7/19/20
(Genesis 28:10-19a; Ps. 139:1-11, 22-23; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)
I’m going to preach a regular old sermon today, but first I need to acknowledge with you the fact that we’re in a different place today. There may be some of you watching this now who are not on our parish email list, or the parish grapevine; so: for you folks: this past week I announced that I will be retiring from St. John’s and from parish ministry at the end of August.
So if we were all gathered together here in church today for worship, there’d be a different feel in the room (there’s definitely a different feel here now, with just me and Flora and the camera.) We’re in a period of leave-taking now, you and I. And I’m not going to dwell on it. It’s just necessary to name it; and to remember that the way forward – for us all, you and me -is to keep our minds firmly on what we’re here for, what we’ve always been and always will be here for: to worship our God, and to grow in the knowledge and love of God, and of God’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
So here’s the sermon.
This past week I had a new experience: I was the guest on a podcast, called “Better Known.” It’s hosted by a man who lives in London, who asks people to talk about five things they think should be better known (and one thing that should be less well known.) He sent me some episodes to listen to in preparation; most of the guests on them were a lot younger than I am, and a lot of the choices they made were completely unknown to me.
As some of mine would certainly be to them. I talked about a contemporary composer whose music most people don’t know, and an American playwright whose plays were popular in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s but have been largely forgotten.
But in thinking about this question – what should be better known – what occurred to me first, and instantly, was the Bible. It sells 100 million copies a year, but very few people actually read it. I think a lot people who go to church don’t read it. I think that may partly be because they think they already know what’s in it (from having heard parts of it read in church): or, they think, I should know what’s in it – shouldn’t I – so if I act as though I do nobody’ll be the wiser; or they think, I’m already a Christian, I’m down with the program, I don’t need to read it.
But the Christian life is not a steady state. It’s a life of constantly drawing closer to God: a life of transformation, and liberation. And the Bible leads us down this path. The Bible challenges us: it disorients us; confuses us; astonishes us; thrills us; sometimes it outrages us.
We have a prime example in the passage from the book of Genesis which we heard today. This reading is one of the cycle of stories about Jacob, whom we know – don’t we? – as one of the most august figures in the Old Testament: father of the twelve tribes of Israel, one of the Big Three whom God always includes when self-identifying (“I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”.) And that revered stature seems justified by today’s story, a well-known and beautiful one about Jacob’s ladder: his dream of the ladder set upon earth and reaching to heaven, and angels moving up and down it: a vision of God’s living presence among us.
And, as we heard today, the Bible tells us that God stands beside Jacob, and makes him the covenant promise of God’s eternal faithfulness: “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.” This is God’s covenant with Jacob and all his descendants (which, in the life of the Spirit, includes you and me.)
And out of this dream Jacob has both a physical and a spiritual awakening: as we heard, “Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!’ “ And Jacob gives God the glory: he creates a memorial for the place, which remained for many centuries one of the most sacred places in the Promised Land.
Beautiful, inspiring story, right?
What we don’t get from this story – but what the Bible has firmly established, in the stories we’ve already heard (if we’ve read the Bible) – is that not only has Jacob done nothing to deserve this experience – this dream, this vision that would seem to be reserved only for the greatest of saints, and this association with one of the holiest places on earth – to the contrary, the Bible has shown us in no uncertain terms that Jacob is a thoroughly detestable person: a crook, a con man: someone none of us would want anything to do with in our own lives.
From the beginning: the Bible tells us that when Jacob is born, his twin brother Esau comes out first – making him the eldest, and therefor the privileged one – but Jacob grabs at his heel, trying to pull him back and get ahead of him. In the very next story, the Bible tells us how Jacob swindles Esau out of his birthright – his right as eldest son to leadership of the family and a double share of the inheritance. Jacob trades him a bowl of stew for it (because Esau’s really hungry; Esau’s admittedly not the sharpest knife in the drawer.) And in the story right after that, the Bible tells us how Jacob cons his aged, feeble, half-blind father into thinking he (Jacob) is Esau, and giving him the blessing of a father to his eldest son (which gives him power over all his brothers, obviously including Esau, and a great destiny.)
When Esau finds out about this he comes after Jacob to kill him. And that’s where today’s story begins: “Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran.” That’s what we heard. Sounds like a normal day, yes? No. Jacob is on the run, he can’t go home, Esau’s on his tail. And lest we think he was a changed man after his dream, the Bible tells us later on that he cons his father-in-law out of most of his livestock, and runs off with not only that, but also both of his daughters, and his household gods.
This is the one to whom God says, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go….”
The great Christian writer Frederick Buechner sees two lessons here. One is that “…even for a dyed-in-the-wool, double-barreled con artist like Jacob there are a few things in this world you can’t get but can only be given, and one of those things is love in general, and another is the love of God in particular.”
And the other is that, “…luckily for Jacob” – and luckily for us – “God doesn’t love people because of who they are but because of who he is. It’s on the houseis one way of saying it and it’s by grace is another, just as it was by grace that it was Jacob of all people who became not only the father of the twelve tribes of Israel but the many many times great grandfather of Jesus of Nazareth, and just as it was by grace that Jesus of Nazareth was born into this world at all.”
This is the kind of place the Bible – and only the Bible – takes us. This is the world the Bible leads us into: in all its wildly different voices, over so many centuries. May we always know it better, as the life-giving Word of God that it truly is.