Seventh Sunday after Trinity

8 am Holy Communion

23rd July 2023

Genesis 28.10-19a

Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43

Angela Tilby,
Canon of Honour

There are some passages in the Bible which resonate because they are so full of mystery and a sense of awe that they somehow stop us in our tracks. For me, the passage about Jacob’s ladder is one of them: ‘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’. The darkness, the stony pillows, the dream, the ladder, and God saying, ‘I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it…’

It is one of many passages which shows God pressing in on our world, appearing to individuals in sleep, or in a trance or in a vision. This is a God who desires to be intimate with particular individuals. This is why we think of God as a God who knows us before we know him, a God who wants to be known by name, a God who sees us in our wholeness, as part of families and histories, a God who knows our betrayals, mistakes and evasions and yet continues to call us  to himself. ‘Surely the Lord is in this place’ says Jacob when he wakes up,  ‘And I knew it not, this is none other but the house of God and this is the gate of heaven’.

We come to this house of God on Sundays and listen to scripture and receive the sacrament. And we greet one another, friend and stranger.  We find the service familiar and reassuring. We are glad to join in the prayers, and to be together. What we sometimes forget is that coming here on Sunday mornings puts us in a mystical place, a place where God is close, there is a ladder set up from earth to heaven, which reaches down into our sometimes stony hearts.

I don’t know about you, but one of the deprivations of getting older is that it is less easy to be comfortable in bed. Jacob’s stony pillow takes in a new meaning! Yet for Jacob the hard stone will become a pillar, a point of consecration. Just as God desires intimacy with Jacob, so he desires intimacy with us, just as we are, old or young, sick or well. Or as the Prayer of Humble Access puts it, ‘Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body and our souls washed through his most precious Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us’. We in him, and he in us. That is the mystical heart of the Gospel, the mystical heart of faith.

During the years of the Reformation there was a great deal of debate about how Holy Communion should be understood. The Reformers rejected the Mass and Transubstantiation. I’m not sure that they entirely understood the Doctrine of Transubstantiation but that is another issue. The problem they faced was what should replace it. No one doubted that the Lord had commanded that we remember him in bread and wine, that we should ‘do this in remembrance’ of him.  But what precisely did he mean? Some argued that communion was really just a visual aid. That what really mattered was remembering what Jesus did for us, once for all, on the cross. But if communion is only a visual aid is it really necessary? Richard Hooker, the great theologian of the 16th century, argued that Holy Communion was more, much more, than just a sign. God loves us, has always loved us, has always desired to be intimate with us. In Jesus, his incarnate Son he binds our nature to his own so we are sparked into sharing his divine life, recharged with divine energy for all those connections and relationships and activities, ‘all those good works which thou hast prepared for us to walk in’. And that we might be assured of our final destination, ‘that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us’. So communion is more than a symbol, more than a visual aid. It is Christ in us, Christ in us, the hope of glory.

I have to admit I often forget all this. I simply receive the bread and the cup because it is what I always do. But sometimes it is good to stand back from habit, to put ourselves back in the howling wilderness of our lives, to own our spiritual lassitude and our all too human brokenness. When I was a teenager the habit was encouraged of preparing for communion the night before. Reading the Gospel of the day, acknowledging our sins and getting ready to greet the Lord in his sacramental presence. Like Jacob we need sometimes to turn in our stony slumber and remember the sheer goodness and kindness of God who has set up a ladder for us on earth, the one who comes down from heaven to bring salvation, refreshment and hope.

We matter that much to him.

‘Let our hearts, then be unfeignedly thankful…that we show forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives’.