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Sunday April 20, 2008 "Sacred Dreams" Genesis 28:10-22 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 4/21/2008 10:53 AM | Scripture. Tradition. Experience.
These three are the hallmarks of our faith journey. Because in these three, God at work in the world is revealed to us. All are important, none can truly stand alone as God’s revelatory method, and none can be excluded if we are to truly understand how God is made known to us.
The scripture is the easiest one, and of course, it is the one that most Christian’s start with. We who are the legacy of Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone sometimes refer to ourselves as “people of the book,” because the studying of scripture was paramount to their way of thinking. In scripture we are able to connect up God’s movement in and among the various stories, poems, and history that make up this amazing book that we call the Holy Bible. In scripture, we are able to see how others understood God and how others reacted to God’s presence in their lives. In scripture, we see roads that run parallel and perpendicular to our own lives and seek to understand what impact that might have on our journey. In scripture, we see one part of God’s revelation in the world.
Jacob’s life was one influenced by scripture. Of course, it’s hard to see how that could be since his life predates the writing of Hebrew scripture, the canonization of the law of Moses or any of the storied history of the Hebrew people.
But, if scripture is God’s word, then Jacob was intimately familiar with God’s word as it was revealed to his grandfather, Abraham. And that story would have been passed down as God’s promise to God’s people.
You see it was to Abraham that God gave the promise of blessing to the Hebrew people. Abraham was to be father of God’s people on earth. Through Abraham, the sacred story would be written and become the scripture that we rely on today to understand God’s revealed truth.
So, what did God tell Abraham? While he was still known as Abram, the Lord told him: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)
So this is Jacob’s legacy: heir to the patriarch of all partiachs; grandson to the father of the Chosen people. Jacob must have been a pretty special kid, don’t you think?
Oh, he was special alright.
Born the second of twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah, the Hebrew scripture makes it clear from the beginning that Jacob was at best a conniving sort, at worst, someone who would put his own well being above the interests of all others.
Scripture tells us that his name means “he supplants.” We are told that when Jacob and his brother Esau were born, Jacob, the second twin, grabbed on to Esau’s heel and tried to pull him back, so that he, Jacob, might emerge first. We are told that he and Esau were born in answer to their father Isaac’s prayer for children. We are told that Jacob quickly became his mother’s favorite of the two, a mama’s boy in comparison to the “man’s man” that Esau would become. And that fact, as much as anything, may explain a lot about Jacob’s outlook on life.
In the neighborhood where I grew up, there was a family of three children where one of them, the youngest, was the clear favorite of their mother. The older two children were good kids, solid citizens. But Steven, the younger, was protected and coddled by their mother, while his older brother and sister simply shrugged their shoulders and went about their business.
Steven grew into a bit of a schemer. He always had an angle for getting out of work. He was always talking about how he was going to get rich, but not by seeking a profession and working hard. Oh, no, that was too mundane…he was going to get rich QUICK and then live the life of leisure.
Whenever he got in disagreements with his older brother and sister, his mother would take Steven’s side. When his siblings were instructed to save their money for college, Steven had no such restriction. Subsequently, he always had new clothes and records and really expensive shoes. The rest of us in the neighborhood thought that high top Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars were the height of fashion, but there was Steven wearing expensive Italian loafers. I’m not kidding! When he was about 14 he would walk around wearing Italian loafers!
In my mind, when I try to visualize the Jacob story, I visualize Steven from the old neighborhood. I see Steven’s face when I hear Jacob connive to steal Esau’s birthright from him, all for the price of a good meal. I hear Steven’s voice and recognize Steven’s mother planning in the background when I read the story of how Jacob and his mother misled his dying father Isaac into believing that he was indeed Esau, and so, received his father’s blessing, a valuable gift, indeed.
I see Steven and his mother huddled together trying to figure out what to do when Esau vows to kill Jacob for his deception.
And finally, it is Steven’s scared face I see on Jacob when he is leaving town in the middle of the night, fleeing to Haran in order to escape Esau’s wrath.
Tradition is an important part of our heritage. Tradition helps define us and helps order our lives. When someone like Jacob comes along and enters into a blatant disregard for the traditions of the day, there is bound to be trouble. It was tradition for the first born male to receive the birthright of land from the father. Jacob swindled that birthright from his brother, upsetting the traditional ways.
It was tradition for a dying father to leave the oldest son with a special blessing. Jacob tricked Isaac into giving him the blessing intended for Esau. Another tradition uprooted.
The result of this was that Esau, the slighted brother, who by tradition would have benefited greatly from his birth position, became outraged. And nothing much good ever comes from that.
Understanding tradition is important to understanding a people, a nation, a religion. Nowhere is it written in the bible that we should celebrate communion every week, but the fact that it is our tradition says a lot about us. Nowhere does scripture dictate that we should all be baptized like Jesus, but tradition of the church says that we should, and that is a powerful symbol of our faith. Traditions are important for things to go along smoothly, but both Jacob and my neighbor Steven flaunted tradition, and it didn’t sit well with some people.
Somewhere along the way, both Steven and Jacob turned their lives in a different direction. Steven is today a Church of God minister in Tennesee. He has a Ph.D. in Old Testament Studies. He’s probably still fond of expensive Italian shoes, but he now serves God where once he served only himself. I don’t know how that happened to Steven. But I now how it happened with Jacob.
When Jacob left Beer-Sheba, he stopped for the night to rest. As he slept, he dreamed that a ladder was built that stretched from heaven to earth. Angels went up and down this ladder and God stood next to it. God spoke in this vision…spoke to Jacob. This is what God said: “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you rest 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 in 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 I have promised you.”
In that vision, that dream, Jacob feels the full weight of the power of scripture and tradition and most importantly, experience.
The weight of scripture is felt with the blessing that God bestows. It is Abraham’s blessing! It connects Jacob immediately to the stories of the patriarch and makes real the God revealed through his grandfather Abraham.
The weight of tradition becomes apparent to Jacob because after all his scheming and manipulating to supplant tradition, it is a traditional blessing of a father to a son that is so graciously given him! And that notion of keeping a living tradition of blessing surely would not have been lost of Jacob.
The weight of experience comes to bear because never had Jacob had such an encounter with God. It wouldn’t be the last time Jacob stood in God’s presence, but it was the first time and it would have been powerful.
So what? What changed? EVERYTHING!
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Jacob named that place “Bethel” – the house of God, and vowed to return. Jacob accepted the blessing and thus began his new life. A new life that would include having his name changed to Israel and becoming father to 12 sons, and in the long run, father to the 12 tribes of Israel, God’s chosen people.
For us, as for Jacob, the issues of scripture, tradition and experience speak volumes to us about who God is and how we are to serve God…if we will pay attention.
The scriptural record is there for us to go to, over and over again. A regular reading of scripture shows me over and over again that the people of Jacob’s day, of Jesus’ day, of the time of early church founders, had some of the same concerns and faced some of the same issues that we fact today. And I am amazed that the more I am in touch with my scriptural roots, the more I am in touch with God’s presence in my life.
The traditions that we celebrate help give us an understanding of how we can appropriate the purposes of God in our daily lives. In Jacob’s day, the power of the blessing and the authority that conveyed was passed from father to son, and the story progressed because of that tradition. Today, we are a more egalitarian and open society, but our faith traditions of communion and communal prayer help to strengthen our faith walk by binding our faith community together, and again, God’s presence is more keenly felt the more we are in community together.
But the most important part of this of this story from Jacob’s perspective is that he felt the presence of God and felt it keenly. He felt it so strongly that he immediately knew that he had to respond.
We have all felt the presence of God. Maybe it hasn’t been as clear as Jacob’s experience, but I guarantee you, if we are open to it, we can feel that presence just as strongly. So, how are we to keep ourselves open to the revelation of God’s presence in our lives?
Through the disciplined study of scripture, through the faithful adherence to our traditions. God is present in both of those, and when we acquaint ourselves with God revealed through our study, through our prayer, I guarantee you, we will be attuned to God revealing Godself to us in a myriad of ways. It is through these concrete actions that our own “sacred dreams” will make themselves known to us. But when we make the effort, we will be amazed.
There is one more point to this scripture that we see in other places that I think is really important to our own faith journey and our own seeking of God.
Jacob was overcome by his vision and knew that God had talked to him. He built a small altar and vowed to return to this house of God. And then he vowed to put God at the center of his journey…sort of.
Here is Jacob’s vow, as presented in “The Message” Bible: “If God stands by me and protects me on this journey on which I’m setting out, keeps me in food and clothing, and brings me back in one piece to my father’s house, THIS God will be my God.”
Wait a second… “IF?”
What are we to make of this conditional vow? Does it upset us? Should it?
It doesn’t upset me because I have probably made this same vow before! “Just get me through this, God, and I’ll never do it again!” “Help me, God, and then I’ll honor you forever.”
Should it upset us? Well, I am a bit embarrassed to admit what I have done, but I revel in the fact that this story rings so true! John C. Holbert (The Story Tellers Companion) sums it up this way, “ This is Jacob after all. What else are we to expect from him? His name is connected with deceit and cleverness; why should he treat God any differently from the way he treated his brother?...We must watch as God works the divine will through a motley collection of human beings…we must never take our eyes off of the one who is the true ruler of all.”
Holbert has it exactly right! How else would we expect Jacob to react? He’s scared and God has just talked to him. He is not yet the fully formed, fully mature Jacob that is one of our great patriarchs. No, he is the fledgling Jacob, the newly blessed Jacob, the Jacob who will find his way along what will be an amazing and difficult faith road.
So revel in the fact that each of us in our imperfections can be useful to God, and then take your eyes off Jacob, off ourselves and realize what the real importance of this vow is: that God was faithful to God’s promise!
Jacob put all kinds of conditions on his acceptance of God’s grace, yet God did not walk away from him, pull the ladder up into heaven, kick Jacob to the side of the road, strike him dead with a bolt of lightning.
No.
God lived out God’s promise.
God lived out the promise to Abraham. God lived out the promise to Jacob. God lives out the promise to you and to me.
Thanks be to God.
Let us pray: Lord, we cry out for your presence, yet too often, we do it with our eyes closed and our heads bowed and our hearts hardened. Open your word to us through our study of your holy scriptures. Open our hearts to you through our prayer and meditation. Open our eyes to your wonder and your presence right here with us today. We have fallen short, but still you never leave us. We are in awe of your love and grace, but unclear about why you have bestowed it upon us. Help us to put our fears aside and simply embrace our sacred dreams, now and always. Amen.
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