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Christ’s ladder to heaven

Herbert Hensley Henson was bishop of both Hereford and Durham in the first half of the twentieth century. He spoke out on national and international affairs, protesting about what he saw as Britain’s appeasement when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in the 1930s and condemning the anti-semitic policies of Nazi Germany. In this sermon extract he likens Communion to the ladder seen by Jacob in Genesis, reaching up to heaven and providing access to God.

The Holy Communion is Christ’s ladder set up on the earth,

whose top reaches to heaven. Thereby we ascend to God

through him, for through him we have our access in one Spirit

unto the Father. The patriarch’s dream revealed what actually

had been in existence all the while, though he knew it not. Holy

Communion protests to us the unsuspected sanctity of common

life, and bids us know the nearness of God. That is the central

and vitalising reality of sacramental worship. All else is picture,

and parable, and vesture of truth. Words, gestures, the ‘creatures

of Bread and Wine’, have their worth and meaning as tokens

and pledges of a spiritual fact, that ‘in him we live and move and

have our being’, that ‘we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s’.

Therefore on the threshold of Holy Communion the words of

the Gospel come to us with direct and luminous relevance: ‘Let

not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in

me.’

Herbert Hensley Henson (1863–1947)