Gate of Heaven
Genesis 28:10-19a
My front door directly faces the front door of my neighbors across a 10 to 15-foot landing.
In order to reach our doors, we climb a short stairway (18 steps).
One of my absolute delights with this set-up is when I hear my 3 year-old neighbor enact a periodic ritual of running up the stairs to her door and sing-songing when she arrives:
“I found it, I found it!”
Pure pleasure and satisfaction emanate from her as she stands at the top of the stairs,
on the threshold of her home: I found it!
I hear this exclamation through my own closed door;
and I’ve never asked, so I can only guess at the origins of her ritual—
I imagine her family just having moved in, helping the kids know their way around the community
or inventing a game to get them inside for dinner.
However it began, I am the happy recipient of a vicarious high as I listen to a child at the entrance to home, having attained something wonderful: I found it!
Jacob’s awe at finding the “gate of heaven,” as he calls it, could have been no less pure and triumphant.
He stands talking to himself in the middle of nowhere,
in the “House of God,” holy ground where he’d dreamed a staircase and angels
and Yahweh speaking words of promise—
“Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.”
He hears the ancestral covenant and wakes up, his senses alive—
“Surely God is in this place—and I did not know it!”
Jacob’s meeting with the Divine affects him so profoundly that he marks the spot with what he has—
he stands his pillow-stone like a pillar
and anoints it with oil,
and he renames the place Bethel: House of God.
~~~
There’s much that has led up to this moment. As we enter the scene this morning, Jacob has just run from home to avoid his brother’s murderous wrath:
Jacob has robbed Esau of his birthright and stolen their father’s blessing from him.
Jacob can’t be feeling very good about himself right now.
In fact, if he has any conscience at all, he probably feels like a complete heel.[1]
And besides his inner torment, he’s had to leave his house and family behind;
he’s alone, traveling the desert with its wild animals and tribal enemies,
not to mention possible evil spirits.
Night comes and he knows his destination remains far off.
With no bedding or other comforts, he finds a stone for his pillow—
still warm from the day’s heat but cooling quickly.
I imagine him looking up into the heavens, an expanse of night full of stars, and praying:
“Oh God! What have I done? Be with me…”
And God is there.
In a dream.
But it was a dream more real than real.
God was there; and the moment was overwhelming. Life changing. Life giving.
~~~
This is what happens when we have a God-encounter:
it leaves us in awe, afraid, ecstatic, or confused…
it can begin the process of healing, renew our hoping, or just keep us going.
Have you ever had an experience like that?
A moment when you knew, unequivocally, surely God is in this place? The Holy is present here, now?
Some of you will say yes, and some of you will say no.
Some of you may have had such encounters, but would not describe them using this type of language.
I have had moments like that. Like my neighbor, I’ve run triumphantly up to the very gate of heaven and sung, I found it!, the threshold; the unexpected experience that reveals something wonderful;
something holy.
This past April I attended a loved one’s funeral in New Jersey.
At the close of the service we all filed outside,
and I stood beside a friend as we were ritually letting go balloons into the sky.
Anthony had loved balloons more than anything.
With his severe disabilities, balloons were a gift everyone
knew they could give him, knew he’d be thrilled by their texture, color and movement.
Honoring this unique fondness, his family and friends stood under a clear spring sky
and offered our balloons to the heavens.
As they floated up, many of themcaught a breeze and just went—
higher, farther, slowly becoming brightly-colored specks.
But a few balloons remained—
caught in the just-budding branches of a tree.
The friend beside me, understanding the close relationship I had with Anthony, said,
“I see some balloons have a harder time letting go.”
A few days later I returned to Fort Collins; and as I was heading out to my car I saw,
in the tree immediately above where I’d parked,
a balloon caught in the branches.
Surely, God was in that place. Present with me. And in that instant, I knew it.
~~~
In her book, An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that in the Bible
people encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the top of mountains, and in the long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in the whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay (p. 12-13).
These threshold moments, experiences of holy ground and connections with the Divine
happen during peaceful respite and in desperate situations;
after dramatic begging for God’s help and when completely oblivious of God’s love.
Each one is so unique; how can you ever convey the profundity of a God-encounter? Because when you’ve known such a moment, you often want so much to share it with another. But the telling rarely translates the experience.
Like when you lay your head on stone for its pillow and feel the earth strong beneath you.
Like when you listen to the choir and sink breathlessly into the waves of music;
or settle into the spaciousness of silent prayer and sense such a loving embrace that you can’t help but be drawn toward wholeness.
Like when a piece of art fills your mind with a clarity of spirit.
Words can never express these things fully… so sometimes, to express the core of our experience,
we use ritual.
We have Sunday morning worship,
where we sing and sit in silence together.
Where we read in scripture the divine encounters of ordinary people,
and pray for our own relationships with Yahweh.
We celebrate Communion, a holy ground moment that
marked those first disciples so deeply;
a sacred act that sparked recognition on that post-Easter Emmaus walk;
a sacrament that continues to take some of us to the very threshold, heaven’s gate.
We have baptism, ritualized with water and words—
a recognition of God’s constant presence in our lives.
We describe our sacraments of Baptism and Communion
as a visible expression of an invisible grace—and yes they are!
We have funerals, remembrance services, celebrations of life
so we can share love and find hope and let go balloons.
We honor anniversaries of events like September 11th, Totenfest, Memorial Day;
and our own, individual anniversaries and significant occasions.
We ritualize birthdays with such things as
cake, candles and singing a simple, quite unimaginative song—
but the ritual brings us all into a similar space
without having to use words to explain why or how.
Maybe we even ritualize our
morning cup of coffee or
our getting ready for bed.
My neighbor, at three years old, instinctively ritualized her experience of coming home.
And Jacob did the same:
turning his pillow-stone on its side and anointing it with oil—
a complete waste of a valuable resource!
But so very significant.
How can we even come close to knowing that significance of Jacob’s encounter?
How can we see it and, through that vision, maybe even recognize some of our own sacred moments?
Perhaps it can be in enacting his ritual for ourselves…
[pour oil over stone on table]
And perhaps, for you, pouring oil over a stone may be like:
taking a beautiful photograph;
watching your child learn to drive;
weeding the flower bed;
visiting the site of Auschwitz;
listening to your mother’s favorite composer;
serving a meal at the mission;
re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia for the 5th time;
or meditating in the Memorial Garden.
Look at the stone and oil and ask yourself:
Where have I dreamed ladders and angels and the voice of God saying, “Know that I am with you”?
And where have I stepped up to a threshold singing, “I found it”?
And if you cannot name a time or place, consider the rituals that you enact—
and perhaps you too will sometime say:
“Surely, God was in that place—
and I did not know it!”
Amen.
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