Friday, December 6, 2024
Scripture: Genesis 28:10-15
This passage from the Old Testament, though it may not look it at first glance, is the gospel! In his dream, Jacob sees a stairway to heaven (cue guitar, haha), with angels ascending and descending. In his dream, heaven and earth aren’t as divided as we usually make them to be. This resembles the correspondence between God and the world, culminating in the very presence of Christ, who came to be born to live among us. This is Christmas, the gospel, right here!
God told Jacob that the land on which he was laying would be given to Jacob and his descendants. God promises him what is to come: that God will give all God’s people the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven, where God’s children can live as one. Though Jacob’s offspring would eventually spread to the west, east, north, and south, God lets Jacob know that wherever they are, God will be with them. God’s very presence grants accessibility to all God’s people. There is no gatekeeping or barring of access to anyone. Given our perpetually divided world, where we struggle to see God in one another, the hope of heaven is that one day people will reconcile. All people, abiding in all places and representing all cultures, will all be known as God’s children.
But God doesn’t stop there—God says, ‘Know that I am with you.’ In the Advent Season, we are reminded, like Jacob, that God is with us. Jesus came into our dark and divided world to be our light. Lastly, God says, “I will not leave you,” and God didn’t. God never left Jacob. So many times, God heard the people crying out, and despite all, kept rescuing them. The promise remained. God sent them hope; God sent them Jesus. God promised that He would come to live and walk among us, to teach us how to love one another. The Spirit of God, who abides among us, binds our very church community together. God is right here among our family at Yates, and has given us heaven!
The baby in the manger is the humble fulfillment of God’s promise of that stairway to heaven. Just like how God gave baby Isaac, Jacob’s father, to Abraham, and John the Baptist to Elizabeth— a promised baby in Scripture shows God’s promise to fruition. This Advent season, find hope in that vision of the accessible stairway to heaven that all can cross, because Jesus crossed it first. Our God is a God that has maintained, since the time of Jacob, that Heaven is the home of all, and in Christmas has made it happen. Thanks be to God.
Mackenzie Smith is in her 3rd year at Duke Divinity School and grew up at Yates.