The Amazing Old Testament: Jacob’s Ladder
Midday today, I have the great privilege and daunting challenge of speaking for 3 to 5 minutes to several hundred children on day 1 of our Vacation Bible School. My staff assigned me a text, Genesis 28:10-22, a theme (“Trust God to go with us”), and that I should we the color of the day. Red. Red? I’m failing already, as I do not own a single item of clothing that is red!
I will have them sing “We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” as I can’t ruminate on this passage without hearing that tune in my head. It was originally a slave spiritual. I won’t get into it with the children today, but I am baffled, delighted and humbled every time I think of cruel slaveowners requiring their chattel “property” to hear the Gospel story – and the slaves not only bought into their faith, but got it right while the plantation owners got it so very wrong.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught us that “Prayer is a ladder stretching from earth to heaven. On this ladder of words, thoughts and emotions, we gradually leave earth’s gravitational field. We move from the world around us, perceived by the senses, to an awareness of that which lies beyond the world.” Kids can grasp this! But should I warn them, or dare them to warn their parents with Steven Covey’s insight that you can spend your life climbing the ladder of success, “only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.”
Here are some more thoughts I may not have time to share with our children – some excerpts from my book reflecting on hymns, Unrevealed Until Its Season. Jacob comes to “a certain place,” no place really. He’s weary. Must rest. Nothing but a rock for a pillow, although the Hebrew may imply he put it next to his head for protection. No rest for the fearful weary. In a fitful sleep he has a dream, one Freud might analyze, a vision, one we might covet. A ladder bridging the great chasm between earth and heaven. The Hebrew really means it’s a long, steep ramp, the kind archaeologists have uncovered on the sides of ziggurats in Iraq.
Angels! Not the sweet, prissy kind we know from jewelry and little ceramic statues, but mighty heavenly warriors and messengers, going up and down on the ramp. What could it mean? Jacob snaps out of his sleep or reverie; dumbfounded, all he can say is “The Lord was in this place and I did not know it.” I wrote an entire book of recollections (Struck From Behind) from my childhood, youth and adulthood of times and places when God was there, but at the time I did not know it; only in retrospect could I say Aha! God was in that moment, that person, that circumstance.
God was there. Not only didn’t I know it. I wasn’t seeking it. I wasn’t praying. Jacob isn’t on some spiritual quest. He’s on the run from – his brother? His past? His demons? It’s as if we’re all groping in the dark for we don’t know what. And it turns out to be the way to God – or God’s way to us. Jacob, after all, doesn’t even try to climb the ladder. He’s awestruck, then goes on his way to a new job, a couple of wives, children who squabble, and a lot of heartbreak. God was in those places too. You can find God, although it’s always God finding us, even in our restless forgetting to pray. Jacob wasn’t praying, but maybe unwittingly his prayer was his brokenness, his weariness, a fitful sigh.
Standing under a fig tree, Jesus mysteriously told Nathaniel, “You will see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51). St. Catherine of Siena thought of Jesus’ cross as a wooden ladder to heaven, and even of his crucified body as that ladder on which we climb toward God. The first rung is the nailed feet: we humbly shed our selfish will. The next rung is his open, pierced side: we press in to glimpse the abyss of divine love. Finally we scale to his face: we are moved by love to obedient holiness.
Who’s doing this climbing? “Soldiers of the cross.” Of course, the soldiers at Jesus’ cross were the ones who nailed him to it, the ones snickering, the ones gambling over his clothing. And the ones he forgave, although they didn’t repent or ask for any mercy. Pondering this, the way God showed up to Jacob in his anxious flight from God and goodness, and the way Jesus our ladder to heaven forgave the unrepentant soldiers of the cross, we know the only answer to the hymn’s other questions: “Sinner, do you love my Jesus?” and “If you love him, why not serve him?”