Gordon McPhee
John 1: 47-51
WAS GOD THERE, AND YOU DIDN’T KNOW IT?
Scripture: Genesis 28:10-17 [MSG]
Jacob left Beersheba and went to Haran. He came to a certain place and camped for the night since the sun had set. He took one of the stones there, set it under his head and lay down to sleep. And he dreamed: A stairway was set on the ground and it reached all the way to the sky; angels of God were going up and going down on it.
Then God was right before him, saying, “I am God, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. I’m giving the ground on which you are sleeping to you and to your descendants. Your descendants will be as the dust of the Earth; they’ll stretch from west to east and from north to south. All the families of the Earth will bless themselves in you and your descendants. Yes. I’ll stay with you, I’ll protect you wherever you go, and I’ll bring you back to this very ground. I’ll stick with you until I’ve done everything I promised you.”
Jacob woke up from his sleep. He said, “God is in this place—truly. And I didn’t even know it!” He was terrified. He whispered in awe, “Incredible. Wonderful. Holy. This is God’s House. This is the Gate of Heaven.”
WELCOME:
Today is St Michael and All Angels Sunday, and September 29th, today, is also known as Michaelmas. St Michael is actually referring to the archangel Michael who comes up in the Book of Daniel and in Revelation. Tradition says he is the leader of all the angels and has four responsibilities. First as the leader of the Army of God. He also gets Christian souls and leads them to heaven and approaches the dying to give them a last-minute chance to repent and be saved. Last, but not least for us, he is the defender of God’s people, the Jews first and then all of us. So, a pretty important guy to both know about and show some respect to as we do today, both to Archangel St. Michael and all the angels.
Also, today is the Sunday we acknowledge the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation which occurs tomorrow. It is a way for the Anglican communities to acknowledge their part in the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools and honours the children who never returned home and Survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities.
Let's pray and ask God to bless our worship today …
SERMON: WAS GOD THERE, AND YOU DIDN’T KNOW IT?
Our Old Testament reading this morning is that well-known story of Jacob’s ladder. One of those inserted dream sequences that pervade both scripture and movies, which unfortunately results in us not taking these things too seriously. When was the last time you had a really significant dream that wasn’t attributable to a big meal enjoyed too close to bedtime or some very ripe cheese? As a norm, we don’t bring the stuff of our dreams into the concrete reality of our daily lives. Someone might suggest you need to see a shrink while by the same token, the most famous psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud, placed great significance on the connection between dreams and real life. But let's try to suspend our uncertainties and look at this story afresh. We may find there is more for us here than we might dream of.
To start, this story can be looked at as a completely allegorical insertion by the author and I dare say some of the commentaries I reviewed were running off into far-flung fancies in every possible avenue of theology and inspirational appeal; which is not to disparage their insights and efforts particularly if they back them up with sound secondary references to scripture. However, the story of Jacob’s Ladder has plenty of content on its own merit.
Jacob is and has been for a long time, immersed in a world of lies and deception. We might put some blame on his mother, Rebecca, who encouraged him to lie to and deceive his Father, Isaac, stealing his brother Esau’s blessing. But it was on his own much earlier that Jacob coerced his brother in a moment of weakness to give up to him his birthright. At this moment where we join him in the story, he is running away from his brother Esau who wants to kill him and get back what he gave away. But even this is done under the pretense invented by Rebecca that she can’t bear it if he marries a local woman and he must return to her father’s family in Haran, far to the east, to find a wife.
One commentator, Carol Penner, caught the essence of the situation perfectly saying, “If there was a vote, Jacob would have been voted, ‘Man least likely to be given a vision from God.’” His life was a mess and of the worst kind. One of his own making. Far from home and family, alone, heading to a place of strangers he had never been. Bereft of everything he thought he had secured for himself by his clever manipulations. And as we know from the story he learns very little from both this experience and the battle of deception and lies he wages with Laban his uncle. We see instantly where Rebecca gets it from. Deceit is a family trait and Laban does it better than Jacob, at least initially.
But that’s a story for another sermon. Today, we have hard-headed Jacob so completely bankrupt that he is using a rock for a pillow. It’s a wonder he even got any sleep let alone dreamt. He must have been exhausted because he did sleep and he did dream. “A stairway was set on the ground and it reached all the way to the sky; angels of God were going up and going down on it.”
There are two things to notice about the ladder. First, it was “set on the ground.” It had an absolute, unmoving, grounded physical presence in this world. It was something concrete and real, something you could find if you looked for it. If you knew where it was, it would be there the next time you came to it. This certainty is why, in the continuing verses we didn’t read, Jacob sets up the rock he slept on as a marker, a memorial, of this place. God had fixed a temporal presence for Jacob in that place.
The second thing to notice is the other end of the ladder. I don’t know about you but I don’t like heights and particularly climbing high ladders. I very carefully ensure the top of the ladder is well placed on something solid and secure. Not so Jacob’s ladder. It is not a ladder for us to ascend or descend as the angels on Jacob’s ladder are. “It reached all the way to the sky.” Ostensibly, so high Jacob couldn’t see what it was resting on. This is one allegory that is sure. The top of the ladder reached a place that was not temporal, solid or what we would call real. It reached heaven and the seat of God’s throne because suddenly, “God was right before him.”
Angel is not a proper name for a heavenly being. It’s a Greek word pronounced ‘Angelos’ meaning messenger that the translators don’t translate into English, they just leave it in the Greek transliteration because it carries more mystique and significance than saying messenger. Jacob’s dream is telling him, and us, that God is listening and responding. I like using the description ‘messengers’ rather than angels in this case. “Messengers of God were going up and going down on it.” We suddenly grasp the idea of a constant conversation occurring. Jacob, like us, no matter how desperate and lonely his situation may have appeared, was not alone.
God was right there, His ladder secured to that little piece of ground Jacob had set his stone pillow on; aware he was there, listening to his fears and misgivings and answering them. “I am God, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. I’m giving the ground on which you are sleeping to you and to your descendants. Your descendants will be as the dust of the Earth; they’ll stretch from west to east and from north to south. All the families of the Earth will bless themselves in you and your descendants.”
God first establishes his relationship with Jacob. He is not some apparition or impersonal god whom Jacob may have heard of from people his family encountered as they travelled. No, this was the very self-same God whom he’d heard his father speak to him about. The God who, as incredible as it may have sounded to Jacob at the time of hearing it, spoke directly to his father Isaac. This was the same God who he had been told spoke to Abraham, his grandfather. And now, this God was speaking to him.
And incredible as it may seem God restates to Jacob the same promises of faithfulness and blessing that He made to Abraham and Isaac. This lying, cheating, thieving upstart with nothing but a rock for a pillow is going to be given all the land under his feet and, his descendants will number like the dust of the earth and, “all the families of the Earth will bless themselves” in them. Obedient Abraham whose faith was counted to him as righteousness and quiet, compliant Isaac we might understand, but this Jacob. What is God doing, he’s not even the eldest, the rightful heir and certainly not eligible because of his sterling character.
“What is God doing?” is the right question to ask. “Yes. I’ll stay with you, I’ll protect you wherever you go, and I’ll bring you back to this very ground. I’ll stick with you until I’ve done everything I promised you.” God says. This isn’t about Jacob. This is something God is doing and even with Abraham and Isaac, it’s always been about something God is doing. God is going to be faithful to Jacob, even if Jacob isn’t faithful to God, and certainly, till now he hasn’t been. God is going to protect him everywhere he goes, not just when Jacob goes where God wants him to go. And no matter how lost, confused, or mixed up Jacob becomes God is going to bring him right back to this spot Jacob prophetically calls, “the Gate of Heaven.”
This is something God is doing and as the Psalmist says, it is marvellous in our eyes. “I’ll stick with you until I’ve done everything I promised you.” That’s God’s promise to us, his chosen people. As Paul tells us we are the descendants of Abraham, the children of the promise, as Jacob also was. And God will stick with us till He’s done everything He’s promised. What a hope to hold on to.
But, as with all dreams, Jacob woke up from his sleep. However, it’s here I think he did much better than many of us do today. He said, “God is in this place—truly. And I didn’t even know it!” Now truly, he didn’t understand the import of what he was saying. But he got the crucial part right, God was there. He seems to have stopped at this little spot of land with his stone pillow on it, not realizing that God, as He promised, would be everywhere with him. He understood enough to be terrified and to whisper in awe.
We so seldom grasp, in our own lives, that God is in this place. We focus our attention on the temporal things where our stone pillow is placed and we never are very sure if we’ve set up camp on our journey of life in a place that is “Incredible. Wonderful. Holy. … God’s House.” The famous preacher Charles H. Spurgeon got it right saying, “The God of Bethel is a God who does concern himself with the things of earth, not a God who shuts himself up in heaven, but God who hath a ladder fixed between heaven and earth.” As we read in John 1:51 this morning Jesus told Nathanael, “You’re going to see heaven open and God’s angels descending to the Son of Man and ascending again.” Jesus Messiah is the ladder between heaven and earth. He is the access to heaven; the means by which heaven comes down to us and by which we can go to heaven. He does not show us the ladder, He is the ladder, the way to heaven, as he said in John 14:6, “I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me.”
When was the last time you felt like a lying, deceiving, cheating, lone, pauper, refugee, abandoned in this world like Jacob, resting alone on a pillow of stone? You don’t need to be any of those terrible things, but you still may feel that way. Probably more often than we care to admit.
Did you know Jesus was there with you? Can you hear him saying to you, “Yes. I’ll stay with you, I’ll protect you wherever you go, and I’ll bring you back to this very ground. I’ll stick with you until I’ve done everything I promised you.” Was God there, and you didn’t know it?
Amen
