5th Sunday af. Pentecost, Lectionary 16, July 17, 2011

Marc Chagall: The Dream of Jacob, 1930-32

Genesis 28:10-19a

10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the LORD, and he said: "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." 16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it." 17 He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven." 18 Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. 19 He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz. 

      “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go”.  Perhaps some of you, back in the day when Sunday School and confirmation students were taught to memorize scripture, memorized this promise of God to Jacob.  It is a good one to memorize because it is a promise to us as well.  Where ever we go, God is with us.

      Sometimes though, that may seem more like a threat than a promise.    There is no getting away from God.  Every breath you take, every step you make, I’ll be watching you.   If we think of God as like Santa Clause who knows when we are sleeping and knows when we’re awake, and knows if we’ve been good or bad and we’d better be good for goodness sake, then maybe we would prefer that God was not around all the time to see everything.

      You can run but you can’t hide.  That is the message for Jacob in our first lesson today.  And Jacob is on the run.  Many years have passed since he tricked his brother Esau into giving up his inheritance for a bowl of stew.  His last stunt was proved to be too much for Esau.

      Life was not what Rebekah had hoped it would be when Isaac took her into his mother’s tent so many years ago.  The sons she had so longed for fought constantly.  She felt close to one and the one she didn’t feel close to formed a bond with her husband and so there was a wedge in the family.  Esau, the son she didn’t really care much for married Hitte women and in the chapter before our lesson, it says “They made life bitter for Rebekah and Isaac”  

      She may have wondered where it all went wrong.  Sometimes life is like that.  You start out thinking everything is going to be so wonderful and then it all goes out of control and you wonder when exactly that happened.

      Now Isaac has grown very old and blind and she overhears him telling Esau to go out and get him some game and then after he’s eaten it he will give him the Patriarchal blessing that goes to the older son.   Rebekah believes that it is Jacob who should have the blessing so tells Jacob to go get some kids that she will cook up and make it taste like game, put on some skins with fur so that he can fool his father into thinking he is his older harrier brother and receive the blessing meant of Esau.  It’s all Rebekah’s idea but Jacob goes along and plays his part well.  And between the two of them they deceive Rebekah’s husband and Jacob’s father.  By the time Esau comes back with the game he has hunted for his father, there is no blessing left for him other than a promise that he will have to serve his younger brother.

      Esau swears to kill his brother for this.  Rebekah overhears this and under the ruse of finding a wife other than the wretched Hittites that Esau has married, she urges Isaac to send away the son for whom she has risked so much.

      And that is why when we pick up our lesson Jacob is spending the night outside on a rock.  And up to now you don’t get any hint that Jacob particularly cares whether or not God is with him.  And yet in his dream God reminds him that he is around.  He has this strange dream of angels going up and down stairs to heaven, reminding him that heaven and earth are not all that separate.  That God is not far away and unaware of what is happening among his children on earth.

      The old Sunday School song “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder” is based on this story but really has nothing to do with the story.  Jacob is not climbing the stairs.  WE do not climb Jacob’s ladder.  It is God who comes down to earth to us.  Even to lying manipulating cheaters like Jacob.   

      God affirms to Jacob the promise that he gave to Abraham and to Isaac and now to Jacob.  It never was necessary for Rebekah to try force God’s hand the way she did.  God decided the promise was going to Jacob.  The promise and blessing would have gone to Jacob even if Isaac had blessed Esau as he planned.  It didn’t have anything to do with Jacob.  Certainly Jacob did nothing to deserve the blessing.    If there ever was any doubt about  whether or not we do anything to deserve God’s blessings, we need to look at the father of twelve sons who would become the twelve tribes of Israel – Jacob the trickster and liar.

      After this dream it seems that God has made an impression.  And our lesson ends on this note.

      Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ 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.’
     
           So is Jacob going to turn over a new leaf?  Has this vision from God made a new man of him? 

       Well you know people are different.  Some people like Paul, experience instant conversions and change overnight.   Others are more a work in progress.  And this is not, by any means, the end of the story.
       Jacob still thinks he’s in control and he thinks he can make a deal with God.  The chapter goes on to say

       So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he 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. He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first. 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, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, 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 surely give one-tenth to you.’
      
       Listen to what Jacob is doing.  He’s making a deal with God.  Okay great, if you take care of me then I’ll take care of you.  Life is still deals and schemes and cons for Jacob.  Jacob has got a lot to learn.

       Jacob is not done with his scheming ways.  But Jacob is going to run into another schemer with his uncle Laban, and we will hear that story next week.  

       But I find hope and good news in this story of Jacob and God’s patience.  Jacob is one of those who has to learn things the hard way.  Some of us are like that.  I’m kind of like that.  If you tell me the paint is not dry, I’m likely to touch to wall to find out for myself.  We are all, like Jacob, works in progress.  And even Paul, he may have turned around for God in one flash of light, but he was still the impatient, hot tempered man he was before.  He still had that thorn in his side.  He still lamented like he did in our lesson a few weeks ago in Romans:  “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”
       Or consider Jesus’ parable in our Gospel about the wheat and the tares.  Now usually we think of that parable meaning people.  The wheat is good people and the tares are bad people and at the end at judgment, all the bad people are going to be destroyed.

       The problem is that people are more complicated.  Maybe there is wheat and tares growing alongside each other in us.  And if we are in too much of a hurry to rip out everything bad in us or in others, we could cause damage.  Maybe it’s about God being patient with us and all the weeds and tares and not so good stuff that is part of us.  Sometimes are worse faults are our greatest strengths that we haven’t learned to harness or use well.    Sometimes what you think is a terrible flaw in someone else is the result of a hurt or burden and if you are too quick to attack it, you will damage the person themselves.  Patience and forgiveness are what heals and allows for growth, not judgment and criticism.  

       Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.  God is with us in all of our lives, wherever we go, whatever we do.  This is not a threat, it is a promise.   It is only God who really knows us and knows why we go where we go and do what we do, better than we ourselves know.  We are all works in progress, like Jacob.  Amen.