lights, we’ve been transported into an ancient world, governed by what a person can carry on their back and regulated by the light and heat of the sun.

When the sun slips behind the frozen, towering peaks, we huddle in dimly lit tea houses, balancing the benefit of the yak dung stove’s meagre warmth with the fact that the sparse oxygen supply has been compromised further and displaced with a dry choking soot. By 8 p.m. the battle is mostly over and we retreat to our sleeping cocoons until it’s bright enough to begin walking again.

We’re in the alpine summer pastures of the Himalayan mountain people, and in spite of our obtrusive presence, life around us goes on much as it has for thousands of years.

We realize we’ve been transported back into the world of the Bible. We read the 23rd psalm and remember the young goat herders with their flocks we passed. These were David’s colleagues of 3,000 years ago.

A day’s journey takes on new meaning. We pass many “stables” such as the one in which Jesus was born. A fellow traveller – a western pagan – tells us how Jesus’ story of the millstone hanging around the neck came to life for him when he saw the working millstones in the lowlands.

We celebrated Easter here. This too was journey to a foreign place. Our celebration of Jesus’ resurrection took place among fluttering Buddhist prayer flags, meditations carved into the rocks, prayer wheels turned by the passing sherpas and porters. None of our familiar rituals have any intrinsic meaning in this place.

We have a few minutes to explain our celebration to our sherpa. It’s a revealing exercise and exactly what the first messengers of the gospel faced. No background, no history, just a simple explanation of the good news from scratch.

The message? God loves people! What a message to those who live under the leering glares of gods who are not gods. In the shadow of those angry glares we carry the good news that God not only loves people, but that he offers new beginnings. Jesus’ resurrection is the proof. Easter really means something. It’s clear, it’s simple, it’s profound. This is the world for which the gospel was designed!

This is a good, and in some ways exhilarating, place to be. As much as we fight against the cold, the dark, the altitude sickness, there’s a relevance to the biblical story that comes to us in a new way. We are literally at the ends of our world, carrying the message of Jesus.

Alongside this exhilaration comes a sobering thought. This isn’t our home and these are not our people; we’re visitors here. While we must try to demonstrate God’s love to our sherpas and porters, the first challenge God has given to us is to explain the gospel to the pagans who live next door.

Pagans like our fellow traveller, moved by the sight of the millstone but somehow failing to understand Jesus’ warning.

Pagans like the stream of western trekkers who travel the path to the highest mountain on earth but don’t pause to reflect on the significance of Jesus’ resurrection.

Pagans like the curious western visitors watching Buddhist monks perform their daily prayers, mesmerized by their severe piety.

Our real homes are warm and comfortable. Soon a day’s travel will mean little to us again. Our shepherds are idyllic, stylized figures. But none of that really matters. We too live in a culture for which the gospel was designed.

We may not live under the carvings of angry gods but the message that God loves people and offers new beginnings is just as important to the teachers, professionals, students, and retirees who walk beside us on the trail and live next door to us, as it is to the sherpas, porters, laundry women, and shepherds we pass. This is the message we’re commissioned to explain.

This is the challenge we’ll come home with.

James Toews is pastor at Neighbourhood Church, Nanaimo, B.C.