Genesis 28:10-19a; John 1:35-51
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Since a very
early age I’ve had a fascination for ecclesiastic architecture and, to be more
precise, the wonderful heritage of our English cathedrals. Being brought up in North Lincolnshire, I was
very familiar with the edifice which is Lincoln Cathedral – after all it often
used to mark the beginning of our journey to our summer holiday destination.
Once beyond Lincoln, we were on less familiar territory as we journeyed south
to the warmer climes of the English Channel coastal resorts or the west country. Lincoln Cathedral stands on a hill dominating
the city and the surrounding countryside and never fails to impress. The three tall towers with their twelve
pinnacles soaring heavenward. Indeed,
for me it was a glimpse of heaven.
As we passed
through towns and cities on our journey – there few motorways and by-passes in
those days - I would always ask the same three questions – Is this a city? Does
it have a cathedral? Can we stop and see
it? My parents would generally oblige
and I built up an amazing collection of Pitkin
Pride guides as holiday souvenirs.
One of our
holiday destinations used to be Torquay – well Brixham to be more precise – and
on that trip I remember visiting Exeter Cathedral, Wells Cathedral (with the
swans that ring a bell) and Bath Abbey (I was never sure whether that was a
cathedral or not). I still have the
guide books. On the front of the one for
Bath Abbey is a photograph of the west front depicting, in stone, Jacobs’
Ladder with the twelve apostles ascending and descending up and down its
rungs. I still remember to this day how
impressive this appeared to me.
The
stonemasons of the Abbey had imagined the ladder as having rungs; probably
modelling it on the ladders they themselves must have used to carve it - but
the ladder or staircase in Jacob’s dream, an account of which we had read to us
in the first lesson, has been depicted in many ways by painters and often
illustrated as a winding stairway or steep path up the side of a hillside or
mountain. One such famous depiction is by our own English painter and writer,
William Blake who may be nearer the truth than those Bath masons. In the time of Jacob, it was common in
Mesopotamia, or modern day Iraq, to build ziggurats – small sloping towers
inside which were staircases leading up to a small temple where it was felt
more appropriate to worship God - nearer to heaven. A bit like the way in which the first two
Salisbury cathedrals and Lincoln Cathedral were built on top of hills. The fabled Tower of Babel would have been such
a ziggurat on a more massive scale. In
all probability, then, Jacob’s dream incorporated a ziggurat with the vision of
God up at the top where he would be expected to be found.
The
importance and relevance of Jacob’s dream in scripture has been the source of
much debate by theologians over the centuries but I think the answer is very
much contained in Jesus’s words as spoken to his new disciples in our second
lesson: but before going on to that, there is another important element of
Jacob’s dream which is of importance to us as Christians.
God says to
Jacob, in verse 18, and I paraphrase:-
“Your descendents will spread over
the earth in all directions and will become as numerous as the specks of dust.
Your family will be a blessing to all people”
This is an
almost complete repetition of the words of God’s call to Abram found in Genesis
12:-
I will bless you and make your
descendents into a great nation. I will give you and your family all the land
you can see. It will be theirs for ever. I will give you more descendents than
there are specks of dust on the earth....”
And again to
Jacob’s father Isaac in Genesis 26:-
“I will give all these lands and will
confirm what I swore to your father Abraham – I will make your descendents as
numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands....”
As an
astronomer, I particularly like this quote.
The
importance here is that God keeps repeating this promise to the descendents of
Abraham and this is picked up by Matthew in the opening of his gospel when he
sets out in the first chapter the genealogy of Jesus – that Jesus was a direct
descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The significance of Jesus’s words to his disciples becomes plain. He has direct access to God.
Like
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the fishermen of Galilee and those Jesus meets in
Bethsaida, particularly Nathanael, are being called by God to service. Nathanael finds it hard to accept that the
Son of Man, the Messiah, can be somebody from Nazareth – “What good ever came
out of Nazareth?” he asks. He questions the calling and questions the caller;
as have many other biblical characters who have heard a call from God. In giving the answer, Jesus is making it
clear to Nathanael that the reason Nathanael should recognise him as the Son of
Man is not because Jesus knew that Nathanael spent some of his time sitting
under a fig tree studying scripture, but because he was the one spoken of in
the scriptures themselves and when he says that Nathanael shall see heaven open
and the angels of God ascending and descending Nathanael would have remembered
the promises made to Jacob and realised that it is Jesus who is the ladder
between heaven and earth.
At the time
Jacob had his dream he is on the run from his brother Esau who has vowed to
kill him for having swindled him out of his inheritance and fraudulently
received a blessing from their father, Isaac.
There is a belief that the spot on which the dream took place, Bethel as
Jacob named it, is the same spot on Mount Moriah where the Temple at Jerusalem
was built – the gateway to heaven – the point where heaven and earth met and
where God dwelt on earth – in the Holy of Holies. In setting up the stone, as Jacob does, and
later building not one but two magnificent temples on the spot, the Jews were
trying to capture the very essence of heaven on earth as being a geographical
location – a point whereby, through the intercessions of the High Priests, and
the sacrifice of burnt offerings, communications with God, were possible – yet we know, that at the moment
of Christ’s death on the Cross, the veil of the Temple – that physical boundary
between the chamber where the High Priest officiated and the chamber where God
was believed to live, was torn in two from top to bottom. We will hear about this again during the Good
Friday liturgy.
Jesus is
telling his disciples, by the choice of the words he uses, angels ascending and
descending, that he is the ladder, the stairway or the means by which Heaven
and Earth can be joined. He is the
fulfilment of that dream of Jacob’s.
There is no need for a physical structure to reach Heaven, the need to
put God in a box, behind a veil to be reached only through the Holy of Holies,
God’s love and grace is available to everybody through Jesus himself.
Those stone
ladders on the face of Bath Abbey are high and vertical. The apostles appear as steeplejacks climbing
up and down the sheer face – leaving you feeling quite giddy as you look
up. The ladder looks so difficult to
climb.
But Jesus is
saying to his disciples, and to us today - through scripture – that it doesn’t
have to be difficult – the bridge or ladder between heaven and earth is easily
available to all through believing and accepting Jesus as our Lord and
Saviour. John reports in his gospel that
Jesus said this very clearly indeed - “No
one comes to the Father except through me”.
Ladders and
stairways are designed not only to be climbed but also for a safe descent
too. The image of our Christian journey
is often a one-way street. We often
think that we are on a journey upwards, we hope for an eternal life somewhere
in another dimension. That is a good
thought to have but, I believe, it is also the role of a Christian to think in
terms of going the other way too - bringing heaven down to earth also. Indeed in the Lord’s prayer we pray that
“Thy will be done on Earth as it is
in Heaven”
If we are in
a true communion with God through the ladder or bridge of Jesus - using prayer
in whatever form - then we should also be trying to bring down to Earth a piece
of his Kingdom of Heaven – or in other word, if we believe that Heaven is a
place where there is no suffering, no envy, no jealousy, no heartbreak and so
on we should do all we can to bring as much of that as we can here now.
I remember
when I was a law student at university many years ago, a popular song of the
time was “A Glimpse of Heaven” by The
Strawbs whose first verse went something like this:
The hillside was a patchwork quilt
Neatly stitched with tidy hedge and
crumbling grey stone walls.....
If you’d only seen what I’ve seen
You would surely know what I mean
I think I must have caught a glimpse
of Heaven
We don’t
necessarily have to wait for a dream like Jacob’s - we can always see glimpses
of Heaven if we really look. We can also provide others with glimpses of Heaven
if we really try.
Lent is a
time of reflection. As we prepare
ourselves to celebrate the ultimate sacrifice made for us all on the Cross and
the glorious resurrection, let us all pray and meditate on how we can use our
communion with Jesus, our ladder to Heaven, to provide a glimpse of that Heaven
to those for whom our faith is difficult to understand or irrelevant – and in
so doing, just as with Jacob and the apostles, let us also use it to strengthen
our own faith.
Amen
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