The Ladder / St George’s, Venice / Epiphany II /15i12 1
THE LADDER:
a sermon praught by the Rev’d Dr Richard Major
in St George’s, Venice,
at Mass for Epiphany II,15thJanuary, 2012.
© Richard Major 2012
I Samuel iii1-10;Psalm cxxxix1-5 & 12-18; Revelation v1-10; St. John i43-51.
From the Gospel:
Hereafter ye shall see heaven open,
and the angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost:
Amen.
The Holy Gospel
T
he day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow Me.
Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?
Philip saith unto him, Come and see.
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!
Nathanael saith unto Him, Whence knowest Thou me?
Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.
Nathanael answered and saith unto Him, Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.
Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these.And He saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
I
t is magnificent to be back in Venice, and I’m grateful to Fr Howard and the churchwardens for the chance to be here, to celebrate the Mass with you, to speak to you, and to spend a few days inthe most beautiful place in the world.
Venice is the most beautiful place in the world – you who live here don’tneed to be told that. But there’s another quality to Venice which inhabitants possibly cease to notice, although it’s obviousat once to the visitor. Venice feels, not just the loveliest, but also the most hiddenof cities. More than anywhere elseon earth, she liessecreted away,veiled behind her moats. This city of rose-pink turrets, like an ecstatic vision in a dream, stands concealed on lonely islands, folded in a lagoon,walled in by a reef. And the lagoon is stowed at the far end of a long narrow sea like a corridor, a sea that is itself an inlet of the Mediterranean, the Middle Sea, tucked in between the continents.
Venice is the most wonderfully enfolded spot on the planet. Opposite the door of this church is the canal of St Vio, salt-water indeed, attached in the end to every ocean; yet how far away the Atlantic seems! This feels, at least to the visitor, like the most perfectly insular of all islands. How could she not beLa Serenissima, the most serene? Of courseI realise she’sbeen connected to the mainland. Trains and even, alas, cars can reach her. But it’s easy to forget that dratted causeway. It’s easy to feel inviolate.
I remember a winter here twenty years ago. Onenight there was a storm so savage that through the curtains of my four-posterI could hear,roaring against the breakwater of the Lido,the surf of the open sea. It was a fine feeling to lie in bed, tohear that wild noise far away,and yet remain so cosy, so cut off.
We like this feeling. We generally like to feel ourselves cosy: small, and hidden, and safe. We picture our livesassmall and hidden and safe, sheltered and enfolded. That’s what makes them so comfortable.
And it is one of the uncomfortable truths of the Christian Gospel that our lives can’t be small, or hidden, or safe. You and I have no privacy. The innermost part of our souls are flung open to the sky. We do have the option of being serene and detached. Nothing about us is small or cut off. We live in atumult of publicity and danger.
Why is this?
I’d like you to imagine a certain very violent image – the most violent image, perhaps, our minds can manage. Imagine the very fabric of the cosmos being torn. Something is being thrust in from beyond the bounds of space and time and matter, something larger than the universe itself. It is straight and unthinkably long: its tremendous posts plunge past the nebulæ: its rungs overshadow the quasars. It is, in fact, a ladder, an infinite ladder, plummeting inward. The highest rungs of the ladder are wider than galaxies, but it subdues itself to littleness as it descends, and it is normal human size when,with a judder, its two feet jabthemselves into the ground,and it comes to rest.
We stand beside it, looking up, and behold with intolerable vertigo the everlasting Powers ascending and descending upon it. These undying ones come down the ladder from the uttermost height, where God waits forever, encompassing all things. They come down, humbling themselves to our smallness, and stand before us, looking into our faces.Then they ascend with news of us, back to thevery heart of the Presence of God.We live our lives at the foot of a ladder stretching straight into infinity.
This staggeringimage of a ladder occurs at the climax of the Old Testament, in the middle of the Book of Genesis [xxviii10-17]. The man called Jacob or Israel slept, and as he slept he dreamed, and as he dreamed he saw a splendid and appalling ladderset up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.It reached up from Israel’s sleeping head into that blaze of beauty from which the worlds arose: the divine reality Itself. And Israel awoke screaming.
It was only a vision, only a prophecy. But the centuries went past, and suddenly it became true.
It became true, of course, at Christmas. At Christmas God did tear the fabric of universe to enter it, trailing a wake of singing seraphim. He entered, he descended, humbling Himself unthinkably, and with a judder He came to rest in a shed behind a pub in the Palestianian hills. He arrived, and lay feebly moving His legs in a trough. The ladder stretched from that lowest point of Bethlehem up into infinity.
That was Christmas.
What happens after Christmas?
Well, nothing, for quite a while. For thirty years the obscure divine Baby became an obscure divine Child, an obscure divine Teenager, an obscure divine Youth, and finally a Man.
All the time, people tried to liveordinary lives, not realising that the great ladder had come crashing into the universe, connecting the little affairs of mankind directly with God.
But such a thing couldn’t stay hidden forever, and after Christmas, on the Sundays of January, the Church has us reflect on stories about how people realised what had come into the world.
The Young Man from Nazareth was baptised, like everyone else – and the sky shook with an infinite Voice crying Him welcome. That was last week. The Young Man went to a wedding part, like everyone else, and the water pitchers poured out vintages. We’ll have that story next Sunday.
In today’s story nothing much actually happens: the Young Man is introduced to a new friend, a cleverrfellow named Nathaniel, and they exchange remarks. But Nathaniel wasan Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile, and his wise innocence was so intense that he discerned Whom he is speaking to. This true Israelite had the same experience as his ancestor Israel, who dreamed of a stairway connecting earth and heaven. And so Nathaniel startled everyone, and startles us now, by shouting out Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.
And he was right.Jesus reveals to Nathaniel that He is Himself the ladder Israel saw: He is the union of humanity and divinity: He stretches from Palestine into eternity, and lifts all men up into God, and brings the servants of God in the world. Jesusis all this: and because of Him, from now on the universe is torn apart, and divinity pours down on us.
Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.It’s one of the great sayings of the Bible, and worth committing to memory, to store in our brains and carry round with us.
The heavens are open now. They are no longer far away, God, Who always seemed the ultimate mystery, ahs torn the veil and showed us Himself. He has invaded the human world: He is never going to leave it. God has become Man: He is never going to stop being Man. He has taken a human Body, and never put it off. Very soon that Body will be once more here, on our altar, very soon it will enter our bodiesonce more. God is at hand: we see heavens open.
It’s worth picturing, whenever we enter a church, a ladder pitched on the altar leading straight up through the roof, and the sky, and the expanse of space, to God. How dreadful is this place! cried Israel when he woke [xxviii17]; this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.That’s what we properly feel about churches: delight, and also awe shading off into terror.
But the dreadful ladder isn’t only pitched in church. Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.Every second our thoughts soar up, and every second God’s love comes down – never more than now, at Mass; but all the time, too. The truth of God’s presence is literally and pressingly true, inescapable.
We began by speaking of our desire for cosy little lives. At the deepest level, we desire even spiritualcosiness. God exists, of course, and the truths of the Christian faith are true: but they seem a bit remote, abstract and mysterious.
They aren’t. The ladder has smashed into your life and mine: God is immediate. The ladder is pitched everywhere. We live our whole lives at the foot of it. There isn’t one moment not full of that dazzling traffic up and down; not an instant when you and I aren’t caught up in the salvation of the world.
We might prefer lives that are small, hidden and safe. We might prefer such enfolded lives, but we cannot have them. Our lives are huge, they are perilous, they are open, and they are already eternal. You and I can never die, and what will look like death will merely be our ascent into yet more ardent and extreme aliveness. We are already on the edge of eternity: the heavens are open, and we are ascending on the Son of Man.
To Him, therefore,
be all praise and honour and glory,
here on earth where He is adored,
and above where He reigns forever
with the Father and the Holy Ghost,
ever one God, world without end:Amen.
© 2011 The Rev’d Dr Richard Major,
Nansough Manor near Ladock, Cornwall TR2 4PB
24B Jurčkova cesta, Ljubljana, Slovenija
I can’t imagine why the lectionary gives us the (relatively trivial) story of the calling of Samuel today, rather than the staggering story of Jacob’s ladder.
The painting of the ladder is by Murillo.
The pen and wash by Cigoli Lodovico,
The watercolour by William Blake, “the village idiot of neo-classicism”.
The carved angels are ascending and descending the western wall of Bath Abbey.