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SERMON
Our story opens today with Jacob fleeing for his life. Twice he had cheated his brother out of something that rightfully belonged to him. Shortly before Jacob and Esau were born, a prophecy was given to their mother, Rebekah, that the older son would serve the younger and that the younger would be the one through whom the family lineage was traced. When the twins were delivered, Esau emerged first, but Jacob came next, holding fast to his brother's heel. That's why they
named him Jacob, a name that means "heel-grabber" or "usurper" or "tripper-upper."
True to his name, he not only swindled his older brother out of his birthright; by a bold scheme concocted by his mother, Jacob deceived his blind father, Isaac, and stole the patriarchal blessing that Isaac thought he was bestowing on Esau. Understandably enraged at what had happened, Esau swore that he would kill Jacob. Again with his mother's help, Jacob quickly set out across the wilderness to the ancestral home from which his grandfather Abraham had come. It was an escape from the known to the unknown. Jacob thought he was fleeing to safety, but in reality he was headed for another crisis.
Now, up to this point in the narrative there is little to suggest that Jacob was particularly aware of God at all. Like so many before and after, Jacob was the quintessential self-made man. As far as he was concerned it was his life and he would do anything for himself and to others that would serve his purposes.
But suddenly this life which he thought he had by the tail, turned against him. His arrogant manipulation of others caught up with him and, perhaps for the first time in his life, he realized that he was not in control. Of course, we know that he never really was in control - none of us is. But like most of us, at times, he thought he was. But now he was on the run and vulnerable, with nobody to care for him. He found himself alone in a universe that suddenly seemed quite inhospitable. Better men than he had been swallowed up in the harshness of that wilderness. But just here, feeling utterly alone, Jacob discovered that he was not as alone as he thought and feared he was.
I read somewhere that there are two kinds of fear that people have with respect to God: the fear of God's absence and the fear of God's presence. In the story of Jacob fleeing for his life we can see both of these fears at work. The first is the fear of the absence of God. When we're facing a crisis - whether it's a life-threatening illness or the tragic loss of someone; or faced with physical danger or conflict with others; or when we're confronted with a moral or spiritual dilemma in which we can't seem to decide which way to turn - in such cases we often feel afraid, abandoned and alone, just as I'm sure Jacob felt. Whatever it was that held us together seems to have disappeared. And those feelings of being totally vulnerable, of inconsolable grief, of being torn between choices - none of which appear to be good, often carry with them the feeling that God is absent.
C. S. Lewis lost his wife to cancer. He jotted down his personal notes concerning his loss in some journals that were later published under the title, A Grief Observed. That remarkable book begins with these insightful words: "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." What a helpful insight! The fear underlying grief - or in any other crisis, I suspect - is the fear that maybe God isn't there. "Maybe what is happening to me is meaningless," we think. Haven't we all felt like that at one time or another? Haven't we all had that sickening knot of fear in our stomach that says, "Maybe God doesn't know. Or maybe God doesn't care about what's happening to me. Maybe God doesn't even exist. Maybe God was just a crutch made from my imagination. Maybe I'm all alone facing this situation; and if I am, I'm in big trouble!"
Some people when they feel that fear are paralyzed. They become depressed and just can't seem to do anything to get themselves out of the hole they're in. They vegetate. They drift aimlessly. They're like the woman whose husband died and, despite the care and attention of her family and friends; she refused to accept his death. And only after years of struggle was she able to see that she was really desperately afraid. She equated her husband's death with God's absence. For her, God had died as a living presence, so she sank into depression.
Others, like Jacob, allow that fear of God's absence to spur them on to get what they think they want and need for themselves. They fight to gain control of their lives. I suppose they're thinking that if God isn't around, or can't be trusted to take care of us, then we'd better look out for ourselves. In either case - whether we fall into paralyzing despair or obsessive self-concern - we are acting out our fear that God is absent, or at least not involved. Either way we are practical atheists. And yet the fear that motivates us is itself a witness to our deep yearning to be connected with heaven.
So Jacob ran for his life from a known danger (his brother) to an unknown future. And on the way, camped overnight on the barren rocky ground, resting his head on a stone pillow, Jacob had a dream. Perhaps for the first time in his life he was aware that there really is a connection between earth and heaven. God, he discovered, is involved in the affairs of humans. God stood beside him in his dream and told him something he was hardly prepared to hear. God informed Jacob that he is the same God who made a promise to his grandfather Abraham and to his father Isaac, and now he was renewing that same promise to him.
Knowing as much as we do about Jacob from the story thus far, we might be tempted to ask: Why? Why should God bless a deceitful, ego-driven little manipulator like Jacob? Well, we might as well ask why God should bless any of us? Which of us hasn't been a practical atheist at times - leaving God out of our calculations and acting strictly on what we think is in our own best interest? Do you and I deserve a blessing? Of course, that's the point of the story. A blessing isn't something we ever deserve. That's why it's a blessing instead of a reward. A blessing is something we receive simply by the grace of the one who bestows it. God's promise to Jacob, while it would require a great deal of Jacob, did not depend on how deserving Jacob was. It was pure grace - a gift. Grace is a gift given before anything we can do to deserve or earn it.
But this dream of the connection between heaven and earth, along with this promise of undeserved blessing, while it may have alleviated Jacob's fear of God's absence, doubtless awakened in him another fear. I'm talking about that second kind of fear, which can be just as great or greater - the fear of God's presence. When Jacob awakened, the author says, "he was afraid." Far from soothing and reassuring him of God's providence, this dream of a ladder with God's messengers coming and going, messing in his personal affairs, probably scared the wits out of him. Trust me: few things are more disconcerting to a control freak than being told, "I just straightened up your life for you."
Jacob woke up to the fact that he could be blindsided at any time. He shook his head and said to himself, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it." The implication being: "Had I known it, I certainly wouldn't have stopped here for the night." So he set up a stone pillar to mark this as a place where divine power lurks. It would signal other unwary travelers to steer clear unless they, too, wanted to have a similar encounter with an uninvited visitor to their dreams.
Many of us, I suspect, can identify with this second kind of fear in Jacob as well. As frightened as we may sometimes be in thinking that God may have forgotten about us, we can become even more shaken in realizing that God may be paying attention to us. In his book, Miracles, C. S. Lewis talks about this reluctance we have to really believe that God is, or wants to be, involved with us. Lewis writes:
"An impersonal God - well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth, goodness inside our own heads - better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap into - best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed - that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found God? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing God found us?"
I suspect that with most of us, as with Jacob, the fear of God's presence may be the worse of the two fears. Because if God really is involved with our lives, if God really does have a purpose for this world and that our lives, therefore, have a meaning that we must discover, then we'll have to do something about it. There are things in our lives that will have to change. Relationships and attitudes and behaviors will have to change. Either we will have to bend our wills and desires to fit in with God's will, or we'll have to do battle against God. And God, as we rightly suspect, is an infinitely more formidable adversary than people, or the blind force of fate. People we can manipulate and circumstances we can often control. But God? We don't stand a chance against him.
Of course, we might try to negotiate a deal with God. But none of us, including Jacob, can manipulate God into giving us what we think we need or want. What God wants is for us to trust him - to believe that he loves us and wants to bless us - that he will be involved in our lives for our good. Jacob had a long way to go before he would understand this. But once the net of God's love and grace has dropped around us, it's hard to escape. It's harder to fight against love than against hatred or indifference.
Jacob didn't change his behavior or his character all at once. There would be many trials ahead, more manipulation and deceit, more effort on his part to try to control his destiny. But he could never forget that he dreamed of a ladder. And that dream began to work its magic on him, until finally, he would find himself on that ladder.
There is a ladder, you know. There's a connection between heaven and earth far more real and permanent than anything we can imagine. And if, by the grace of God, we were to catch a vision of that ladder, we might begin to understand, like Jacob, that that connection is what holds our lives together; that it can fill us with hope and meaning and courage and peace, even in the most fearful experiences of life. Have you ever caught a vision of that ladder? Let me tell you about one such vision.
There is a legend about a carpenter who lived in Jesus' day. His wife told him one day that the Roman government needed carpenters to make crosses - execution crosses. The carpenter was reluctant to sell his skill to perpetuate such barbarity, but they were terribly poor. So he agreed to make the crosses.
Time passed, until one day the carpenter's son came home crying. "What's wrong, son?" his parents asked.
"I was in the city," said the boy. "I saw Jesus."
His father asked, "Do you mean the Jesus we love - the rabbi we follow?"
"Yes, Father," the boy replied. "I saw Jesus and - Father - he was carrying our cross, a cross that we made here in our shop. They're going to kill Jesus on a cross we made."
"What!" said the father. "But how do you know it's not a cross made by someone else?"
The son replied, "Because after we finished making some crosses, I went into the shop and I carved my name on one of them. And today I was in a great crowd of people. I saw Jesus coming by. Just when he got even with me, he fell. Father, I know it was our cross because when Jesus fell at my feet, I looked at the cross and there was my name - my name that I put there." Then the boy straightened himself up and said, "Father, do you know what that means? My name was on that cross."
Brothers and sisters, your names and mine are on that cross as well. The cross of Christ is the one place where heaven invades earth for all time - for all of us; and it is far more real and permanent than anything we can imagine. Because it was there that Jesus took upon himself your name and mine - and everything attached to them - and gave up his life to save us all.
What Jacob witnessed in that dream was only a pale first glimpse of the connection that holds us together; that can fill us with hope and meaning and courage and peace, even in the most fearful experiences of life. If you have never known that truth - or if you have known it but forgotten - then my prayer is that, when you look to the cross of Christ, you will wake up and say, like Jacob: "The Lord is in this place - my place - and I was not aware of it!"
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