Heavengate
(Rutgers,
July 18, 1999; Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A) Matthew 13:24-30 (NT,
pp. 14-15); Genesis 28:10-19a (OT, p. 27)
Let
me clear one thing up right away.
This sermon is not about Heaven's Gate, the infamous cult led by Matthew
Applewhite.
That's
the group whose members two years ago sought through suicide to release their
spirits from their earthly bodies so that they could board the spaceship from
the Kingdom of Heaven they believed to be shadowing the Hale-Bopp comet.
That's
not what this sermon is about.
Nor
is this sermon about some great religious scandal
like the moral and political scandals we call "Watergate" and "Monicagate."
No,
this is a sermon about the "heavengate" that's a gate of heaven, a
place that's a touchpoint between heaven and earth, a point of contact between
the sacred and the secular, between the divine and the humanlike the gate of
heaven described in this morning's 2nd Lesson, the heavengate of angelic
presence that Jacob saw in the dream‑vision he experienced at Bethel so
long ago.
As
we saw already in last Sunday's sermon,
the youthful Jacob is one of
Scripture's immoral characters.
You'll recall that in last week's lesson from Genesis 25 Jacob cons Esau, his
older twin brother, out of his birthright.
Then
in a story found two chapters later, in Genesis 27, Jacob cheats Esau out of
their father Isaac's paternal blessing. Isaac, in his old age, is not able to
see.
So
Jacob dresses himself up like Esau, presents himself to Isaac, claiming to be
Esau, and even lies to his father when Isaac asks him directly, "Are you
really my son Esau?" Jacob steals the blessing Isaac has intended for Esau.
And
when Esau learns of the theft he becomes so furious that Jacob decides he has to
flee for his life.
As
Jacob is fleeing, he stumbles upon this mysterious, sacred space, one of those
places where earth and heaven touch a heavengate, as Scripture itself calls it.
And there God comes to Jacob + appears to him in a dream.
In
the dream, Jacob sees a ladder stretching up to heaven, and on it,
angels‑messengers from God - ascending + descending. Then,
God speaks to Jacob directly, and contrary to what justice would seem to demand,
God's words to him are not words of condemnation, but words of mercy and grace.
Jacob
is told that it is to be through him that God will fulfill the promises made to
Abraham and his descendants. And God says to this man who's on the run,
"Know that I am with you and that I will keep you wherever you go."
Now,
the story of Jacob's ladder is one that's imprinted indelibly on my brain, and
it's not because I've read Genesis 28 that often. No, it's imprinted on my brain
because as a boy I sang, hundreds of times, that old African-American spiritual
"We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder." How many others of you have
sung that song lots of times? And how many of you learned it when you were a
child?
Amazing!
Well,
after the benediction today I'll give all of you the chance to sing three
stanzas of this song, which so many of us have known for so long.
Now,
Jacob's dream about the ladder and his profound experience of God's grace in
that dream have inspired more hymn texts than just that one spiritual.
Perhaps, in perusing your bulletins, you've already noticed that all
three of this morning's hymns and one other of our sung responses draw on our
2nd Lesson for images and metaphors.
Our
opening hymn, "Blessed Assurance," dates back to 1873 + is one of some
8,000 gospel songs written by Fanny Jane Crosby, if you can imagine anyone
producing that many hymns! "Blessed Assurance" is so popular in
Korean Presbyterian Churches that the topmost verses printed in our hymnal are
those of the transliterated Korean version.
It's
the second verse of "Blessed Assurance" that takes its imagery
directly from our Second Lesson. That
verse sings of a rapturous vision in which "angels descending bring from
above echoes of mercy, whispers of love."
And
then there's our second hymn, "Nearer, My God, to You," was written by
Sarah Flower Adams, a successful London actress. Following the hymn's
publication in 1841, it remained for nearly one hundred years one of the ten
most frequently sung Protestant hymns. The version we sang this morning adapts
and modernizes some of Adams's original phrases.
Adams
based her hymn text quite consciously on the biblical account of Jacob's
dream. Look with me at the text that's found
on p. 10 of your bulletin.
Vs.
2 sings of "wanderering as Jacob did" and of approaching God through
dreams. Vs. 3 refers specifically to "Jacob's ladder" and
"angels." and vs. 4 mentions the rocky pillow that Jacob used during
his time of dreaming calling it "Bethel's stone."
"Bethel"
is the name Jacob gave to the place where he encountered God while sleeping on
that stone pillow. The Hebrew name "beth-'el"
means "House of God," and in the United States "Bethel"
has been a popular name for Protestant churches. That is particularly true
among Baptist churches, but there are also dozens of Bethel Presbyterian
Churches scattered across the country.
Following
the Assurance of Pardon, we sang as our response a little‑known and
usually omitted verse from an otherwise very famous hymn, "Beneath the
Cross of Jesus" (1868), which is the third of our hymn texts for the
morning written by a 19th - century woman - this one, Elizabeth C. Clephane of
Scotland!
Please
look with me at the words printed on page 3 of your bulletin:
0
safe and happy shelter, 0 refuge tried and swe
0
trysting-place
where heaven's love and heaven's justice meet!
As
to the exiled patriarch that wondrous dream was given,
So
seems my Savior's cross to me a ladder up to heaven.
Clephane's
verse celebrates Christ's cross as the new Jacob's ladder, as the new heavengate
where earth and heaven touch, as the new point where reprobate people experience
not the condemnation of God but the gracious mercy of God. Here, the cross
of Jesus is sung of as a means of grace, as an access-point to heavenmlike
Jacob's ladder of old.
And
finally, our closing hymn this morning, will be the great African-American
spiritual "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah."
Yes,
few Old Testament stories have inspired more Christian hymn writers than this
one in Genesis 28.
And
the reasons for that are not hard to see: the story of Jacob's vision is a story
of the power of sacred space:
Sisters
and brothers, the place where you now sit is a Jacob's Pillow. This space is a
Bethel, a beth-el,
a House of God. This space is a
place of divine visions and dreams.
Here,
on Sundays, and on weekdays, in silence, in prayer,
Here,
God embraces us, holds us, nurses us, heals us, saves us,
empowers us, and sends us forth with the promise, "Know that I am
with you and that I will keep you wherever you go."
When
God created the universe, God did not abandon the earth to its own resources.
No,
God has filled this earth with touchpoints of heaven, with heavengates, with
places where the human and the divine converge.
So
in our world, we encounter, growing side by side, both the sacred and the
profane, both the pure and the impure, both the good and the evil.
When
we cross the threshold of the church, we are passing symbolically through the
gate of heaven into sacred space. We are passing from our perplexing world of
wheat + weeds, in' which the sacred + the profane grow up alongside each other
and are often mistaken for each other, and we are entering a realm where God's
original sacred order of goodness can be experienced anew and recovered as a
focus for life.
When
we cross the threshold of the church, we are entering a place whose central
symbol is the cross, where earth and heaven touch in grace; we are entering a
place whose high arches and vaulted ceilings point upward-to touch God; we are
entering a place whose stained-glass windows are set aglow by the touch of the
light of God's creation, set aglow in purple and green and blue and amber, to
illumine there the figures of Christ and the angels.
Look
with me, please, at our stained-glass windows in this gate of heaven, in this
portal to the divine.
In
our South window, our rose window, you see an adoring angel, the kind of angel
called a seraph, swinging a censer - a censer that imparts to space both
sacredness and purity.
Now,
if you are able, please come up front and join me in the chancel for I want you
to see and appreciate the other windows from here. And please bring your
bulletins with you, so we can sing our final hymn and conclude the service from
up here.
There,
in our East window, above the choir and organ, you see portrayed six angels
playing an orchestra of instruments - harp, cymbals, organ, drum, bass viol, and
psaltery, doubtless accompanying the singing of the 150th Psalm, "Praise
God with lute and harp,... with strings and pipe,... with loud clashing
cymbals."
And
now look to our gorgeous North window, up there in the balcony. At the top in
the center, you see the figure of Christ, and then, descending below him, from
left to right you see the archangels Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael "Angels,
descending, bring from above Echoes of mercy, whispers of love."
This place - this sanctuary of the Rutgers Presbyterian Church - is a Jacob's ladder, a heavengate, a place where earth and heaven touch, a place where God comes to us, not in judgment, but with mercy and grace.
How
good it is to be here in this place that is a "beth-el," a House of God - a heavengate.
Let
us pray:
0
God, we need your touch of grace.
Come to us
here, and say to us, as you said to Jacob,
"Know that I am with you and that I will keep you wherever you go."
In
the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.
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