In recent weeks I have heard more than a few people tell me how boring life can be with it being winter and many Covid restrictions limiting which activities are still going on.
And not just boring, but also discouraging. Political events in recent weeks that have been nothing to feel good or hopeful about. Alcohol and drug use, Crime rates and domestic abuse rates are all skyrocketing since the time that so much has changed in our world over a virus. The consequences of sin in the world have not made for the best of times in recent weeks. It just seems like there is nothing good to be hopeful about in our world as of late.
Yet still many of us continue to look at the news, hoping to see something different. Would we even know what it looks like if there was actually good news to report? What is good news? Can we even recognize good things when they are present in our lives? I am not sure what I would even be watching for.
In our gospel lesson from John chapter 1, the account of Jesus calling of Phillip and Nathanael, Jesus tells them exactly what to watch for. By extension Jesus is also telling us that, we are to watch for the coming of God’s kingdom in our midst.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” That is what we are to watch for. This Sunday in particular our worship contains themes of the mysteries of God’s kingdom revealed.
Sometimes the body language and facial expressions seen in church by people of various ages can give the impression that worship, like our everyday life, is at times boring. But how could it possibly be boring if we see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man? Perhaps we are not always seeing the full picture!
Our church does not have a special effects department- sound, lighting and video. External bells and whistles, entertainment- that is not what is needed to make sure worship is not boring. We rely on God’s Word and the gift of faith to show this amazing thing that Jesus promises to Nathanael- heaven opened as Jesus himself is Jacob’s ladder.
Genesis chapter 28, Jacob is on a journey from Beersheeba to Haran, sent by his family to find a wife for himself of their people. That night as he is dreaming the LORD appeared to him with a vision of a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven. Jacob saw a ladder bridging the gap between heaven and earth.
How amazing that there could be something like a ladder that could bridge the divide that which was broken since the Fall into sin! This is such a different picture than the cherubim and flaming sword set up to bar Adam and Eve from returning to the garden of Eden.
The scripture in Genesis chapter 28 records: “And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!” This ladder was bringing the messengers of God’s kingdom, the angels up and down. What a change was present in this dream in relation to our standing before God. What could this ladder possibly represent? Some magic item that makes everything better?
But no it was not a thing that the ladder represented, but a person. A God and a man, Jesus the Christ. The ladder had to do with the promise made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, a promise that the LORD would be with them and their descendants and would make them great, the fathers of a holy people set apart for the LORD.
“Behold I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I promised.”
That promise sounds familiar, Jesus told the disciples, “All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And behold I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Nathanael was impressed that Jesus knew his name and saw him under the tree. But Jesus was only just beginning, any prophet can see extra things and know extra things as revealed by the LORD. But to die on the cross for the sin of the world, to rise again as the first fruits of our resurrection, to hold all authority on heaven and earth and to give it to His people to make disciples of all nations- that is the ladder that connects us on earth to heaven!
And Jesus is the only ladder that connects us to the Father. Many in the world want to believe that their own efforts and diligent life disciplines connect them to God. People believe in countless gods of their own making and believe that these gods will give them all things desirable.
Yet the scripture is clear that Jesus alone is the Way the Truth and the life and that no one comes to know the Father except through Him. Jesus is, as 1 Timothy declares, the only ladder that connects us to the Father: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.”
Like Nathanael we do not always see the full meaning of who Jesus is for us, of what it means to us that through the cross the gates of heaven are opened to us. We would like to see heaven opened in the form of a company of radiant angels surrounded by a big flourish of colors and sounds that would amaze us and bring us joy.
But instead we see the gates of heaven opened through the ordinary activities of hearing God’s Word and receiving His gifts to us in worship, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper and the preaching of forgiveness in Christ. Just ordinary church activities many of us have seen since we were children.
But they are not ordinary at all. These things we encounter in worship have the power to change our lives. Every time we hear God’s Word we are participating in the putting away of our old sinful nature and the welcoming of new life in Christ.
The results are that we are always in the position of overcoming the expectations others have of us in the world. The world expects us to often be self centered and easily jump to conclusions of despair when things are not going well. The world expects us to be hypocrites who make decisions in our lives as if we do not believe God’s Word.
We may even put limitations on our own expectations of how well we can handle a situation in life that is challenging. We know what habits we often fall back on when we are distressed. Often, we do not need the world to expect us to fail, when we have seen ourselves fail so often in the past and when we doubt how we can overcome challenges before us.
Whether it is the expectations of the world or our own expectations, God’s Word changes the script for us. Jesus changes the script. Where we have fallen he brings forgiveness and in that forgiveness we are freed from the temptations that have such a tight snare over us.
Jesus knows us inside and out and sees far more potential in our lives than we ourselves can. “O LORD you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold O LORD you know it all together.” That is the psalm appointed for today. A psalm that helps us to see that our own bodies have been fearfully and wonderfully made. Our own bodies are made for the Lord.
And as our Epistle reading from 1 Corinthians emphasizes our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit. Whether it is issues of sexual purity or other ways we need to be careful in respecting our bodies- the message is the same, our bodies belong to the Lord, and it is through our bodies that we serve in God’s kingdom.
Often people in our culture today talk about spiritual matters in a way in which our bodies are inconvenient vessels to our soul that get in the way of our enjoying a certain communion with God. If we do not value our bodies we are losing sight of the fact that Jesus is not only the Son of God, but also true man. Jesus connects heaven and earth because he is both man and God.
Jesus connects us with heaven through Water and the Word. The ordinary activities for our bodies of hearing God’s Word and eating and drinking the Lord’s Supper, is actually the way that we see heaven opened to us. In seeing our Savior crucified for us and risen from the dead, we know we are beholding something more amazing than any of the disciples first saw in Jesus.
The events and circumstances of our lives may be difficult and unlike previous times, yet God’s Word is the same. Jesus is the same yesterday today and tomorrow. In Jesus we see day by day through the course of our everyday walk of faith that the gates of heaven are opened to us.
And as the gates are open, we are united with a God who transcends all of the difficulties of today and tomorrow. A God who will one day return to us in glory so that all things in heaven and earth will be united forever in the joys of eternal life. Amen.