Sun Kwak, “The Downward Mobility of Jesus” (Christmas 2025/26)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khhMumOyumk

TEXT: Genesis 28:10-22

[10] Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. [11] And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. [12] And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! [13] And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. [14] Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. [15] Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” [16] Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” [17] 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.”

[18] So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. [19] He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first. [20] Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, [21] so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God, [22] and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you.”

SERMON: “The Downward Mobility of Jesus”

So, we’re in the season of Christmastide. And if you’ve heard of the twelve days of Christmas, this is the season we’re referring to. And during this season, we reflect upon Immanuel — that God is with us and came to be among us in the person of Jesus. And for most years, we get two Sundays for the season Christmas. And they usually serve as the hinges — the last Sunday of a year and into the first Sunday of the following year. And so, we take this opportunity to think about how God has been with us as a church community this past year while anticipating how God might guide our steps among us in the coming year. With our Session, I was reflecting on this past year about things that have both happened and ways we’ve been involved with the way God has moved amongst his people here at Christ Our Redeemer. And there’s been a lot that’s happened. We moved into this building. We’ve seen a number of families join our community, notably the number of kids amidst us doubling in size (quadrupling in noise). And yet, I think the very best thing we did was come alongside grieving families — through memorial services and being present alongside them in this most difficult season. God has been with us, as he’s always promised he would be. And in one of the prayers from the second volume of Every Moment Holy that really ministered to me in these darker moments was a prayer that spelled out not just that God is with us or amongst us in our suffering. But that in Christ, he is in the epicenter. He’s not on the periphery or just observing, but he’s at the very core of our suffering. Which is what we reflect upon in this season of Christmas, of God with us.

In our passage today, Jacob is at the low point in his life, up to that point. He’s been running, and he’s so exhaustedthat he falls asleep while using a stone as a pillow. We read in verse 11 that this is a certain place, but in the Hebrew, it’s more literally translated as a nothing place. And he’s here at rock bottom, because he’s made some bad decisions, at the expense of Esau, his older brother. We actually read that Esau is so angry in the previous chapter that he not only pronounces but vows that he will kill Jacob. And the way we probably envision Esau is as this hairy caveman. But the Bible actually describes him as a hunter. And this isn’t just him going out hunting for game. But that word has other descriptions attached to it. It’s actually the same word used to describe Nimrod back in chapter 10, one of the great kings who contributed to the might of man erecting this Tower of Babel. So, think less your uncle who goes out hunting on the weekend and more so Thor or Atila the Hun. Maybe not that extreme, but you get the point. This is the guy who’s vowing to kill him. And so, Jacob, in this moment is in complete disarray and completely exhausted from running for his life.

So, he’s in this nothing place, with no strength left, after having made some terrible choices. So, he’s literally at rock bottom. And what does he do? He makes a vow. Jacob, of all people. He who used vows to trick his blind father and steal from his older brother — twice. He who used his words for deception. And he didn’t just lie, but he used God’sname to make vow — he swore on God’s name. And here he is making a vow. And why? And how? Because something happened in him, as God shows up, in this nothing place. And he begins to transform this liar. He sets him on a new trajectory. Because the first words Jacob hears is not about him and his sinful history. And isn’t that what we often fear when encountering God after running from him? But that’s not what Jacob hears. The very first words, after all he had done is God pronouncing to him — I am the LORD, the God of your fathers. Highlighting to Jacob — Take your eyes off of yourself and put them on me. That even after all that he’s done, God is here pronouncing — I’m still your God, because I’m true to my word. And so, Jacob makes a vow, and he takes the stone he was using as a pillow, because he was so sapped of strength and in this place of debilitaiton — the very emblem of his nothingness and emptiness. And he calls this Bethel, which means the house of God. And what house? There were no walls, there was no furniture. It was a nothing place. And yet, that’s the Christmas Story. Where God would come down to dwell amongst, in the epicenter of his nothing place people. Where there was no room for him in the inn. Where foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head — not even on a stone pillow.

And so, as 2025 comes to a close, it’s my prayer that we would not dwell in our regrets or our sorrowful happenings. But we would look upon our God, who transforms our crooked lips to speak words of truth. Not about how we have acted but how God has acted and moved toward us. Because unlike Jacob, unlike you and me, when God says something and promises something, he can’t go back on his word. It’s against his character. And so, when we reflect upon how he took on human flesh and moved toward us in the story of the incarnation, that’s a movement that we don’t have the power to reverse. For the Story of Jesus is the story of God with us and God for us. And through this story that’s often recalled as Jacob’s ladder, we’re going to look at what Henri Nouwen referred to as the downward mobility of Jesus — how he came down to be at the epicenter of all of our hurts and nothingness.

We just referred to it, but you might know this story as Jacob’s Ladder. And when we think of ladder, we might think of a help to hang up Christmas lights or change light bulbs. Something that’s provided as an assistance for something menial. But this ladder seen in Jacob’s dream might be better understood as a stairway or scholars refer to as a ziggurat. There’s a grander picture here. Because with these ancient ziggurats, this climbing was to represent this heavenly portal that was open near the top of its construction. And that’s kind of what we have in this dream — something connecting earth to heaven and vice versa. The Tower of Babel from Genesis 11 was understood to be a ziggurat, and that word Babel itself means gate to God. This was the supposed access point for humans to reach the divine. Because the way of the world, the common understanding of humanity is that in order for the human to meet the divine, there needs to be some kind of ascent. But as we’ve just seen in our story, Jacob is in no place to climb. He’s on the run, he’s lost, he’s been completely wrung out. Because this dream that God shows Jacob is ultimately not about providing Jacob an opportunity to climb. But here, we have the reversal of man’s ways. Not where men reach God but where God comes down to meet man. Not in a place of impressive self-decoration but in a place of self-despair and self-defeat, when on his last legs and fatigued by the relentless demands of life.

Something that Edmund Clowney notes when it comes to the Hebrew of this text is with the positioning of God. We read in verse 13 that the LORD stood above it. And that’s kind of the picture we might see — God all the way at the top of this mighty structure. But as Clowney notes, in the Hebrew, it’s not that God was towering over him. But it’s more accurately depicted in the Hebrew that God was not above it but rather beside him. In the thoughts of Clowney, it’s as if he’s looking up at the heights of heaven, expecting God to be seated on the throne. But instead of him being there, where he’s expected, he finds him in the most unexpected place — next to him, in the epicenter of his nothingness and emptiness and sorrow. Because we mentioned the incarnation, the story of God’s movement into this world. And after his birth and arrival, Jesus actually recalls this very moment when calling one of his disciples to follow him. When you look our text, in verse 12, we’re told that on this stairway that was set up to connect earth to heaven — that on this stairway, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And you fast forward hundreds of years, at this moment when Jesus is calling Nathanael to him in John 1:51, he tells him — Truly, truly I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. That this stairway is Jesus. That God had not just descended to his bewildered people but that he did so in order to become the means to take hell-bound people and lift us to the gate of heaven.

Not too long ago, one of my friends — we’ll call him Nick. He shared this amusing story involving him and his wife — we’ll call her Shelly. They apparently had a pretty heavy conversation that went deep into the night. And because it took a lot out of her heart, Shelly fell into some deep sleep, which resulted in her having a dream. And in that dream, she saw Nick holding hands with another woman. And so, as Nick narrates, she spent the better part of the following morning being mad at him. And here he was exclaiming in frustration — She’s mad at me because of a dream, a dream that wasn’t even real. And I think some of us might chuckle, because we might have had similar experiences of our own. And as humorous as such a story is, Shelly just might have a case that her dream is more related to reality than Nick might have given her credit for. Dreams are rather interesting, aren’t they? Those in the world of psychology have theorized that dreaming unveils something of psychological importance. That these dreams allow for the dreamer to sort through unresolved and repressed wishes, searching deep into the human mind. And in a relatively recent Scientific American article, it was theorized that dreams put into picture and motion form emotions that are buried and suppressed. These dreams, thus, help regulate traffic on that fragile bridge which connects our experiences with our emotions and memories.

And you think about these buried and suppressed emotions for Jacob. We mentioned his experience of fear and anxiety with his running. But what lead him to being on the run? And further back, what lead him to steal his brother’s birthrights and blessing? There’s just this messy entanglement of family and his history with his family. As one author put it, regarding her own family history, she writes: “I am bound to these members of my family though I cannot look into their eyes or hear their voices. I honor their history. I cherish their lives. I will tell their story. I will remember them for I am the result of their very love, struggle, sacrifice, and journey.” And Jacob, like all of us, has a family history. His family shaped him — his identity, his buried and suppressed emotions that lead to his current experience of rock bottom. Because here’s what we get with what the Bible tells us about Jacob’s family history. This is a family of dysfunction and of wounding favoritism. When you look at the way the story is told in the early chapters of chapters 25-27, the way that Moses narrates it is with this vacuum of family hurts. In these early chapters where Jacob and Esau are in the home, Jacob and his father Isaac are never shown to be speaking to each other, except for when Isaac is tricked into thinking that he’s talking to Esau. And on the flip side, Esau and his mother Rebekah also are never shown to be speaking to one another. This is a fragmented, a severed family with fractured relationships. And this, without a doubt, reached deep down into the soul of Jacob. And so, after all this running, after these years of disfigurement, God visits him in a dream. To regulate the traffic on that fragile bridge that connects his experiences with his emotions and memories.

There was this huge blockbuster film back in 2010, a movie titled Inception. You might remember it as the movie with the spinning top. The film starred Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Dom Cobb, who specializes in entering into the subconscious of his clients through navigating the dream realm. But they also do this to alter reality, with the knowledge of the power of dreams and the narratives one chooses to believe. And so, the main mind that Cobb and his team try to enter into is Robert Fischer, whose father recently died. His father Maurice was the founding CEO of this company and a rival to Cobb’s client. And so, it’s Cobb’s task to enter into Robert’s mind, in order to change the narrative, of this burden of needing to continue his father’s legacy. As a son, Robert had always felt like a disappointment and has always been left with a lack of empowerment. And in a sense, he always felt unworthy to carry the mantle after his father’s death. And so, Cobb and his team go into Robert’s dreams. And layer by layer, they design these dreams so that he’s eventually at this moment bedside by his father prior to his death. And in this dream, the waning moments of his father’s life is captured. And there, Robert expresses to his father about how he’s sorry for disappointing his father and not living up to expectations. But in this altered dream, his father’s last words were not words of disappointment, but rather — No, no, I’m disappointed that you tried. As in — you never had to earn my love, my son, because you’ve always had it. And these words of approval from a father changes everything, flips the script. Because that’s the lasting impact of a father’s approval of his child, his word of approval.

And in every way, Jacob carries that sense of worthlessness, never having received approval from his father — going as far as to fabricate a scenario where he hears these words of blessing, even through deception. And so, God enters his subconscious, and he gives him this dream. This dream where the heavens are torn open, and where he finds his Godnot towering above him but next to him, in his place of destitution. And when you peruse through the Gospels of the heavens splitting open, what comes out? It’s the words of blessing from a Father to his Son — This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. But in coming down and being the stairway, he makes accessible these words to us who had broken the Father’s trust. Instead of the expected and deserving narrative of judgment and punishment, there is a great reversal that occurs. For it would be Jesus who, like Jacob, would come wearing his brother’s skin, as the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And he would approach his Father to receive the word that we were supposed to receive. But instead of a blessing, he receives a curse, because he came wearing on sin and hung on the cross for our sins. So that we might we receive the unmitigated blessing of God and feel his smile upon us — even when we run, even we’re weak, even when we use our lips to speak lies against him. And as God visited Jacob in this place of nothingnessand vulnerability through a dream, through entering his subconscious, he does so with us, giving to us the picture of the reality of a Father’s approval that we don’t have to deceive for, work for. But something we have because of the acts of our elder brother who took our place of shame, as the Word who became flesh, in his downward mobility toward us.

I don’t know the extent of your family history, but nobody’s is perfect. Because only one had a perfect family history, and he left that in order to repair ours and to reorient us to a Father’s love that we don’t deserve but absolutely have, if we place our trust in the perfect Son of God who came to die for our sins and for our salvation. For us in here who are regularly gasping for air, if it’s due to the relentless demands of life — being better in your career, fabricating more illusions of self-worth, feeling like you never match up as a mom, as a dad, as a daughter, as a son. Here, we build together on Bethel, where the stone of weakness is structured to be our strength. This is the stone of reorientation in our worship. Where we look to God in our weakness, in our rebellion, in our nothingness, in our exhaustion, in our emptiness, while gasping for air. And in turn, we’re shown of one who in complete rejection was left gasping for airwhen pinned on the cross. Where he traded his words of blessing to us, as those adopted as heirs. In order that we might hear the words of blessing we so desperately need and crave. That though we deserved to be that curse, we are now daughters and sons of God, because Jesus is the stairway, the Word. He became a curse for us, in order that we might become the Father’s joy. My prayer is that you would feel the Father’s smile upon you this morning — not because you’ve achieved or attained. But because you’ve been given, you’ve been reoriented through being shown how you’ve been loved, with our eyes on the epicenter of our fellowship. He who builds on our Bethel, our place of weakness, our place of admitting we have nothing to give and need help. Let’s turn our hearts toward Jesus, who left heaven to come to his people.