There’s a classic rock song where a woman is buying the stairway to heaven. The Tower of Babel was intended to reach up into heaven. The stairway or ladder represents human history: man’s attempt to achieve bliss, heaven, nirvana, through experience, conquest, lust, inebriation. Get that job, get that car, get that phone, get that girl, get the ocean view – with a moment of purchase we can climb the stairway to heaven.

Even though most of you have identified as disciples of Jesus, you’ve got the same impulse. You think that if you work hard, make the right decisions, buy the right stuff, you’ll be happy, you’ll be better, you’ll get satisfaction.

Religion sells the same thing by means of ethics or experience. The right spiritual effort, or good works, can get you up the ladder. It’s embedded in the 18th century hymn, “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.”

But the whole point of the narrative with Jacob, and culminating in Nathanael’s encounter with Jesus, is that the ladder cannot be climbed by us. The ladder first of all descends, bringing God down to us….