Searching for Grace - Part 2

Genesis 28:10-19a

 

         A line in one of my favorite songs is, “I’ve been searching for grace and grace ain’t so easily found.” Jacob could have written that line. The son of Isaac and the grandson Abraham should have been the son of destiny. He should have had the road paved and the wind at his back. But nothing came easy for Jacob. He was born a moment too late. That minute cost him the privileges that would have naturally been his. He was sixty seconds from being the king. Instead, he was destined to always be a contender.

        Most folks would have been stopped cold by losing the race out of his mother’s womb, but not Jacob. He took destiny into his own hands and by doing so showed a lot of spunk. The misfortune of being born second was not going to stop Jacob from securing what he believed was supposed to be his. No one, not an older brother, and certainly not an aging father were going to keep Jacob from being the head of the family. He schemed and succeeded. The birthright and the blessing were his. All Jacob lacked was a place to lie down and peacefully sleep. But a peaceful rest was the last thing Jacob was about to experience.

        As Jacob lay down, his mind began to churn 1,000 miles an hour. Jacob is not the first person to suffer from insomnia and  I suspect guilt is not the only thing that keeps us awake. Sometimes it is a problem that seems to have no solution. Sometimes it is a relationship that has gone sideways. Sometimes we worry about our children and grandchildren. Sometimes we are perplexed by the unknown. Sometimes we just worry over the complexities of a very complicated world. At night, when there are no chores or games to entertain our imagination, anxiety floods our brain. We are desperate for sleep but no sleep is forthcoming. The next morning we awake but are not refreshed. Jacob was about to have one of those nights.

A favorite poet/singer of mine is Mary Gauthier (pronounced Go-Shay). Her music is so dark you better turn the lights on if you plan to give her a listen. She might have been thinking about Jacob when she wrote,

       When you sell your soul, it opens a deep dark hole;

When you sell your soul, drink will leave you thirsty,

                             And fire will leave you cold.

        Jacob couldn’t sleep because he had sold his soul for a birthright. Everything he desired was his only the birthright  were no good to him because it was as good as 1,000 miles away. The land of his father was his but his brother would kill him if he set foot on it. The wealth of his family was his but that too was now possessed by his brother. The love of his mother was his but he would never see her alive again. Jacob sold his soul and was left with nothing but his dreams and they were turning into nightmares.

        That night Jacob dreamed of a ladder that extended into the heavens. Many of us have been singing about that ladder most of our life. Because of that song we may have lost the meaning of this story. Jacob, conflicted, tired and lonely lay down on the hard ground. With his mind churning, he imagined a ramp opening out of the heavens. Contrary to the words of the song, Jacob had no desire to climb that ladder. Other than his older brother, God was the last entity Jacob desired to meet.

In the culture in which Jacob lived, an encounter with a god was not a healthy experience. When a god appeared, something really bad usually followed. A thunderstorm was understood as the anger of God. A whirlwind depicted the rage of God. Humans were created to be at the disposal of the gods. People believed wars were actually games played by the gods and humans were no more than pawns in these celestial competitions. In the cultures surrounding Israel, specifically Egypt, Babylon and Syria, their gods had little relations with humans and humanity never sought them out. Some of the great stories from those traditions depict the quest of men hiding in a mountain or traversing a great sea in order to escape the gods.

The ladder from heaven meant only one thing for Jacob and that was death. He stared skyward in absolute fear as God descended down the ladder. Jacob had tricked his brother, and deceived his father. He had run away from home and showed hardly any remorse. Can we even imagine what was going on in Jacob’s soul when God Almighty decided it was time for a visit?

        Jacob knew this was going to be his last night on earth. The man who showed no fear in the presence of his warrior brother lay down on the ground and wept like a baby. Then two extraordinary things happened. God spoke, not through fire or frosty wind but with words. Furthermore, the words were not condemnation but rather comfort.

        This story reminds the listener that the God of Abraham, Isaac and now Jacob was not to be compared with the gods of Egypt, Babylon and Syria. The Hebrew people were not pawns to be slaughtered indiscriminately on a giant chess board. Their lives had meaning because each life was sacred and held in high esteem by Yahweh.  True, the God of Sinai had high expectations but this God also cared and protected their wayward souls. Nowhere in the Old Testament tradition is this more obvious that the story of Jacob and the ladder. God descended to Jacob. God was going to have a little talk with Jacob. And unbelievably, God was about to tell this no good wretch of a man that God would watch after him and be with him no matter what.

        This radical concept is one I fear we often take for granted. We hardly think twice about laying our burdens upon the Lord. Then when nothing happens to solve our self-created chaos, our response is to question the very existence of God. The One who understands anguish better than any of us is pushed from our consciousness as we begin to travel a new road……...alone. And that is sad.

         Like Jacob we make the search for grace difficult because we expect to find an elixir that will eliminate all our problems, all our confusion and all our pain. That is not the way grace works. Instead we are promised that in the midst of our problems, in the midst of our confusion, even in the midst of our pain, God will be with us.

        For many of us that is just not enough. We don’t just want a promise. We demand proof. Then when our needs, our desires, even our demands are not met, we walk away claiming we identified the problem and God did not respond.

We need to follow Jacob into the next morning. He got up and discovered there was no great reversal of his fate. Esau and Isaac were still mad enough to kill him. Jacob was not going home, at least not yet.  A dream is seldom enough to annul the pain and anxiety with which we live. But a dream can give us the courage to face the dawn. Jacob went to meet his eventual bride and a father-in-law who was going to twist him like a pretzel. But Jacob found the courage to step forward because he now believed God would never leave him.

Jacob also discovered something else. Just dreaming is never enough. P.J. O’Rourke was remarked, “Everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to do the dishes.” Changing the world, or just your small part of it, requires hard work and some serious discipleship. Jacob could have responded to his dream by wishfully thinking God would straighten out all the wrinkles in his life. Instead, anchored by a dream, Jacob endured Laban’s demands. For fourteen years Jacob worked honestly and faithfully. Each day new callous brought Jacob closer to that dream. His faith in himself and God anchored his endeavors until eventually he crossed the river and took his family home.

Peter Marty claims, “Hope is what sustains us when we are not ready to give up on God beaming a light in our darkness or placing life in our weary hands.”

So start dreaming about God coming down a ladder to disrupt your nightmares. Then, sustained by grace, begin the long climb out of whatever hole you’re in.                    Amen.