July 17, 2010
Pentecost 5, Proper 11, Year A
Genesis 28:10-19a – Jacob’s Ladder
It might be because I am not the best sleeper, but I have very vivid dreams. Most of them are anxiety dreams, unfortunately. At least every few nights I dash out of bed thinking one of the kids is in danger and I need to save them – last night Maya was about to fall down the stairs. Once I had this horrible dream that Holden was cheating on me and I woke up incredibly angry with him and couldn’t shake the feeling for hours. Often the dreams are just silly and make no sense – like the kind where you dream about one person but you somehow know it was really someone else. Every once in a while, though, my dreams are gifts from God. I feel a little uncomfortable saying that out loud, frankly, but I absolutely believe it.
And so I appreciate Jacob’s experience that we read about this morning.
Granted, Jacob is not the most sympathetic character. Many of the great forerunners of our faith were not. Last week we heard about how when his brother Esau was hungry, Jacob turned that into an opportunity to trick Esau out of his birthright. Then he connived with his mother Rebekah to pretend to be Esau so that he could steal Esau’s blessing, too. Jacob had to flee quickly before his rightly furious brother killed him.
Our story this morning finds Jacob in an very vulnerable place. He is afraid and defeated; exhausted and utterly alone. He is a fugitive, far from home in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but a rock to lay his head on. He is without any real hope of ever returning home, given the wrath of his brother. The present looks hopeless and the future looks bleak.
And yet his story isn’t over. Not even close. His long road to recovery and redemption begins this very night. Jacob in no way deserves this incredible dream of his, but he desperately needs it. And what’s more, he believes it.
Dreams were serious business back in Jacob’s day. God appeared in dreams in a fairly regular basis throughout the Bible and people took it seriously. But this one from our reading this morning, Jacob’s dream about a ladder from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending and God making promises to Jacob, this dream is one of the best known dreams of them all.
Of course, now days we’re much more likely to attribute dreams to our own subconscious than to a message from God. Out of curiosity, I searched the internet to see what dream interpreters would make of this image of a ladder. Apparently, ladders are fraught with subconscious meaning. They symbolize aspiration – attempts to achieve wholeness or success. Ladders suggest that a person will be successful after struggle or obstacles; that the person will be able to rise above a certain situation. All that certainly seems to apply to Jacob. He has spent the better part of his life striving for his father’s approval and blessing, fighting against his brother from the womb for a primary place in the family. And as we’ll hear in the next few weeks, he will ultimately be successful and rise above his current circumstances.
But for Jacob, this dream is much more than his subconscious reassuring him that he will get out of this mess he’s made for himself. This dream is the beginning of his relationship with God. The beginning of his realization that he is included in the covenant God has made with his father and grandfather. Two verses after today’s reading he lays claim to what until now had just been his parents’ God. After waking from his dream, Jacob proclaims, “The LORD will be my God.” (Or at least, Jacob proclaims that the Lord will be his God IF God really follows through on all these wonderful promises and brings him home safely to his father’s house. He is still Jacob with all his flaws, after all. Bargaining and preconditions are part of his very nature.)
God’s part, though, is completely unconditional. There is no judgment for Jacob’s treatment of his brother and father. God is fully committed to Jacob despite everything. “I will give you…, I am with you…, I will keep you…, I will not leave you…,” God promises.
Jacob’s dream marks his first (but certainly not his last) encounter with God. Jacob wasn’t looking for God – he was just running from who he was and what he’d done and looking for safety. And yet, whether or not Jacob was in search of God, God was clearly in search of him.
This dream also marks Jacob’s first (but again, not his last) realization that God can come bursting on the scene even in a random, middle-of-nowhere place. “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!” Jacob exclaims.
In his dream, Jacob got a glimpse of what is always there and what is always true. And so when he woke up, he took the stone on which he’d been lying when he had this remarkable dream and he made it into a shrine. He called the place Bethel – the house of God.
I love this story about Jacob because I’ve had my own dream about God, also in what seemed to be an unlikely place. I had been studying abroad in London during college, visiting the requisite pubs, flirting with boys with great accents, exploring the cities of Europe. And before coming home I decided to visit my sister who was working in Moscow.
I’d studied Russian for a full two years in college, but found that I couldn’t communicate even slightly with anyone. I found Moscow to be very bleak, full of grey buildings and poverty. I was acutely aware both of how incredibly lucky I was to be a well-off American and of how obvious a target I was to people that wanted to take advantage of the fact that I was a well-off American. More than one drunk man followed me and muttered what I could only imagine were obscenities and I had no idea who or how to ask for help. I wasn’t sleeping well because I was sharing my sister’s squeaky, too-small bed. It started snowing (in July!) and I was cold and exhausted and had lost all the confidence I’d gained from my time studying abroad.
And then I had my dream. I was an artist and created this amazingly, painfully beautiful sculpture. It was white and yet full of color, incredibly detailed and yet so simple. Somehow I knew in my dream that what I’d created was a vision of God and that God was enabling me to create it and watching approvingly, lovingly.
I woke up next to my sister in the middle of the night on this rickety, Murphy bed in an apartment in one of the faceless buildings in the middle of this exhausting bleak city. And I felt the most incredible joy. I woke up knowing that God had visited me in that dream somehow and that I had gotten a glimpse of what had been there all along. The Lord was in that place – and I did not know it.
And afterwards, for a while anyway, I was conscious of God all around me. Suddenly everywhere I turned offered amazing examples of God’s creation. Suddenly every person I met was a fellow traveler on the journey that I hadn’t even realized I was on. All because of that dream. I didn’t deserve it. But I needed it. And I definitely believed it.
More often than not, that time feels so far away that it hurts. Sometimes my longing to re-experience all that is stronger than my memory of it. But still, that moment remains a sacred piece of my journey. I wrote a poem afterwards to try to capture it:
The Dream
One night I was an artist
Talented and perceptive
Using solely white brilliance
All colors combined
Creating an all-encompassing symbol
Insignificant from a distance
Thicknesses of white
But intricate upon inspection
Sculpted edges and crevices
Deep with meaning
With morning came color
A new radiance seeped through
Distorting yet illuminating
Enriching with meaning
Larger than myself
I see now that my poem is my attempt, like Jacob, to create my own version of a rock shrine to remember that moment and set it apart. It is something that helps me point to a particular place and time and call it Bethel – the house of God.
But of course, that is what every place is. As Jacob discovered, God doesn’t need a church or a saint or prayerful meditation or good intentions or any kind of welcome to make a holy intrusion into our lives. The world around us shimmers with the possibility of being confronted with the shock of God’s presence. Big and small, seen and unseen, these rock shrines surround us on every side. Bethel is not somewhere, but everywhere. And those promises from God to Jacob echo for all of us from every stone and tree and cloud and creature: ““I will give you…, I am with you…, I will keep you…, I will not leave you…”
Surely the LORD is in this place. In every place. Lord, help us to know it! Amen.
Pentecost 5, Proper 11, Year A
Genesis 28:10-19a – Jacob’s Ladder
It might be because I am not the best sleeper, but I have very vivid dreams. Most of them are anxiety dreams, unfortunately. At least every few nights I dash out of bed thinking one of the kids is in danger and I need to save them – last night Maya was about to fall down the stairs. Once I had this horrible dream that Holden was cheating on me and I woke up incredibly angry with him and couldn’t shake the feeling for hours. Often the dreams are just silly and make no sense – like the kind where you dream about one person but you somehow know it was really someone else. Every once in a while, though, my dreams are gifts from God. I feel a little uncomfortable saying that out loud, frankly, but I absolutely believe it.
And so I appreciate Jacob’s experience that we read about this morning.
Granted, Jacob is not the most sympathetic character. Many of the great forerunners of our faith were not. Last week we heard about how when his brother Esau was hungry, Jacob turned that into an opportunity to trick Esau out of his birthright. Then he connived with his mother Rebekah to pretend to be Esau so that he could steal Esau’s blessing, too. Jacob had to flee quickly before his rightly furious brother killed him.
Our story this morning finds Jacob in an very vulnerable place. He is afraid and defeated; exhausted and utterly alone. He is a fugitive, far from home in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but a rock to lay his head on. He is without any real hope of ever returning home, given the wrath of his brother. The present looks hopeless and the future looks bleak.
And yet his story isn’t over. Not even close. His long road to recovery and redemption begins this very night. Jacob in no way deserves this incredible dream of his, but he desperately needs it. And what’s more, he believes it.
Dreams were serious business back in Jacob’s day. God appeared in dreams in a fairly regular basis throughout the Bible and people took it seriously. But this one from our reading this morning, Jacob’s dream about a ladder from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending and God making promises to Jacob, this dream is one of the best known dreams of them all.
Of course, now days we’re much more likely to attribute dreams to our own subconscious than to a message from God. Out of curiosity, I searched the internet to see what dream interpreters would make of this image of a ladder. Apparently, ladders are fraught with subconscious meaning. They symbolize aspiration – attempts to achieve wholeness or success. Ladders suggest that a person will be successful after struggle or obstacles; that the person will be able to rise above a certain situation. All that certainly seems to apply to Jacob. He has spent the better part of his life striving for his father’s approval and blessing, fighting against his brother from the womb for a primary place in the family. And as we’ll hear in the next few weeks, he will ultimately be successful and rise above his current circumstances.
But for Jacob, this dream is much more than his subconscious reassuring him that he will get out of this mess he’s made for himself. This dream is the beginning of his relationship with God. The beginning of his realization that he is included in the covenant God has made with his father and grandfather. Two verses after today’s reading he lays claim to what until now had just been his parents’ God. After waking from his dream, Jacob proclaims, “The LORD will be my God.” (Or at least, Jacob proclaims that the Lord will be his God IF God really follows through on all these wonderful promises and brings him home safely to his father’s house. He is still Jacob with all his flaws, after all. Bargaining and preconditions are part of his very nature.)
God’s part, though, is completely unconditional. There is no judgment for Jacob’s treatment of his brother and father. God is fully committed to Jacob despite everything. “I will give you…, I am with you…, I will keep you…, I will not leave you…,” God promises.
Jacob’s dream marks his first (but certainly not his last) encounter with God. Jacob wasn’t looking for God – he was just running from who he was and what he’d done and looking for safety. And yet, whether or not Jacob was in search of God, God was clearly in search of him.
This dream also marks Jacob’s first (but again, not his last) realization that God can come bursting on the scene even in a random, middle-of-nowhere place. “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!” Jacob exclaims.
In his dream, Jacob got a glimpse of what is always there and what is always true. And so when he woke up, he took the stone on which he’d been lying when he had this remarkable dream and he made it into a shrine. He called the place Bethel – the house of God.
I love this story about Jacob because I’ve had my own dream about God, also in what seemed to be an unlikely place. I had been studying abroad in London during college, visiting the requisite pubs, flirting with boys with great accents, exploring the cities of Europe. And before coming home I decided to visit my sister who was working in Moscow.
I’d studied Russian for a full two years in college, but found that I couldn’t communicate even slightly with anyone. I found Moscow to be very bleak, full of grey buildings and poverty. I was acutely aware both of how incredibly lucky I was to be a well-off American and of how obvious a target I was to people that wanted to take advantage of the fact that I was a well-off American. More than one drunk man followed me and muttered what I could only imagine were obscenities and I had no idea who or how to ask for help. I wasn’t sleeping well because I was sharing my sister’s squeaky, too-small bed. It started snowing (in July!) and I was cold and exhausted and had lost all the confidence I’d gained from my time studying abroad.
And then I had my dream. I was an artist and created this amazingly, painfully beautiful sculpture. It was white and yet full of color, incredibly detailed and yet so simple. Somehow I knew in my dream that what I’d created was a vision of God and that God was enabling me to create it and watching approvingly, lovingly.
I woke up next to my sister in the middle of the night on this rickety, Murphy bed in an apartment in one of the faceless buildings in the middle of this exhausting bleak city. And I felt the most incredible joy. I woke up knowing that God had visited me in that dream somehow and that I had gotten a glimpse of what had been there all along. The Lord was in that place – and I did not know it.
And afterwards, for a while anyway, I was conscious of God all around me. Suddenly everywhere I turned offered amazing examples of God’s creation. Suddenly every person I met was a fellow traveler on the journey that I hadn’t even realized I was on. All because of that dream. I didn’t deserve it. But I needed it. And I definitely believed it.
More often than not, that time feels so far away that it hurts. Sometimes my longing to re-experience all that is stronger than my memory of it. But still, that moment remains a sacred piece of my journey. I wrote a poem afterwards to try to capture it:
The Dream
One night I was an artist
Talented and perceptive
Using solely white brilliance
All colors combined
Creating an all-encompassing symbol
Insignificant from a distance
Thicknesses of white
But intricate upon inspection
Sculpted edges and crevices
Deep with meaning
With morning came color
A new radiance seeped through
Distorting yet illuminating
Enriching with meaning
Larger than myself
I see now that my poem is my attempt, like Jacob, to create my own version of a rock shrine to remember that moment and set it apart. It is something that helps me point to a particular place and time and call it Bethel – the house of God.
But of course, that is what every place is. As Jacob discovered, God doesn’t need a church or a saint or prayerful meditation or good intentions or any kind of welcome to make a holy intrusion into our lives. The world around us shimmers with the possibility of being confronted with the shock of God’s presence. Big and small, seen and unseen, these rock shrines surround us on every side. Bethel is not somewhere, but everywhere. And those promises from God to Jacob echo for all of us from every stone and tree and cloud and creature: ““I will give you…, I am with you…, I will keep you…, I will not leave you…”
Surely the LORD is in this place. In every place. Lord, help us to know it! Amen.
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