Stone Pillows
By Caroline Dean
January 15, 2012
Genesis 28: 10-19
[ Audio
(mp3, 5.4Mb) ]
cob came to a certain place and camped for the night since the sun had set. He took one of the stones there, set it under his head and lay down to sleep. And he dreamed: A stairway was set on the ground and it reached all the way to the sky; angels of God were going up and going down on it.
Then
God was right before him, saying, "I am God, the God of Abraham your
father and the God of Isaac. I'm giving the ground on which you are sleeping to
you and to your descendants. Your descendants will be as the dust of the Earth;
they'll stretch from west to east and from north to south. All the families of
the Earth will be blessed in. Yes. I'll stay with you, I'll protect you, and
I'll bring you back to this very ground. I'll stick with you until I've done
everything I promised you."
Jacob
woke up from his sleep. He said, "Surely the Lord is in this place –and I
didn't know it!" He was terrified. He whispered in awe, "This is none
other than the house of God – the gate of heaven."
He
took the stone he had used for his pillow and stood it up as a pillar and
poured oil over it. He christened the place Bethel, which means House of God.
Do
you ever have reoccurring dreams? I
won't pretend to be a dream analyst but I am pretty sure that my re-occurring
dreams tell me a lot about my fears and anxieties. For example, one of my dreams that sticks
with me and occurs over and over again – especially on a week like this – is
that I have forgotten to write a sermon – or I cannot print out a sermon – or I
am somehow late to worship and I cannot find my robe much less figure out what
I am supposed to be preaching about – I have lingering dreams from my student
days that I am in a class that I have somehow completely forgotten to attend
and the final exam is tomorrow. These
kinds of dreams reveal to me that I am deeply afraid of being caught
unprepared, or being left utterly exposed as a fraud.
When
I was a kid I used to dream about being chased by a dinosaur, a T.Rex. while I
scurried away on my bike riding through our neighborhood (a consequence of
watching Jurassic Park with my brothers way too early). I used to dreamed of vampires, gremlins, and
scary creatures living under my couch…and the ironic thing is that, I can't
really remember many dream dreams from my childhood – but the nightmares are
etched in my memory forever.
I
bet Jacob's dream was etched in his memory forever.
Jacob
has just left home – er I should say he has run away from home even sprinted at
times – because he has just stolen his twin brother Esau's birthright – and
Esau is ticked and as far as Jacob know Esau is after him. Jacob has left behind everything familiar and
he runs for his life into the wilderness…
We
find Jacob alone in the wilderness at sunset – after he has fled the comfort
and safety of his home. Tonight his nightmare
would be Esau popping out of the bushes with wrath sparking in his eyes – much
less a pack of wild animals. But instead
of dreaming about his brother's wrath or gremlins and dinosaurs, Jacob dozes
off snuggling with a stone pillow and he dreams about a ladder.
And on this ladder rooted in the earth and stretching to the
heavens are a host of angels going up and down. Now this seems like a lovely image at first. But 9 out of 10 times in the bible the
arrival of an angel incites a pretty strong negative reaction. The response of humility and even terror is
pretty understandable if you imagine a heavenly being popping up in your dreams
or telling you that God will put a baby in your womb. Usually the angel's first words are “fear
not! I bring you tidings of great joy!” as
if to say, “look I'm here on good terms!” even as the person cowers.
And if I am Jacob, I am thinking that this ladder is meant to
connect heaven and earth to bring God's wrath so that these angels can pay me
back for stealing Esau's birthright. And
so this scene is quickly becoming nightmarish. And just as these dots are connecting in Jacob's subconscious, God
appears. And Jacob is thinking, “now I'm
really screwed.” “Not only has God sent angels,
but God has decided to make an appearance and be in charge of shaming and
punishing me.” And then God says, “Now
Jacob, go back and apologize to your brother and pull your family back
together! If you don't I will smite you
and you will not get the blessing that I have prepared for you!”
No – this is not what God says. God says, “I am with you.”
God goes on to say – “I am the God of your father, and your
family, I am going to give you a ton of children and grandchildren, and they
will all be blessed. God says, I am with
you and I'll watch over you and not leave you until you receive these promises.”
Jacob probably stops and thinks “Wait a second so, this stairway
leading to the unknown covered in terrifying heavenly beings brings God's
promise of blessing to watch over me, not, God's judgment against my failures?”
Jacob takes a moment to let it sink
in.
“God with us” is not a sign of judgment, guilt, shame or eternal
damnation. God is “with us” to bless us! And God promises this to each and every one
of us in different moments - if we can only pay attention to it and hold on to it
long enough to let it sink in.
Jacob is still a little freaked out – even the text says so – but
he awakes from this dream and declares, “Surely the Lord is in this place –
this is none other than the house of God.” And at sunrise, the colors and beams of new light remind Jacob of the
hope for a new day, for reconciliation, for a new community, and a new
dream. Jacob takes his stone pillow and
he sets it on its side and he pours oil on it.
This seems strange at first. What's the big deal with a rock turned on it's side – won't the wind or
the scary pack of wild animals knock it over anyway?
But when I think about it – and it's as if Jacob wants to mark
this place, so that he can come back to it one day. And more than that, he has created a reminder
for himself to help him carry this moment with him – to carry God's promise
with him - the rest of his life. Jacob
marks the spot where his greatest fear was wrapped in grace, bound up in a
promise of new life. He wants to carry
on in the memory of that time when heaven reached down to earth without judgment
but filled with promise.
Martin Luther King Junior shares a story in one of his sermons
entitled “Our God is able.” He tells the
story of going to bed one night after he had gotten involved with the
Montgomery Bus Boycott and getting a phone call. He dragged himself out of bed and answered
the phone only to find that this was one of the nasty threatening phone calls
that came too often in this period in his life. And it is this phone call that finally made King realize that these
threats were not isolated and empty but that they were in fact very earnest.
King gets out of bed – and stumbles to his kitchen table
“faltering and growing in fear.” He has
reached saturation point – he couldn't live in fear anymore. King ponders how to back out graciously
without seeming like a coward? King
writes, “In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had almost gone, I
determined to take my problem to God. My
head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud, “I am here
taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people
are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength
and courage, they too will falter. I am
at the end of my powers, I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can not face it alone.”
He continues, “At that moment I experienced the presence of the
Divine as I had never before experienced him. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice,
saying, “Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever.” Almost at once King's fear began to
pass.
Our greatest fears wrapped in grace.
Sometimes the blessing
comes in the face of terror, in the time of great struggle when that last straw
is about to break your back. (pause)
So
in the face of terror Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. commits to the dream of
racial equality, nonviolence, and economic justice. He dares to dream about a time when all
children play together black and white, queer, straight, poor, rich, bilingual,
and differently-abled. And in the face
of terror, Jacob dreams that God comes to earth granting each of us a blessing
of God's presence and promise. And God
simply says to both of them, “I am with you.”
But
what does that mean for us? What's the
big deal?
Jacob's
ladder and King's testimony helps us trust that when we have majorly screwed up
and we are running from our greatest fears, God response is first and foremost
– I am with you – not to “judge the hell out of you” – but rather to “love the
hell out of you.”
Do
you really believe that God is like that? That if we run to her, we will receive blessing instead of wrath? Do we really believe that we are that
lovable? That love is the foundation of
who we are, instead of our sense of inadequacy, failure, or baggage. What is the thing that holds you back from
loving yourself as God loves you? Why is
it such a struggle? (pause)
Why
was Jacob's dream so honorable? What did
King do that was so moving in that moment at the kitchen table? They both believed with almost every ounce of
their being that God was “for them.” That God's blessing would be enough. That God's promises were worth standing by.
And
this is an important foundation, the foundation of God's radical love, because
when you dream big, there will be resistance, there will be times of failure,
and times when we run into walls of fear and cowardice. Think about what MLK's legacy would be if he
gave up that day – if he had no strength to go on – if he did not have the
foundation of God's love to grant him courage and strength.
And
just as God is WITH us, we can be WITH each other in this same way. Do our loved ones expect grace and love from us
before they expect judgment and accusation? Are we the kind of people who love in a way
that says “you are already fantastic and there is nothing you can do to mess
that up and even when you screw up I will stick with you.” I don't know about you, but I am pretty good
at loving strangers with this radical love. But with close friends and family or those who have gotten under my skin,
I am more likely to jump to judgment and accusation and then eventually squeak
out a little bit of love. What if we
loved each other with God's love? What
if we responded with immediate and undeserved grace despite the circumstance? There is enough consequence and judgment in
our world – and there are moments when we should speak about justice and the
consequences of actions – but the question is – how can we wrap those moments
in God's grace and God's unconditional love.
And
also in honor of Dr. King – let us also think about how we can be WITH each
other in ways that honors the dream of equality, economic justice, and
nonviolence. How can our community at
Christ Church fight these evils in this world and in our midst – in our town –
in our own circles today?
And
lastly, Jacob's story helps me remember that when I have the courage to dream
big dreams that connect heaven and earth, there will be moments when God is
very real and immediately present. And
when that happens let us adopt the practice of anointing our stone pillows and
marking the spot. When God does
something important in your dreams, light a candle, write it down, tell a
friend, make up a ritual that may seem silly to an outside eye, like throwing
something into the ocean or burying something that needs to be left behind. Or at least, when you encounter God's dream
in a real way, simply make an altar within yourself where you commit to carry
this moment with you the rest of your life.
And
here's the thing, some of us are thinking, I don't really “hear God's voice”
like that. Or God and I don't really
have that kind of relationship. But I'm
talking about the moments when you find a dream that makes you alive, or a
moment when you are walking in nature and you notice the beauty around you, or
when you encounter a friend who grants you a surprising moment of grace and
kindness. These moments are expressions
of God's love. And so if you think that
you are “not that kind of person” – no pressure! But I dare you to pay a little more
attention, to be a little more gracious, and to mark these places within your
soul and see what happens! Jesus says “come
and see” – try it out and see what kind of life follows.
And
so as we go, let us know that the ladder reaching from heaven to earth is built
out of God's love, not guilt, shame or wrath. And let us be friends and family members who love first and judge
later. And lastly, let us join
together, etching God's love and grace in our lives by anointing stone pillows
and marking holy places, here, there, and in our wildest dreams. Amen.
