Sermon - The Staircase in the Weeds

Grace Communion Mooroolbark provides a free meal on Friday nights for those in need called the People's Pantry. My first time there, I met a retired Astrophysicist. He told me a story about a project he worked on for a very long time. The goal was to discover why a policeman’s helmet had cracked in an accident when it should not have. This resulted in injury and, of course, a lengthy court case.

They tested the helmets used by police in a number of ways – dropped them from great heights, smashed them against things, and performed other tests – all in laboratory settings so the results could be verified and explained.

When the results were finally in, the answer was both disappointing and surprising. Every time the police filled up their bikes with petrol, they would use a rag to clean the excess petrol that inevitably splashed on the tank. They would then run the rag over the bike’s metal surfaces and their helmets. This left everything looking shiny and clean.

Unfortunately, the shockproof coating on the helmets was weakened by the petrol. Every application caused a repeat reaction to the petrol, and over time, the safety of the helmet was compromised. You can imagine the devastation that came with this answer. There was no consolation. No fault of the helmet maker. It was user error without even knowing they were in error.

Have you ever had a time you tried to “fix” something or clean up a mess, but your intervention actually made things worse? Our sinful nature is like that. Isaiah says all our efforts are as filthy rags.

Sometimes, without our even knowing it, our habits and self-care are actually bringing us harm. When our plans collapse, and our efforts fail us, we often find ourselves in a spiritual wilderness, exhausted and desperate. This is exactly where we find Jacob in Genesis 28.

Turn with me to Genesis 28:10-11. I will be reading from the Christian Standard Bible. Genesis 28:10-11.

10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. 11 He reached a certain place and spent the night there because the sun had set. He took one of the stones from the place, put it there at his head, and lay down in that place.

Jacob. His name literally translates to “supplanter,” the controller, the manipulator. Someone who takes what belongs to someone else and claims ownership - moving in and setting up shop. That’s a supplanter, and that is Jacob. From the moment he was born, grasping his brother’s heel, Jacob’s life was defined by a relentless drive to secure his own future through his own striving. He deceived his blind father and stole the family blessing that belonged to Esau.

But his scheming did not bring him peace; it brought him a death threat. Fleeing from his brother’s murderous rage, Jacob runs into the desolate wilderness. When the sun goes down, this exhausted fugitive lies down in the dirt, sleeping with a rock for a pillow.

He is entirely out of control. His life is a tangled, overgrown mess. And it is precisely here, in the dark, that heaven breaks open.

Read Genesis 28:12 and following.

12 And he dreamed: A stairway was set on the ground with its top reaching the sky, and God’s angels were going up and down on it. 13 The Lord was standing there beside him,[a] saying, “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your offspring the land on which you are lying. 14 Your offspring will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out toward the west, the east, the north, and the south. All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 Look, I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” 17 He was afraid and said, “What an awesome place this is! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.”

18 Early in the morning Jacob took the stone that was near his head and set it up as a marker. He poured oil on top of it 19 and named the place Bethel.

Jacob dreams of a great staircase reaching from the earth to heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending. Above it stands the Lord, who does not condemn Jacob, but instead reiterates the covenant of grace: “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.”

I’ve been reading a book called “Invitation to a Journey” by M. Robert Mulholland Jr. It is about the journey we are all on as growing and maturing Christians. He identifies this exact moment in Jacob’s life as the vital first stage in the classical Christian pilgrimage: awakening. Mulholland explains that this awakening is a profound “two-sided dynamic”: A personal awakening to the reality of both God and Man.

“On the one hand, it is an encounter with the living God.”

“On the other hand, it is an encounter with our true self.”

This time of awakening in our experience brings us face-to-face with “the reality of our own brokenness, our own manipulativeness, our own grasping, our own deep-seated rebelliousness.”

When Jacob wakes from his sleep, he is struck by this dual reality. He cries out, “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I did not know it”. Filled with awe, he says, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” He names the place Bethel—the House of God.

To understand the sheer magnitude of God’s grace at Bethel, we have to view it through the lens of Jesus’ parable of the Wheat and the Weeds in Matthew 13.

Turn with me to Matthew 13:24-30 and read silently as I read aloud. Matthew 13:24-30

24 He presented another parable to them: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while people were sleeping, his enemy came, sowed weeds among the wheat, and left. 26 When the plants sprouted and produced grain, then the weeds also appeared. 27 The landowner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Master, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Then where did the weeds come from?’

28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he told them.

“‘So, do you want us to go and pull them up?’ the servants asked him.

29 “‘No,’ he said. ‘When you pull up the weeds, you might also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At harvest time I’ll tell the reapers: Gather the weeds first and tie them in bundles to burn them, but collect the wheat in my barn.’”

Jacob’s soul is that mixed-up field. He has the “wheat” of God’s covenant promise within him, but it is heavily choked by the “weeds” of his own manipulative, grasping nature. If God had acted like the panicked servants, He would have uprooted Jacob right there in the wilderness. He would have demanded that Jacob pull all his own weeds and perfect his moral performance before the staircase could come down.

But that is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God’s grace does not wait for a weed-free field. God drops the staircase of heaven directly into the weeds of Jacob’s dysfunction.

We, too, are a tangled field of wheat and weeds. We have moments of genuine faith mixed with our own grasping, our own manipulation, and our own desperate attempts to control our lives.

We too have a staircase to Heaven. In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, at the very end, in verse 51, there is a tip of the hat from Jesus to Jacob’s ladder. John writes, “Then he (Jesus) said, “Truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Scholars and commentators debate the Greek word “Epi” (translated “on” which can also mean “toward, near, to, or before”). But what is sure is this: Jesus is involved, on your behalf, in the opening of Heaven and the movement of angels!

Jesus is the intersection of heaven and earth. The Incarnation means that God has stepped into the dirt, the mess and the weeds of our human existence. By the Holy Spirit, you are included in Christ. He is with you in your most barren wilderness, and He meets you when your head is resting on a rock.

God accepts us exactly as we are in our messy fields, but He loves us too much to leave us there. God’s grace is an invitation to a journey.

In his book, “Invitation to a Journey”, Mulholland defines spiritual formation as “the process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others”. Listen to that said slowly.

You do not have to clean yourself up to encounter God. Look up from your rocky pillow today. The Lord is in this place, and His grace embraces each of us.

Amen.

As a closing prayer, let’s listen to this week’s psalm in song.

Michael Card: Psalm 139: Search me and Know me

Genesis 28 & Psalm 139:
Jacob encountered God’s grace not in a temple, but on the run in the wilderness. The Psalmist realised there is nowhere we can flee from God’s presence. How does it change your view of God to know He meets us in our failures and “wilderness” seasons, rather than waiting for us to climb our way back to Him?

Matthew 13:
In the Parable of the Weeds, the servants want to immediately rip out the bad plants, but the Master tells them to wait so they don’t destroy the wheat. In what areas of life (personally, relationally, or culturally) do you find yourself wanting to immediately “uproot the weeds,” and what might it look like to trust God’s patient timing instead?