Genesis 28:10-19a
July 20, 2014
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| Jacob's Dream William Blake 1805 |
We just read about Jacob waking from his
dream and exclaiming, “Surely the Lord is
in this place—and I did not know it!” Whether
from sleep or spiritual stupor, have you ever awakened to discover God was right
there with you?”
The
last night of a high school mission trip our evening activity was small groups performing
brief skits to represent the week. The first one was funny, and without
planning, each one was more serious than the previous. The last group reenacted
Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and then washed the feet of the whole group. In
the quiet that persisted when they were done, one of the guys who projected an “I’m
too cool for youth group” attitude and didn’t come often said, “Oh wow! God
really is here!”
Close to death and knowing that the covenant
promise would be fulfilled through Jacob, Isaac blessed him and sent him to
Rebekah’s brother Laban to get a wife from the clan. Esau was planning to kill
Jacob when Isaac died. With his mother’s help, Jacob not only obeyed his father’s
wishes, but fled for his life from his brother. Seemingly by chance, Jacob came
to a certain specific place where he dreamed of a stairway to heaven and woke
to the realization the Lord was in this awesome place.
Just like Jacob, on your journey, God is
beside you in every place whether you are awake to know it or not.
Do you have some personal sacred spaces you
go to where you expect God to meet you?
Ancient Celtic Christians spoke of “thin
places” where this world and eternity were so close together you could hear or
see from one to the other. Dawn and dusk, when it is neither day nor night, are
such holy times every day. The Benedictine hours of Lauds to start the day with praise and Vespers to end the day with prayer reflect this rhythm. Sacred
spaces may be adorned with symbols of previous encounters with God, such as
this church’s cross walls and the Good Shepherd window in the chapel.
Jacob apparently accidently stumbled into a
place that was already recognized as a sanctuary, perhaps a solitary rocky
peak. He unwittingly takes a stone for a pillow, which was sometimes done by
those desiring an oracle from God. The “ladder” may have been like a stairway
up the side of a Mesopotamian ziggurat that Abraham would have been familiar
with from Ur. That would have symbolized a sacred connection between earth and
heaven. Unlike pagan ziggurats, such as the Tower of Babel that were human
efforts to climb to heaven, Jacob’s ladder was God coming to earth to visit a
human.
The Elders did some thinking about what makes
a sacred space when talking about renovating Fellowship Hall, which had once been
this church’s sanctuary, to become a worship center without losing its
multi-functionality. The stained glass windows were obviously critical. The
arches are being played up for a sacred focus on the chancel. Some of a place’s
sacredness comes from the celebration of important events such as baptisms,
weddings, funerals and holy days such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. After
Jacob’s encounter with God, Bethel continued to be an important sacred place
for Israel until the destruction of the Northern Kingdom over 1,000 years
later.
Jacob’s journey to a relationship with God
poses a haunting question for us. Has your journey taken you from believing in
God to an intimate relationship with God?
Several times in the 13 months I’ve been with
you, I’ve quoted Father Thomas Hopko, retired Dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox
Seminary in New York. He told the students preparing for ministry that his
mother’s advice applied to them: if you want to grow as a Christian, read your
Bible, say your prayers and go to church. These are at the core of all the
spiritual disciples of every Christian tradition from every time of Church
history. And sometimes as we sleepwalk through them, we wake up and discover
that God is standing beside us and we did not know it. We feel the awe of being
in the dwelling of God at the very gate of heaven.
When Jacob deceived his father Isaac into
giving him the covenant blessing, thinking he was Esau returned quickly from
the hunt, Isaac asked how he had been so fast. Jacob answered, “The Lord your God granted me success.”
(Genesis 27:20) But now, after being personally encountered by God, Jacob said,
“The Lord shall be my God.”
(Genesis 28:21) As we shall see in the next two Sundays, God had a long-term
plan for reshaping Jacob, but he was a changed man after being encountered by
God at Bethel. His journey took a new, though not easy, direction.
Our faith often consists of theological
convictions and religious practices. Those are important and can bring us to a
sacred space or time when we awaken and discover that God has been beside us
all along. Then, like Jacob, our journeys take a new turn toward an intimate
relationship with God who is beside us in every place whether we are awake to
know it or not. Among everything else, our spiritual disciplines and religious
practices are transformed. We get a great picture of this from Brother Lawrence
(1614-1691) whose book The Practice of
the Presence of God records his spiritual insights while working in the
kitchen in the Carmelite Priory in Paris. While the better
educated monks did the “important” work of study, meditation, prayer and
ministry, he washed pots and pans, and in his later years made sandals. He did
recognize that his work enabled the other monks to engage in monastic
disciplines from which he was excluded. We have no record of the insights of
the higher monks, but we have his little book that records his friendship with
Jesus who stood beside him in the kitchen.
What hints and clues let you know that Jesus
is standing beside you?
I love one episode in C. S. Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader, from The Chronicles of Narnia. The Dawn
Treader is the ship sailing to the edge of the world with the children who have
come to Narnia from England. They arrive at the island of the Duffle Puds, invisible
creatures who make a loud thumping noise as they move around. They want to
become visible again, and Lucy agrees to go into the magician’s house to find
the book of spells and discover and speak the spell for making the invisible,
visible. With some trepidation, Lucy searches the house, locates the book,
finds the spell and reads it aloud. She can’t see the Duffle Puds from there,
but discovers that Aslan, the Christ-figure lion in the Narnia stories has
suddenly appeared beside her. A little startled, Lucy asks, “When did you get
here?” Aslan answers, “I’ve been with you all along on your whole voyage. You
just couldn’t see me.” Lucy asks, “Then how can I see you now?” Aslan answers, “You
said the spell for making the invisible, visible. So I appeared.” In astonishment
Lucy asks, “Do I have the power to make you visible?” And Aslan answers, “Don’t
you think I would follow my own rules?” By the way, yes, the Duffle Puds also
became visible: dwarf-like people with one very large foot on which they hop
around, thus the thumping noise.
God reiterated the Abrahamic covenant to
Jacob. You will have descendants who will inherit this land, through whom God
will bless the whole human race. Then God promised Jacob to be with him
wherever he went, which must have been wonderfully assuring to him as he was
going to be wandering in one way or another the rest of his life. This God
without boundaries was dramatically different than the pagan deities who were
thought to be tied to specific geographic territories. When people changed
locations, they changed gods. This God who had promised to be with Jacob
everywhere was God for all people – a radical concept then and even today as
our society tends to treat religion as a cultural artifact rather than an
intimate, personal relationship with God.
During this interim journey between pastors, we have
been very aware of being in transition from the way things were to the way things
will become. However, I can tell you with great confidence; you will not be
going to a settled, static situation. You will be embarking on an ever changing
journey into an uncharted future. I can also assure you that God will go with
you wherever you go, just as God went with Jacob on his journey. Our personal
and family lives are not settled and static either. Children and grandchildren
grow up. We retire from careers. Babies are born and old people die. That’s not
always easy, but it is inevitable and actually good. Whether you are awake to
know it or not, God is beside you at every place on this journey.
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