Here at Christ Church, we preach and say and mean that however you are, right now, is welcome. And that’s true – there’s nothing else any of us can be, other than what we are right now. And we if we’re to welcome each other, that’s what we welcome.
But at the same time, isn’t it sort of like the old saying: “come as you are, but don’t stay as you are.”
I mean, there’s something in Christianity, in this community, that while it accepts and affirms, also right alongside of that, doesn’t let us get too comfortable or complacent. As the great rabbi and scholar Abraham Heschel writes, “Religion is critique of all satisfaction.”
So what is it that both comforts us and, maybe in the comfort, assures us that it’s ok to grow, and even asks us to grow? What lets us go from the comfort zone to the drive to go higher, what lets us go from mere wonder to radical amazement?
Well, one idea is that it’s a hope. Not an optimism – I’m not an optimistic person, I don’t usually believe that the best will happen. But – I’m still hopeful. It’s hope that allows me to keep open the possibility of growing and understanding and loving on a newer and better level.
And the key seems to be that both those things – comfort and the openness to growing – both hinge on the hope that something larger and more loving than what we can see right now, is out there. And that that can transform us.
When we hear about Jacob, in this little bit from Genesis, it’s at a time of uncertainty and vulnerability – certainly a time when he would need comfort. Jacob seems to get into trouble easily anyway and ends up in an argument with virtually everybody in his life. And right now, he’s running from his brother Esau, who has a legit case against him, so it’s not like he’s been framed. Jacob stole Esau’s birthright and blessing, and Esau is so ticked he’s trying to kill Jacob. Jacob is in some sort of no-man’s-land that doesn’t even have a name, and he’s sleeping with a stone for a pillow. In short, Jacob’s on the lam and not really what we’d consider a picture of biblical morality.
Except – if we stop and think about what biblical morality usually looks like. And when I do that, I realize that more often than not, biblical morality usually comes down to God intervening in a life that doesn’t deserve it and turning that person around out of pure love. And it’s almost never gentle either, not cupids and pink-edged clouds. For instance, here, God turns Jacob around through radical new information, a new vision, that doesn’t just add to the way Jacob already sees the world – it does a basic reorientation of Jacob’s whole self. That’s biblical morality – encountering God’s love not in any way that reinforces human satisfaction, but that unsettles us in a way that will make for greater human experience.
It’s even in how Jacob responds – “God is here – and I didn’t know it.” Wake up, folks. God’s here, more than any of us can know. The only difference is that for whatever reasons, God gave Jacob a glimpse behind the veil.
“It’s the gate of heaven,” Jacob says, and sure enough, it’s a portal – if you want to get kind of Harry Potter about it – a portal into a whole other reality, one that’s been right there all along.
But here’s the thing, and this gets to the idea of God disrupting what we have in order to give us more. That “heaven” is not just a separate reality. There’s something going on between it and the world we know. And the key, of course, is the ladder.
Now, we’ve heard so much about Jacob’s ladder, sung songs about it, we’ve got Jacob’s ladder toys in the back, so maybe it’s just dulled into white noise. But think about it as if you’ve never heard of it, and it becomes pretty amazing.
The word there really isn’t to mean a ladder like what we have hanging out in our garages; it’s more a ramp, almost part of temple architecture in that part of the world, that was about reaching into heaven.
And so we have this ramp – if you have to, sing to yourself “we are climbing Jacob’s ramp” – going from a no-name, stone-pillow place into a glorious reality. And it’s not like you go from one place to the other and just stay. To really make the point, there are beings moving back and forth on it. Now, that’s another visual not to get hung up on – we shouldn’t grasp at these images of the divine but just see what they point us toward. And let me make it clear, I’m not talking about cutesy tv shows about angels. What we learn here is far more awesome and august than what any tv exec can dream up for commercial sponsors.
What seems to be at the heart of this dream, this enlightenment of Jacob’s, is that he gets it that there’s exchange between this world that we know with our senses, and an entirely different way of knowing.
So what we learn are two things: the glorious dimension of God’s love is there, right beside even the most sordid of characters – up to this point in the story, we haven’t even seen Jacob do any praying – and that dimension is a resource for us. We’re not stuck, left to our own devices.
And what it all means beyond that – it’s hard to say. I think the point was probably not so much a particular meaning as just being woken up by love. All Jacob could say was, “man, God’s really here even when I was clueless.” That’s the tricky thing about it – it’s not 10 commandments written on two tablets we can touch, and it’s not the embodiment of Jesus, whose robe we can touch. This is more of an ephemeral experience – but no less real – that reorients Jacob’s life in ways that have yet to show themselves.
But that’s why this kind of insight that Jacob has is really an in-breaking. It’s God breaking in in a more full-frontal kind of way. It may not be the usual way God works, but from time to time, for whatever mysterious reasons, God will play that card. Sometimes I even think God does that kind of radical sleight-of-hand only when someone is so far gone they’ll be oblivious to anything less – who knows?!
But whatever the reasons, God meets Jacob’s life right where he is – “whoever you are and wherever you find yourself on the journey of faith” – and breaks in in a way that changes Jacob’s life forever and therefore affects everybody he deals with, forever. Jacob still stays a dubious character; God’s working in our lives doesn’t suddenly make us different people. But it seems to have an effect on our inner compass, where we're grounded.
Remember, this whole experience came at a pretty between-the-cracks kind of moment. Jacob’s not really anywhere that even has a name, he’s sleeping with his head on a rock, he’s left some place and is going somewhere else. So it’s not really a moment when anyone would expect a mountain-top insight. This feels almost accidental, in human terms.
And in this accidental moment of no-place and sleeping on rocks, and everything falling apart –
That moment becomes the ground for an entirely new future. Talk about transformation. In that no-name place, God basically introduces God’s own self – “Hi, my name is…” – and then says “this land that you’re sleeping on with a rock for a pillow – this no-name rock-pillow place where you’re on the lam – is suddenly going to become a gift. And not just a gift, but a blessing. And a future.”
What seemed like Loser with a capital L – became the greatest thing there could be. Go figure.
It’s kind of like the psalm, that glorious psalm that I tend to use at funerals because it assures people that God finds them in their pain, but it’s also totally useful wherever we are. It’s a reminder that God cuts through all the bull. Look at these verbs – God discerns, searches, knows – this is an active God who’s going after us, in a good way. It’s jarring, if you really think about it – it can even be nervous-making, until you stop and realize that this is love that’s chasing you down. How many of us are on the lam from love…?
But, maybe, like with Jacob, that will let us be bold. It will let us have the boldness that comes when we realize there’s more there than we knew. More of God moving around. More of God’s cutting through all the defenses we throw up and digging into our deepest places, maybe even the places we hide from ourselves.
In both the Genesis and the Psalm, it’s this really crucial link – it’s God saying, I know who you are better than you do – and I promise I will be there with you.
From identity to promise. Remember that.
God’s promise, and God’s promise to fulfill that promise. It’s like we heard last week in Isaiah 55 – “my words won’t return to me till they’ve done what I intend them to do.”
And they’re nice enough as words on a page, but we’re really meant to bring them home. It’s not just the story of Jacob, it’s the story of us. You may feel like someone’s after your life and that you’re in a no-man’s-land and that you’re sleeping on a stone pillow. But look for God to turn that non-space into holy ground, and listen for God to stick to that promise.
Your response might be, “Well what has God ever promised me.” It might feel like the end of the issue for you – but it’s not. Consider it a welcome. God’s inviting you to ask the question, begging you forward into it. What has God promised you?? – the question is a whole new door to open, a whole new space to wander into and be curious.