"From Pillow to Pillar, From Memory to Hope"
October 29, 2006: 21st Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
The Rev. John MacIver Gage, senior minister
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.unitedchurchonthegreen.org

Scripture:
Genesis 28:10-22
Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He 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. And 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. And 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; and 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. Know 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." Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!" And 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." 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. He called that place Bethel (which means "house of God"); but the name of the city was Luz at the first. Then 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, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, and 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."

"May God speak through these words and make from them a holy word for us today. Amen."

Sermon:
This story from Genesis that Barbara read for us this morning is one of the first I can remember hearing as a young child, back somewhere south of first grade, and I bet if you grew up going to church, you remember it, too. It was a favorite on the Sunday school circuit. I remember being dazzled by the image of the ladder reaching into the sky, all the way into heaven, and of holy angels climbing up and down, something made all the more miraculous, I thought, given their angelic propensity for loose robes and sandals. There was a song to go with the story, and even hand motions to go with the song. Maybe you remember:

We are climbing Jacob's ladder;
  We are climbing Jacob's ladder;
We are climbing Jacob's ladder;
  Soldiers of the cross.

This was Texas in the early 1970s, of course, and neither Pete Seeger nor the constraints of political correctness had taught us to replace those soldiers of the cross with "brothers, sisters all," but that's okay. The odd thing is, I don't really remember what we were supposed to learn from the story. It seemed there was just an awful lot of climbing to do. But it remained a beautiful, if isolated vision of the glory of God, beautiful and haunting enough to remain etched in my childhood imagination.

As with so many of the most popular children's Sunday Bible lessons, there's a whole lot more to the story of Jacob's ladder. It would be a shame to leave it collecting dust among the other discarded souvenirs of childhood, to limit ourselves to a child's understanding simply because we first learned the story as children. If indeed our God is still speaking, then it stands to reason that God may speak to us even through these well worn words from scripture, though they are several thousand years old and we are no longer not quite six.

First, of course, we must set the story in context; after all, Jacob didn't just get a wild hair one night and decide to go camping. Oh no, there's much more to the story than that, in the adult version. This is Jacob we're talking about, one of the great troublemakers of scripture, whose very name means "the one who grasps." This is Jacob, the smooth "man of the tents," beloved of his mother, who stands in stark contrast to his rough, ruddy brother Esau, the firstborn favorite of their father, Isaac. This is Jacob who makes his way in the world by his wits and his wiles. He even colludes with his mother in order to fool blind old Isaac into giving up the precious blessing that, by rights, should be his brother's. This is Jacob. Drama is his middle name. Sibling rivalry, parents playing favorites, the smooth versus the rough, grudges and gouging, blessings promised and denied. This is the stuff of soap operas... and all-too often of all-too real life, as we know all-too well.

So this is Jacob, a man running for his life from his life. He leaves the only home he's ever known, in Beer-sheba, for a home he's never seen among distant relations in Haran. In between one life and the next, in the wilderness, he is rootless and vulnerable. He sleeps in the open air, exposed to the elements and the night. He is cut off and alone. He stretches out on the bare ground bone tired in body and soul. Tears and fears, old memories and fresh anxieties mingle together as he contemplates his past and his future. Why was it all so hard? Hard to do right, hard to be right, hard to love and be loved, hard to get what he needs and give what he should. Hard as the hate hard on his heels, hard as the road baked hard under his feet, hard as the stone pillow propped under his head, biting into the back of his neck like a cruel joke, and a true one.

Hard to sleep as the hard stars overhead begin to swirl and dance and coalesce around the image of a great ladder, a stairway, a ramp like those that wrap the great tower temples of the cities of the East. Only this ladder reaches all the way into heaven, and great glowing creatures of light are ascending and descending upon it, the very hosts of heaven, the starry angels in their orders carrying the messages of the Most High to the four corners of the world. Jacob stares in mute wonder, and fear. Even heaven seems high up and hard and far away. What do holy angels have to do with him, Jacob, a human being, and not even a very good one, at that. As the lightning flashes up and down the ladder, and the thunder rolls, Jacob closes his eyes, sure that it's all over now, that he will die here in the wilderness, alone, unloved and unlovely.

The first miracle is that he doesn't. He doesn't die. The second miracle is the presence of God, not high up and hard and far away, but near at hand, beside him, almost inside him, and that the purity of God's presence does not consume his spotted, frail frame in fire and brimstone. The third miracle is that God speaks—to him!—and what God says:

"I am the Yahweh God, the Lord, the God of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, your ancestors; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendents; and they shall cover the earth like dust, to the north and the south and the east and the west; and I will bless all people everywhere through you and your family. Know that I am with you always and will be with you no matter where you are on life's journey, and will bring you home, to this land; for I will not leave you alone until I have accomplished all this I have promised you."

"I am with you always and will be with you no matter where you are on life's journey, and I will bring you home, for I will not leave you alone until I have accomplished all I have promised you." Everything Jacob has struggled for his whole life, everything he has schemed and cheated and fought for, everything he has grasped at, only to have it slip like sand through his fingers, or dissolve in anger and tears, everything Jacob has ever wanted is contained in those few lines spoken in the dark of night in a dangerous and desolate place. "I will be with you." Affirmation, sure, to be precious and beloved, but more: to have a place and a purpose in the world. For once, to be more than just an annoyance, an embarrassment, a villain in someone else's drama and the empty center of his own, always climbing, climbing. To be now a child of promise and part of a family in faith and a plan. To know God, and to be known, now, forever.

With that night vision, Jacob is changed. He will never be an easy man. He will remain on the lookout for the shortcut, the deal, the loophole all his days. Old habits die hard, we know, especially habits of the heart. But that experience of God will work on Jacob for the rest of his life. The Spirit of God will flow over him like water over the rock to transform him, to free him from his bondage to the past, to all he's done and all that's been done to him, and instead give him hope for a future where he, Jacob, Mr. Smooth himself, will be blessed and, what's more, will even become a blessing to others.

As an outward sign of this inward opening to a future he once believed impossible, Jacob takes the stony pillow from under his head and sets it up as a marker standing upright alongside the wilderness road, a common enough sign in ancient times that something important had happened there. Jacob sets it aside as a shrine of God's presence in that hard and lonely place. He pours olive oil on the stone, marking it dark so it won't be missed by others who pass that way. And he gives it a name, Bethel, that is "house of God, for, as he says, "Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the gate of heaven, the very house of God."

We ourselves are the descendents of Jacob. Like him, we are often too smooth for our own good. Like him, we trust overmuch in our reason and our wits to get for us most of what we'd wish in the world. We try to work all the angles, account for all the variables, in order to plot our course onward through the fog of the future. Like him, we often feel burdened by the weight of a past we didn't make and bound over by the bad choices we did. Like him, we have been strivers, desperate to beg, steal, or borrow a love we have been told and which we believe we do not deserve. Like him, we have wandered the wild places spiritually homeless, rootless, and alone.

But like him, we are not alone, not now, not anymore. For we have found a holy place. Wholly unexpected, we have stumbled across the house of God, this one here on the corner of Temple and Elm in New Haven, Connecticut, of all places. And what's more, we have found God at home, at home here with us, among us, and for us. Like Jacob, we marvel at the good news that we are children of promise, part of this family of faith and—wonder of wonders!—part of God's plan of good news for all people. Like Jacob before us, God intends not only to bless you and you and you but to make you and you and you, to make us a blessing. We may have thought we were on some dead—end back road where angels fear to tread, but this place, centuries old as it is and nearly half-drowned in history, this turns out to be a highway for our God, because God chooses to speak here and change lives here, and we choose to listen and be changed. That is what it means to be a church, a household of God.

Now, back in Genesis, some people think Jacob ruins the big moment by opening his big mouth. They interpret his very next words as a sign that the old Jacob, the grasper, the schemer, is alive and unwell despite his having "got religion." Listen to him! they say: "O God, if you 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, and bring me again to my family in peace, then you, O Lord, shall be my God,... and of all that you give me I will surely give one tenth to you."

He's not changed at all! Despite everything, despite the ladder and the angels and the Lord's Own Self, he's still got the chutzpah to try to haggle with God. Well, it just goes to show, the leopard can't go changing his spots. Once a gonif, always a gonif, I always say. So tell us, Mr. Smoothy, just how much money does it take to buy yourself into God's good graces, huh?

And some people think a preacher ruins church by opening his big mouth to talk about money, too. They think it somehow cheapens the whole experience. It's bad enough we have to pass the plate each Sunday, but to talk about money from the pulpit, and to threaten to invade our very own homes...!? Well, Mr. Preacher, you paint a very pretty picture of grace, you talk about the love of God for all people, no matter who we are or where we are on life's journey, but tell us, just how much money does it take to buy ourselves into God's good graces?

Don't be silly. Listen again, with fresh ears. Jacob isn't making a deal. He's making a vow. Try hearing it this way: "O God, since you are with me, and since you keep me in this way that I go, and since you give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and since you bring me again to my family in peace, then you, O Lord, you are my God,... and of all that you give me I will surely give one tenth to you." It's not grasping or grifting, it's gospel, grace, and gratitude—gratitude for all that God has done on our behalf up to now, all unbeknownst to us, to bring us to this holy place; gratitude for all the ways we encounter God here in one another, in worship and service, in comfort and challenge; and gratitude for God's promised transforming presence with us into the future, until at last God has accomplished the reign of peace, justice, and compassion God intends.

Our forebears in faith, who knew a thing or two about wandering in the wilderness, spiritual and otherwise, set up this meeting house as a sign of God's presence and God's promise for them, and it has been passed down to us as heirs of their pilgrim legacy. Now, some might say those old puritans would be rolling over in their graves if they knew just who was sitting in their precious pews today, much less preaching from this historic pulpit. And that may be true. But you know what? I think the exercise would probably do them good.

And let's not sell them short. These were the folks who set out from all the new in England literally on a wing and a prayer, believing that somewhere, somehow, God had "yet more light and truth to break forth from God's holy word," in the words of Pastor John Robinson. True, they didn't know all that God had in store, and much of what they did know, they bungled, as we would, but through it all and despite it all, they trusted God to be with them on their journey in faith and to carry the message of the gospel forward beyond them. They set up this place as a marker that has stood for generations here along the roadside as a reminder to all who pass by that surely God is in this place, this world, this wilderness with us.

How do I know? Well, I saw the sign, just like you did. I decided to stop here a while, just like you did. And now together we're adding our witness to theirs, building on their foundation, building together on God's solid rock of love among the shifting sands of our lives. We pour out our prayers like holy oil here and dedicate our gifts of gratitude so that the whole world may know that this, even this, is the house of God. God is still speaking here, and here the family of God still gathers to experience the grace of God and share it, to hear a holy word and do it, to receive peace and plant it, to glimpse the kingdom and do our bit to build it. In this place, we move from stony pillow to sacred pillar, and from painful memory to living hope. Brothers and sisters, all, we are climbing Jacob's ladder. Thanks be to the God who meets us here, more than halfway, and takes and makes us home.