Sermon: A ladder from heaven to earth.

             May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be now and always

            acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen. 

 

How dreadful is this place; this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

 

I don’t think of Jacob as a dreamer. That will come later in the Joseph stories in Genesis. Rather, Jacob is a schemer, a fixer, a bit of a rogue. He stole the birthright that properly belonged to his brother Esau; he dressing up as his brother and so mischievously grasped his father’s blessing. And Esau was rightly furious, and so we have a family at war with itself.  And so Jacob has to run away.

 

There is a real sense that Jacob was living without God. Frank Sinatra’s I did it my way would be a very good signature song for him. And so on his journey to ‘God knows where’ – at night Jacob lay down to sleep, but the narrative reminds us that he was in a comfortless, unsettled place. He took some rocks as pillows, hard, cold, restless.  But he had a dream – he saw a ladder, a staircase, a series of steps, reaching from earth to heaven, and he saw angels, celestial beings, God’s messengers, ascending and descending the ladder. Jacob was far from God and yet God was very close to him. Jacob was earth-bound, we might say ‘secular’, but suddenly he found heaven to be present – to be here -  not way up there, but reaching down – right here. And it got even stranger. Because at the top of the ladder stood God himself, and incredibly, God then began to speak. And God made the same promise he had once made to Jacob’s grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac – he would give the promised land to his children, he would make his family as numerous as the dust of the earth – and we have to remember that at this time Jacob had no wife, no children – and that in him all the families of the earth will be blessed – a promise that was fulfilled wonderfully in Jesus.

 

And then more intimately, God says to him: ‘Jacob, I am with you, I will keep you or watch over you, and wherever you wander, I will bring you back to this place, and I will keep my promises’.

 

Jacob awoke and yes, it was a dream, but so much more than a dream.  He realized that in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, God was here. That God is here, all of the time – even when we do not know it, even when we banish him from our minds and even our hearts, God is here with us. And Jacob is overwhelmed by what we call ‘holy fear’. He trembles and perhaps in a low voice, slowly and hesitantly, utters the words: ‘How dreadful, how awesome, how overwhelming, is this place. This is none other than Beth-el, the house of God; this is the very gate of heaven.’ And to mark the spot of this revelation, this disclosure, Jacob took the stones that had been his pillows, and made them a pillar which he anointed with oil to make that pillar holy.

 

And Jacob was changed. You know it wasn’t that Jacob found God, it was God that found Jacob, and so he found himself. Jacob now knew who he was; that God cared for him, loved him, that he had an amazing security because God was with him.

 

Well, the story is dramatic isn’t it, but in talking with many people of faith, I have heard so often stories of how, like Jacob, when we least expect it, God reveals to us his presence and his love.  I have just read a new biography of a former Bishop of Durham called Ian Ramsey. Ramsey died in 1972, it is said through over-work, and he was greatly loved. I remember him, because he confirmed me as a twelve year old.

Ramsey used the word ‘disclosure’ a lot. He had a conviction that suddenly through all kinds of life experiences, the truth of God can suddenly flash into our minds. At Durham Cathedral on the anniversary of his enthronement we use the following prayer:

 

            Lord God almighty,

            your truth cannot be contained in words alone,

            though by them we hear a whisper of your ways:

            grant that we who commemorate your servant Ian Ramsey,

            in seeking you, may be led to a disclosure of your glory,

and so come to serve you faithfully all our days;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

You know, sometimes as a priest I wonder – is God really with me or am I deluding myself?  It happens when times are pressured and I feel discouraged or simply tired. Twice in recent months, out of the blue, I have felt an urge to go and visit someone and on both occasions I have found myself present at a critical moment in their lives.

And I can only say that this was a disclosure, a divine prompting, and a sign of God’s abiding presence with me.

 

These moments are precious. I love the poetry of William Wordsworth, the great Lake-land nature poet of the nineteenth century. In his magnificent, and I think his greatest poem, Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth speaks of experiences of beauty that bring not only

 

                                                            ‘……the sense

            Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

            That in this moment there is life and food

            For future years.’

 

What is given once is a gift that can be recalled; and recalled in times of perplexity, times of doubt and so restoring; to quote Wordsworth again,

 

                                                ‘…that blessed mood,

            In which the burthen of the mystery,

            In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world, is lightened.’

 

Jacob built a pillar at Bethel and to that pillar he returned, to restore the memory of that encounter with God, to hear again in his mind and his heart those words of love and promise; that moment when he discovered God’s presence and he discovered himself.

 

And so the truth of today’s lesson from Genesis is this. God is with you; he is here, he is closer than close. Even if you feel he is miles away, he is here, and he invites to share in the blessing of Jacob, the blessings that come to us through our Lord Jesus Christ. My prayer is that God in his mercy will grant you a disclosure of his glory, and that that disclosure, that reality, will sustain you as you recall it and come back to it in future years. And through our worship today may we repeat with a sense of holy fear those great words of faith:

 

How dreadful is this place; this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.