From Tucker Ruderman: Dear Pat, Just wanted to check in and wish you many blessings! The girls and I are on the road to visit some friends "at the river" in the Thousand Islands, and so we won't be in worship tomorrow, but I saw the scripture that you will be preaching on tomorrow, and it made me smile, because I love that passage, especially in verse 16, when Jacob wakes up and says "Surely God was in this place and I, I did not know it." I feel like that all the time! :)
Wishing you cool mornings of the Spirit,
TR
Genesis 28:10-17 (NRSV)
10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. 11 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. 12 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.
13 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; 14 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.
15 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.”
16 Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it!” 17 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.”
Thank you, Tucker. “Surely God was in this place and I did not know it.” That happens to me all the time also! How is it that we so-called people of faith go around so much of the time not expecting that God will be in the places we are going? Not even noticing that God is there? Not understanding that God might be there, hoping to meet up with us?
Sometimes God is suddenly there—and we notice—or maybe what really happens is that God was there all along and we suddenly notice. When an unexpected letter arrives, opening a whole new possibility for your life. When you happen to look up and see a soft ethereal light in the tops of the old sycamore trees. When you catch sight of divine presence in the eyes of your neighbor, a stranger, your friend, your child, your dog, your kitten.
As renowned biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann says, “The world is a place of such meetings.”
And as we heard in our call to worship this morning,
“Entrances to holiness are everywhere.
The possibility of connection is all the time,
even at unlikely times and through unlikely places.
There is no place on earth without the Presence.”
--Rabbi Lawrence Kushner
Jacob was not in a religious mood when he was running away after betraying his family. He was likely confused and terrified. Yet God meets him. And God promises to be with him and to take care of him. In wild faith in who we can become, God blesses us in our imperfect humanity, with all our weaknesses as well as our wonderful strengths. God blesses us and opens the door again and again into the beloved community, where broken relationships can be restored.
In my mind's eye when I hear the story of Jacob this morning, I see his body asleep with his head on the stone he found for a pillow. And it reminds me of our body politic these days. And of how we as a democracy have been running away from our deepest ideals and values--and our betrayals of each other--for so long, in fact throughout our existence.
Like Jacob’s body, our body politic is full of contradictions. There is conflict within us. Some parts of us want to shout other parts down or send them into exile. And yet, knowing us as we are, God keeps opening the door to a community where everyone belongs, where no one is oppressed, where all are truly equal. Even now, day by day, I see God’s Spirit at work in our body politic as women and people of color and people in the LGBTQ+ community are being joined by more and more voices who are speaking the truth that it is time for us to break through into the love and freedom for which God created us all.
These days it often seems that we are stuck in some God-forsaken place. Understandably, we don’t always have a lot of faith. But God does. God is a God of wild faith. We talk a lot about whether we have enough faith in God. Maybe we should talk more about the abundance of faith God has in us.
This God of wild faith keeps calling us. This God of wild faith keeps opening the door. This God of wild faith keeps showing up and letting us know that there never was a shortage of blessings, and that we are being set free by God's Spirit to share them now.