Which Art in Heaven

I. A Stone Under His Head

He walks until the sun goes down.

Behind him lies a tent where from now on his name will be spoken with resentment. He has deceived his blind father with the skin of a young goat, and his brother has said to himself what he will do to him as soon as the days of mourning for their father begin. It got out all the same, and his mother said: flee. So he walks, away from Beersheba, toward Haran, with his father's house behind him and his destination still far off — until the light is used up.1

He owns a staff and the clothes he is wearing. And his father's blessing, given him at parting in a Name: may El Shaddai bless you — make you fruitful, make you numerous, into a multitude of peoples. And with it the blessing of Abraham: this land, through which he is now passing as a stranger, he will inherit.2

A father pronounces a Name over a son he is sending away, and he does not know whether he will see him again.

About repentance there is not a word in the whole chapter. What it says is that he comes to a place, takes one of the stones of that place, puts it under his head and lies down.

That is what he holds of his inheritance: one stone. And he falls asleep with it, all alone.

And then heaven opens. A ladder, set on the earth, with its top reaching into heaven; angels of God going up and coming down on it. And above it all stands YHWH himself, and He speaks.3

The first thing the fugitive gets to hear is not a reproach. It is a name: "I am YHWH, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac."

Then come promises — the land on which he is lying, offspring like the dust of the earth, spreading out to all four points of the compass, blessing for all the families of the earth — spoken over a man with a staff for all his property and a stone for a pillow. And at the close the sentence that carries everything: "I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you."4

The man to whom all this is promised lies there as he lay down: alone, his head on a stone — a stone of the land that has just been promised to him.

II. The Other Tower

Genesis knows another structure whose top was to reach heaven, and it stands earlier in the book, in the plain of Shinar.

"Let us build a city, and a tower with its top in heaven; let us make a name for ourselves." All of Babel is in that one let us. There is no stone in the plain, so they bake one; there is no mortar, so they take bitumen. Everything about this structure is substitute — artificial stone, artificial mortar, and at the top, if it works, a homemade name.10

Then comes the verse that gives the whole undertaking its measure: YHWH comes down to see the city and the tower that the children of men were building. The tower that was meant to reach heaven cannot be seen from up there without coming down. The text needs no more mockery than that. He confuses their language and scatters them over the whole earth, and the building stops.

And generations later Jacob lies asleep at the foot of something that stands where the tower had wanted to be: set on the earth, with its top reaching into heaven. The measure Shinar set itself has been reached — but not by him. He has not laid one stone on another; his one stone lies under his head. The ladder is not erected but found — it is standing there already, set up by a hand the text does not name.

And the name. In Shinar people want to make themselves a name; above the ladder God speaks his own. I am YHWH. The city climbed up to grab; here He comes down to give — as He came down earlier to a childless old man to give him a name.11 Now the grandson of that old man lies at the foot of the ladder, and the God who then gave a name speaks his own to him — and attaches promises to it that the sleeper has not asked for.12

Babel ends in scattering: people who no longer understand one another, driven apart over the whole earth. Bethel ends with one man in one place, and over him the word: "I will bring you back."

III. A House, and a Gate

Then he wakes up.

"Surely YHWH is in this place, and I did not know it." The presence, then, was there before the discovery. Fear falls on him, and the fear finds words that reach further than he can know: "How awesome is this place! This is none other than a house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."13

He had noticed none of it when he arrived: a place to spend the night, stones enough. The gate was not in what could be seen; it opened from the other side.

A house. That is the word he chooses — the word for the place where a family lives, spoken by a man who has just lost his own house.14

The city in Shinar also had a gate in its name: Babel can be read as "the gate of god" — and God called it Babble.15 Two gates, in one book of Genesis: one that people ascribed to themselves and that ended in confusion of speech, and one that was pointed out to a fugitive in his sleep.

"Which art in heaven" is not a statement of distance. It is an address — and distances have no door, a house does. The first human being to point out that address does not point upward: he points to the ground where he has been sleeping, for that is where the foot of the ladder stood.

IV. The Direction

A ladder goes two ways. Everything depends on where the traffic starts.

At Bethel it starts at the top: God stands at the head and speaks downward, to a sleeper who has asked for nothing.

In the wilderness bread rains from heaven — "see, I will rain bread from heaven for you", and the same verse says: that I may test them.16

In the ashes of Jerusalem someone prays "oh, that You would tear open the heavens and come down" — the same voice that a little earlier said "You are our Father"; whoever no longer has a temple does not ask for a staircase up, he asks whether He will come down.17

In the synagogue of Capernaum the Son says: "I have come down from heaven" — and the grumbling that follows is precisely about the direction: is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? They knew his address, they thought; it was the wrong one.18

And on the last pages of Scripture a city comes down, from God, out of heaven.19

Every time the movement is from above to below. Nowhere in this series does anyone climb up — the only one who tried built Babel.

"Which art in heaven" does not say how far away He is. It says where everything comes from: the bread, the Son, the city — and the first word, which a fugitive heard in his sleep.

V. Where the Ladder Went

Jacob's dream did not stay in Bethel.

At the beginning of John's gospel a man is called who, by the word of the One calling him, had already been seen before anyone called him — under the fig tree. Philip had fetched him with three words, "come and see", and the man had come, doubting aloud whether anything good could come out of Nazareth. Of him Jesus says: "See, truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit."20

Israelite: son of Jacob, named after the new name of the man of Bethel. In whom there is no deceit: precisely what Jacob did carry with him that night — he slept with a stolen blessing.21

And to this son of Jacob without Jacob's deceit He quotes the dream of the patriarch, word for word.

"Amen, amen, I say to you: from now on you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God going up and coming down on the Son of Man."22

The same angels, the same two verbs, in the same order: it is Jacob's dream, arriving at another man, under a fig tree. One thing is different: in Genesis they went up and down on the ladder — here on the Son of Man. Where Jacob saw a ladder, He points to himself. The gate of heaven has turned out to be not a place but a Person.

And the order stands, and it remains strange: the angels go up first. So they are already there, below. The connection does not begin in heaven; it begins on the ground — with a sleeping man then, with this Man now.

One more thing has shifted, small and audible: the promise is in the plural. You will see heaven opened — you, all of you. What Bethel was for one man alone, in the dark, is here promised to whoever happens to be standing by; the ladder was the dream of one sleeper, the Person stands in public.

The first word of the prayer does the same with the address: our. And the first to hear that plural is the man under the fig tree — who a moment ago was still doubting aloud whether anything good could come out of Nazareth.

VI. The Address

At first light the man of Bethel set up the stone on which his head had lain, poured oil over it and gave the place its name: house of God.

And he made a vow, touchingly small for someone who had just been promised four points of the compass: if God gives me bread to eat and clothing to put on, and brings me back in peace to my father's house — then YHWH shall be my God, and this stone a house of God.23

Bread, clothing, and coming home safely: it is what a child asks for. The Sermon on the Mount, the chapter in which this prayer stands, speaks the same language about precisely those things: do not worry about what you will eat or put on — your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.24

Then he walked on, into the east, toward a long exile. The house did not go with him; the promise did. I am with you, wherever you go.

20 years later he stood there again, with wives and children and flocks and a dislocated hip. And at that same place he heard the Name with which his father had sent him away — now from the mouth of the One who had brought him back: I am El Shaddai.25

And when centuries later the Son taught a handful of people to pray, He gave them that address as the second word: Our Father, which art in heaven.

Whoever says that is not pointing at a distance. He presents himself at a house whose door stands open downward — and where the traffic is already on its way, having started from the other side, as always.

Whoever speaks it says with it the first thing a child of this house must know: there is Someone at home, and He spoke first — as at Bethel, over a man who had asked for nothing.