Scripture: Genesis 29: 1-14

Sermon: Finding Our Way Home

Topics: Home, Jacob, Bountiful

Preached: June 13, 1999, pm. Woodlawn CRC

Rev. Mike Abma

Genesis 29: 1-14

Then Jacob went on his journey, and came to the land of the people of the east. ²As he looked, he saw a well in the field and three flocks of sheep lying there beside it; for out of that well the flocks were watered. The stone on the well’s mouth was large, ³and when all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well, and water the sheep, and put the stone back in its place on the mouth of the well.

4 Jacob said to them, ‘My brothers, where do you come from?’ They said, ‘We are from Haran.’ ⁵He said to them, ‘Do you know Laban son of Nahor?’ They said, ‘We do.’ ⁶He said to them, ‘Is it well with him?’ ‘Yes,’ they replied, ‘and here is his daughter Rachel, coming with the sheep.’⁷He said, ‘Look, it is still broad daylight; it is not time for the animals to be gathered together. Water the sheep, and go, pasture them.’ ⁸But they said, ‘We cannot until all the flocks are gathered together, and the stone is rolled from the mouth of the well; then we water the sheep.’

9 While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep; for she kept them. ¹⁰Now when Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of his mother’s brother Laban, and the sheep of his mother’s brother Laban, Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of his mother’s brother Laban. ¹¹Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and wept aloud. ¹²And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s kinsman, and that he was Rebekah’s son; and she ran and told her father.

13 When Laban heard the news about his sister’s son Jacob, he ran to meet him; he embraced him and kissed him, and brought him to his house. Jacob told Laban all these things, ¹⁴and Laban said to him, ‘Surely you are my bone and my flesh!’ And he stayed with him for a month.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

For Jacob the scene in Genesis 29 comes at a low and desperate time in his life. Jacob has already had a number of conflicts with his older brother, Esau. Jacob has already had a tense confrontation with his father, Isaac. Conflict seems to surround and follow Jacob. But that isn’t so surprising – even his name points to the fact that he is a wrestler, a grappler, someone who will claw and scratch his way to what he wants. But in Genesis 29, Jacob the wrestler, is tired and alone. He is travelling to the home country of his mother, and the home country of his grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, in search of a wife but also to escape the wrath of his older brother. In true Jacob fashion, the Hebrew text of this chapter is filled with a flurry of observations followed by a flurry of questions followed by a flurry of impulsive actions.

JACOB AT THE WELL

Jacob arrives at a well and checks out the local activity. He then asks the shepherds where they are from and if they know Laban. They do, and even point out Laban’s daughter, Rachel, who was approaching the well. Seemingly, while the shepherds were still talking, Jacob springs into action to move the stone from the well.

This story of Jacob arriving at a well is much like the earlier story of Abraham’s servant arriving at a well in Genesis 24. In that story, Abraham’s chief servant travelled this way taking ten camels and all kinds of other treasures. He was on a mission to find a bride for Isaac. Once this servant arrived at the well, he waited until evening, when the women came out to draw water. And when this servant saw Rebekah, the first thing we are told about her is that she was very beautiful.

Jacob’s story at a well is different. Unlike the earlier story, Jacob arrives at this well empty-handed. He has neither servants nor herds nor gifts. The only thing he has are his two strong hands and his eager ambition. When Rachel is mentioned in the story, she is introduced as Laban’s daughter. That she is beautiful is left until later. Jacob, a practical guy, can’t get over the fact that these shepherds seem to be doing things differently than he is used to. They are watering their flocks in the heat of the day rather than at the end of it. When Jacob sees Rachel, it is not his eyes that are smitten by her beauty. Rather it is his hands which jump into action – he moves the stone from the well. Jacob, the grappler, grabs that stone and wrestles it out of the way. Jacob does what he does best – he wrestles whatever obstacle is in his way to get what he wants.

But then comes a scene of both beauty and grace that displays Jacob the fighter’s vulnerability. Jacob kisses Rachel and weeps aloud before her.

Don’t get the idea that he was kissing her for her beauty.

The kiss he gives her is a formal kiss of one relative to another.

He is not kissing her because she is beautiful. He is kissing her because she is family. He is weeping aloud because he has finally arrived. Though it is a strange place with different shepherding customs, and no doubt speaking with a different accent, Jacob knows deep inside that he is among his own – he is home.

Rachel runs to tell her father.

Her father runs to meet Jacob.

Notice, they too embrace and kiss, and Jacob is taken into their home.

There, in the home, Jacob tells his story … of his father and mother, his grandfather and grandmother. He tells of how he has come to this land of his ancestors. Laban listens. After hearing the tale he gives Jacob the ultimate gesture of belonging, “You are my own flesh and blood – you are family boy!”

Don’t worry about a thing, – you’re home.

HOME

My parents are both immigrants to Canada from the Netherlands. They were the oldest in their respective families and the only ones to immigrate. The result is that all my uncles and aunts, all my cousins, live in the Netherlands. My first trip to the Netherlands was when I was married and 27 years old. That was a time of meeting a number of uncles and aunts and most of my cousins for the very first time.

On this trip, Shirlene and I attended a church service in the small town of Oudega which is in the Dutch province of Friesland. The town is where my parents were born and raised. The church is where my parents were baptized, made profession of faith, and were married. While sitting in that church, it seemed to echo with memories of the past.

The minister began to read the scripture lesson. It was, of all passages, Genesis 29, the same passage we read this afternoon. And he began to preach about Jacob’s deep desire to find his family home. About Jacob’s ability to travel many miles, to be in a strange part of the world, to be surrounded by people he had never met before, and yet … and yet to feel like he belonged.

Even though Dutch is not my first language, I knew enough to know that the sermon wasn’t only about Jacob. The sermon was about me … travelling for the first time to the ‘old country’

meeting for the first time uncles and aunts, cousins and other relations,

being in a country that spoke a different language,

being in a small-town church where all the diary farmers observed you from afar as the son of so-and-so, and yet …

and yet feeling like I somehow belonged.

Home. That is such a compelling and elusive word.

Compelling for the human heart has such a strong hunger for home.

Elusive for home is more than the place we were born, or the place we were raised, or the place we are presently living.

What does it mean to be home? Is home the place we are from?

Is home the place we go to after a long trip?

Is home that place in this world where we most feel we belong?.

And how is it that can we have a sense of home in a place we have only visited once?

How could I have a sense of home in being in that small Friesian village for the first time in my life?

How could Jacob weep aloud in deep gratitude knowing he had arrived home when this was his first time to the land of his ancestors?

Home is a compelling and elusive word.

Trying to sort out what it means to be home is the inspiration for a number of books. Take Kathleen Norris in her going-home book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. There she writes about moving from New York city to the small town of Lemmon, South Dakota. Lemmon, South Dakota, was where her grandparents were from. Kathleen and her husband moved into the house her grandparents built in 1923. In moving there, Norris writes, she was forced to wrestle her story out of landscape and inheritance.

That is partly what it means to come home.

To wrestle out our story – to come to terms with our past;

to understand our inheritance.

For Norris, when she moved into her grandmother’s house, used her furniture, even wore some of her old clothes, it was only a matter of time before she also eventually tried on her faith – and found that it fit. Kathleen Norris discovered home was less about belonging to a place, than it was finding oneself through faith by grace belonging to a person.

MEANING OF HOME

When Jacob arrived in the homeland of his mother,

the homeland of his grandparents,

Jacob, the grappler, the wrestler, had to come to terms with his own inheritance, his own past.

Why did his grandfather, Abraham, leave this place?

Why did his mother, Rebekah, agree to leave her home and family to travel hundreds of miles away to be the wife of a man she had never met?

Jacob had to wrestle out his own story.

Jacob wept and was overcome when he arrived at his uncle Laban’s place.

He was home – or so he thought, at first.

But really, in wrestling out his story he discovered he wasn’t quite home.

Soon the relationship with his uncle – his own flesh and blood – would sour.

He would fight for Rachel – and end up with Leah and Rachel.

Jacob, the grappler, would fight with his uncle,

would fight with his uncle’s sons and servants,

would fight for flocks of his own sheep and goats.

And after working and wrestling for years, he would end up saying to his uncle in Genesis 30, “Listen Laban, let me go, because I need to get back home.”

What did it mean for Jacob to get back home?

Home in the Bible is less a geographical location as it is a state of being.

When God tells Jacob it is time return home in Genesis 31, this is how he states it,

“Go back to the land of your fathers and your relatives, and I will be with you.”

This was the same thing God had said at Bethel when Jacob was still on the run, when Jacob had dreamed of the ladder going up to heaven. While homeless, while a refugee, God had made Jacob this promise,

“I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you

back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised

you.” Genesis 28:15

WHERE IS HOME?

“I will be with you.”

Where is home?

Home is more than the place we’re from.

Home is more than a place to return to.

Home is even more than a place where we feel we belong.

Home is ultimately the place where we hear Jesus say, “I am with you.”

When all is said and done, while we still walk on this earth, we will never quite be home. We will simply be on the way there.

We are simply finding our way there.

Pilgrims on the journey. Walkers on the way.

Homeless until we find our home with the Lord.

Restless until we find our rest in the Lord.

TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL

A wonderfully touching movie made in 1985 called A Trip to Bountiful is about an aging widow who lives in a cramped city apartment with her son and daughter-in-law. All she finds herself doing is dreaming about returning to the home of her youth. She dreams about returning to the town of Bountiful, Texas. Her son and daughter-in-law tell her she is too old and too frail to go. But she refuses to take no for an answer. She sneaks away alone on a train and then takes a bus.

Getting there takes most of the movies but when she finally arrives, the town, village, or hamlet of Bountiful that she remembers from her youth no longer really exists. Bountiful is hardly the word to describe what she finds left of her childhood town for there are only old abandoned houses and overgrown fields of grass. But the touching beauty of this film is that the old woman is not disappointed. For it is only by the end of the film that we realize that her trip is not really to an earthly village, or to a nostalgic home. Her journey is really to somewhere else. She is on a trip … a trip to Bountiful – a home that is really home,

A place where she will finally and ultimately belong,

The place her heart has always longed and yearned for.

The movie ends with the singing an old classic hymn,

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling you,

Calling for you and for me;

See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,

Watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home, you who are weary come home;

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home. Amen

Prayer:

Lord God, look upon us with your favor and give us your peace.

Life for many of us has been a struggle.

We have fought, and we have grappled ,

With illnesses, with dark days and nights, with deep disappointments.

Lord, we are all pilgrims on the way.

Be our guiding cloud in the day, our pillar of fire in the night.

Assure us that no matter what the future may hold,

Because you are leading, we will get home someday. Amen