Between A Rock and a Good Place
Genesis 28: 10-22
Between a rock and a good place
A woman finds herself at a house. A tractor drives up to her house and hands her an invitation to a wedding. He bumps into the house and the house falls down. She finds a bible in the ruins and she and her family agrees to rebuild the house on the foundation of the Word.
A man drives to Richmond. As he drove over the Alex Fraser bridge and reaches the middle of the bridge, as he starts going down, the bridge turns into a roller coaster. He has to steer the car on it but he enjoys it.
A woman keeps on dreaming about family get togethers with family members that have died.
There are many theories about dreams. Some call it “the forgotten language of God” and see it as detailed messages from God. Others say dreams are kind of the spam folder of our unconscious thoughts and really means nothing. Still others say it gives us a glimpse into our deepest darkest desires.
In this story a dream was the way in which God revealed himself to Jacob in a personal way. It was not only the dream itself but the place and time in Jacob’s life it was given that revealed to him something of who God is and how He works. It is often the time and state of mind we are in that gives us more insight into the meaning of a dream than the dream itself. During Covid lockdown, many people reported having dreams. It is because of two reasons. One is that some people suddenly got enough sleep. We dream every evening and you actually have to get enough sleep, to be able to remember your dreams. The dreams you remember actually comes from a restless phase of your sleep cycle. The other reason people dreamed more during lock down is that some worried. Like been well-rested, being concerned and insecure can also bring about dreams that you remember.
Jacob had much reason for a restless sleep. His brother wanted him dead. His mother left Haran with gifts. He was approaching Haran with much debt. He was in between a place of danger and familiarity and a place of uncertainty and possible danger. He slept on a rock. That in itself makes this story worth it to look at. We are also now with Covid in between systems and ways of familiarity that we knew well and a future full of unknowns and possible danger. We may still have comfy cushions to sleep on but we do share the unfamiliar territory of Jacob in this story.
But there is good news about this time. This in-between season of peoples lives seems to be a time where God likes to reveal Himself in new ways and times in which He likes to give us deeper and directional insight into his being. What God revealed to Jacob at this time remain as relevant to us today in our own version of such a in between season. What is it?
God has a Ladder
For the first time in his dream, Jacob sees that God has a ladder. Who would have thought? If someone asks you about the God you believe in, how many of you would mention that your God, has a ladder? It is not the first thing that comes to mind when we think of God, but actually it is a very common accessory when it comes to the gods of most religions. Yes, most gods has “ladders”. Most religions believe that their god is connected to the affairs of humans on earth and interested in them. Even in Greek mythology it was believed that what the gods did, effected things on earth.
But in this dream, there is something distinctly different about the way in which the God of Jacob uses his ladder. You see, most gods put a ladder out so that people can climb up it towards them. But notice on the ladder in Jacob’s dream, he is not the one on it. It is the heavenly angels that descend and ascend on it. Ladders are most often used to reach heights and sometimes to reach depths. God doesn’t need a ladder to reach heights because He is over and above all creation. He does use it to reach down below. To reach people. To reach Jacob. To reach us.
In other religions or faith systems you are constantly haunted with the question: “Did I climb high and far enough?” or: “Do I have what it takes to continue climbing and reach ever higher?”. This reaching typified Jacob’s life up to this point. He stretched and reached for his brothers first born right and for the blessing from God through his father. His reaching landed him between a rock and a hard place. It landed him at a place where he must have felt ever so far from God…as our own reaching, striving and climbing often does. He thought God is the one to be reached. The fact that God has a ladder taught him that God is actually more the one that reaches out than He is the one waiting to be reached. God is not the one hiding. God is the one seeking.
So, if someone asks you what God you believe in, it might actually a good thing to reply: “Well, I can tell you this: He has this ladder…”.
God transforms
You know there are movies made about cars that transform into robots. There are children toys, even when I was a boy that were called “transformers”. And maybe that is not a bad way to think about how God transforms. When that car becomes a robot its form changes but if you look into it, its essence doesn’t. It might seem like it, but it doesn’t, all the metal and rubber, all the bolts and screws are still there. Nothing is added or shed, it is just presented in a different way. God is unchanging in His essence. We cannot put God on a table and dissect all his “parts” like we do with a transformer toy but we can rest assured that God’s essence, which is for instance his love and grace, could come to us in unexpected and different forms.
When this happens, it could be scary. Verse 17 says Jacob was afraid as much as he was in awe when God revealed Himself to Jacob in a new way. Much later God could reveal himself to Moses in a burning bush, a way different form than the one He used in Jacob’s dream but He could with integrity say that He is what He is and still also that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob because He was in essence still the same.
But then there is also another way in which God transforms. God also transforms places and people. An insignificant in between place gets transformed into a place of significance and meaning, Bet-El, the “house of God” in this passage. A refugee gets turned into a pilgrim in this passage, when he encounters God. Suddenly his journey has more direction and purpose to it. God transforms us and the places where we live. God turned a rock into a cushion and then into a pillar which eventually became an altar which eventually became a temple.
He still does. John knows nothing about gardening. He is leading our gardening project. Maybe God is transforming John into a gardener as he is transforming our barren soil into a garden. God is transforming wanderers that flees from community into pilgrims on their way back to their families. God is still transforming refugees in this very neighbourhood from people that just flees danger into people that pursues God and His purposes in their new home.
God is a transformer. Start dreaming about what God can change for the better in you and through you.
God likes oil
Now this statement would have gone off really well in Alberta. I guess it has you B.C. tree huggers all worried now😊. Don’t worry. Let me explain. Jacob anointing is an act of pivotal importance in this passage. It is not by him putting upright the stone but by him anointing this stone that this patch of land becomes Beth-el, the ‘house of God”. Jacob could have prayed over it, he could have sacrificed on it, he could have done many things, but God seems to respond favourably to him anointing the rock with oil. God likes oil.
What is Jesus’s other name? That’s right. It is Christ. Xristos in the Greek. You know what that means? It means “Anointed one”. Kings were anointed. Jesus being called the anointed one is a proclamation of his kingship and authority over all creation. But here is the interesting part. In biblical times there was basically two kinds of oils. The one was a very expensive oil used for very special occasions like when a body was embalmed or a wound was attended to. The other was an inexpensive oil for everyday use for ordinary people. What kind do you think Jacob had with him? We don’t know, but probably it was the ordinary kind. What oil was Jesus named after? The expensive one or the everyday one? The expensive one was called pistou. The inexpensive every day one was called Xristou. Jesus was named after the everyday oil of the common man. He was the king, not only over the high and mighty but the king of the ordinary man and woman! When God met Jacob here, he wasn’t wealthy or of high status. Quite the contrary. He was an ordinary man, a refugee in fact!
Beth-El, the house of God was on the spot where he revealed Himself to an ordinary, even lowly man. To the south you have Bethlehem which in Hebrew means “house of bread” and in Arab is called “house of blood’ because it was a place where sheep farming and the meat business was strong. To the North of Beth-El you have Jerusalem. The city of King David, where Jesus was crucified as “The King of the Jews” so that he could be the saviour of ordinary people, even non-Jews that believes in Him.
Even today we have expensive oil and everyday oil. One of the tastiest and commonly eaten dishes is fried chicken. You cannot make fried chicken with expensive extra virgin, olive oil. You need to make it with cheap cooking oil. Why? Because the expensive oil, the pistou of today cannot stand the heat. The everyday Xristou can. Jesus is our King, because he could stand and defeat the heat.
Can you see why we can all like oil? Because it is good news. Because it means Jesus said to us what God said to Jacob in Genesis 28. That he is also our God. That He is able and meets us right where we are. Next time you eat tasty fried chicken…think of Jesus!
Close
There are things pushing against us. Those things might be partly our own doing and partly that of others. Sometimes they push so hard, that we need to flee them. When we do the feeling of being vulnerable, unsettled and unfamiliar could be quite scary. But God has ladder with which he reaches out to ordinary people in difficult circumstances.
God is a transformer. He meets us in new forms and he tranforms us into new people. Through his grace refugees becomes pilgrims, people feeling the push against them feel an even stronger pull towards God, His ways and His love.
And as we rochnize and honor God in our lives, we anoint him as King in turn sharing in his abundance.
Keep on going. Keep on dreaming. Arise and know that God is also at this place, right here with you!
Amen