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Genesis 28:10-19; John 3:16-21
October 5, 2014 (World Communion Sunday) • Portage First UMC
It is good to be with you this morning, as the next two Sundays Rachel and I and six others from Portage will be on the other side of the world from here. Over these next couple of weeks, I’m going to be able to check off a couple of things from my “bucket list.” You know what that is, right? I don’t know that I had ever heard of a “bucket list” until the movie by that same name came out, and though I haven’t written it down, there are certain places I want to be able to visit before I leave this earth. This “Lands of the Bible” trip will help me accomplish a few of those, as I’m able to walk among a couple of the cities whom John wrote to in the book of Revelation, and stand among the Parthenon and the Acropolis and the place where the ancient Olympics took place. We covet your prayers as we travel, and look forward to sharing all that we learn with you when we get back.
But I’ve been thinking about that “bucket list” over the last couple of weeks. Some of you know we lost a dear friend a couple of weeks ago, a woman who was just a little bit older than Cathy and I, who seemed perfectly healthy one moment, felt a little ill and in the next moment, was gone. Her funeral was the same day as our celebration here for Jim Jongsma, and going to two funerals in one day can’t help but affect your perspective. It makes you think and wonder if you’re really doing what God calls you to do. Suddenly, you want to be sure about that. And I’m not just talking about a job. Jobs are just that: jobs. They pay the bills and support the family. I’m talking about your vocation, which is much larger than a job. I’m talking about how we find, pursue and respond to God’s dream and vision for our lives.
Think about it this way: when your kids are little, the question they are often asked or even are asking themselves is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The problem is, we translate that question into a job or a career path. When we ask that, what we’re really asking is, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Our kids are answering that question right now. Christopher is in college, studying Computer Graphic Technology in order to pursue a career in technology. Rachel wants to skip high school so that she can get right to doing what she wants to do, and that’s being a nurse. And yes, we want them to be gainfully employed some day. But, more than that, I want them to answer the original question: what do you want to be when you grow up? Being and doing are two different things. We “do” our jobs. But who we are, our “being,” is shaped by how we find, pursue and respond to God’s dream and vision for our lives. So, this morning, let me ask you, at whatever age and stage of life you are: what do you want to be when you grow up?
I often get asked, “How do I know when a vision or a dream is from God and not just from myself?” We’re going to explore that a bit today, and even more when I return from the trip, but let me just throw this “big idea” out up front. When a vision is from God, “it will always honor God, bless other people, and bring you joy” (Slaughter, Dare to Dream, pg. 16). Did you get all three of those? Because all three are vitally important, and the order is important as well. When a vision is truly from God, it will always honor God, bless other people and bring you joy.
Now, in a couple of weeks, Leigh Coffey is going to share with you about listening to God, a skill that we often struggle with in our very loud culture. But let me say that, in the Bible, there are a wide variety of ways through which God speaks to people. Sometimes it’s an audible voice, sometimes it’s through the voice of a preacher or prophet, sometimes it’s through the written word, and sometimes it’s through dreams and visions. We know from science that dreams are often the way our mind processes bits and pieces from our day, things that we're worried about, things we are anticipating (cf. Goldingay, Genesis for Everyone, Part Two, pg. 86). Now, I don't know about you, but I have some really strange dreams sometimes. My mind seems to put really strange things together, but there have been a few times where I felt like God was using my dreams to prepare me for something or speak to me. One in particular, a very vivid dream that I still remember from over thirty years ago. Our neighbor was like a grandfather to me and we had watched over the previous several years as he struggled with Parkinson’s Disease. One night, I dreamed that my dad came home to tell me Papa had died, and within a very short time, that very thing happened. Dad was there when Papa died, and then came home to tell us about it. It was a hard loss to bear, and yet I felt a sense of peace because God used a dream to prepare me. There are other times where God gives direction through our dreams, and to help us see that, I want to take you back to the twentieth century B.C. and a man named Jacob.
Jacob had an eventful childhood and adolescence. He is born a twin, but he is second-born and he’s always scheming to become the first, the most important. His name means “heel grabber” because he came out of the womb grabbing onto the heel of his brother Esau. His mother, Rebekah, is also a schemer, and since Jacob is her favorite, she tries to help him along as he steals the birthright from Esau and later he steals Esau’s blessing. Those may not sound like big deals in our world, but in that world, it meant that Jacob had taken everything that rightfully belonged to his brother. Esau is so angry that he swears he will kill his brother once their father is dead. So, Rebekah convinces her husband Isaac to send Jacob off to a far away land. She wants to make sure her favorite son is protected. And that’s how Jacob, the schemer, the heel grabber, ends up far away from his family, and that’s where we pick up the story in Genesis 28.
We’re told Jacob goes from Beersheba to Harran. That’s a trip of about 500 miles. Walking, it would take someone in good shape around seventeen days. So that song that says I would walk 500 miles to fall down at your door—better make sure you have seventeen days or more if you’re going to sing that to your sweetheart. But Jacob does have seventeen days, and can you imagine what he must have been thinking about as he walked, every step taking him further away from everything he ever knew? Do you think there were regrets or “wish I would have’s” going through his brain during those seventeen days? Because at the end of those, God gives him a dream. Now, undoubtedly, he has stopped along the way every night. He’s probably done each night what he does this night: he picks up a stone and lays it by where his head is going to be. Contrary to the way it’s usually translated, the wording doesn’t really mean he makes the stone a pillow, though he may have leaned on it. The wording really means he put a stone by his head for protection. He would have it handy. If he were attacked he could throw it at the attacker (cf. Ross, “Genesis,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 1, pg. 170). So he ends up in a particular place, no place special, no hotel, no swimming pool, no cinnamon rolls on the breakfast buffet and he lays down to sleep just like he has every night for the last sixteen days. But on this night, Jacob has a dream. On this night, God shows up.
You know, when we go through difficult times, we want to tell God when and where to show up. I know I do. When I’m struggling with something, it’s not uncommon for me to pray, “Okay, God, here’s what I want and when I want you to do it.” And the “when” is usually “now.” But I’ve learned that in those in-between times, in the seventeen days of walking through the wilderness (and mine are usually longer than seventeen days), God is working. It may not seem like it. It may seem like God has gone off somewhere else and is silent and has forgotten about you, but God is still working. He’s working on me, and you. He’s waiting for us to get quiet enough to listen. He’s preparing us for the next stage of our journey. Some of you this morning are probably caught in that “walking” time, the in-between time. You’ve been in the midst of a struggle and you are hoping it will be over soon. Maybe you’re feeling exiled, like Jacob was, and you’re wondering where God is. Some of you may have come here this morning ready to give God just “one more chance,” and you’re feeling like, “If God doesn’t show up today, I’m done.” Friends, those times when you’re in the wilderness, those times when it feels like God is not present, God is doing his best stuff. You can't see it, but He’s working in and through you. He’s preparing you for what comes next. You can trust him, even in the wilderness times, even in the “walking” times. Just do what Jacob did: keep walking and moving toward God’s future for you, even if it’s uncertain.
And Jacob’s future was uncertain. But there’s not any reason to expect that he thought this place where he lay down for the night was anything special. He probably expected to have the same dreams he’s had for the last sixteen nights: maybe dreams of regret or of worry or of the fear that his brother was going to show up and kill him. But this night, Jacob had a decidedly different dream. As he sleeps, he sees a stairway or a ladder or a ramp (it depends on your translation, but it indicates something going up from earth to heaven) (Goldingay 86). What happens here is what happens in just a few other places in the Bible. God opens Jacob’s eyes to see what is actually happening all the time. There is constant connection between heaven and earth; we’re just usually unaware of it. The ancient Celtic Christians talked about “thin places,” places where it seems you can almost see to the other side, where heaven touches earth (Slaughter 21). We might talk about “holy places,” those places where you have experienced the presence of God in powerful and unique ways. It might be at a camp, or a retreat center. I’ve had experiences like that at monasteries and ancient churches, places where, it seems, people for centuries have rubbed up against the barrier between heaven and earth so much that it’s grown thin. Jacob is in such a place in Genesis 28, a thin place, a holy place, and he doesn’t even realize it. Then, God shows up.
At the top of the ladder/stairway/ramp stands the God of Abraham and Isaac, and at the bottom is the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham. These two need to have a talk, and God reminds Jacob of the promises he made to Jacob’s ancestors, promises he wants to renew with the new generation. It’s a promise of land, a promise of descendants, and most importantly, a promise of presence. “I am with you,” God tells Jacob, “and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you” (28:15). Now, imagine Jacob, seventeen days away from home, no family nearby, no guarantee that this journey would turn out well. Imagine Jacob hearing these words from the God who have proven himself so faithful in the past: “I am with you.” I would imagine those words echoed in his life from that point on, and maybe you’ve come here this morning just needing to hear those words: God is with you. He is with you. Even when, like Jacob, you don’t realize God is present in this place, or when you don’t “feel” him, he is with you. And, more than that, he will go with you because “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). He is with you and he goes with you; hang onto that truth.
Beyond getting a glimpse of God’s presence, Jacob is being changed, little by little. God is giving him a bigger vision for his life (cf. Slaughter 19). He is moving Jacob from being self-centered to God-directed. Up to this point, he’s lied to his father, taken God’s name in vain, and made his brother want to kill him (cf. Goldingay 87). He’s not what we would call a model citizen or even a model for faith. But after this encounter with God, Jacob says that if God will go with him, he will serve the Lord. He will follow God’s leading, just as his father and grandfather have (28:20-22). Granted, he puts some conditions on that promise, which he probably shouldn’t have, but we all come to God in small steps. We can’t expect Jacob to have it all together right away. The point is this: Jacob is moving, even if slowly, from being self-centered to God-directed. You see, it’s not Jacob at the top of that ladder; it’s God, which begs the question: who is at the top of your ladder (cf Slaughter 34)? If you achieve everything you want to achieve and reach the “pinnacle of success,” who will be standing there with you? Who’s at the top of your ladder? When we are operating out of a self-centered mindset and life, we’ll find it’s just us there at the top. That’s probably here the idea that it’s “lonely at the top” came from. But Jacob is gaining a bigger vision for what life could be like, and he’s coming to realize that a life of earning and acquisition is too small a life. He needs a bigger vision, one that’s as big as the world, one that has God as the focus, one in which he understands his part in pointing the world toward God, so that God would be not just the God of Abraham, Isaac and even of Jacob, but God of the world which he created. Anything else is far too small to spend a life on.
Now, let me say quickly that Jacob didn’t always get it right. He goes from this place to his uncle's home in Paddan Aram, where he falls in love with a woman named Rachel, then is tricked into marrying her sister. After marrying Rachel as well, they all have children (and make a good argument against marrying sisters!), then he decides to head back home and tricks his father-in-law out of the best of his flock. And he ends up wrestling with God on the shores of the Jabbok River, where he doesn’t lose but he doesn’t win. What he does get there is a hip out of joint and another glimpse of God, along with a new name: Israel, which means “One who struggles with God.” Jacob didn’t always get it right, but like many of the Biblical figures before and after him, in that place, he set his heart on a vision bigger than his own life, and more than anything else, he wanted to pursue that vision. That transformation began in a very ordinary place that he named Bethel, “House of God.” God’s dreams often come to us in ordinary places.
I remember one of my own Bethels very well. In the midst of an ordinary place, God showed up and changed my heart. I was watching a movie—I can’t tell you what movie it was, but it was about a woman who had so little hope and was dying. I was just probably 11 or 12 years old and I remember very clearly wondering what people did who didn't know Jesus, who lived without hope. That thought led to my heart being broken for those who don’t know Jesus, and in many ways it led me to what I’m doing now for a job. But that moment wasn’t about a job; it wasn’t about what I was going to do when I grew up. It was about who I wanted to be when I grew up. God used an ordinary thing like a movie to break my heart for those who don’t know Jesus. There have been other times, other Bethels for me. One of the reasons I keep going to Leadership Institute in Kansas City is because that has become a Bethel for me, a place where I can worship without being responsible for leading worship, a place where I can meet with God (and get some great barbecue at the same time!). The same is true for walking in the Holy Land (except there it’s falafel instead of barbecue). It’s not about the travel, it’s about being in a “thin place” where God meets me. And another time I remember is when Christopher was a baby and a toddler. (He turned 19 this week, so I’m allowed to be nostalgic.) One of our rituals when he was small was that I would pray with him and sing to him when I put him to bed at night. And those times when I rocked him to sleep and sang to him were times of pure worship. Of course, every ritual comes to an end. When I tried to do the same thing with Rachel when she was a baby, she reached up and put her hand over my mouth as I sang. I got the message!
But here’s the point: God will meet us in the most ordinary of places and turn them into a Bethel. God will meet us in the midst of our daily lives, while we’re going from here to there, while we’re doing our everyday routine. Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth century monk, found the presence of God in his kitchen, among the pots and pans. He said it this way: “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees before the Blessed Sacrament.” I’ve been reading the biography of a French saint, Madame Guyon (and I’m probably mispronouncing her name terribly), who had a horrible life. Married to a 37-year-old man when she was only fifteen, verbally, spiritually and emotionally abused by him, his mother and others, often beaten with a brush and told she was forbidden to pray, Guyon found a way to make her heart an altar, to find God’s presence even in the worst of circumstances. She said the key to that was to abandon ourselves and give everything over to God. Her life challenges me, because she gives witness to the truth that every situation can become a Bethel, even when you think life can’t get any worse. Jacob’s life says that to us, too. Every ordinary place can become a Bethel, if we’re open and ready to hear from God.
The second thing Jacob's story tells is that once God transforms those ordinary places and things, he will give us a vision as big as the world. Listen to the promise God makes to Jacob: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring” (28:14). Notice two things there. The vision is not limited to just his local area. All people on earth will be blessed when Jacob gets ahold of God’s vision for his life. And it’s not just about Jacob. It’s about him and his offspring, which God has already promised would be “like the dust of the earth” (28:14). Can you count the dust? Of course not, and Jacob’s offspring will be so numerous that they will bless the entire earth. So God gives Jacob a vision that’s not just about him, his happiness, his health and wealth. In fact, it’s about none of that. It’s not about Jacob. It’s about having a vision as big as the world, a vision to bless not just “me and mine,” but all people on earth.
That is, after all, the vision God wants us to have and it's the vision he came to put in place in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In what is, most likely, the best-known Bible verse in the world, John tells us that God so loved—who? You? Me? Our neighbors? Yes, and No. God so loved the world—that’s why Jesus came, to show God’s love not just for you, not just for me, not just for people whom we like, but for the world. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (3:16). You may know that verse, but does it inform your everyday living? Does that sort of vision guide your life? And what about the next verse? “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (3:17). Now, scholars are divided as to where Jesus’ words end in this chapter and where John’s sermon begins, but they all agree that these words in verses 16 and 17 are most likely John’s (Card, John: The Gospel of Wisdom, pg. 60). He’s reminding us of his vision, of his purpose, the one he received by being a disciple of Jesus. It’s not about the individual. It’s about the world. Yes, we need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but it’s not enough to just have that. God wants to give us a vision as big as the world, a dream as big as the world he loves.
Today is World Communion Sunday. It’s the one time each year where brothers and sisters around the world all join together at the communion table, to remember Jesus’ death for our sake. Communion ought to be something that unites us across denominational and fellowship lines, because this bread and the cup remind us that Jesus died for the sins of all, not just some. When Jesus went to the cross, it was not just for a select few. It was for all. “For God so loved the world…” But even on this day, we sometimes look at it as what communion can do for me, how it makes me feel. That’s not what it's about. Communion reminds us there is something bigger going on here than just my own personal faith or how I feel. Communion is a time when our eyes can be opened to the call to be a blessing to the whole world. It's a time when we’re reminded that God’s heart is big enough to love the entire world. Is ours?
I wonder if our dreams are big enough? Are we so stuck on what we want to “do” that we forget life is about “being”? Remember, when God gives you a vision or a dream it will first of all honor him, second it will bless other people and finally it will bring you joy. If those three things are not happening, I can guarantee you that you don’t have a vision as big as the world. God longs to give you a life that will satisfy you, and maybe today can be the day when you slow down long enough to allow him to do that. This place and this time can be your own personal Bethel. So this morning, as we come to the table with brothers and sisters all around the world, ask God for a vision as big as the world, and then be ready to follow where he leads, knowing that wherever he leads, he goes with you. Jesus promised, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
