Jacob's Ladder

Just for fun, as a warm-up, cling on the link above. You won't be disappointed and it'll set the mood. I'll wait...

OK, a quick rant.  Let me get it out of my system! The Lectionary Committee has skipped over two full chapters and those chapters matter. Last week's reading was from Genesis 25. I wrote about those verses here. Today's reading comes from Genesis 28. So what happened in between?

It matters. First there is the stuff of life. Isaac plants and reaps and becomes a rich man. He goes up to Beer-sheba and settles down. Esau gets married, for the first time. The text isn't quite explicit but it's very implicit; Rebecca doesn't approve. She just doesn't like the local Canaanite women. 

In Chapter 27 we see the real result of that bowl of lentil soup as Isaac lies on his death bed and is ready to offer a blessing to his eldest. (That would be Esau.) You really have to read that chapter if you don't know the story, or even if you do. It's significant. Short version? Rebecca and Jacob collude and pull a fast one over the old man - and Esau. Jacob gets the blessing. Esau, the guy with the guns, is not amused. 

So two important lines of Rebecca's that really matter. First, in 27:43, she tells Jacob to run for his life. "Flee to my brother Laban in Haran." (By the way, Haran is in modern-day Turkey- about 500 miles or so north of Beer-sheba.) Second, Rebecca tells her dying husband that she is so sick and tired of Canaanite women and that it would kill her if Jacob married any one of them. She says he needs to go to Haran to find a wife. So notice what's happened here and who is in charge. 

That brings us to today's reading. "Mama's boy" has gone about thirty miles on his first day away from home, to Beth-el, literally "house of God." My work here is practically done. Context matters. Now we get what Jacob is up to. He's left home and as we'll soon see it's going to be a while before he comes back home. Years. He may be the one with the blessing but he's just embarked on a long journey, alone. I'll resist the urge to jump ahead; we'll get there. 

But anyone with a little imagination can see what has happened and why Beth-el would be a "thin place" for him. He's alone with an unknown future ahead of him. It's like that first night away at camp, or college, or moving from the east coast to the west coast. It's exciting and scary and confusing and liberating all at the same time. 

Jacob has a mystical experience. Again I don't want to spoil the ending but, I will: this won't be the last time. He will wrestle with the living God many years later on his way back home at the Jabbok River. However we want to interpret these two events, in Beth-el and at the Jabbok, they seem to suggest that Jacob had real life-changing encounters with God, that clearly affirm he is the one who should inherit the Promise - however imperfect he may be. He finds himself  in a thin place between heaven and earth; both times. And in his own words, "it's totally awesome!"

I think if I were preaching on this text, which I am not doing this year, I'd do it in much the way that this blog post has unfolded - with a lot of "set up" and filling in the blanks and re-telling the story. But the goal is to get to that place where he sees the ladder and then I'd insist on including the last two verses. (For the love of God, did they really have to divide a verse in half and stop at 28:19a? His response matters, and it goes like this: 

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.”

God blesses Jacob at Beth-el. But a covenant always requires a response. Jacob gets it. And we know that he will come again, to his father's house in peace. And we know that he will be a faithful steward of his many blessings, giving back his first tithe to God.  But get ready. We are about to meet Uncle Laban! Stay tuned!