Scripture: Genesis 28: 10ff
Sermon: Fugitive Grace
Topics: Nomad, Dream, Communion
Preached: February 17, 2008 pm communion
Rev. Mike Abma
Genesis 28: 10-22
Jacob left Beer-sheba and went towards Haran. 11He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. 12And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13And the Lord stood beside him and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. 15Know 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.’ 16Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ 17And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’
18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first. 20Then Jacob made a vow, saying, ‘If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, 21so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, 22and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one-tenth to you.’
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
For the last month or so we have been looking at the story of Jacob.
The last time we visited Jacob, he was fighting with his uncle Laban.
Here, in our passage, Jacob is quite young yet – maybe 19 or 20.
He is between battles.
He has just stolen the birthright from his older brother Esau.
He is not yet quarreling with his uncle Laban.
He has yet to wrestle with the stranger in the night at the Jabbok river.
The striking thing about the beginning of our passage is that Jacob is alone.
Not only is he alone, but he is on the run.
He is a fugitive from his own family.
He had stolen from his brother.
He had hoodwinked his father,
And now was high-tailing it out of the country.
He was homeless.
He left Beer-sheba and headed north.
About 50 miles into the trip he reached a place to rest.
Was this his first night from home?
If he was travelling by camel, it could be.
What we do know is that when it got dark, he stopped.
So there was Jacob, a young man of about 19 or 20.
There he was, sleeping under the stars:
afraid, lonely, and perhaps a little guilty too.
Behind him was an angry brother and a disappointed father.
In front of him was a territory he had never travelled before.
He settles down for the night.
He chooses a rock as his pillow.
I have always stumbled over that detail of the story.
Having done quite a bit of camping, I have used backpacks,
books wrapped in clothes,
even dead leaves in a bag for a pillow.
But never a rock.
Clearly this was going to be an uneasy and restless night.
NOMADS
This year I am meeting with a group of seminarians once a week for their Formation for Ministry group. When we started the year, I asked them where they were from.
The question was always met by more questions:
Do you mean where I was born,
or where I grew up,
or where my parents are living now,
or where I am living now?
The seemingly simple question “Where are you from?”
has become for many people very complicated to answer.
We are such a nomadic, transient, moving culture that it is hard to know where home is.
Even if we have moved around a lot, however,
many of us still live with at least some images of home.
We live with some memory of comfort and protection,
of parental care and concern.
William Willimon, the former dean of the Chapel at Duke University,
writes that soon after his mother died,
he began having the same dream night after night.
In this dream, he was back in his boyhood home.
The rooms were exactly as they were when he was 10 years old.
He could even make out the books on the bookshelf.
But oddly, his mother was never in those dreams.
He hoped she would be there.
But she never was.
It was only after a while that Willimon began to sense why he was having this recurring dream.
The death of his mother had suddenly deepened his need for a home.
Suddenly he longed to be home.
But the only thing he could imagine was his old boyhood house.
Without his mother, however, it wasn’t really a home.
It was only a house.
His dreams were an expression of his homesickness.
His dreams were an expression of his restlessness.
GRACE IN A DREAM
In his restlessness, Jacob also has a dream.
In this dream, Jacob both sees something and hears something astonishing.
He sees this ladder or ramp going up to heaven.
He sees angels descending and ascending on this ladder.
Clearly there was more traffic between heaven and earth than Jacob realized.
Which raises the question, “What is the relationship between heaven and earth?”
In many ways, when the Bible speaks of earth,
it is not a planet left totally on its own;
heaven is closer to earth than we realize.
And what is heaven?
We heard a lot about this earlier today.
To add one more way the Bible speaks of heaven, it is in terms of
the reality of God’s fulfilled promises.
Heaven is the reality of God’s fulfilled promises.
What Jacob sees in this dream,
resonates with what he hears.
We, of course, are spell-bound by what he sees — this image of a ladder, a staircase to heaven.
But it is what he hears that fleshes out God’s promises to him.
It is what he hears that reminds him that he is not alone,
That God has a promise to give him:
Jacob’s offspring would spread to the east and to the west,
to the north and to the south;
they would be as numerous as the dust of the earth.
God also has a purpose to give Jacob:
That through him and his offspring,
All the families of the earth would be blessed.
It is a breath-taking dream with a breath-taking promise.
As New Testament Christians,
We cannot hear these promises without thinking of Jesus,
the one who came down the ladder from heaven
to take up residence with us here on earth.
We cannot hear these promises without thinking of Jesus,
the one who embodied God’s promises in flesh and blood.
We cannot hear the words: I am with you,
without thinking of Jesus’ last words to us:
I am with you, always, to the end of the age.
We cannot hear the words: I will keep you,
without thinking of Jesus, our good shepherd.
All God’s promises are fulfilled in him.
He is the one who is with us, who keeps us,
and who will one day welcome us home.
Tonight we are going to celebrate communion.
In our communion liturgies,
We begin with those words
Lift up your hearts
We lift them up to the Lord.
For John Calvin,
these words relate directly to this passage of Jacob’s Ladder.
For Jacob, this place, Bethel,
opened heaven’s gates
and allowed him to experience God in all his love,
and mercy, and grace.
Calvin said the same thing happens
when we look at the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.
They are like a gateway to heaven,
A ladder to heaven if you will
so that the Spirit can lift up our spirits
and we can be united with Jesus in heaven.[1]
You may be thinking this sounds almost mystical.
Are you sure this is Calvin?
Well maybe hearing it in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism will convince you.
The Catechism asks,
What does it mean to eat the crucified body of Christ
And to drink his poured out blood?
The answer is not only accepting that Jesus died for our sins.
It means more.
Through the Holy Spirit, who lives both in Christ and in us,
We are united more and more to Christ’s blessed body.
And so, although he is in heaven and we are on earth,
We are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.
We have a fancy Latin name for being lifted up by the Spirit during communion.
We call it sursum corda.
This is how all the promises of Christ become real for us.
All the promises that he is with us,
He is keeping us,
His grace is for us,
And he will one day welcome us home.
COMMITMENT
Whenever God makes a commitment, a promise,
he waits for our response.
In hearing God’s surprisingly gracious promises to him,
Jacob makes a deep promise in return.
If the Lord was going to be with him and keep him,
then he promises to be with and keep to the Lord.
After this sermon we are going to sing a song I don’t think we have sung at Woodlawn before, at least not in my time here.
The song is We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.
Some people remember this as a camp-fire song.
Others see it as having roots in African American Spirituals.
For me, it harkens back to my high school days.
I went to a Christian High School in London Ontario.
The student population was about 300 students.
The choir of that high school was about 300 students.
It was an odd school in that everyone was in the choir – whether they could sing or not.
At the school’s 40th anniversary a few years ago,
The old choir director got in front of all these alumni,
Waved his baton,
And began directing this song,
We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.
No one needed words.
We all remembered it by heart.
It had become the school’s unofficial theme song.
In high school, I think it challenged us.
Now years later, it inspired us,
And asked of us once again,
If you love him, why not serve him,
Soldiers of the cross.
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For more on this see Christopher Kaiser, “John Calvin Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” in Perspectives (April, 1998). ↑
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