We’re back in the book of Genesis and a lot has happened since Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac in the land of Moriah. You may remember that, after the angel held back the patriarch’s hand, Isaac was unbound, not only literally but also unbound from his parents’ emotional ties, freed to finally start a life of his own, and this all starts right away in Chapter 24 – this long chapter that tells us everything about how a wife was found for Isaac in Haran, where the family came from. Shortly after this wedding, Rebekah gets pregnant with twins, Esau and Jacob, and the story tells us that from the womb the brothers start fighting – that was last week’s reading. And then, things do not get better: Resorting to trickery, Jacob will steal both Esau’s birthright (Ch 25) and then his Father’s blessing, (Ch 27). And this is where we pick up today in Chapter 28. Our lesson starts with this mention: “Jacob left Beer-sheba and went towards Haran”, and we know that Jacob is not traveling for business and he is not traveling for pleasure, he is fleeing because he has made his brother so enraged that his very life is now in danger. This is what we read in 27:41 “Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his Father has blessed him and Esau said to himself: ‘The days of the mourning for my father are approaching and then I will kill my brother Jacob’”. For this reason, Rebekah sends Jacob out, back to Haran, which is the family’s land as I’ve just mentioned. And so, Jacob is traveling all the way back from where his grand father Abraham came from, it’s a long journey of several hundreds miles, and with each step Jacob takes, it feels like a slow undoing of all the promises that God has made before: Rather than possessing the land, Jacob puts the land behind him, rather than enjoying prosperity, he becomes a homeless with a stone to rest his head, rather than becoming a father to many, he finds himself alone in the wilderness.
And yet, that’s when God decides to show up in this wonderful dream God sends to Jacob: A ladder set on earth reaches towards the heavens, angels ascending and descending, and then Jacob hears God’s voice, renewing the promise for an offspring, renewing the promise for a land, and God promises to be with Jacob as he goes on his way, and promises to bring him back. Obviously, this is a very important passage, not just because it’s beautiful and certainly emotional, but we have to understand that this is the first time that Jacob finally gets a break. This is the first time Jacob finally gets a break. From the beginning, even while still in the womb, Jacob’s life has been difficult and filled with conflicts. He has been fighting with his father and brother, and later he will also fight with his father in law and his wives. Now, did he bring it on him? Sure. He tricked Esau twice to get his inheritance. Yet we have to understand that the Bible never condemns Jacob for his behavior, and it may appear shocking to us, but the thing is most of the stories in the Bible aren’t about morality, they are about spirituality. Jacob’s name means “The grasper, the supplanter” and indeed he will take for himself God’s promise but it’s also because, contrarily to his brother who isn’t very invested, Jacob values God’s gifts, he is eager for God’s blessing. Again, did he do wrong? Sure. We should wait for God’s gifts, trust God to give us God’s gifts when the time has come, and yet “Jacob” means also “the one who perseveres, the one who holds on”. He does not let go of God. You probably know how Jacob will be renamed later by the angel of God: Israel, that is the one who struggles with God.
I would like to pause on that, as our passage invites us to: From the beginning, we have seen this Jacob person leading this complicated life with complicated motives, but now he finally gets a break and now we finally know what it’s about: Jacob is eager for God. Jacob knows that his family has been given a treasure and he wants that. Unlike Esau, Jacob is not satisfied with business as usual, Jacob wants what God has to offer and what God is about, and what happens is that God honors that, in spite of the questionable behavior. And this is something we need to think about for ourselves. Someone once said with indignation: How did this happen that being a Christian has become about being nice? And maybe they have a point.Now don’t get me wrong, nice is nice, but God wants more from us than being well behaved, inoffensive people. God wants us to seek God, God wants us to desire God. And maybe make mistakes, so we can find God more deeply. This is Jacob’s potential, in my interpretation.
And so to me here are the few take away of the story:
– The first point, of which I have just talked, is that we have to be “God driven”, God seekers and God lovers. Faith is not a matter of behaving, although encountering a holy God should bring holiness in our lives – and we will see how Jacob will make up for his behavior by working hard 14 years for his uncle and father in law Laban, who was even more a trickster than he was. But let’s keep that in mind: For the journey of faith to start, we need this desire, this curiosity, this hunger for God.
– Then the second point, which I think is very important too, is that although God says to Jacob that he is the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac, God deals differently with Jacob. It’s the same God, but the faith is different. Abraham, even when he had his doubts, was trustful and submissive. Isaac was a man of peace and serenity, so much so that there is very little about him in the Bible. But Jacob, he is the conflicted one, the tortured one. He is the tortured one and actually, it’s fine with God. You know how we always talk about “the God of our fathers”, but Jacob, he does not have the faith of his fathers! And so we do not have to have the faith of our fathers either! There is not a one size fits all for faith, our faith depends on who we are, our context but it also depends on our call. In seminary, I had a professor who always talked about his grand mother’s faith, and you could tell he was very admirative and not just a little envious of her all trusting, all accepting way of relating to God. And yes, it’s beautiful to have a faith like that but then you can’t teach theology if you’re not ready to fight with God a little bit! His own call was a call to wrestle. On the other way around, I had a mentor who told me once that he felt ashamed that he never doubted God, he said: Holy people, they always have time of testing, I guess God think I am not holy enough because I have never questioned God’s existence. And yet everybody else would agree that it’s wonderful to be able to love God like that! For so many people this how faith should be! The bottom line is that we’re always going to think that the way we experience faith is not the right way. But again it’s a relationship. What matters is to be in the relationships. We say “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob”, as if the three of them were all the same. But again, they all had a very unique, special way of experiencing God, and in the same way, even today there is the God of John and the God of Jill because we all have a unique way of experiencing God.
– Then, and that’s my last point, directly related to that, is that we learn from the story that God can find us wherever we are. God can find us wherever we are. It is made very obvious here, when Jacob has this vision of God at the time he is away from his land, his traditions, and his family. He is on the road, in the middle of nowhere and he sees the heavens open and the angels of God, not just winged creatures but messengers, doing God’s bidding on earth, coming and going. And from God himself Jacob hears the promise: “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go”. As you know, it was a very important message for the Jews when they were in exile. But deeper than that, I think the story tells us that God can also find us wherever we are emotionally, mentally, spiritually. God appears to Jacob in the midst of Jacob’s whirlwind, in the midst of the mess he has made with his life. And God brings, or will bring, beauty, order and the assurance of God’s guidance. I think this is true for us as well. God finds us in hospital rooms and on the side of the highway, and mainly God finds us in our times of doubts, anxiety and crisis. These days we hear so much about “mindfulness” and how we have to bring peace and balance into our lives, and it’s certainly not a bad idea, but it is not the prerequisite for faith. Peace and balance does not bring God. God brings peace and balance. We don’t have to make a stairway to reach God, the stairway is here already. Actually for us Christians this passage of Genesis is important because Jesus will compare himself to the stairway to heaven. He says to Nathanael: “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (John1:51). In a nutshell, I think this is what our Gospel is all about. As it is, this world is obviously a “mixed bag of beans” or a “mixed bag of seeds”, but the Kingdom of God is growing nonetheless and the Kingdom of God will prevail. The assurance of the judgment that can come out as quite scary in Matthew’s Gospel is in fact really about that: At some point, there will be nothing but what God has willed. In the meantime, God is patient with the world as it is, and God is with us in the midst of it all.
At the end of our passage, Jacob takes a stone and consecrate the place where he had the vision and calls it “Bethel”, which in Hebrew means house of God. Going on step further, the commentators of the Torah have come to say over the centuries that in fact, it’s more like God is our home. We find the word “the place” six times in our short passage, HaMakon, and it has become a name for God. Sometimes Jewish people call God “HaMakon”. They say: God is the place. Not just because God is everywhere (like in our Psalm today, Psalm 139) but also because God is our place to be, our refuge and our home. It can seems weird to say that God is our home, and yet haven’t we all experienced that there are these people in our lives that are “home” to us, and wherever we may be we feel at home when we’re with them? I think it has to do with unconditional love, radical acceptance, this sense that we belong, no matter what. And this what Jacob had understood and what faith is all about.