Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] July 23, 2023 “Surely God is in This Place” Genesis 28: 10-19a – The Message Jacob left Beersheba and went to Haran. He came to a certain place and camped for the night since the sun had set. He took one of the stones there, set it under his head and lay down to sleep. And he dreamed: A stairway was set on the ground and it reached all the way to the sky; angels of God were going up and going down on it. 13-15 Then God was right before him, saying, “I am God, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. I’m giving the ground on which you are sleeping to you and to your descendants. Your descendants will be as the dust of the Earth; they’ll stretch from west to east and from north to south. All the families of the Earth will bless themselves in you and your descendants. Yes. I’ll stay with you, I’ll protect you wherever you go, and I’ll bring you back to this very ground. I’ll stick with you until I’ve done everything I promised you.” 16-17 Jacob woke up from his sleep. He said, “God is in this place—truly. And I didn’t even know it!” He was terrified. He whispered in awe, “Incredible. Wonderful. Holy. This is God’s House. This is the Gate of Heaven.” 18-19 Jacob was up first thing in the morning. He took the stone he had used for his pillow and stood it up as a memorial pillar and poured oil over it. He christened the place Bethel (God’s House). Last week I shared the story of Jacob and Esau – twins born to Isaac and Rebekah, a blessed event after 20 years of trying to get pregnant. But, in an ominous sign, these twins began fighting with each other even while they were still in the womb. It was so bad, Rebekah complained, “Why should I still live?” Jacob was born trying to get ahead of his brother, grasping onto Esau’s heel to hold him back as they came down the birth canal. And he never stopped trying to get ahead of his older brother. Having failed in the womb, as adults, Jacob tricked Esau into giving him his birthright for the price of some stew. Some years later, Jacob once again tricked Esau out of his rightful place as the head of the tribe. Jacob did this by conspiring with his mother Rebekah to deceive his father Isaac. It’s a wild story as good as any soap opera and if you want to catch up, watch or read last week’s sermon. So, today’s reading begins right after Jacob tricked his twin again. Esau was so angry, he promised to kill Jacob, but he would wait to do so until after their father was dead. But before that happened, Rebekah sent her favorite twin off to live with her brother Laban. Jumping ahead in the story, that’s where he met Laban’s daughters and was tricked into marrying both of them, which then, in retaliation, Jacob schemed to steal his uncle’s sheep. My colleague Jeffrey Spencer describes Jacob as someone who puts the fun in dysfunctional. So, today’s story happens at the end of the first day of running from Esau’s murderous rage. Jacob was so dog-tired he simply used a rock for his pillow and fell into a deep sleep, the kind with dreams so convoluted you wake up tired. Do you ever have those kinds of dreams? My worst dreams are of being late to something. More than once I’ve had a dream where I realize I forgot my sermon at home and think I’ve got enough time to run home and get it but something keeps happening and finally by the time I make it back to the church, you’ve all gone home very angry that I skipped out. Running, running, running… Jacob was running for his life when he laid his head on a rock and fell into a deep sleep. And what a fascinating dream. This is the source of the famous spiritual We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder, except in that case, the dream was of the enslaved escaping to heaven. That’s not Jacob’s dream. In his dream he saw God’s messengers busily going up and down like office workers on what we might envision as a Mayan Temple. The original audience would have imagined ziggurats in Babylon. But wait, Jacob wouldn’t have known what a Babylonian ziggurat was. Babylon was hundreds and hundreds of years later. What was that doing in his dream? The Book of Genesis was compiled during the Babylonian exile, full of stories the people had carried with them for generations. All of them true stories, except that they didn’t actually happen. Or maybe pieces of them happened that were all sewn together like a patchwork quilt. Do you remember in school having to diagram sentences?
Sorry to the English teachers in the room, but yuck. I hated doing that. As much as I hated diagraming Bible passages in seminary. We had to dissemble the biblical patchwork quilt. We used letters like J and D and P to delineate which paragraph or story belonged to which tradition and what era it had been written.[1] But once you could see what came from where, you could understand the why – the agendas and purposes of each group that contributed to the patchwork quilt. At first, that kind of deconstruction was disturbing. I remember how after 17 years of blissful ignorance in Sunday School, I got really angry with my first college Old Testament professor. I wasn’t prepared to hear Dr. Wilterdink say that the Bible is mythological. It took me a while to calm down. He wasn’t saying the Bible is a bunch of fairy tales, but it’s not history. The Bible is true, or rather, contains truth. I can even say it’s the Word of God. But it’s not factual. It wasn’t meant to be. They are stories passed down generation to generation to explain why we are who we are and why things happened. Like in today’s reading, one question might be why is this place, this rock, special? And so, we’re told a story about our ancestor Jacob and the time he escaped from his brother and used this rock as his pillow and turned it into a sacred pillar. This story also functions as a transition to explain how he came to marry his four wives and how he came to be the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Except, it’s not the only story of how he came to meet his cousin-wives. In the chapter right before today, Genesis 27, a different story is told that the reason Jacob went off to Uncle Laban’s is because Isaac and Rebekah couldn’t stand the wives of Esau. Rebekah said to Isaac, “I’m sick to death of these Hittite women. If Jacob also marries a native Hittite woman, why should I continue to live?” The same question she asked of her feuding twins in the womb. So, in this version, Jacob is sent off to find a wife, not to escape Esau. Which is the true story? Truth is found in the meaning, not the history. After all the diagramming and dissembling, it makes total sense that it was written down during the Babylonian exile because during the exile, the Israelites were forced from their homeland, dragged away from the Temple where they worshiped God. Surely God was in that place! They mourned, how can we sing the songs of Zion in Babylon? In response, they told each other stories, including about the Patriarch Isaac and how at a time when he was utterly alone and afraid, running for his life, with only a rock for his pillow, he saw the connection of earth and heaven and woke up and exclaimed, “Surely God is in this place!” Hence, it’s a “true story” that God is not limited to a particular place. I love a good story about scandals and villains with soap opera twists. But ultimately, the question is, where is the truth in this story for you because the real commission of the spiritual life is to explore these texts until they aren’t just mythological stories about someone else but words by which we can live our lives. Words for those times, for example, when we feel utterly alone. Misunderstood or afraid. Times that we are trying to escape danger, even from family. Times when it has felt like all we’ve had was a rock for our pillow. And in those moments, asking, are we going to be OK? Richard Rohr said, “these are the places where human beings hate to go, but it’s the place where God is always leading us. It’s [the in-between place] when you have left the tried and true but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else.” We have lots of those times in our lives. Leaving a job without a new one, leaving a relationship without a new one, leaving a home and even leaving a church before you’ve found a new one. That place where we surely knew God but it’s not who we are anymore. We can visit all kinds of churches that might make a great new home but it’s not the same, even though “the same” is what we need to leave. As Rohr said, “It’s when you are between your old comfort and any new answer. [Those are anxious times and if] you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait, you will keep running.” The spiritual life is learning how to hold anxiety, live with ambiguity, trust and wait. Jacob wasn’t on a vision quest. He wasn’t seeking deeper answers to spiritual truths. No, he had pushed his luck too far and was now running, running, running; he was in a limbo of his own making.[2] But pay attention: That’s exactly when God told Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” It’s easy to say surely God is in this beautiful sanctuary. But that dirty-tricks scoundrel Jacob, as well as the Babylonian exiles, learned that God is not limited to one place or time. It’s a true story that God is just as surely with us in the desolate, isolated, forlorn, anxious, and ambiguous places of our lives. And if you can trust that, you don’t have to run anymore. Searching for truth in this story and meaning, I also find encouragement to listen to our dreams. Dreams are often just weird. But sometimes they are the way the sacred and divine break through to share a message. Maybe it’s a message to carry on. Maybe it’s a message that you are not alone. Maybe it’s a message for when you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, knowing you had to leave something behind but unsure about what you will find. That’s exactly where you will find God – or God will find you – and you can turn your granite pillow into a pillar of gratitude. [1] Learn a little more here: https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literature/The-patriarchal-narratives [2] Barbara Brown Taylor, Dreaming the Truth, Gospel Medicine Babylonian Ziggurat
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