Genesis 28:10-22
Presented November 13, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
Progressive Brethren Gathering
Perhaps you remember the Dr. Seuss book, And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street. It’s the delightful tale of a little boy who, while walking home, “sees” a wonderful circus parade coming down the street. When he reaches home, the youngster enthusiastically describes what he has seen to his father in vivid detail. The father, however, is skeptical, repeatedly questioning his son, “What really happened on Mulberry Street?” The story is continually eroded until the boy finally acknowledges that what he actually saw on Mulberry Street was a “plain horse and wagon.”
At one level And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street is a fun and delightful Dr. Seuss story, yet at another level it points to one of our culture’s biases, a suspicion of the imagination, a tendency to look with dismay upon anything but the most concrete and most visible. It’s a perspective that makes faith difficult for many in our day, for the very essence of faith demands an ability to look beyond ourselves, to envision something greater than we are, to trust—all appearances to the contrary—that a new world is unfolding. A new world is in the works.
I must admit to groaning inwardly just a bit when I learned that the worship planning committee for this weekend had chosen as today’s text a story that calls attention to Jacob, that ancient patriarch of the fledgling people of Israel far more noted for deception and intrigue than for integrity and faithful living. No doubt you remember the accounts from the book of Genesis, how Jacob and his mother Rebekah plotted and schemed, so that Jacob might attain what rightfully belonged to his older brother, Esau—the birthright and blessing of their father, Isaac. In his book Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who Frederick Buechner reminds us that the writers of Genesis make “no attempt to conceal the fact that Jacob was, among other things, a crook.” Asserts Buechner in his tongue-in-cheek style,
Twice Jacob cheated his lame-brained brother Esau out of what was coming to him. At least once Jacob took advantage of his old father, Isaac’s, blindness and played him for a sucker. He out-did his double-crossing father-in-law, Laban, by conning him out of most of his livestock, and later on, when Laban was looking the other way, by sneaking off with not only the man’s daughters but just about everything else that wasn’t nailed down including his household gods. Jacob was never satisfied. He wanted the moon, and if he’d ever managed to bilk Heaven out of that, he would have been back the next morning for the stars to go with it.
We generally approach Scripture, asking what there is in the various stories and parables and prayers and admonitions that we might emulate. But we’re hard-pressed to find much in Jacob’s life making him into a worthy role model—this master manipulator ever scheming to position himself ahead of others. Indeed, the picture the writers of Genesis portray of the early patriarchs and matriarchs remind us that the dysfunctions within our own families, and even the maneuverings and conflicts of our recent Annual Conference betraying a dysfunctional church—all of this is really nothing new! Truth be told, what is to be gathered from this story has far less to do with Jacob’s actions than it does with what follows: the surprising, even shocking, intrusion of God into the dreams of Jacob. It is a story of God’s surprising grace; it is a tale of God’s persistent love; it is an affirmation of God’s passionate yearning that we humans might catch hold of a new vision, that we might begin to imagine new possibilities for our living. Instead of scheming and plotting and manipulating situations to meet our own ends, the life of faith invites and urges us to envision a markedly new way of living, one based not upon selfish pursuit of power and domination over others, but instead, self-giving servanthood and liberating love; life based not upon clenched fists but open and welcoming embrace; life centered not upon suspicion and fear of those who are different from us, but rather upon celebration of the diverse gifts and insights one another brings to our life together.
Still, the last thing Jacob would have anticipated when he fell asleep that night, exhausted from running for his life, was a dream in which God extends words of assurance to him. For Jacob finds himself somewhere in the middle of nowhere, having burned all of his bridges behind him, certain only of one thing—his brother Esau’s anger breathing vengeance down upon him. Indeed, given all that we know of Jacob, we might expect his dreams to take the shape of nightmares. But instead, Jacob envisions a ladder in his dreams, a stairway, a ramp stretching from the land where he is resting all the way to the heavens, with angels ascending and descending upon it. Suddenly Jacob is aware of God standing beside him, and the words Jacob hears are not words of accusation or recrimination, but words of remarkable comfort and blessing.
Reiterating promises already made to his grandparents and parents, God asserts to Jacob:
I am the Lord, the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of Isaac and Rebekah; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and 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 all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and your offspring. Know that 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 you have promised me (Genesis 28:13-15).
Remarkable words of promise, indeed! Jacob, the one seemingly never satisfied, now hears that he will receive more than he could ever imagine; he will receive blessings that extend to the very ends of the earth. God will be with Jacob. God will sustain and protect Jacob. And what’s more, God will ensure that, wherever Jacob travels, he will return safely to the land promised to the people. Is it any wonder that when Jacob awakens from the dream he tells himself, “Surely God is in this place—and I did not know it” (v. 16).
Surely God is to be found in the very midst of the mundane and the ordinary, if only we dare to imagine it so. The poet Mary Oliver urges us “to keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable” (Evidence, p. 43). In her poem Mysteries, Yes, Mary Oliver writes,
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and
laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.
I love those lines about keeping distance from those who think they have all the answers, while keeping company with those who embrace astonishment and wonder, those who recognize life’s mysteries and who imagine new possibilities for the shape of our life together. Joan Chittister, Benedictine sister, advocate for justice and peace, prolific writer about the spiritual life, reminds us that “one of the most demanding, but often overlooked, dimensions of the creation story is that when creation was finished, it wasn’t really finished at all. Instead, God committed the rest of the process to us. What humans do on this earth either continues creation or obstructs it.” If we are to embrace our role in creation, seeing ourselves as co-creators with God, we need to be wary of those who act as if they already have all the answers, those who think all of life can be wrapped up into neat packages with concise formulas and simplistic answers. Instead, God calls us to join with those who embrace life’s mysteries and imagine new models and patterns of faithful living.
It’s not clear whether Jacob gets this message or not. The Genesis writers tell us that Jacob creates a pillar or an altar out of the stone on which he slept, that he pours oil of consecration upon that stone, and he names the site Bethel, the house of God. An unnamed common place, Jacob affirms, has the potential of becoming sacred space. But the vow Jacob offers in response is a conditional one, suggesting he’s not yet ready to place trust fully in the remarkable grace and forgiveness and goodness of our God. If you do what you have said, Jacob tells God, if you will be with me and if you will keep me, then this place shall be a place of worship.
But whatever the level of Jacob’s response, do not you and I hear the call to move forward, to press on to deeper levels of faithful living, to take hold of the gospel’s call to become instruments of transformation and new life? Do we not hear the call to be in the business of creating new worlds in the name and spirit of Jesus; do we not recognize the divine prodding to pray and work for the coming of God’s new creation here on earth, even as it is in heaven?
Problem is, we often feel stuck in the middle of nowhere, caught in the great divide between what currently is and what God envisions life could be for us. How do we come to sense that we are somewhere in the middle of that nowhere? Joan Chittister shares the experience of being asked at the conclusion of a speech, “Why does a woman like you stay in the church?” We understand the question, don’t we? Why stay in a church that claims a heritage of peace, yet a church in which advocates for justice and peace are increasingly feeling drowned out by competing voices? Why stay in a church where the gifts of women and of our gay and lesbian sisters and brothers are generally ignored and all too frequently denigrated? Why stay in a church that seems to be losing sight of those strengths that have helped forge its identity through several centuries—a passion to live out the teachings of Jesus as found in the Sermon on the Mount, a yearning to Continue the work of Jesus—peacefully, simply, together?
Joan Chittister answered her questioner, “Because every time I thought of leaving, I found myself thinking of oysters.” As you might expect, the questioner looked puzzled, so Chittister continued on, “An oyster is an organism that defends itself by excreting a substance to protect itself against the sand of its spawning bed. The more sand in the oyster, the more chemical the oyster produces until finally, after layer upon layer of gel, the sand turns into a pearl. And the oyster itself becomes more valuable in the process. At that moment,” continued Chittister, “I discovered the ministry of irritation.”
Perhaps those of us who find ourselves labeled these days as “progressive” have been given a ministry of irritation. If there are those within the larger church who find irritating our thirst for justice and for peace, if there are those who find annoying our desire to imagine hopeful possibilities for growth and for change, if there are those who find troubling our hunger to live lives of integrity and compassion, if there are those who find irksome our passion to proclaim the gospel of abundant grace for all people, if there are those who find exasperating our yearning for the coming of God’s realm, here and now on earth, even as in heaven—then so be it! For this is our calling. This is our reason for being. As followers of Jesus, we are in the business of imagining a whole new creation.
Surely God is in this place—our place that may well feel as if it is in the middle of nowhere, but truly, it is somewhere. Thanks be to God! Amen.