No Ladder, Just a Cross
Genesis 28:10-19
I spent much of my recent vacation up on a ladder painting the exterior of the manse. (If you’re wondering, the color is Washington Blue from the Benjamin Moore Colonial Williamsburg collection.) One of the best purchases that Sandy and I made recently was a steel extension ladder from Costco. It’s called Little Giant. Little Giant extends up to 18 feet, which allowed me to reach all the way up to the gutter and the two inches of trim between the gutter and the top of the second-floor windows.
At the risk of stating the obvious, ladders allow us to scale heights and access spaces beyond our normal reach, like second-floor windows. In other words, ladders are for climbing. But not in today’s Scripture passage.
If you were already familiar with this passage before we read it a moment ago, you may have heard it referred to in shorthand as “Jacob’s ladder.” That makes a certain sense. Jacob is the main character of the story, and the central image is a ladder, even though some Bible translations use the word “stairway.” But this is no stairway to heaven. It’s a stairway from heaven to earth. It’s not a ladder for Jacob to climb. It’s a ladder for the angels of God to descend.
Which means that it’s not really Jacob’s ladder at all. The phrase “Jacob’s ladder” is therefore misleading.
I mention this not to be pedantic (a splitter of hairs) but to stress a vital theological point. In the same way that we think of ladders as tools that allow us to ascend to places beyond our normal reach, it’s tempting to think of the gospel as something that allows us to climb our way up to God’s level. If we pray daily, attend church weekly, read the Bible now and then, and do our best to love God and love our neighbors—maybe not all of them, but most of them—then we just might be able to ascend to some lofty spiritual heights. Through much effort, force of will, and cultivation of various spiritual disciplines, we will become more and more like Jesus. That’s the hope, anyway.
The gospel isn’t, “Try hard enough for long enough and you will eventually get there.” The gospel is simply, “Your sins are forgiven.”
The problem is that none of that’s the gospel. The gospel isn’t, “Try hard enough for long enough and you will eventually get there.” The gospel is simply, “Your sins are forgiven.” All of that other stuff—praying, attending church, reading Scripture, loving God and neighbor—follows from the glorious good news that your sins are forgiven. All you have to do is accept that good news with joy and gratitude.
It’s been a while since we last read from Genesis, so let’s catch up with where we left off. In Genesis 25 we heard of the birth of Esau and Jacob, twin brothers born to Isaac and Rebekah. Esau was born first, with his younger brother right upon his heels, literally. Jacob was born grasping his older brother’s heel, a sign of things to come.
In their first recorded interaction, the elder Esau gave up his birthright to Jacob for the paltry price of a plate of stew. From that point on, all the privileges and blessings that came with being the oldest son were passed to Jacob.
Then in chapter 27, which we did not read, Jacob upped the ante. With his mother’s help, he disguised himself as Esau so that he might go to his father and receive the blessing intended for his older brother. The ruse worked. Jacob deceived his father, who in his old age was no longer able to see.
But while Jacob may have received the blessing of his father, he destroyed his relationship with his brother. Having been cheated of his father’s blessing, Esau became so enraged that he vowed to kill his brother. When Rebekah learned of this, she warned Jacob so that he might flee from Esau’s wrath.
As we encounter Jacob in today’s reading, he’s still on the run from Esau. He’s headed toward Haran, the very place that his grandfather Abraham had once left to travel to the land that God had promised him. But whereas Abraham journeyed toward the promised land in faith, Jacob flees from it in fear. A fear of his own making, for he has tried to grasp what would have been given to him if he had just been willing to wait. Understand, then, this is not a holy pilgrimage that Jacob is on. He is fleeing the scene of a crime, for he has stolen that which belonged to his brother.
With the sun about to set, Jacob stops for the night before darkness takes hold of the land. The accommodations are sparse. There’s no hotel, no motel, no camping ground, even, for him to spend the night. He has to rough it, as evidenced by the stone that he lays under his head for a pillow.
As uncomfortable as that sounds, Jacob somehow manages to fall asleep…and a deep sleep, at that, because as he sleeps he dreams. He dreams of a ladder that descends from the heavens and extends all the way down to the ground upon which he is standing. A portal has opened upon the Earth. A heavenly reality has manifested in the mundane.
Upon this ladder there are angels ascending and descending. More than just angels, God appears to Jacob as well. The passage reads, “And the Lord stood beside him.” This is astonishing! Despite his many moral transgressions, which include deceiving his father and stealing from his brother, Jacob is given a one-on-one encounter with the living God. God wants to address Jacob, and, amazingly, not to rebuke him! Not to call him to account for being such a terrible brother! Not to rain down justice upon him! But to bless him!
“I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring, and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth….”
What gives? What has Jacob done to deserve a blessing from God in the first place? Not to mention that he’s already stolen the blessing that was meant for his brother Esau!
What gives?
What has Jacob done to deserve a blessing from God in the first place?
Answer: absolutely nothing. Jacob has done nothing to deserve God’s blessing. And that is precisely the point. That is why this blessing is good news, not only for Jacob, but for us.
There is a wonderful children’s Bible called The Jesus Storybook Bible, the subtitle of which is “Every Story Whispers His Name.” By that the author means that, while the name “Jesus” never appears in the Old Testament, all of those familiar stories—creation, Noah and the flood, Abraham and Isaac, or Jacob’s ladder—nevertheless whisper his name by some expression of grace.
We see before us today an example of that grace, in that Jacob is wholly undeserving of receiving God’s blessing. Nevertheless, God remains faithful to the promises that God had made to Abraham—promises to which Jacob was a part. This is why the Lord says to Jacob, “I am the God of Abraham your father.” Strictly speaking, as a matter of biology, that’s not true. Abraham is Jacob’s grandfather. Jacob’s father is Isaac.
Then, what? Is God mistaken? No! This is not a matter of biology but rather theology. As the first monotheist, the first person to trust the promises of God, Abraham is the father of all who believe. And the promises that God had made to Abraham—land, descendants, generation upon generation—extend to Jacob as well, regardless of any merit on his part. The blessings given by God to Jacob are not a reward for his righteousness but a sign of a God who is faithful even in the face of human sinfulness.
What’s more, God’s faithfulness and blessing are not confined to this one family. “All the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring,” the Lord says to Jacob.
How is that so? This is how. In Jesus Christ, a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that same grace that was given to Jacob is given to all of us. As God did not count the sins of Jacob against him, so God does not count our sins against us. In his letter to the Romans Paul writes, “God proves [God’s] love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
While we still were sinners. In other words, Jesus didn’t say, “Let me wait until they show themselves worthy. Then maybe I’ll take up the cross.” That’s not grace. Grace doesn’t wait for you to get your house in order. Grace doesn’t wait for you to make amends with those you’ve wronged, reconcile with that friend or family member you haven’t spoken to for years, stop cheating on your taxes, or stop cursing at the other drivers. Grace doesn’t demand that you do better, try harder, and climb the ladder.
Grace says, “I’m not waiting for you to climb to my level, I’m coming down to you.” That is what God does for us in Jesus Christ. God meets us right where we’re at. That could be on holy ground, like in the church sanctuary. Or it could be among the mundane, say in the checkout aisle of the supermarket. Or it could be in the least likely of places, like some random rest stop on the desert highway that you’ve come to only after fleeing from the brother you cheated out of his blessing and who has vowed to kill you.
“Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go,” God says to Jacob. We have here a foreshadowing of the promise that the risen Jesus makes to his disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: “And remember I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
God with us not only on holy ground but in the hole in the ground that we can’t seem to climb out of.
What a promise that is! God with us always, not only in our best moments when we’ve got it all sorted out and we’re feeling good about ourselves. But God with us when it feels like everything in our lives or in the world around us is falling apart. God with us not only on holy ground but in the hole in the ground that we can’t seem to climb out of.
And as this Genesis passage teaches us, even that hole in the ground is holy ground. Jacob wakes from his dream and declares, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” The place that Jacob had stopped for no other reason than that he was tired and it was getting dark, he now recognizes as holy ground. The place where he sought momentary rest and refuge while trying to outrun his past, he now recognizes as the house of God and the gate of heaven. And so he calls the place Bethel, meaning house of God.
Whether we live in Haverstraw or Stony Point or a surrounding town, we are all residents of Bethel because wherever we are, we are in the presence of the living God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God made known to us in Jesus Christ. This God does not wait for us to scale the sacred mountain, ascend the stairway to heaven, or climb the ladder of spiritual success but comes down and meets us among the sacred and the profane, the miraculous and the mundane. Wherever we find ourselves, we are on holy ground.