Keep Climbing (Sunday of the Ladder)

Lessons: 2 Esd 7:127-140; Ps 42; Heb 6:13-20; Mk 9:17-31

Today we come to the Fourth Sunday of Lent, the Sunday of the Ladder. In the Christian East, this Sunday is tied to Saint John of the Ladder, the abbot of Sinai who wrote about the spiritual life as a kind of ascent toward God. That image has stayed with the Church because it tells the truth. The life of faith is not static. We are either being drawn upward into the life of God, or we are settling back into the old patterns that keep us bound. Lent puts that plainly before us.

But let us be careful here.

When the Church gives us the image of a ladder, it is not inviting us into spiritual pride. This is not about proving we are holy. It is not about outperforming one another in fasting, prayer, or religious discipline. It is not a contest. The ladder is not about ego. It is about transformation. It is about repentance. It is about becoming free. It is about moving, by grace, from one degree of healing to another. One step at a time. One act of surrender at a time. One hard-won act of mercy at a time.

And that matters because by the Fourth Sunday of Lent, most of us have already learned something about ourselves.

At the start of Lent, we often come in with resolve. We are going to pray more. Fast better. Be more focused. Be less distracted. Be more patient. Be more present to God. And then somewhere along the way we discover what was there all along. We are easily distracted. We are impatient. We are afraid. We are tired. We carry resentment. We carry grief. We carry appetites that do not serve life. We want resurrection without death. We want healing without surrender. We want the top of the ladder without the humility of the first rung.

That is why this Sunday comes as mercy.

Because the readings today do not flatter us. But they do tell the truth about how God meets us.

In the Gospel, a father brings his son to Jesus. The boy is tormented. Thrown down. Seized up. Harmed by a force stronger than he is. The father has already gone to the disciples, and they could not help him. So now he comes to Jesus with a mixture of desperation and disappointment. He is not standing there as a model of strong, settled faith. He is standing there worn out. And he says to Jesus, “If you can do anything, have pity on us and help us.”

I think that is one of the most human lines in all the Gospels.

Because that is how people speak when pain has gone on too long.

That is how people pray when they have already tried and failed.

That is how people speak when they have been let down before.

If you can do anything.

That line is not polished. It is not triumphant. It is not a line from somebody who has all the right church answers. It is the prayer of a person at the end of himself.

And then Jesus answers, “If you can! Everything is possible to the one who has faith.”

And immediately the father cries out, “I believe. Help my unbelief.”

There it is.

That is the prayer of the Church.

Not, Lord, I have no doubts.

Not, Lord, my faith is complete.

Not, Lord, I have climbed higher than the rest.

But, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

That is a prayer for people like us.

People who do believe, but who also know what it is to be afraid.

People who do believe, but who have watched prayers go unanswered in the way they hoped.

People who do believe, but who are carrying wounds from life, from family, from church, from their own failures.

People who do believe, but who know there are still rooms in the heart where fear and trust are fighting.

That prayer, “help my unbelief,” is not the opposite of faith. It is faith telling the truth.

And truth is where healing begins.

Saint John of the Ladder understood this. The spiritual life is not built on illusion. It is built on truthfulness before God. You do not climb by pretending. You do not ascend by performing. You ascend by repentance. You ascend by humility. You ascend by learning to stop lying to yourself about who you are and what still holds you.

And that is where this Gospel cuts close to home.

Because the child in the story is thrown down by a destructive force. And while we should not flatten the text into metaphor alone, we know this much. There are still forces that throw people down.

Some are personal. Addiction. Despair. Shame. Rage. Trauma. Self-hatred.

Some are social. Poverty. Isolation. Systems that grind people down and call it normal. A culture that tells people their worth lies in what they produce, how they look, what they own, or how well they can hide their pain.

Some are spiritual. The old lie that God is far away. The old lie that we are beyond healing. The old lie that religion is for the strong and the certain, not for the broken and the doubting.

And many people right now are being thrown down.

You do not have to look far to see it.

People are tired. Tired in their bodies. Tired in their minds. Tired in their spirits. Here in Arizona, people are carrying the pressure of rising costs, unstable work, housing strain, heat, long commutes, family stress, and the constant low hum of anxiety about what comes next. In the Phoenix area, there is growth everywhere, cranes everywhere, new construction everywhere, but growth is not the same thing as peace. People can live in a fast-growing city and still feel spiritually starved. People can be surrounded by activity and still feel alone.

And nationally, we are living in a time when anger is rewarded, cruelty is marketed as honesty, and compassion is treated like weakness. People are trained to react before they reflect. To judge before they listen. To harden before they grieve. It has made many souls brittle.

The Church is not exempt from that.

Some people come into Lent not simply needing encouragement but needing exorcism of the false stories they have been taught. The false story that God is disappointed in every weakness. The false story that holiness means never struggling. The false story that those who suffer must have failed. The false story that if the disciples could not help you, then Jesus will not help you either.

But the Gospel says otherwise.

Jesus does not turn this father away.

He does not say, come back when your faith is stronger.

He does not say, go clean up your doubts first.

He does not say, speak to me in more impressive words.

He receives the broken prayer.

And I think that is one of the most important things we need to hear in Lent. Christ receives broken prayers.

Some of us were taught that prayer had to sound polished. As though God only hears prayers spoken in confidence and certainty. But some of the holiest prayers are the ones that come out half as a cry. Lord have mercy. Help me. Stay with me. I do believe. Help my unbelief.

Those are real prayers.

The reading from Hebrews gives us another image. It says we have hope as an anchor for the soul, sure and steadfast, and it speaks of Christ as our forerunner who has gone before us. I love that the lectionary gives us both a ladder and an anchor on the same Sunday. Because that is the Christian life. We are being lifted up, yes. But we are also being held fast. We are called upward, but not by our own striving. We are anchored in the faithfulness of Christ.

That matters, because if all we had was the ladder, we might think the whole burden is ours. Climb harder. Try more. Do better. Be stronger. But Hebrews will not let us tell that lie. Our hope is anchored beyond us. Christ has gone before us. Christ is the forerunner. Christ is the one who enters the holy place on our behalf. Christ is not merely standing at the top shouting instructions. Christ has gone into the depths and opened the way.

That is the heart of the gospel.

The ladder is not our project of self-improvement. The ladder is possible because Christ has descended into our condition and raised human nature with him. He has entered the depth of our suffering, our fear, our abandonment, even our death. He has gone all the way down. And because he has gone all the way down, he is able to bring us up.

So the ladder is not about achieving spiritual status. It is about participating in the life of the crucified and risen Christ.

And then there is 2 Esdras. It gives us a sober word. The path to life is not broad and easy. There is a narrow way. There is a difficult passage. Life with God does not come by drift. It comes by decision. By endurance. By letting grace strip away what is false in us.

We do not always like hearing that now. Ours is not a culture that likes limits, discipline, or self-denial. We like convenience. We like immediate access. We like spirituality so long as it does not ask too much of us. But the old saints knew better. Saint John Climacus knew better. The way of life is real, but it is not casual.

You do not stumble into holiness.

You are formed into it.

And that formation asks something of us.

It asks prayer when distraction feels easier.

It asks forgiveness when anger feels more satisfying.

It asks restraint when indulgence feels more natural.

It asks patience when the whole culture trains us for instant reaction.

It asks humility when pride feels safer.

It asks love of enemy when contempt feels more justified.

This is why the Ladder matters. Because the spiritual life is not vague. It has texture. It has practices. It has renunciations. It has habits. It has steps.

But hear me clearly. The steps are not punishment. They are medicine.

Fasting is medicine for appetite.

Prayer is medicine for illusion.

Almsgiving is medicine for selfishness.

Confession is medicine for denial.

Forgiveness is medicine for bitterness.

Silence is medicine for noise.

Worship is medicine for forgetfulness.

The whole Lenten path is medicine for souls that have forgotten how to live.

That is why Jesus says, after healing the boy, that this kind comes out through prayer. Some wounds and bondages are not broken by willpower. Some chains are too old, too deep, too tangled for technique alone. They are broken by prayer. By staying near Christ. By learning dependence. By letting God do in us what we cannot do by ourselves.

And this is where many modern people struggle, even religious people. We still want control. We want methods that guarantee results. We want religion to work like a machine. Put in the right practice, get out the right blessing. But prayer is not a machine. Prayer is relationship. Prayer is surrender. Prayer is consent to the healing presence of God.

And that takes time.

Which is one reason Lent can feel so uncomfortable. It slows us down enough to see what is really going on inside us. It shows us we are not nearly as free as we imagined. It shows us how much of our inner life is governed by fear, irritation, judgment, fantasy, avoidance, and self-protection.

That can feel discouraging at first.

But in the hands of God, revelation is mercy.

It is mercy to find out where we are stuck.

It is mercy to see what still has power over us.

It is mercy to discover what keeps throwing us down.

Because what is named can be brought to Christ.

And what is brought to Christ can be healed.

Now, I think there is another layer here too. This father’s pain is not his alone. He says, “have pity on us and help us.” Not just my son. Us.

Because suffering rarely confines itself neatly to one person. One person’s bondage affects the whole household. One person’s pain radiates outward. One person’s despair weighs on the people who love them.

That is true in families.

It is true in churches.

It is true in communities.

It is true in a nation.

We are bound up with one another.

That means the ladder is not merely individual. Yes, each of us must repent. Yes, each of us must pray. But the Church climbs together. Or it does not truly climb at all.

So part of the question this Sunday is not simply, what throws me down?

It is also, what throws us down?

What habits of church life keep us from healing?

What forms of pride keep us from repentance?

What patterns of exclusion, suspicion, or self-protection keep us from becoming a people of resurrection?

What are we tolerating because we have grown used to it?

What are we calling normal that Christ came to cast out?

Those are not easy questions. But Lent is not given for easy questions. Lent is given for true ones.

And as a parish, as a Communion, as a Church trying to live faithfully in this time, we need to ask whether we are becoming people who help carry others toward Christ, or whether we are still standing around arguing while the child convulses on the ground.

The disciples in this Gospel could not cast the spirit out. That had to humble them. And perhaps it should humble us too. Because the Church does not always help as it should. Sometimes we fail people. Sometimes we misread suffering. Sometimes we offer slogans where healing is needed. Sometimes we protect appearances instead of telling the truth. Sometimes we speak too quickly and pray too little.

But Jesus does not abandon the scene because the disciples failed. He steps into it.

Thanks be to God, the failures of the Church do not exhaust the mercy of Christ.

And then, after this healing, Jesus starts speaking again about his coming suffering, death, and resurrection. He turns the disciples back toward the cross. That is no accident. Because the real healing of the world is not spectacle. It is the self-offering love of God in Christ. The kind of love that goes all the way into human violence and does not return violence for violence. The kind of love that exposes the scapegoating machinery of the world and breaks its hold. The kind of love that does not save by crushing enemies, but by unmasking the lie beneath our fear and opening a new way of being human.

That is why the cross stands at the center of the ladder.

Not because God delights in suffering.

Not because pain is holy in itself.

But because in Christ, even the place of greatest abandonment becomes the place where divine love refuses to let go.

So this Sunday, the Church calls us upward. But not into triumphalism. Into honesty. Into repentance. Into prayer. Into hope. Into endurance.

And maybe this week the clearest spiritual work before you is simple.

Name what throws you down.

Name the fear.

Name the resentment.

Name the exhaustion.

Name the self-protective pattern.

Name the appetite that has become a master.

Name the grief you keep trying to outrun.

Name the lie you have believed about yourself, about God, or about someone else.

And then do not dress it up.

Bring it to Christ as plainly as the father did.

Lord, if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us.

And when even that feels like too much, pray the prayer the Gospel gives you.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

That is enough to begin.

That is enough for the next rung.

That is enough for this week.

Because the good news on the Sunday of the Ladder is not that you have to climb to God by your own strength. The good news is that in Jesus Christ, God has already come down into the depth to meet you. And because he has come down, you do not have to stay where you are. What throws you down does not get the final word. Despair does not get the final word. Sin does not get the final word. Failure does not get the final word. Even death does not get the final word.

Christ does.

So keep climbing.

Keep praying.

Keep telling the truth.

Keep returning.

Keep putting one foot on the next rung.

And when your strength fails, hold fast to the One who is already holding you.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. amen.