Okay . . . to start . . . Pop quiz! One question: “Did you notice anything odd about our readings this morning?” [Yes,] I hope you noticed that there are some gaps . . . both in the psalm and in the Gospel! Curious? Good, curiosity is a good thing! As I mentioned last week, sometimes the gaps are significant, and sometimes . . . not so much. I’ll leave it to you to take the bulletin insert home, to take your Bible, read the entirety of both passages, and draw your own conclusions!.
My main focus this morning, however, has to do with a line from our first reading: “The LORD is definitely in this place, but I didn’t know it” (Gn 28.16). And so I want to start with the lesson that doesn’t have any apparent gaps . . . the familiar story from Genesis that generated at least one well-known song: “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder”, as well as a piece of exercise equipment! To get into our story, however, a bit of a refresher course—a very Reader’s Digest Condensed version of the background to today’s reading. Jacob, you’ll recall, was Abraham’s grandson. It was to Abraham, living in Haran, in the upper Euphrates, that God—Yahweh—said, “Go to Canaan! I will give you that land. And you will have numerous descendants” (Gn 12.1-2//15.5-7). Ishmael and Isaac were the first two of those descendants. Isaac, as we heard last week, married his cousin Rebekah, who left Haran for Canaan. They became the parents of two sons, Esau and Jacob.
In this morning’s reading. Jacob departs Beer-sheba in Canaan, the land of his immediate family, for Haran. Why? It was in Haran that he was to find a wife (as had been the case for Isaac) in order to keep the family lineage pure. Tired from his journey, he stops at a “certain place” to spend the night. He takes a stone and, according to most translations, uses it as a pillow. While sleeping, he has his note-worthy dream of a ladder (or ramp or stairs . . . or even ziggurat!—the Hebrew allows for all four meanings)—a ladder with angels ascending and descending—that is, acting as God’s messengers. Wakened (by the dream, perhaps), he muses ,”The LORD is definitely in this place, but I didn’t know it. . . . This sacred place is awesome. It’s none other than God’s house and the entrance to heaven” (Gn 28.16-17). He takes the stone, and sets it up as a memorial—a “sacred pillar”—to his experience, and names the place “Beth-el”, that is, “God’s House” (28.19). “The LORD is definitely in this place, but I didn’t know it.” This is the phrase that stopped me.
Jacob, I suspect, like many ancient peoples, associated a god with a particular place. Indeed, most scholars recognize that the early Israelites saw their God—whether called “El”, “El-Shaddai”, “Elohim”, or “Yahweh”—to be one among many gods (like Ba’al or Dagon or Molech). To be sure, they came to worship Yahweh only, but there were others gods around. So, it makes a bit of sense to me that Jacob was surprised, recognizing that where he slept was also a Beth-El, a “house of God”.
Jacob may have been taught that the God who called Abraham in Haran, and led him to Canaan, was associated with the land of promise—that is, Canaan . . . in particular, Beer-Sheba. Jacob’s journey had taken him a long way from home . . . a long way from his tribal God. What a surprise it must have been, then, to be addressed by that God in a distant—that is, another god’s—locale. And, not only to be addressed by that God, but to be at a place where God made contact with the earth. No wonder he thought, ”The LORD is definitely in this place, but I didn’t know it. . . . This sacred place is awesome. It’s none other than God’s house and the entrance to heaven”. Mind blown: God was no longer confined to one place! God can be found—God’s work can be done—anywhere!
We don’t know exactly when the ancient Israelites began to understand that their God was “bigger” than a specific locale; maybe that dawning realization is reflected here. But it was some centuries before the belief that God is universal became commonplace—a notion reflected, for example, in a psalm composed some centuries after Jacob’s death: “Where can I go then from your Spirit? where can I flee from your presence? If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast (139.5-9, BCP version). The psalmist praises God—almost in surprise—for God’s presence in heaven, in the grave, in the uttermost parts of the sea, in the darkness of night. Not only is God not to be identified with any one place, but there is no-place from which God is absent.
The details of the “Jacob’s ladder”account, of course, caught the attention of the ancient rabbis. In their meditation on the story, they, too, focused on the verse that caught my attention—specifically on the word “place”—or, in Hebrew, ha-makom. They noted that it occurred several times in the story—drawing attention to its importance. They recognized that it did have a specific meaning in the Genesis story . . . but that it carried more weight that just in the story. They began to understand that ha-makom—the place where we can encounter God—was any place where God “lets down the ladder”. But we need to be ready, always, to see it. Jacob saw the ladder at Bethel. The psalmist saw it everywhere. And, so I wonder, where are the places we might see God . . . if only we pay attention?
Paul, in his letter to the Romans, asserts that God is omni-present—even where we may not recognize it. God’s Spirit is within us—we, adopted as God’s children, receive the same Spirit that was in Christ, proving that we are, like Christ, representatives of God (8.14-16). We, are, referring back to Genesis, “that place”—that Bethel, “house of God”—where God’s angels descend and ascend. Some of us may find it difficult to look in the mirror and say “Bethel”, as caught up as we may be in our failings. But, as Martin Luther famously pointed out and a popular tattoo proclaims, we are, at the same time, both sinner and saint. God is not absent from any place, or any individual, just because the evil one may also be found there.
Likewise, it’s often difficult for most of us, I think, to see God’s presence in the midst of confusing, or conflicted, situations. Last week’s telling of the Parable of the Sower hints at that. What we heard last week was confusion, or concern, over the mixed success of Jesus’ and the disciples’ mission in Galilee. The parable was all about various “soils” upon which the extravagantly sown “word of God” falls. Not all soils are equally receptive. The given “explanation” suggested that evangelistic efforts must recognize that there will be mixed results. Despite those mixed results, the disciples are told, in effect, “Be patient, God is in the mix, and God will ensure that there will be significant produce”.
Worry about the nature of community seems to be at the root of today’s Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Jesus tells us that a farmer has his field sown with good seed. Shortly thereafter, an enemy sows bad seed among the good seed, and departs. The two “crops” grow up together, but the presence of a toxic weed jeopardizes the value of the good crop. The farm-hands want to pull out the bad stuff, but the farmer points out that, if they do, they could pull out the wheat as well. Best to let them grow together, and do the separating at harvest-time. Matthew’s explanation of points to a a mixture of the good and the bad—faithful and unfaithful—in the same congregation, a mixture creating concern among the leadership. The parable (and the explanation) counsel, “Be patient. Trust that God is present, and let God sort it out.”
I’ve often found myself asking, like many of the psalm-writers, “Where ARE you God? You’ve been with me before! Where are you now?” I don’t think I’m alone in that. We find it difficult to accept that God is present where we don’t expect it, or can’t understand it—especially “in the moment”. As I said, the psalmists ask the question. Job asked the question. Victor Frankl, in his famous post-Holocaust book, Man’s Search for Meaning, asked the question. It is one of the animating—and perplexing—questions of human history: “Can God be in this place?”
Jacob—on a journey into his future—was surprised to find that the answer could be “Yes”. With persistent prayer, and, perhaps, a stone for a pillow, may we find that ”The LORD is definitely in this place, but I didn’t know it”.
Amen.