Sunday, January 29, 2017

Jacob's Ladder Today

• Jacob’s Ladder Today
with Genesis 28:10-22
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• My sermons for the next few months will come from my weekly scripture readings, divided daily by genre (Gospel, Torah, History, Psalms, Poetry, Prophecy, Epistles)
Last week I spoke on Judges (History), and asked for your prayers on Genesis 24-32 (Torah) for this week. (Next week’s text comes from Matthew 23-28)
• Today’s section contains much of the story of Jacob (son of Isaac, son of Abraham). We’re maybe around 1600 BC. South of Jerusalem something like 75 miles.
 Grandfather Abraham had traveled to Hebron (20 mi south of Jerusalem) from Haran (500 miles north) a hundred years before, in response to God’s promise (Genesis 12) of land, people, blessing, which had been confirmed in a covenant ritual in Genesis 15.
God affirmed the covenant with Abraham’s son Isaac (Gen 26, land people blessing), and today we read of God affirming covenant with Isaac’s son Jacob.
• But first, birth of twins Esau and Jacob (chap 25). And there will be perpetual friction between the two. Then later, as young adults, Jacob buys Esau’s birthright (inheritance) and steals the paternal blessing as well. Esau is maaad, and Jacob runs away.
• He gets about as far as halfway to Buckhannon, to Bethel (where Abraham had received the covenant in Gen 12) and God speaks to him in a dream. Jacob doesn’t speak of it as a dream, but as a visit.
God initiates contact, renews covenant. As Jacob is leaving the land God told Abraham to go to, God tells Jacob I will go with you, I will protect you, I will bring you back, I will not leave you.
And once again, land, people, blessing.
Jacob’s response: worship. Sanctify and memorialize. Claim the promise. Offer tithe. (one of the biblical examples of tithing)
• IMAGINE THAT PROMISE as Jacob is 500 miles away (think NYC) having run away from his brother.
Imagine that promise when he returns 20 years later (and again encounters God, this time wrestling a stranger right before crossing the Jordan).
Imagine that promise as Jacob now Israel becomes the father of a nation and then God protects the people by sending them to Egypt.
Imagine in Egyptian exile.
As people return to Canaan 400 years later.
Imagine in Babylonian exile 400 years after that.
The promise given to Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob was a lifeline, a beacon of hope, a definition of “who we are.”
• What about today? Can we claim that promise? Yes we can! Remember Gen 28:15 I am with you… Emmanuel (Matthew 1:23 and then later Matthew 28:20 I will be with you always).
And consider John 1:49-51 Philip and Nathanael and Jesus.
You will see heaven open, and angels ascending and descending (sounds like Jacob’s Ladder!) and John 14:6 I am the way the truth and the life. Jesus is the ladder.
• Hope. Akin to Emma Lazarus’s poem about the lady in the harbor.
(by the way, Emma means whole or universal, and Lazarus means God is my help) The New Colossus. This is who we are, we are hope embodied.
We will be with you, will protect you, will not leave you.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A might woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
• Keep on living as though promise is real and true, God with us. Respond with worship, claim of promise, tithe.
• Christians called to pray and work
• Hymn 418 Jacob’s Ladder

Genesis 28:10-22  (CEB)
10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and set out for Haran. 11 He reached a certain place and spent the night there. When the sun had set, he took one of the stones at that place and put it near his head. Then he lay down there. 12 He dreamed and saw a raised staircase, its foundation on earth and its top touching the sky, and God’s messengers were ascending and descending on it. 13 Suddenly the Lord was standing on it and saying, “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.  I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will become like the dust of the earth; you will spread out to the west, east, north, and south. Every family of earth will be blessed because of you and your descendants. 15 I am with you now, I will protect you everywhere you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done everything that I have promised you.
16 When Jacob woke from his sleep, he thought to himself, The Lord is definitely in this place, but I didn’t know it. 17 He was terrified and thought, This sacred place is awesome. It’s none other than God’s house and the entrance to heaven. 18 After Jacob got up early in the morning, he took the stone that he had put near his head, set it up as a sacred pillar, and poured oil on the top of it. 19 He named that sacred place Bethel (which means “God’s house) though Luz was the city’s original name. 20 Jacob made a solemn promise: “If God is with me and protects me on this trip I’m taking, and gives me bread to eat and clothes to wear, 21 and I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God. 22 This stone that I’ve set up as a sacred pillar will be God’s house, and of everything you give me I will give a tenth back to you.” X

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
By Emily Dickenson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

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