Wayne Campbell steadies the Fender Stratocaster guitar across his knee and begins the iconic notes of the Led Zeppelin classic only to have the music store clerk stop him and point to the sign prohibiting its playing. Wayne incredulously looks into the camera and proclaims, “No Stairway. Denied!” The scene from the early 90s comedy, “Wayne’s World” makes light of the crushing blow of the headbanger being denied the euphoric strains of the song. But for our purposes, we are going to reflect for a moment on “Wayne’s Words.”
After the completion of the temple, during his prayer of dedication, Solomon asks the great question, “Will God indeed dwell on the earth?” Theologians have been pondering that question from the earliest of times. But the answer to the question is at the very heart of the Church’s worship life and it has everything to do with the Ascension of our Lord. But the answer goes back much further than Solomon.
Will God indeed dwell on the earth? God indeed had dwelt with Adam and Eve in the Garden before the Fall. Though sin had separated humanity from God, we still see how numerous instances throughout the Old Testament where God comes among His people. Gordon Lathrop builds on Jacob’s encounter with God at Bethel for a paradigm of Lutheran Worship. Lathrop writes:
According to the Genesis narrative (Genesis 28:11-22), when Jacob put his head upon the stones at Bethel, he dreamed that the place where he lay was filled with God and the signs of God. A stairway or ramp – a Mesopotamian ziggurat, most likely – extended between earth and heaven. On it the angels of God were ascending and descending, making Bethel the very center of a kind of commerce with the divine. Jacob could see this commerce, this series of exchanges that, according to many religions takes place invisibly at temples and holy shrines. But the imagery of the narrative was also unlike the expectations of many shrines. God, whom we would expect to find at the top of the ramp, housed in the hut which was closest to heaven and receiving the intermediary angels was, instead, standing “beside” Jacob (28:13), promising presence and blessing without intermediary. The angels had become indicators of the importance and holiness of the place, not commerce-bearers. When Jacob awoke, he proclaimed, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Such awe belongs conventionally to holy places. Hence, however, the awe is heightened because of the surprising character of this God. “Surely the Lord” – not just any deity – “is in this place – and I did not know it.” (28:16)[1]
Since the earliest of times, fallen humanity has been trying to construct for themselves towers that reach the heavens. Humanity’s thirst for glory is insatiable and will never be quenched. The transparency of the people of Babel is surprising as they set out “to make a name for ourselves.” The foolishly labor and construct their ladders rather than understanding our “down-to-earth God” as Gerhard Forde describes. He writes:
The problem is not the abstract one of what God might or might not be like up there “in heaven,” not what he might or might not have willed in the secret of his own counsel , but what he has actually willed and done for you here on earth. He has sent his Son to die and conquer the grave; he has baptized you and given you the sacrament of his body and blood and that is the revelation of his almighty will. The point is that it is only the down to earth God who can help us.[2]
In one sense, the stairway is denied, Wayne. We cannot climb the “ladder” (to use Forde’s terminology) or “stairway” (using Robert Plant’s) to reach heaven. We may try to reach God by our own best efforts or building projects, but there is no way that we can ascend to God. The stairway is denied. But there is indeed one who traveled down the staircase from heaven. As we hear in the Christmas Eve introit, “When all was still and it was midnight, Your almighty Word, descended from Your royal throne.” The Lord who revealed Himself to Jacob at Bethel also descended as the Child of Mary. Christ is the Word made flesh, who made His dwelling among us by coming down to earth in human form. Harold Senkbeil writes, “Solomon’s age-old question was answered at Bethlehem, and with an exclamation point. Yes, God would really dwell on earth with man. This baby born to a young Jewish virgin was God with us. God couldn’t get more ‘with us’ than He did with Jesus.”[3] We could never ascend to God by our own powers and abilities, but God descends to us in His mercy and love.
When the disciples find themselves staring gape-mouthed into heaven after Jesus’ ascension, this does not mean that God ceases to be a “down-to-earth” God. The same God who came down to Jacob at the stairway to heaven and as Savior wrapped in swaddling clothes still comes down to His people on earth, though hidden from the world. Lathrop writes, “For us in the Christian congregation, Word and Sacrament are our Bethel-stones.”[4] He further explains, “Jesus Christ is Bethel for us, and He is known where he gives himself away: in the word he opens our minds to understand beginning with Moses and all the prophets (Luke 24:47), in the bread he breaks (Luke 24:31), in the baptism into his death which is the beginning of sharing his resurrection (Romans 6:4).”[5] Though Christ ascends into heaven, He still is the one who dwells among His people as the Word made flesh. Senkbeil writes, He who once took up residence in human flesh now gives His heavenly power hidden in the lowly human word of His holy Gospel – and, wonder of wonders, once again God dwells among His people in that holy Word.”[6]
Since Christ has come down to us as God wrapped in flesh in Bethlehem and who suffered in that same flesh for the life of the world, something dramatic has happened. The stairway is no longer denied to His saints. Christ is the One who “opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers” as we sing in the Te Deum. By Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension, He, Himself, has become the stairway to heaven. He is the means by which the saints will enter glory.
Ascension is a time when we start with Christ’s “descension.” Christ descended to us in servant’s form to rescue us and give to bridge the chasm between holy God and sinful man. But until His return in glory, Christ continues to comes to us hidden under the Word and Sacraments. Philip Pfatteicher summarizes this Scriptural theme well, writing:
Bethel, called by Jacob “the gate of heaven,” is a holy place because there God came down, not because the people asked for the visit but because God chose to comed down. Thus the ladder or staircase is a useful and instructive symbol of God’s interaction with his people. God sets up the ladder. God builds the stairs. At last God comes down bearing a child, so that we children may come up. God descends to us in order to help us to do what we cannot do on our own: ascend to our true home. It is a sacramental sign: God condescends to come down to bestow gifts and one of those gifts is to raise us by the very means God used to come down to us. In the words of Jesus, the one who came down, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself (John 12:32).[7]
So
fear not Wayne! There is no denial of “stairway”
to the saints of God. Christ, Himself is
the way. He is indeed the very gate of
heaven. That’s why we assemble on a
Thursday evening when everyone else is heading to the ballpark of cutting
grass. We go to celebrate the fact that
Christ ascended to the Father’s right hand, but also because our down-to-earth
God came among us to save and continues to come among us to forgiven, strengthen
and renew. We won’t sing “Stairway to
Heaven” on Ascension Day, but we can trace this multi-directional theme of His
saving work. The stairway is not denied!
[1][1]
Gordon Lathrop, “How Awesome is this Place: The Lutheran Book of Worship and the Encounter with God,” Encountering God: The Legacy of Lutheran
Book of Worship for the 21st Century. ed. Ralph Van Loon. (Minneapolis:
Kirk House, 1998), p. 40.
[2]
Gerhard O. Forde, Where God Meets Man:
Luther’s Down-to-Earth Approach to the Gospel. (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972), p. 25.
[3]
Harold L. Senkbeil, Dying to Live: The
Power of Forgiveness. (St. Louis:
Concordia, 1994), p. 32.
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