Homily – Sunday, the 23rd July 2023
Lord, I pray that you bless the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts that they help us to hear Your word which you have set out so that we can experience your presence in our lives, Amen
Today’s readings are about our personal relationship with God.
We read in the beautiful psalm 139 how intimately David has experienced his relationship with God and I will come back to it.
In the reading from the Old Testament we heard about Jacob having to leave his father’s house after cheating himself into the inheritance and blessing of Isaac, fearing for his life because of Esau’s revenge when he has one of the most beautiful dreams reported in the bible and finally Laurence read to us the parable of the weeds and the wheat, a story which is promising and disturbing at the same time. There is much more to say about this parable and I am happy to talk more to you if you wish after the service.
In my homily I will focus on Jacob’s dream of a ladder and God reaching out to us. I want to share three thoughts with you today: Coming into God’s presence, Being reassured in prayer and setting Altar stones in our lives.
Coming into God’s presence: This passage from Genesis is about a man called Jacob. He was the second son to Isaac and grandson to Abraham the Forefather of the Jews whom God had promised a great nation to arise from his descendants. So, he certainly grew up in a family with very exceptional close bonds and extraordinary promises of the God of his forefathers. The name of Jacob means the one following behind (as he was the second of the twins) or he who grasps the heel which became a Hebrew synonym for he takes advantage, he who outmaneuvers, which he truly did in regard to his twin brother Esau just in the chapter before. By disguising himself as his older brother he tricked his nearly blind father and stole his brother’s blessing as the oldest son after he had taken his birth rights just beforehand for a meal of lentils.
With the stolen blessing he left “home” which was not even the God promised home and set out to find himself a wife by traveling towards Syria more than a day’s journey through barren land. It is not clear to me whether Jacob felt in any way bad about what he had done to his father and brother or whether he felt self-righteous as his mother had the promise that she will bear two sons of whom the younger will rule over the older. We neither know how Jacob felt about his father clearly preferring the stronger and more adventurous older brother while he was helping his mother in the kitchen. On this journey to his uncle, he came to a place north of Jerusalem called Luz where he decided to stay overnight. It must have been a dry, rocky place as he takes a stone as his pillow. There he went to sleep, seemingly alone between troublesome past days and an uncertain future.
In the midst of this Jacob has a dream: “in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
There above it stood the Lord.”
God did not meet him there because Jacob deserved it because he was already a great hero of faith. I am sure growing up in the family he grew up in that his mind was prepared, he knew about God, he had heard the stories of his father and grandfather and I am sure these stories must have left a strong impression with him. This was the soil this dream fell on, his mind was open and God met him there because Jacob needed the encouragement, the affirmation of the covenant and direction. This dream must have been not just the usual experience of God’s presence, he had experienced during his religious life beforehand, as he exclaimed: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.” Such moments are rare mountain top experiences of faith, like the moment of transfiguration of Jesus for Peter, John and James on the mount Tabor. God had come beforehand to his grandfather Abram and had taken him outside to see the countless stars of the universe as a sign for the offspring of God’s people. This also happened before God made His covenant with Abram. Abram believed the Lord even when he had no son and could not understand how this will come true. It took more visitations, close communication so to say ladder dreams and moments before Abram became Abraham and thereby the great father figure of the Jewish nation. It was not the one dream which made Abram or Jacob the great representatives of faith. No, these dreams were just the beginning of their more intimate journey with God.
Jacob was not the super hero, not the flawless character who was God’s favorite because of his good behavior. He was running away from home, he had just cheated his father, traveled alone and slept out in the wilderness with a stone as his pillow. His family had this great promise but was still living as foreigners in the land, when he had this dream of the ladder. People will encounter God’s presence in different ways and under different circumstances. By reading God’s word, getting to know more about Him and seeking His presence in our lives we can prepare the soil, but we still cannot force such an intimate presence of God in our life by being a good Christian, closely following Christian rules or perform the daily devotions. I imagine it to be difficult for our rational approach to open heaven’s gate. Have you felt moments of God’s presence in your life? When was this? Have you experienced a ladder reaching from heaven down into your heart exactly where you are; a strong connection between you and God when he entered your life at a moment when you did not expect it? Some of you may have experienced him in devotional prayer, in meditation, in worship, but may be also in moments of deep suffering and sadness, or in moments of awe realizing His majesty in His creation. As we cannot force such experiences through our behavior, we can allow them to happen when we surrender to him, when we give up control and open ourselves to dreams and visions of His presence. It was not by chance I believe that this happened in the dessert of the West bank. It is often when we are not in control and comfort as everything is going well but when we are seeking. Then, we can open our hearts and minds to God’s guidance and presence because we belief in His promises instead of close them by only creating and following our own agenda. We can be touched by the God who has promised that he will not leave us and come into our midst when we gather in his name. He has faithfully done so with many people in the past as well in the presence. It is not us who build the ladder to reach higher and higher, all attempts to reach God out of our own strength failed, so that we may not boast but receive His presence in grace. We need to be prepared, we need to seek Him to come into our lives and surrender to His loving embrace.
Being reassured in prayer: Some of you might find it difficult to connect to a dream about a ladder symbolizing the close intimate relationship with God. In the tradition of the mystic Jewish Kabbalah this dream resembles the prayerful entrance into God’s presence. Mindful prayer has been one of the ways how we can prepare for seeing God’s ladder and by which we can come into His presence. Any prayer will be a step in this direction, yet it will remain only a small step if we force it into the five minutes between breakfast and work or the last 2 minutes before falling asleep. Although all these are good intentions and definitely better than not praying, we have to ask ourselves whether we are just going through the motions which might become empty and meaningless as we cannot feel the presence of God in them. Sometimes we go through spiritual dry lands when God seems not be near, but we need to ask God to make him visible, so we return to the closer relationship we had before. In the tradition of Kabbalah you reach the final step of the ladder described as intimacy with God only after aligning your action and your inner being and after complete surrender of yourself. This requires practice, time and devotion, which I have not often given. It was the time of the preparation of this service when I suddenly felt again that He is there, that He is real, that He cares, despite going through difficult times.
In the dream, God appeared, standing at the top of the ladder which reached all the way from heaven to earth, allowing for direct access between men and God through angels ascending and descending. It is a two directional communication. Not only messages from God can reach the world but also our message in the form of prayer reaches heaven. While it sounds like a nice story the image is powerful even now.
It is God who let down the ladder of communion with His creation. He reached out to Jacob in the night as he did to Abraham before and finally to all of us when He Himself came down the ladder in His son to build once for all the bridge between us and Him. Jesus’ life, work, words, death and resurrection have become the permanent bridge between us and our God and creator. A bridge we could have not build and He provided for us.
In his vision God said to Jacob: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and God of Isaac.” He promises Jacob land, finally a home, and a multitude of descendants. God renews His covenant with Abraham’s grandson. And He promises that all the people of the world will be blessed through this line. And now listen carefully: “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
Christ renewed this promise to his disciples “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matth. 28:20b). Have you felt this promise for your life? Have you heard His voice saying “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.”? Jacob was there in the middle of the dessert in-between a difficult past and an uncertain future when he received this promise. God is a faithful God, do you believe it? How often have I been in a situation burdened with the events of the last days and not knowing what the morning would bring. Often, I had to work my way back into trusting God. Are you right now going through a difficult time not sure what the right decision is or whether you will be able to face tomorrow with no light in the last days nor in your hope for the days to come. Do we long to see God’s ladder in these moments, are we seeking His voice? And would His voice reassure us when everything seems to fail? Faith is more than our rational acceptance that there might be a God, more than the formal ritual of prayer, more than a good feeling during worship it is the complete reassurance that there is a God who has searched you and knows you in and out. There is nothing hidden from His eyes, and He lays His hand upon you as a father does to his daughter or son as a sign of his never ending bond, his unconditional love and his blessing. It is this experience when David prayed in the psalm of today that such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is when Peter said to Jesus “leave me because I am a sinner”, but Jesus lifted him up to his feet and took him at his side as a disciple, because Peter like David prayed “lead me in the way everlasting.” God’s angels ascending and descending, what a beautiful picture of permanent communication. God is ready, are we? Are we ready to allow His ladder to be placed in us? Can we become still in His presence and Know that He is my Lord and God?
Finally Setting altar stones:
As the story continues, we will see that Jacob was not quite ready to surrender everything, but he realized that he was blessed by a wonder, that he has been in the very presence of God.
One of our difficulties in life is that we enjoy wonders when they take place but are we ready to acknowledge them? We ask for many things to happen or not happen but how often do we just forget the blessing once we are given, what we asked for, and just move on without praise acknowledging thankfully the miracle in our lives. We are a generation continuously expecting our wishes to be fulfilled instantly as we can order online and thanks to special deals can hold it into our hands already the next day. But how long does our joy last? Are we setting marks in our calendars to remember that this was a special day? Are we setting landmarks on our walk through life so when we can come back, remember thankfully and praise our God? Only building on such landmarks during his walk with God, Dietrich Bonhoeffer could write a poem like “Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen” in times when anything but miracles were present. Jacob used the stone he has slept on to build an altar, poured oil over it and called it Bethel which means House of God. Do you have these landmarks in your life? Is there an encounter with God which you can hold onto when the present experience is a silent God? Can you go back to such moments in life and draw strength from them? If we have not marked them consciously in our memories they will fade into nothing. Let us not allow these moments to disappear.
Yet, life remained challenging for Jacob. He had to serve his uncle and then father-in-law for 20 years, he had to flee from him, his daughter was raped while they were on their way back to his father’s house, he had to settle his conflict with his brother. And in the middle of all this he had another dream in which he wrestled with God and would not let him go until God blesses him and God blessed him. Sometimes, it takes us to wrestle with God, only then we take his promises seriously. If we don’t understand the life we live in, the circumstances we face, the injustice, the sickness, sadness wearing us down are we reminding ourselves of His promise that we will have life and life to the fullest? Believing in His promise we cannot be satisfied with less. Are we like Job, David in the psalms and Jacob wrestle with God to bless us? Are we ready to test our trust in Him by confronting God prayerfully with the disappointments we go through, the doubts we cannot get rid of, are we bringing the fears which cripple our lives before him asking him to remember me? These men did not stop believing in the existence and sovereignty of God, but asked Him to remember His promises, that we will live in the house of our Lord. It is insightful that the dream of Jacob’s ladder became a gospel for black Americans reminding them of God coming into their midst despite the terrible circumstances they were facing.
Jacob remembered too and more than 20 years after his first dream, finally on his way home, Jacob told his family: “I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone” and he returned to Bethel and set up an altar as a gate to heaven the synonym for the eternal presence of God.
Lord, we want to feel your presence in our lives. We came here to worship you, fill this place, fill my heart with your Holy Spirit, let my worship let my prayers be like the angels ascending. Lord, open my eyes let me see you. Lord, help me to become still and know that you are the great I am, faithful and everlasting. Lord let me never forget these moments when you entered my life and allow me to return in praise and thanksgiving so that I can experience your house as our gate to heaven. Amen
Klaus Warnatz
23rd July 2023
Freiburg Anglican Church 