Genesis 28:10-19a
This week as I prepared my sermon I had the opportunity to “hang out” with or spend time with the biblical characters Isaac, and Rebecca, Jacob and Esau, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, Zilpah, and Laban. If there is ever any comfort to be had in contemplating one’s own family dysfunctions, just spend some time with these characters in Genesis.
Our text for today does not give you the big picture of this family. Our text for today focuses on Jacob alone as he travels from Beer-sheba toward Haran. In this story we read that Jacob lies down, places a stone for a pillow under his head, and dreams of a ladder ascending from earth into the heavens. Upon that ladder, there are angels ascending and descending, and in this dream YHWH stands beside him and reiterates a covenant promise that God had already made with his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac before him. YHWH promises him three things, or four things really,
to give Jacob and his descendents the land that he is lying on,
God promises him that his descendents will be like the dust of the earth and that they will be spread in all directions on the earth
and that all the families of the earth will be blessed in or through him and his offspring.
On top of that Jacob receives a very personal promise. YHWH says to him,
“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.”
And Jacob responds to this encounter with awe, sets up and anoints the stone that was beneath his head and calls the place Bethel or Beth el – house of God, “for surely YHWH is in this place,” he proclaims.
By itself this is a great story of God’s encounter with the patriarch Jacob and we could point to it as an example of the work of God’s Spirit, an encounter with “the Holy One,” in line with our summer theme, “I have seen the wind.” If Jacob were here and knew about our summer theme he could say, “I have seen and experienced the Spirit of God at work and he might tell us about this dream,” and we might respond by thinking that Jacob must have been an amazing character or special or good or a truly deserving person, maybe even a Holy person for God to have shown up like this. However this story alone does not capture how truly surprising in some ways this encounter was. This story alone does not allow us to see the precarious nature of God’s desire for Covenant with God’s people.
And so I’m going to expand the circle of this story, first to include the story of Jacob’s family and second I will expand it again to include the story of God with Israel as told to us in Genesis and I will expand it one last time to include the story of God as we know it that includes the entire biblical narrative and our Christian story today.
First, let’s move to the immediate context of Jacob and his family.
In the larger context of this story it would be more accurate to say that Jacob was fleeing from Beer-sheba towards Haran, not just travelling, but rather fleeing from the wrath of his slightly older twin brother Esau. Prior to our passage for today, Jacob’s mother Rebecca helped Jacob deceive Isaac, Jacob’s father and her husband. Isaac’s eyesight and health were failing and so he planned to give his formal blessing to his eldest son Esau and sent him out to capture game, make a stew and return for the blessing. While he was away, Rebecca helped Jacob to prepare the stew, and disguised him as Esau by clothing him with a goat’s skin, for Esau apparently was a much hairier man than Jacob, and sent him in to Isaac to receive the blessing. There’s significant tension in the story as it looks at first like Isaac will not be deceived, but in the end Isaac concedes that it must be Esau and confers the blessing traditionally reserved for the eldest son Esau on his younger son Jacob. Esau returns from the hunt, discovers the deception and wails in despair, “Is there no blessing left for me? ” And Isaac is powerless to change the blessing he has already given. Esau’s wrath becomes hatred and he plots to kill Jacob. Rebecca, their mother, hears of the plot and tells Jacob to flee. Then she convinces Isaac that Jacob should go to her brother Laben to find a wife from among their own people. Isaac is convinced that she’s right and sends Jacob on his way. And then Jacob lies down and has a dream wherein God reiterates the covenant promises. (to give Jacob and his descendents the land that he is lying on,
that his descendents will be like the dust of the earth and that they will spread out in all directions
and that all the families of the earth will be blessed in or through him and his offspring.)
And what I’ve just related to you now is only a small part of the story and leaves out the part where Jacob had already bribed Esau to give up his birthright and it also leaves out the next part of the story which recounts all the interesting things that happen when Jacob gets to Laben’s household.
The next part of the story includes:
love – Jacob falls in love with Laben’s daughter Rachel;
promises made and broken – Laben promises Jacob he can marry Rachel after seven yea
rs of labour, but on his wedding night Laben gives Jacob his daughter Leah instead; (Jacob has to work another seven years for Rachel too.)
jealousy – Leah is jealous of Jacob’s love for Rachel
barrenness – Rachel is unable to bear children initially
rivalry – Leah is able to bear children – six sons in total and a daughter Dinah while Rachel is barren.
fruitfulness – Jacob’s two wives and their maid servants bear twelve sons and a daughter
and prosperity – everything Jacob does prospers and he accumulates much wealth in cattle, sheep and goats.
And after all of these things and after Jacob’s relationships with his father-in-law Laben, and his brothers-in-law begin to deteriorate, Jacob consults with his wives and suggests that it may be time to return to the land of his own father and mother, Isaac and Rebecca. God appears to him again and tells him that “yes,” this is what he should do. His wives agree and they get ready to depart and Genesis 31:20 says, “And Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean, in that he did not tell him that he intended to flee.” It seems nothing has changed. Deception and flight are quite consistently part of the story. And just before he once again faces his brother Esau, God appears to Jacob, one more time. This whole story is packed with emotion and tension.
And now I will expand the story beyond the story of Jacob to the story of Genesis so we might have some insight into the nature of God who consistently comes to such ordinary, conflict ridden, often faithless, sometimes faithful families like Abraham and Sarah’s, Isaac and Rebecca’s, and Jacob and Leah and Rachel’s and their descendants.
It seems that God is taking a chance. God has made God’s covenant promises with a family – a family made up of – autonomous, willful, needy, fickle, and yes sometimes loving and faithful people. Let me explain what I mean by saying that God is taking a chance, and I’ll do that by starting at the beginning.
If we begin at the beginning, the beginning of Genesis that is, we are introduced to a creating God who speaks the world into being. As the story of Genesis unfolds we see and realize that though this creation was created good and intended for relationship with a loving creator, all did not unfold as God desired. And by the time of the story of Noah and the flood, God despairs of all that God has created. After the flood, however, God regrets this destruction and vows never to bring this kind of calamity on the world again and makes a covenant with all of creation – symbolized by the rainbow. At this point it’s as if God picks himself up, dusts himself off and tries all over again by speaking a word of recreation and covenant to a family in all of its dramatic, dynamic dysfunction. God is going to begin recreation and reconciliation of the world by making covenant promises to real people in real families (in all their glorious configurations) and through them bring blessing to all.
Let’s step back one final time and look at what this covenant means in the big picture. The very reality of covenant implies taking a chance, because a covenant requires two parties to agree on something. It’s like a contract. And we are only too aware of the often painful and tragic reality that any contract that can be entered into can also be broken. Generally to be successful, it requires that both parties fulfill their part of the contract or covenant and often if not always we require God’s help to do this.
The tension that carries the story of Genesis is the tension of whether and how these covenant promises that God makes to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be carried forward by the characters that we are introduced to there; characters who are flawed and willful and needy. And here is where it is helpful to look at other parts of the Biblical narrative for a moment. Both the Wisdom of Solomon, an apocryphal text, written by a Greek Jew in the first century before Christ and the Isaiah passage, written before, during and after a time when the Jewish people were refugees in Babylon speak of the nature of this God who entered into a covenant relationship with a family that goes by the name Israel.
This is not just a god or any god, one among a large pantheon of gods who get angry and jealous and vengeful and fight among themselves as well as with humans. In these passages, this God is named as the first and last besides whom there is no other god. This God is named as King of all, redeemer or saviour or liberator, a divine being who is strong and powerful, a God who is a commander of Angel armies (that’s another way of saying Lord of hosts) and yet with all this strength and majesty this God is also compassionate. These passages tell us that this powerful God, besides whom there is no other god, cares for all people and judges in mildness and forbearance. And this God takes a chance by making a covenant with people.
And the story expands from here. God desires to recreate and reconcile all people and races and nations and this desire led to opening up that covenant to all families of the earth through the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus who was a Jew from the line of David – from the lineage of Judah, a son born of Leah and Jacob. This One God was and is willing to make a covenant with all people and all families, not just the ones we read about in Genesis.
And just as in the story of Genesis and throughout the Biblical narrative the tension still exists. How will we respond? We live in families today, all kinds of families with all kinds of dynamics and
yet God faithfully keeps God’s covenant with us.
To conclude I want to go back to the particularity of the Jacob story for a moment. Just as his family’s troubles may make many of us feel at home, I think his encounters with and responses to this God of covenant promises may make us feel at home as well. Jacob encounters God on many different occasions. Today’s story tells us about the first encounter. After he sets up the stone and anoints it proclaiming that God must be in this place Jacob decides also to test God by saying – “now if God will be with me and will keep me in the way that I shall go and will give me bread to eat and clothes to wear so that I will come back to my father’s house in peace, then YHWH will be my God.” In other words, at the beginning of his covenant relationship with God, Jacob wants some assurance that this God will care for him. It’s as if he says, “okay God, if you will prove worthy of your promises to me then you will be my God.” Is this a youthful arrogance or just self-assurance or simple human need? I’m not sure – but much later after another encounter with God much later in his life – at the time that he anticipates meeting Esau again, Jacob’s attitude towards God has changed. In this encounter, Jacob says to God, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O YHWH who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, and I will do you good,” I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan; and now I have become two companies.” He goes on to pray for deliverance from the hands of his brother Esau and calls upon God to keep God’s covenant promises with him.” This time his attitude of humility calls on God for mercy and deliverance at the same time that he acknowledges God’s steadfast love and mercy.
Wherever you may be on your own journey with God, know that God seeks to uphold a covenant relationship with you and your family. Whether you need God to prove God’s promises or you can say with an older Jacob, I am not worthy of your love and faithfulness, but please deliver me anyway,
may God come to you and your family this summer.
May God’s faithfulness be proven among you and may we say together, “Great is the God of our anscestors.”
Amen.