"Whose Promised Land?"
Genesis 28:10-19
July 17, 2011 + Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404
A brief prologue before I begin my message . . . To profess a liberal Christian faith means many things. It certainly means taking seriously the teachings of Jesus for our lives. “What would Jesus do?” is not a question reserved exclusively to conservative Christians. We who are liberal Christians should also do our best to live in the way Jesus taught and demonstrated in his life. And when we don’t do that we should seek forgiveness from the loving God Jesus proclaimed.
That is what used to be called the “Personal Gospel.” It’s good as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. As liberal Christians we are also challenged to bring that faith into the world around us. By that I don’t mean trying to convert those around us to our form of Christian faith. That is really only the “Personal Gospel” writ large. Instead, we are called into the struggle to confront injustice wherever we see it in the world. We are to do our best to change our community, our state, our nation, and our world in ways that would bring peace and justice to all the human family. That is what used to be called the “Social Gospel” and it should be just as much part of our faith as the “Personal Gospel.”
I want you to keep this understanding of our liberal Christian faith in mind during my message this morning.
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Have you ever been “taken” by a con artist? I have. If you have, too, you know exactly what it feels like. We feel angry and frustrated. We feel hurt and betrayed because we put our trust in the con artist. We ask ourselves, “How could I have been so stupid not to have recognized what I was being suckered into?” We also have fantasies of the revenge we would like to inflict on the con artist, but usually that is not possible or even legal. Leave them to heaven’s justice says the Good Book. What goes around will come around . . . eventually. Best of all, work hard to forgive the person who hurt us. Why give such people a double victory, not just to have stabbed us but also to have left a wound that never heals?
But strange as it may seem, God doesn’t always see con artists the way we do. Several times in the Bible we are told that God sees possibilities for good in the cleverness of the con artist. Today’s scripture story certainly makes that clear.
When we last met him in Jonathan’s (Sloan) wonderful sermon last week, Jacob the trickster has conned his brother Esau out of the family fortune. Not just that, Jacob has also conned his father Isaac into giving him the blessing that makes Jacob the sheik of the tribe. That is, if Jacob lives long enough to succeed Isaac, Esau is determined that he won’t. Esau wants to hunt Jacob down and kill him.
Rebecca, the mother of both boys, quickly packs Jacob off to live with her brother Laban. When he gets there Jacob will discover that his uncle is just as big a trickster as he is, maybe even better. And the two daughters of Laban that Jacob marries, Leah and Rachel, are pretty fair tricksters themselves. Talk about family values!
But all that is in the future. For now, Jacob has been on the run all day. Bone-tired, he stops for the night at a desolate place. He finds a stone he can use for a pillow, lies down, and falls fast asleep.
Then comes one of the most incredible stories in the entire Bible. Jacob has a dream, and what a dream it is. He dreams there is a ladder from earth to heaven. Actually, a better translation than “ladder” would be “ramp.” In Jacob’s dream he sees one of those Babylonian ziggurats, a wedding cake temple with a ramp around it winding up to the top. Going up and down that ramp are angels, God’s heavenly servants. Don’t think cupids; think those beefcakes we see in professional wrestling. I almost said think Arnold Swarzenneger but he doesn’t seem too angelic lately!
Then, in the most awesome moment of all, God stands beside him. In one of the greatest epiphanies of the Bible, God tells Jacob: “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and your father Isaac. I give you this land on which you are lying. I give it to you and your descendants. There will be millions of them. They will spread to all parts of the earth and all the families of earth will be blessed through you and your descendants.
As if this incredible promise is not enough, God goes on to tell Jacob that God will always be with him wherever he goes. He doesn’t have to be afraid of the future. God will bring Jacob back to his own country, this land that God has promised to him.
With that Jacob wakes up with a start and exclaims, “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it. This is an awesome place. I am standing in the very house of God, and this is the doorway to heaven.”
Jacob was like most young men and women in their teens and twenties. They don’t think all that much about God. Life is sweet when we’re young and there are too many other things to enjoy. We’ll leave God ‘til later in our lives. Maybe when we get married, have children, and settle down, we’ll take a more serious look at all this religion business.
Of course, sometimes something happens which shocks us into thinking about God a lot sooner. Such a moment for many young people was when their friend and classmate, “Gus” McCravey died accidentally. They were packed into the McCallie Chapel yesterday. Of course, they were there to remember this truly fine young man whose life was cut so tragically short. But I have a feeling that some of them were asking themselves: “What do I believe . . . about God, about life, about death, about eternity?”
I think that was what happened to Jacob there in the Judean desert. For Jacob this was a holy moment and a holy place. Yes, yes, I know. Everyplace is potentially a place where we can experience God. But there are special places for all of us. David Beebe used to say that there are “thin” places where earth and heaven, life and eternity, come very close together. For us, such places are shot through with the divine. You know what I mean. At least, I hope you do.
As human beings we like to mark and memorialize such places to remind ourselves and others what we experienced there. Jacob pours oil on his pillow stone and calls the place “Beth – El.” The house of God. Bethel became one of the most important religious shrines in Hebrew history.
Jacob is a changed man . . . partly, but he hasn’t lost his ability to manipulate. He promises that if God will be with him, keep him safe wherever he goes, O, yes, and give him nice clothes to wear and good food to eat (Jacob really does sound like a teenager, doesn’t he?”), yes, and by the way, Jacob also wants God to bring him back home where he can collect his inheritance. Like some television “Greed and Grab” religious huckster, Jacob promises that if God will give him everything he wants, he’ll give a tenth back to God. Nice bargain, don’t you think?
Thank God, Jacob matured a good deal before he finally went home with the wives and wealth he had collected along the way. But fear of Esau his brother had never left him. When he came near home, Jacob sent magnificent gifts to his brother as well as his wives and children, hoping that Esau would not kill him. But wonderful to relate, Esau had changed years before. He had already forgiven Jacob and welcomed him home. He didn’t want or need Jacob’s “stuff” as George Carlin used to put it.
In a way, this reminds me of another rabbinic story about two brothers who argued all day about how to fairly divide the family farm they had just inherited from their father. When night came, they agreed they would come back in the morning and continue their argument. The next morning, one brother asked the other: “What part of the farm are you willing to give me?” The other brother responded: “I give it all to you. You are the most important thing to me.”
Wow! You and I could only hope that all family disputes over property and inheritances could be settled in that gracious and generous way. As Janice Minchenberg reminded us a few years ago, in life we sometimes have to decide whether we want to be right or to be in a relationship.
In that spirit, I close this message with the fervent hope that we as Americans can help Israelis and Palestinians to a just and generous and compassionate end to their half-century of conflict. There has been so much violence and hatred on both sides. We as Americans should support our President in his efforts to resolve this never-ending war.
I believe a fair and just solution would be for Israel to return to its 1967 boundaries. There should be fair exchanges of land on both sides. East Jerusalem should be the capital of the Palestinian state. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Jerusalem – which means city “of peace” – would be a symbol of true peace and sisterhood and brotherhood between these two people. Yes, both sides should recognize the legitimate status of the other. Both sides should ensure that there be no more terrorism from any of their people. Perhaps, in time these two countries will come to have the same relationship our country has with Canada which we Americans tried to conquer in the Revolutionary war and the War of 1812. Now we are friends and good neighbors.
Is what I am suggesting a foolish dream? All I can say is that dreams can come true. Let’s let Margaret Mead have the last word; “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world – indeed it is the only thing that ever does.” I believe that we as liberal Christians are meant to be part of that group.