“JACOB’S
LADDER”
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A sermon preached Readings: Genesis
28:10-17, Mark 1:9-13 |
“Jacob…had a
dream: there was a ladder,
planted on the ground with its top reaching to heaven”
(Genesis 28:12, NJB)
“Climbing Jacob’s Ladder…”
On
a day when we baptise two Jacobs,
it seemed a good time to revisit this famous story of their namesake Jacob
It’s
a story which has inspired Christians down through the ages –
Maybe as a child you may have sung:
“We are climbing Jacob's
ladder
Ev'ry rung
goes higher, higher
Makes the climbing harder, harder
Life's a journey on
this ladder…”
- and so on.
It’s
a theme which echoes all the way back to St John Climacos,
who wrote one of the best sellers of the 7th Century -
It was called “The
Ladder of Divine Ascent”
And describes a ladder with 30 rungs–
each rung a step on the spiritual journey.
It
is still read during this Lenten season in Eastern Orthodox monasteries.
The
book inspired many Orthodox icons
showing people climbing Jacobs Ladder -
with angels and devils flying around them -
the angels with halos and big
shining wings,
the devils with stunted dark wings and tails –
Some people are climbing up the ladder,
others are hanging precariously with devils tugging at their heels.
Well there is much food for thought here -
not just for our two Jacobs, but for us all at the start of Lent –
In a world of property ladders and career ladders,
Lent is a season for us to climb in other ways -
taking new steps in spiritual growth,
embarking on the steep and rugged pathway.
And – if this is not too fanciful - we could even see
Jacob’s ladder as some sort of latter day spiritual beanstalk -
our ultimate aim being to climb like Jack to the top
and there defeat the giant/devil and all his works…
Well, as we reflect this Lent on Jesus in the
wilderness,
fighting the devil and finding God’s way,
there is much here to meditate on here.
Unfortunately, it isn’t a very good sermon on Jacob,
because it actually misses the whole point of the Genesis passage.
So let’s start again
Firstly a minor point of correction - it wasn’t a ladder at all –
they didn’t really go in for ladders in the middle east
3700 years ago.
It was almost certainly a Ziggurat –
one of those things looking a bit like an Egyptian pyramid with steps up the
outside –
So forget the idea of Jacob popping into B&Q
to get the ladder of his dreams –
We are here talking serious staircase – and that is
the word used in a lot of modern translations.
But the main point of correction is much more
important.
Think for a minute about the story of Jacob’s dream
–
Question: how far up the ladder did
Jacob go in his dream?
Answer: he didn’t go up it at all – he wasn’t even on the ladder-
The ladder is not filled
with people like Jacob climbing to heaven.
It is filled with angels going up and down –
In other words the dream is not about us
climbing up to heaven at all
it is about the angels (God’s messengers) coming down to earth.
The next
thing to say is
(and I think this is actually encouraging for our two Jacobs today) -
Jacob was not a monk or a holy man –
indeed he was frankly more than a bit of a rogue.
Our two baptismal babes have second names Stephen
and Samuel –
And if you are looking for symbols of the holy life
to follow,
that’s where you need to look -
But Jacob? –
He is hardly saintly material.
Jacob has cheated his brother Esau
Esau must have been a bit dim because he’s allowed
Jacob to diddle him out of his birthright for a mess of pottage
Jacob then cons a blessing out of his father Isaac –
(whose mind is not dim, but whose eyes are - short sighted)
by pretending to be “an hairy man”
(Maybe there is scope for another sermon there? But I digress)
So Jacob is a swindler on the run from his brother,
camping out asleep under the stars on the run.
Jacob is clearly no saint about to climb any ladder
of perfection-
- to be frank
he’s not the sort of guy you’d buy a second hand camel from…
But it is to this Jacob that God sends angels
to protect him and promise him blessing even while he sleeps!
God
doesn’t say
“Come on up to the top of the ladder of perfection
and you shall be blessed”
Rather – like Jesus talking to the disciples in Gethsemane,
God says to Jacob “Sleep on and take your rest” (Mt 26:45),
and though you sleep the sleep of the unjust,
I will fashion a stairway of stone and a cross of wood
I will love bless and protect you.
So what does God say to our Jacobs this morning?
Does he say
“Are
you worthy to baptised?”
“How far up the ladder of perfection have you climbed?”
“Do you deserve my love?”
No – God says to our Jacobs,
as he said to their namesake near 4,000 years ago –
“I will send my angels to protect you
not because of your virtue,
but because of my love.”
Indeed, it doesn’t even matter if like Jacob of old,
you are fast asleep,
totally unaware of what is going on,
I will still bless you.
And that is why in this Church we practise infant
baptism –
Because even whilst we sleep in our parents’ arms,
before we even know God is there,
already he has lowered the ladder
and sent angels to guard us.
“Matthew Mark Luke and John,
Bless the bed that I lay on.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head,
One to watch and one to
pray,
And two to bear my soul
away.”
Jacob may only have had a stone pillow
but he suddenly finds that his bed for the night,
this ordinary overnight camping place
Has become filled with God –
it is holy ground.
And
we need to tell our children that wherever they walk and roam
- even when they seem overwhelmed by the hubbub of everyday life and by its
fears and sorrows -
they will be treading holy ground
- always closer than they know
to the ladder’s end and to heaven’s gate.
In one of his poems Francis Thompson
describes people
overwhelmed by the chaos and sorrow of everyday life -
Yet finding in their need the light of the angelic host –
“But (when so sad thou canst no sadder)
Cry; - and upon thy so sore loss
Shall
shine the traffic on Jacob's ladder
Pitched between Heaven and
Charing Cross.
So be you in sin, sorrow or
sleep, you stand on holy ground,
God’s angels are descending about you.
And there are no congestion charges for angel
traffic.
And so it was that God blessed Jacob –
and said I am the God of Abraham and Isaac –
so I will bless you and your family for all time –
(And remember incidentally
that grandfather Abraham came from Ur –
in modern Iraq -
are we really to mark Lent by blessing with bombs?
Pray God it may not be.
Charing Cross, Baghdad,
Exeter – all holy places,
potentially gateways to heaven….
let us pray they do not this Lent open rather a gate into hell…)
And
God says to Jacob – I am the God of your fathers –
so you too have my blessing –
And here today to our Jacobs he says:
I am the God of your parents – of Rob and Kate, of Stephen and Dawn -
so assuredly will I bless you and your family, past present and future.
So here God says to everyone
of us
·
As in a desert wilderness long ago I sent angels to minister to Jacob
on the run,
·
As in a desert wilderness long ago I sent angels to minister to Jesus wrestling
with his destiny
So in the wilderness of this
life, will I send angels to minister to you.
A final thought – from of George Eliot’s “Silas Marner”
If you remember the story,
Silas Marner is the old Methodist weaver who is a
miser –
he is a bit like Jacob – he has failed to look beyond material gain,
and his life is the poorer for it.
But his life is wondrously transformed by an orphan
girl called Eppie
whom he adopts and brings up as
his own.
Silas Marner never saw a
vision of angels –
But his guardian angel came in the form of that
little girl.
As George Eliot puts it (at the end of chapter 14):
”In old days there were
angels
who came and took men by the hand
and led them away from the city of destruction.
We see no white-winged angels now.
But yet men are led away from threatening destruction:
a hand is put into theirs,
which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land,
so that they look no more backward;
and the hand may be a little child's.
When someone says to Jack or Jacob - “What a little
angel he is”,
I hope you will make that a prayer and a wish –
For God has sent his angels to us all
And now he calls us to respond to his love – How?
By ourselves becoming angels (God’s messengers) –
I
pray for our two Jacobs here, for their parents, and for us all,
that we may grow in God’s love
and in thanksgiving learn what it means to be a guardian angel,
and that we may thus learn how to
lead others from the city of destruction to the gates of heaven.