The hidden life of Jacob

John’s Gospel is a mystery.

We don’t know who wrote it, when exactly or where it was written;

There are some baffling questions.

Who is ‘the beloved disciple’ who appears half-way through but is never named?

Why is there no Last Supper, which seems quite important in the other Gospels, and the church –

With that why are there actually no sacraments –

No description of baptism, or the baptism of Jesus –

But many allusions to sacraments – I am the bread of life, I am the true vine, I am the living water, the six stone jars for purification, the foot-washing.

Sacrament is a Latin word, sacramentum, whose Greek equivalent in Mysterion, and there’s no shortage of mysteries.

Why does the crucifixion happen before the Passover in John, rather than the Passover being celebrated as the Last Supper in the other Gospels?

And why are the list of disciples different?

Ironically, or not, there’s no mention of John in this Gospel, a central figure elsewhere, and today we heard about Nathaniel – unknown to Matthew, Mark and Luke.

John is just a very different Gospel.

It’s an insider Gospel.

He’s assuming you know certain things –

He’s perhaps protecting the church’s practices from being mocked or perverted by outsiders.

He’s always coding in connections, allusions, symbols to enrich the narrative and tell you more about Jesus, if you take the time to peel through the layers.

So you’d be forgiven – I forgive you – te absolvo –

If you hadn’t realised today’s passage is all about Jacob.

The first little clue comes in this strange introduction of Nathaniel –

Jesus describes him as an ‘Israelite in whom there is no deceit’.

Israelite here is an unusual term for John.

But Israel is the name which God gives Jacob, who becomes father of the twelve tribes –

But Jacob is famously the deceiver, he tricks his father by wearing animal skins to appear to be hairy like his brother and by getting his mother to cook Isaac a good lunch.

Nathaniel then is a true Israel – in whom there is no deceit – who will witness to the new promise of God.

But the explicit moment is the image we ended with:

you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’

Updated in the New Zeppelin Version to a stairway, St John’s image replicates the seminal moment of Jacob’s dream in Genesis (not the band):

[Jacob] dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

This is the moment after Jacob has stolen Esau’s birthright – their father’s blessing –

where Jacob has this theophany of angels going up and down, and God renews his covenant with Jacob promising the land and offspring.

And Jacob declares: ‘‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ 

And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place!

This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’

But let’s get things lined up properly in these parallel texts.

Jesus is not Jacob here.

He’s not having a dream –

He’s saying this is what you, my disciples, you Nathaniel, Israel without deceit, will see.

No, Jesus is himself Beth-el, the House of God upon whom the angels ascend and descend;

He is the ladder that connects heaven and earth.

In that most unlikely place – between heaven and earth – towards which the Gospel inexorably moves;

Which finds in love and in suffering the central truth of creation.

And there’re no coincidences in John’s Gospel.

So when Jesus cleanses the temple in the next chapter, a totally different timing to the other Gospels, who put it at the end, he is saying the temple is not the house of God.

I am the house of God, the Word made flesh and dwelling amongst you.

The body which you will break.

And while Jacob exclaims: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!’

only a few verses before today’s Gospel we read:

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.

As the centurion will cry at  the foot of the cross:

“Surely this was the Son of God!”

The Biblical stories are full of little parallels, mirroring and twists;

Jacob gets his comeuppance for stealing his brother Esau’s blessing a few years later.

He goes down to a well, sees a pretty girl called Rachel.

He agrees to serve her father for seven years in return for marriage.

But Laban tricks him and sends him in to Leah, and only gets Rachel in return for another seven years’ work.

No one really comes off well in the story but essentially Jacob gets a dose of his own medicine, his deceit.

Intriguingly, John deliberately plays off this Jacob story as well, a few chapters after today’s Gospel, when Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.

There are little details that match – Jacob and Jesus both arrive in the middle of the day;

And we have the odd unchaperoned flirting that shocks the disciples.

But as with Nathaniel, in whom there is no deceit, there’s no trickery here, and while Rachel was to fulfil the promises of God by giving Jacob his favourite children, Joseph and Benjamin, so we see the promises of God fulfilled in the encounter with the Samaritan woman, as she comes to faith and spreads the news of the Gospel to surrounding villages.

So – I’m sure you’re thinking – this is all very interesting, but why does it matter?

Well, the first thing is about the depth of the Biblical narrative.

The story of Jesus is only unlocked, only makes sense, in the context of Scripture.

The evangelist uses parallels with stories and characters – especially Adam and Moses, to bring out who Jesus is, to build the connections so you can see the larger story of what God’s doing with creation.

The promise Jacob receives at Bethel is owned by his children.

Jacob is Israel so the children of Israel have this promise that God has blessed them and given them the land.

We can see today how significant that is.

Here Jesus is saying I am Bethel – the house of God –

So the promise Jacob receives becomes incarnate in the person of Jesus.

And just as Jesus figuratively brings the people liberation and the new law – through parallels with Moses,

And is a universal figure of humanity, as Adam is,

So in Jacob he represents the promises of God, not achieved through deceit and trickery;

But by being this mediating figure between heaven and earth.

By revealing God on the cross –

By identifying with our suffering and conquering with love;

A God not universally recognised, but awesome to those who see it, the house of God and the gate of heaven.

There is something in the call of faith that is about the ability to connect.

If the Gospel is just a story about someone called Jesus who lived along time ago, then we have not been able to make that step.

Just as if you can read CS Lewis or Tolkien without hearing the Christian underpinning of their stories, you’d have missed something important.

To really read the Gospel is to hear the tremors of so many more stories beneath, of Kings and prostitutes and lepers and conquests and slavery and trickery and children and snakes.

And all those stories – like we hear at Carol services and on Easter night are built into the pivotal story we hear each Sunday.

And this isn’t about the evangelist who may or may not have been called John.

It’s about a drumbeat, an ancient story built up like geological strata over millennia.

A story about what it means to be human;

And carried forward through the lives of Saints, the mystery plays, Chaucer, Shakespeare, King Arthur and Dickens;

And in every generation it’s asking can you hear that beat?
Can you hear the story?

Hear the call of God, enough to respond –

Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.

Because just as John is riffing on the story of Jacob to give sense and meaning to the story of Jesus, so we can play out the story of our lives by connecting it with this well of stories we have inherited.

As a Christian, our suffering is cruciform;

Our depression is Gethsemane

Our grief is Good Friday;

Our recovery is resurrection;

Our love is our purpose.

This is a work of imagination, to connect us to the deeper story that God is telling about the world.

A story of layers and layers,

Where a great deal is hidden and there is no shortage of mystery.

but also buried in those layers is the Word made flesh, and a stairway to heaven.

Amen.