Reflection July 19

Today I thought I would do something a little bit different and preach not on the gospel, but on the first lesson. The story of Jacob's ladder.Here’s the go.Jacob is on a journey of 500 miles to say Howdy to  his uncle in Haran. This is where he plans to meet his wives. But God says “PHooe! I have a different plan and journey in mind for you Jacob. Let me show you.In a dream Jacob sees a ladder standing upon the earth, and the top of it is touching heaven: The angels of God are going up and down on this ladder; The Lord introduces himself to Jacob and makes him a promise.“I am the Lord God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac; the land, where you are snoozing, I will give to you and to your descendants.”  When Jacob wakes up he exclaims that he was unaware of God’s presence in this place. Further, He takes the stone that he had been using as a pillow, pours oil on it, and renames the place Bethel. OK great story about a lumpy pillow, but what in it for us

First, God takes the initiative. Jacob did not build the ladder to reach heaven, God extended it to him. Contrast this with the building of the Tower of Babel. We tend to think of Babel as an act of human pride and folly. But dig deeper friends. They very much wanted something that would ‘reach to heaven’.. It did not end well.. Man cannot make his own way to heaven.So God first came to us. God not only takes the initiative, but He first descends to us. It is He who crosses the gulf between the human and the divine. That’s what Christmass was all about.  The lowered ladder is not a challenge from God, but a wonderful opportunity, an invitation to become one with Him..Secondly God is with us as we make the ascent. God is both the destination and our companion on the way.Notice that there are angels running up and down the sides of the ladder. Some see these angels as carrying our wishes to God and then bringing back his help. It's like this prayer that I am very fond of.“To go daily from men to God to offer him their homage and petitions; to return from God to men to bring them his pardon and his hope”.OK. So God is with us, the angels are our companions, what is expected of us? God does not drag us up the ladder. We are expected to respond to this invitation.How does Jacob respond?;When Jacob woke up, he said: “Indeed the Lord is in this place, and I did not know”. How awesome is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven”.Jacob’s response is one of holy fear or reverence at the presence of God. So the story becomes a metaphor for how we tend to fall asleep to the reality of God’s presence in our life. And what is it that awakens Jacob to God? It is this vision of the ladder. For us, the Cross is our true ladder to heaven—that ought to awaken us to the presence of God.Then We must act. After the vision ends, Jacob does more than wake up and remark how truly awesome it had been. He goes beyond a mere verbal utterance. He sets a stone in place and anoints it. His world is changed.And so Our world is changed. Jacob sets the stone in place as a permanent memorial of what happened. It could also be interpreted as a kind of a primitive temple since he also renames the area Bethel, which means ‘house of God’— The renaming of the area itself tells us a significant change has occurred. Finally, Jacob calls on God to be with him and to ‘keep’ the ‘way by which I walk’ and to nourish and clothe him. Jacob arrived at Bethel as a simple itinerant. He walked away with God.Something to ponderAs I re read the account of poor old Jacob I had to ask myself “How many times have I encountered a person or gone into a place only to discover much later that this was a sacred space, a holy encounter and I did not know it? How many times have I been asleep, when actually what I should have been seeing is angels and  climbing a ladder with them to heaven itself? How many times Lord… how many times?