Sunday, July 23, 2017

Holy Heights

Jacob's Ladder Textile Art by Eszter Bornemisza


July 31, 2017
Genesis 28:10-20

10Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. 11He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. 12And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 And the LORD stood beside him and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14and 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. 15Know 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.” 16Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place — and I did not know it!” 17And 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.”
18So 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. 19aHe called that place Bethel…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.”


Sermon: “Holy Heights”

Jacob was a mess. It’s amazing how we often make out most (male) biblical characters to be perfect heroes and not flawed humans like us. Jacob may be the many-times-over-great-grandfather of Jesus, but he was trouble. It actually takes less time to name what he didn’t do wrong than what he did.

He cheated his brother Esau out of a birthright.
He took advantage of his father’s blindness to trick him.
Not caring about impressing the in-laws, he took everything from his father-in-law Laban: his daughters (yes, both of them), his livestock (hopefully of less worth than the daughters), even his household gods.
He cheated his brother out of a blessing a second time, and ran off toward Haran to let Esau cool down a bit (and save his own skin). Much later, still obsessed with blessing, he sowed jealousy between his sons and grandsons by blessing some more than others.

If Jacob was a character in a story outside the Bible, he’s surely play the villain, not the hero. He’d be the vengeful Voldemort, the impulsive Anakin Skywalker, that jealous Wicked Witch of the West. In short, he’s not the good guy.
So, it comes as no surprise that, when we find him in Genesis 28, though he’s a fugitive from the well-placed anger of his brother, Jacob is able to sleep like a baby in the wilderness on a stone pillow, with an even stonier heart. Regret is a result of conscious, and as far as we can tell, ol’ Jake didn’t have one. He slept as the blissfully ignorant do, and God came to him in an incredible dream.
It would be fitting if this was a Scrooge-style transformative dream, where he awakes to finally be a good guy. Spoiler alert: it’s not, and he doesn’t. God brings him a dream of a ladder, or a staircase ascending into heaven, with angels going up and down between heaven and earth. Jacob isn’t invited to those holy heights. He’s simply invited to get a brief glimpse of them. God promises that this troublemaker, this villain, will have land, offspring and blessing beyond what even his selfish mind can dream up. 

Imagine for a moment if Voldemort had bested Harry, or if Anakin had defeated the Force forever, or if the Wicked Witch and her flying monkeys had won. It fights against every concept we know of justice. So it is with this crook Jacob getting such a blessing. He’s not even gracious about receiving it. I love how Barry Robinson describes his reaction to God’s promise:

Jacob responds to God's completely unconditional promise of blessing and protection with a completely conditional promise of his own. "IF you will give me the land, food, clothing and protection, THEN I will be your man." In response to this incredible blessing of God, all Jacob can think of saying is, "SHOW ME THE MONEY!" I mean, can you believe this guy! God, out of the unbelievable goodness of God’s heart, gives Jacob holy heaven instead of holy hell, and Jacob, demonstrating that he hasn't learned a blessed thing, says in response, "Prove it to me!”

Jacob does not deserve God’s blessing. He does not deserve to look upon the holy heights of God’s glory. He does not deserve to share space with angels, or to have God come and literally stand beside him. But that’s because God’s goodness is never dependent upon our own — which can be summed up in one big little word: grace. In Jacob, God annoyingly shows us that grace has little to do with what’s deserved, and everything to do with the character of God. God forgives, God blesses, God brings us to holy heights and stands beside us, not because it’s earned, but because that’s who God is. And no matter how menacing, how enticing, or how amusing, the villain is never the main character of our lives, or of our Bible for that matter. God is.

We all like to be the main character of our own stories, though, don’t we? It’s no different in the story of the church. We see this in language of entitlement, of assuming God’s blessing runs along the lines of wealth, or privilege, or status, or even political opinion. We see this in how grudges, bitterness, and prejudice are cherished like inherited traditions (perhaps first passed down by that trickster Jacob). We see this in forgiving only when we think it’s deserved, or churches acting like it’s us against the world, and assuming a posture of pride and defensiveness, withdrawing more and more from those who need us most. We want to be the main character. And slowly, so slowly we don’t even notice it most of the time, we begin to look more and more like our ancestor Jacob. And we forget that God is the biggest part of any of our stories.

But if grace is anything, it is God refusing to leave us where we are, even if we we’re sleeping rough on a stone pillow in the wilderness. God comes beside us, us imperfect, struggling, tired people, and smiles and says, “Look up…I’ve got something beautiful to show you.” And what we see is that the barrier between heaven and earth never was the barred door we thought, only opening at the right time, but has in fact been a staircase of angelic movement all along. It’s just hard to see it when we’re awake to all our pain and frustration and fear, thinking we’re the only ones, because we’ve tried too long to be Number One.

But, whether we see it or not, that beauty is always there. Like the stars that shine through the day as well, God’s holy heights are there, calling us to be humbled by our place in the order of things, and our utter dependence upon God’s grace, not just for the life to come, but for every moment of this life. We’re invited to joyfully, fearlessly celebrate that we aren’t the center of our stories — God is.
Whether we want to claim him or not, Jacob is part of our faith family. He’s like an unruly uncle we’d rather ignore, but we can’t. He reminds us that God's grace does not discriminate. What would our church be like if we went into our community and the world proclaiming that we don’t have it all together all the time, but instead are a place of imperfect people desperate for grace, humble enough to put ourselves second, or third, or fourth, or as Jesus would have us do, last?

Anne Lamott describes well how unexpected this grace can be, telling a story of when she went to church after a particularly trying morning with her crumbling family.

Then I headed to church.

And it was not good.

The service was way long, and boring, and only three people had shown up for the choir. There was a disruptive baby who had about three hours of neck control but was already spoiling everything for the rest of us. I sat with a look of grim munificence, like so many of your better Christians, exuding mental toxins into the atmosphere. I decided that this church was deteriorating.

I had come for a spiritual booster shot and instead got aggravation.

I was going to leave, and never come back.

Then something amazing happened. I would call it grace, but then, I'm easy. It was that deeper breath, or pause, or briefly cleaner glasses, that gives us a bit of freedom and relief. I remembered my secular father's only strong spiritual directive: Don't be a [jerk], and make sure everybody eats. Veronica quoted a fellow pastor recently: "I'm only a beggar, showing the other beggars where the bread is. There are many kinds of bread: kindness, companionship, besides the flour-and-yeast kind...I realized I was going to get through this disappointing service, and anyway, you have to be somewhere: better here, where I have heard truth spoken so often, than, say, at the DMV, or home alone, orbiting my own mind. And it's good to be out where others can see you, so you can't be your ghastly, spoiled self. It forces you to act slightly more elegantly, and this improves your thoughts, and thereby the world.


We’re all beggars, like that juvenile Jacob. But with God, there’s enough bread to share, enough to get us through. And, if ever we wonder where to find it, how to get to those holy heights once more, how to find out the truth that God has been beside us all along in stories that have always been bigger than us, we come home. We come here, however grumpy, or guilty, or imperfect we are. We come. And God says, “Okay, do I have your attention now? ‘Cause I’ve got something to show you…and it looks an awful lot like grace.” Amen.


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