Genesis 28:10-19 And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel

This happened during a difficult time in Jacob’s life. He had stolen his brother’s birthright, tricked his father into giving him his blessing, and, in consequence, had to leave his family and travel to a place he had never been to be with people he had never met. On his way, in the middle of a rocky place with no shelter, but with night falling, he made a crude bed on the hard ground with only a stone for his pillow.

In that place of barrenness and emptiness, cold and alone, Jacob had a vision of the promises of God. His dream of the ladder reminds us that although Heaven is invisible to us, the way is open even when God seems farthest from us. Awakening the next morning, awestruck, he blessed that place and named it Bethel, House of God. The New Testament tells us that we are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. As a choir we have sung, “Send it on down, Lord, send it on down,” and like the angels on Jacob’s Ladder, God sends his blessings down to us.

In her poem, “The Jacob’s Ladder,” Denise Levertov imagines the ladder as a stone ladder—one where “angels must spring \ down from one step to the next, giving a little lift of the wings” which is how it seems at times waiting for the blessings to fall from heaven, as if we are far removed and blessings like her vision of the angels, struggle to reach us.

Levertov also suggests “a man climbing \ must scrape his knees, and bring \ the grip of his hands into play” revealing the image of a man kneeling in prayer, asking blessings from the father. But, she tells us, “The cut stone \ consoles his groping feet.” Coming to God in prayer and humility comforts us. And it is then Levertov says, he feels “Wings brush past him,” and his prayer, like the poem “ascends” because it is only in humility and prayer that we can come before God and have the comfort of knowing his blessings and promises are ours, despite what our circumstances might look like.

“The Jacob’s Ladder” by Denise Levertov

On Valentine’s Day, we celebrate the most intimate of human relationships. One of the enduring symbols of love in our culture is the wedding band, a circlet of metal, without beginning or end, that represents love as eternal, neverending. For some, however, Valentine’s Day opens old wounds. I once knew a woman who suffered from deep depression every Valentine’s Day. She had lost her husband years before, and always after, Valentine’s Day reminded her of that loss.

On the night before his sister’s wedding, Scottish minister George Matheson was also reminded of love lost. He had been engaged to be married, but his fiance, unable to cope with the blindness that had afflicted Matheson from his youth, broke off the engagement and left him heartbroken. For years, he had lived with his sister, who took care of him, helping him with his studies, meeting his daily needs. Now she was leaving him to be married, and despite his joy for her, he could not help but feel sorry for himself (Asiado).

That night, all the old pain, all the old sense of loss and abandonment came back to him. But in the midst of his depression, Matheson remembered that God loved him with an everlasting love (Jer. 31:3).  In a few moments, he penned the words to this, now famous, hymn (Asiado):

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be. (“O Love”)

Works Cited

Asiado, Tel. “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.” Suite101.com. 14 Mar. 2007. Web. 12 Feb. 2010.
“O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.” RUF Hymnbook Online Hymn Resource. Reformed University Fellowship. Web. 27 Jan. 2010.

The church today is terrified of doubt. Doubt has become the new unpardonable sin. As one conservative talk show host said recently, tears in his eyes, “It’s better to believe in something, even if it’s wrong.”

That is not faith. But we are so afraid of questions that we will deny any evidence placed before us before we will admit doubts. We are so afraid of doubt that we will stand firm long after it is clear we are wrong because it is better to be certain and wrong than admit uncertainty.

And yet, over and over in the lives of the saints in the Bible, we read of their moments of doubt. Read the lives of the great Christians of the past, and every one of them faced doubt and often more than once in their Christian lives. To doubt is to be human, to recognize human frailty and the limits of human knowledge and experience. Paul tells us that now “we see through a glass darkly,” now “we know in part” (KJV, I Corinthians 13.12). In this life, we will never know the answers to all the questions that face us, and it is only hubris, the worst kind of arrogance to suggest we can.

Faith is no more the absence of doubt than courage is the absence of fear. In Mark chapter 9, a man brought his son to the disciples, a child tormented by seizures, but they were unable to heal him. And when the man brought his son to Christ, the child fell into a fit, and his father said to Christ, “if you can do anything, please have compassion on my son.”

Christ looked at the man and said, “If you can believe, all things are possible to those who believe.”

And that father, torn by doubt, cried out, tears streaming down his face, “I believe, oh, help me believe” (KJV, Mark 9.17-27).

Jesus didn’t condemn him for his doubt. Jesus didn’t berate him. Jesus didn’t say, “I’m sorry. Your faith just isn’t strong enough.” Jesus healed his son. Jesus healed his son because, in the midst of doubt, the man believed. Hebrews 11: 1 tells us that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (KJV, Heb. 11.1). Faith is not dead certainty. Faith is not blind belief. Faith comes with humility and a contrite heart.

Hours before his crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples he would be taken and they would abandon him. When Peter heard Christ’s words, he said, “Oh. no, Jesus. Not me. All these may doubt, but not me. I will be faithful. I will be true.” And Jesus looked him in the eye and said, “Peter, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me thrice.”

And, Peter said, “I will die before I deny you” (KJV, Matthew 26. 31-35). Peter was so angry. How could Jesus doubt his faith? And moments later, when Judas came with the betrayer’s kiss, and the high priest’s servant stepped forward to take Jesus into custody, Peter leapt forward, swinging his blade, and if the servant hadn’t ducked, Peter would have taken off his head instead of his ear (KJV, John 18:10-11). And then, does Jesus reward him for his faith? No, Jesus turns to Peter and tells him to put down his sword, that those who live by the sword, die by the sword, then heals the servant’s wound before meekly going to his doom. And before the cock crowed morning, Peter, cursing and angry, had denied Christ (KJV, Luke 22.51-62).

And then, in his humiliation, then, his pride broken, then, his arrogance drowned in tears, heartbroken, then, Peter was open to faith. On Sunday morning, when Christ arose from the dead, and the women coming to bind his body found an angel waiting for them, the angel told them “tell his disciples and Peter that he will see them in Galilee just as he promised (KJV, Mark 16.1-7). Tradition says that some short time later, Christ spoke to Peter, privately, and we don’t know what was said, but Peter, his arrogance obliterated, found faith, and with faith, forgiveness.

The true response to doubt is not blind faith. The true response to doubt is humility and prayer, patience and fervent study, waiting on God, who in his own good time, will come to us.

God, grant us the humility to endure doubt
Teach us to pray, in faith believing,
and when all hope is gone,
help us turn to your word,
help us turn to you in prayer,
broken and humble,
to find faith.

© Bill Stifler, 2009

On Wednesday, January 20, 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the Potomac River after striking a bridge in Washington, D.C (Rosenblatt, pars. 1-2). The following week Time carried an editorial by Roger Rosenblatt describing reaction to the crash. He writes,

But the person most responsible for the emotional impact of the disaster is the one known at first simply as “the man in the water.” (Balding, probably in his 50s, an extravagant mustache.) He was seen clinging with five other survivors to the tail section of the airplane. This man was described by Usher and Windsor [the park police helicopter team] as appearing alert and in control. Every time they lowered a lifeline and flotation ring to him, he passed it on to another of the passengers. “In a mass casualty, you’ll find people like him,” said Windsor. “But I’ve never seen one with that commitment.” When the helicopter came back for him, the man had gone under.   (Rosenblatt, par. 4)

In John 5, Jesus tells us “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (KJV, John 5.13). “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that ye love one another” (KJV, John 5.16-17).

God wants us to be “the man in the water.” All around us, people are drowning. Some are drowning in sin, some, in doubt. Some are drowning in heartache, some in sickness, some in pain. Some are drowning in debt. Some are drowning in loneliness. So many are drowning, believing they are all alone in the water, trapped in the swells, desperate for help.

God calls on us to hold them up. We hold them up in prayer. We hold them up when we give them a shoulder to cry on. We hold them up when we lend a helping hand. We hold them up when we listen. We hold them up when all we can do is hold them.

And when we are drowning, we have the promise that the God of all comfort comforts us in all our troubles, holding us up, so we may comfort those we will find in the water by that same comfort we receive from Him (II Cor. 1.3-4).

_______________

Rosenblatt, Roger. “The Man in the Water.” Time. 25 Jan. 1982. Time, Inc. 4 Feb. 2009 <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,925257,00.html>.

 © Bill Stifler, 2009

One of the great mysteries of Christianity is the incarnation of Christ. God, who is holy, sacred, wholly other, awful, beyond words or explanations, “was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth” (KJV, John 1.14).

In Exodus 33, when Moses asked to see God, to see his glory, God told him “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live” (KJV, Exodus 33.20), and so God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock, allowing Moses only a passing glance (KJV, Exodus 33.21-23).

But, in the New Testament, God is “made flesh” (KJV, John 1.4). In John 8, when asked about the resurrection of the Old Testament saints, Christ says, “Before Abraham was, I am” (KJV, John 8: 58). In John 10, when the Pharisees ask Christ if he is the Messiah, he tells them “I and my Father are one” (KJV, John 10:30). When Phillip asks Christ to “Show us the Father,” he is told, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (KJV, John 14.9).

In Philippians 2, Paul tells us, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (KJV, Philippians 2.5-8).

Paul calls the cross the humiliation of Christ. But that humiliation doesn’t end with the cross. On Easter Sunday morning, it wasn’t a divine Spirit that stepped from the tomb to comfort Mary in Gethsemane. It wasn’t a divine spirit that inspired the disciples on the Emmaus road. It wasn’t a divine spirit that confronted Thomas for his unbelief. Christ, who was sent “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (KJV, Romans 8.3), at the resurrection took on once more a physical body.

In I Corinthians 15, Paul takes the Corinthian church to task for doubting the resurrection. He reminds them that, without the resurrection, our “faith is vain; [and we] are yet in [our] sins (KJV, I Corinthians 15.17), that they “which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished” (KJV, I Corinthians 15.18), and that “we are of all men [and women] most miserable” (KJV, I Corinthians 15.19).

But Christ did rise from the dead. Paul tells us Christ has “become the firstfruits of them that slept” (KJV, I Corinthians 15.20). In Ephesians 4, Paul says, “When [Christ] ascended up on high, he led captivity captive” (KJV, Ephesians 4.8). Church tradition says that this refers to the Old Testament saints, that after his death and before his resurrection, Christ led the Old Testament saints out of limbo into glory.

In her poem “Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell,” Denise Levertov describes this moment, but the focus of her poem isn’t on the rescue of those Old Testament saints. Instead, she turns to the resurrection, the re-incarnation of Christ. But unlike Paul, she offers a more human motivation for Christ’s return to “mortal flesh.”

living, dying, descending to rescue the just
from shadow, were lesser travails
than this: to break
through earth and stone of the faithless world
back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained
stifling shroud: to break from them
back into breath and heartbeat, and walk
the world again, closed into days and weeks again,
wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit
streaming through every cell of flesh
so that if mortal sight could bear
to perceive it, it would be seen
His mortal flesh was lit from within, now,
and aching for home. He must return,
first, in Divine patience, and know
hunger again, and give
to humble friends the joy
of giving Him food–fish and a honeycomb.
                    (Levertov, lines 21-38)

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Levertov, Denise. “Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell.” The Best American Poetry 1990. Ed. Jorie Graham. Series Ed. David Lehman. New York: Collier Books, 1990. 121-2.

© Bill Stifler, 2009