Waking up to the Nearness of God

Jacob’s ladder, Genesis 28: 10-22

By J. Stuart Taylor III

St. Mark's Presbyterian Church, Tucson, AZ.

July 17, 2005

One half of our lives, the waking half is spent in the light of day as we use our reason to think, to make rational choices, to exercise control over the circumstances of our lives. But in the other half of our existence, that occurs at night, we live our lives in a realm that we know very little about. – the world of sleep. Science is the first to admit that here is a true frontier of our knowledge. Why is sleep so necessary? What happens that restores us? What is it exactly? We simply don’t know. But a couple of recent books on sleep suggest that when we reach the point of deepest sleep, the time in which we dream dreams, a physiological restoration takes place. Our minds are cleansed of excess stimulation. New information circuits  are developed in the brain- allowing us to integrate and unify our experiences. Sleep is like a little death. Our bodies go into semi-paralysis but our minds go into a heightened period of activity. Our control is down, we are vulnerable.  and we experience stirrings that we do not initiate come to us in the night unbidden in the form of dreams that address us. Are dreams random electrical events, snyapses firing off in the brain. Or are dreams god’s forgotten language? The place of divine messages. The ancient world and the biblical tradition knew about dreams. The ancients understood that the unbidden communication in the night opens sleepers to a world different from the one they manage during the day. There are many stories of dreams in the bible from Joseph, to Daniel to zechariah. But this story of Jacob’s ladder is the Bible’s first recorded story of the world of dreams. 

One thing we know: the dreams we dream often arise from the context of the lives we are leading. The stuff of life that we are living during the day is played out in the dreams we have at night. Consider the place in Jacob’s journey that gave rise to this dream.  Jacob, like his grandfather  Abraham, and his father Isaac was a migrant a traveling nomad. But in this stretch of his journey he is more. Jacob is a fugitive who was fleeing from the consequences of his own treachery to his brother Esau.  Jacob finds himself Nowhere, in-between a past from which he is running to a future that is unknown. The one who was always more comfortable staying close to the camp of his parents is now having a wilderness experience. Jacob’s talents such as they were were not like Esau’s. He was not particularly equipped to handle the challenges of the wilderness. He could have easily perished from hunger or cold, been killed by bandits or wild beasts. Or lost his way,  wandering hopelessly in the desert . This moment in Jacob’s journey viewed clinically today would be called a psychological crisis, perhaps even an emotional breakdown.  Looked at spiritually, this moment in Jacob’s life holds the possibility of metamorphisis, of conversion, of transformation. Darkness falls in the middle of nowhere, and Jacob exhausted and alone goes to sleep with a stone as his pillow.  And he has a dream  in which he sees a ladder connecting heaven and earth. And on the ladder are countless angels. descending to earth and ascending into heaven. And above the ladder is the the God of Abraham and Isaac, the awesome holy living God. 

Our text today reminded me of the time that I once encountered a ladder in the middle of wilderness. I had spent the better part of a week alone in Chaco canyon in N. NM, that very mystical place that was the center of the Ancient Anasazi civilization. On the last day there I was exploring a side canyon and came upon a steps carved into the side of the cliff. I surprised myself when I began to climb that ladder. Step by step I climbed, trying not to think of what would happen if I slipped and fell. Each place I put my hand in and my foot I wondered about the ancient Anasazi, men women and children who ascended or descended this ladder carrying all manner of things. And then finally when I reached the top. I looked at over the settlements and great kivas all around me. And at my feet  were pathways literally trod into the rock themselves leading in every direction. At that moment I could feel the presence of the ancient Anasazi, could feel their presence almost as if I could see them and hear them going their way. And I will always believe that I would not have that experience if I had not climbed that ladder.

I began to catch a vision of another ladder this past winter. During Lent sue and I did a sermon series on the beatitudes which was for us a rich exploration of the universe inside of each beatitude. But it is only now that I can reflect on the whole and see that that Jesus arranged these beatitudes in a particular order. There are eight beatitudes that each represent one facet of discipleship, one dimension of the Kingdom of GOD. Each is a different pathway to the one blessing of God’s loving presence. You could almost say that the beatitudes are like rungs on a ladder.  the lowest rung, the place of beginning is the blessing of the poor in spirit. It is not until we have finally faced our own spiritual poverty in those moments when we realize in all humility that we know nothing, that we are finally ready to take the first step in the ladder of our spiritual development.  We reach for the second beatitude, the blessing of those who mourn. Our losses and sadnesses and the things in our world and in our lives that grieve us can also become a rung on the ladder that leads higher deeper into God’s peace and consolation.  Spiritual poverty and grief can create the space in the human soul for the 3^rd beatitude. The blessing of the meek which is the blessing of those who are open and responsive to a reality beyond themselves. The openness of the spiritually meek then leads to the possibility that we might come to know the heart’s true passion. Blessed are they who Hunger and thirst for rightousness, the fourth rung on the ladder.  Can you begin to see a pattern here? . Rung by rung something is beginning to happen in the soul of a believer who practices the beatitudes.  Until our poverty of spirit gradually becomes a purity of heart. And our hunger and thirsting for rightousness lead’s us to every believers’ calling to be a peacemaker. The beatitudes become a ladder by which the disciple ascends into the presence of God.

 The image of Jacob’s ladder is the most dominant symbol in the history of Christian mysticism. For the mystics this image of the ladder is the pathway of ascent. Various mystical traditions characterized each rung as particular spiritual discipline of contemplative prayer. And when these were practiced will lead the Christian higher and higher into the divine being. Or it may be that the point is not how we ascend into heaven at all. Maybe it is not about ascent as it about descending. Someone recently read a quote to me that has stuck in my mind ever since as a truly profound question. we are not so much Human beings who are learning how to be spiritual as we are spiritual beings that are learning how to be human. Let me say that again….. Maybe we should not invest too much attention in a ladder spirituality of ascending or descending. I mean Jacob is himself nowhere on the ladder. This image of the ladder  evokes the awareness that between heaven and earth there is constant traffic of messengers.  Earth is not left to its own resources and heaven is not remote and self-contained. Angels are messengers, doing the bidding of god, carrying word of the divine promise.  And that is what is at stake in the second half of Jacob’s dream.

In the second half of the dream, auditory rather than visual, the God of Abraham and Isaac speaks to Jacob and the promises that God has made to Jacob’s ancestors, God now makes to Jacob. Look at the three fold promise made to Jacob. I am with you.- The promise of Divine Accompaniment. I will keep you - the promise of divine protection. And I will lead you home.- The promise of a homecoming.   Yes Jacob with all his material and spiritual ambitions  had schemed to have the birthright to supercede his brother Esau. But did he really understand what he was seeking? Be careful what you pray for, so the saying goes because you might get it. It’s like any one of us who have vaguely believed this or that about our faith and then comes along a moment when we fInally understand what it means for me. The promise becomes personal. Later on the service Teresa Blythe is going to lead us in a guided meditation in the hope we can be still enough to enter into Jacob’s dream.  To realize at a deeper level of our being that just as God spoke these promises to Jacob, even now God speaks the same promise to you. I  am with you. I will keep you I will lead you home. Maybe during our waking days it is just too difficult to hear the word of promise that God makes to each one of us. We cannot hear the promise of God because we think that we are in control, everything that happens in our lives is initiated by us. We are to busy bargaining with our lives that we cannot hear and trust the promise. Maybe it is only in the dream state that we are vulnerable enough, still enough, finally laying down control and reason that we can take into our hearts the promise that god is with us, God will keep us, God will lead us home.

You see the Jacob’s  dream is our birthright. The promises of God are ours as well. And Jacob’s ladder is stretching right now above us into the heavens. And angels are coming and going, all bearing the message of the promise of God. I am with you. I will keep you. I will lead you home. Jacob awoke and he cried out in joy and in awe, “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it.  And he makes a pile of stones to mark this place in his journey, this no-place that has become the dwelling place of god. A nameless in-between place has become a sacred place. And we awake. And we realize that this sanctuary that is so dear to us no more than Jacob’s pile of stones, a way to mark this place is sacred to us because all places are sacred. And this time is holy because all times are holy.  And the journey of our days is not simply the pointless meandering of a human life but a pilgrimage. I am with you. I will keep you. I will lead you home.. The issue is our consciousness. The dream message, the meaning of the ladder is this: Are we awake?  Are we awake to the presence of God? Do we understand that God is nearer to me than I am to myself. My being in every moment depends on the nearness of God. - Kingdom of god is everywhere. In everything and everything is in it. Or as one mystic put it. “Heaven includes every step on the way to heaven”.  God has been committed to Jacob, now Jacob will be committed to God but his transformation will continue.  The story of Jacob’s ladder and of the promises of God. “Reminds us that there is something outside our controlled management of reality which must be heeded. Sometimes that something turns out  to be a miracle of new life”.