Genesis 28:10-19

Genesis 28:10-19

10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. 11He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place.

12 And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 

13 And the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 

14 and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.

15 Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

16 Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” 17And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” 

18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 

19 He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.
Amen

Dear congregation,
There lies Jacob. He lies on the ground, outwardly and inwardly. Jacob, the deceiver. He has surreptitiously obtained the blessing from his father Isaac.
Esau, his older twin brother, was on the way. Jacob and his mother Rebekah are hatching a sad plan. Rebekah liked this son better. This gentle boy, so different from the rough-and-tumble Esau.
And the blessing was important. The blessing opened up a bright future. Jacob wanted to secure it, no matter what.
And now he lies there. He lies on the ground. There's no way he can go any lower. And it's the middle of the night.
He wanted quick fortune. He wanted wealth at the push of a button. He wanted assurance that everything would go well in his life – and he achieved the opposite.

There he lies on the ground. On a stone. It's hard to accept this sad truth about oneself.

What had he done?

After receiving the blessing, Esau returned home. The cruel deception was quickly exposed. Esau was shaken. He was used to conflict and envy between him and his brother. He had come to terms with the fact that his mother didn't like him as much as her favorite son. But to be betrayed like this in his own family. To see Jacob put his own interests first. Pure selfishness.

It's me who matters most to me. "Am I my brother's keeper?" What happens between Esau and Jacob is reminiscent of the fratricide between Cain and Abel.

The story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, their sons, Ishmael and Isaac, their wives, and then Jacob and Esau is full of conflict and pain.

Envy. Betrayal. Fear. Resentment. The story is told so honestly. So shockingly realistic. So believable.

All of this is embedded in Israel's history. It is the beginning of a history that has been marked by suffering for millennia.

The great lament in situations of unimaginable suffering always raises the question:

"Why?"

Why do the opening pages of the Bible tell such sad and tragic stories?

Stories in which people inflict so much suffering on each other and then lie on the ground, crushed by the guilt they carry?

There lies Jacob – he has what he wanted: his father's blessing, and yet he has lost everything that defines him.

When Esau came home, he looked into his father's eyes. Esau's eyes, a mirror of the soul. Jacob saw a deeply wounded soul. And perhaps in that moment, he understood for a moment: What have I done?

Esau seeks revenge. Jacob fears for his life. "Easy come, easy go!"  we say with a German proverb. Quick happiness is an illusion. A blessing at the expense of others, is a curse.

There lies Jacob. All alone. Cast upon himself. Abandoned in the loneliness of the night.

Abandoned. Lost. He has become a deceiver because he couldn't cope with himself and because he didn't want to be who he was: the second born.

Because Jacob wanted to be more, he allowed envy to drive him. He let himself be driven by the insane idea that he was entitled to something that belonged to his brother. He took what he wanted. He didn't understand that blessing and curse are closely linked, and that blessing is not something that can be obtained by stealth or purchase.

His attempt to live a good life at his brother's expense had failed.

I see entire countries and nations in Jacob: countries and nations cheating the world of its blessings.

Jacob's attitude is widespread today. People haven't learned much about it yet.

Some presidents and governments also take what they want. They don't care about their brothers and sisters.

That's hard to bear.

"But in the middle of the night," a Jewish proverb says, "lies the beginning of a new day!"

That's what this story tells.

God appears to Jacob in a dream. Heaven and earth are connected. In the midst of God's abandonment, heaven opens, and God reveals himself.

The angels have a hard job: going up and down. They carry the suffering of the world to heaven and the goodness of God to earth. They go back and forth. They don't abandon the world God appears to the deceiver – I will not abandon you. I will not abandon you to your guilt and shame. I will redeem you from it – for guilt and shame will bring a curse upon generations.

I redeem you, Jacob. You are mine.

As a reader of this scene, I actually wish that God would shake him awake and wake him up. I wish that God would rebuke him and make him even more aware of his guilt. I wish that God would teach Jacob a lesson.

That is human thinking. That is taking Esau's side and thereby stirring up hatred, allowing division. In a way, it is hard to bear that.

God also turns to the one who has brought so much suffering upon others.

But God is God and cannot be measured by our human standards. We hear of a God who lets Jacob sleep and changes him in his sleep: without Jacob even knowing.  

Jacob doesn't have to offer anything to him. God turns to him.

God doesn't justify what Jacob has done. God doesn't take sides with Jacob. But he gives him a future. He gives him hope. God has mercy on someone who lies on the ground, overwhelmed by his guilt and fearing his brother's revenge. He gives the fugitive Jacob, the homeless sinner who no longer recognizes himself, a new life.

I don't understand this. I'm amazed. This story challenges me: As long as I have to choose between Esau and Jacob. As long as I only connect with Esau's pain, I will experience God as unjust. How can God remain on Jacob's side?

God can.

In the New Testament, people are just as shaken: How can Jesus sit at table with sinners? Yes, how can that be?

This question is like an arrow to the heart: how can it be that the deceiver is allowed to live?

Only when I identify myself with this deceiver, only when I realize that I am not one bit better than Jacob: then will I feel liberation.

We readers of this story are so accustomed to dividing the world into good people and evil people.

And most of the time, we come off well. We are not Jacob. We are Esau, the deceived, not the deceiver.

This is precisely where we deceive ourselves the most.

God does not justify the immoral evil deed here. But God gives the immoral actor another chance.

This remains a great challenge for us: to continue trying to do good, not to be deterred from it, to be grateful when we succeed in doing good and even in overcoming evil. But this should not lead us to believe that we are fundamentally better.

But if we have truly burdened ourselves with such guilt as Jacob did, then we hear that it is possible for God, in His goodness, to turn to us. As soon as we look beyond our personal lives and acknowledge how entangled we are in some guilt, then perhaps we will become a little more subdued: How entangled then in apartheid and today in the exploitation of the world. How entangled in environmental pollution and racism, entangled in a world in which some are materially so well off and others so poorly. This story makes me quiet and thoughtful. It offers no rational, logical answer. It is to be understood with the heart, with the heart of people who are down and out—and at a dead end.

What Jacob understands that night is:

"How holy is this place!" I take that with me: the wonder at how holy a place can be where God encounters a sinner. How holy the place is where a person feels so forsaken by God, trapped in their guilt. "How holy is this place!"

"How holy is this place!" – where an unholy man lies on the ground. I am moved by this view. How often I drive past places where I see only evil. The filth.  The unholy. Places I avoid because I'm afraid. Because I don't want to have anything to do with some people. But perhaps they are precisely  that  – holy places.

Places where God has been since long ago. Places where heaven is open.

Jochen Klepper puts it this way in an Advent hymn:

"Many more nights will fall upon human suffering and guilt.

But now the star of God's grace wanders with everyone.

Shining with its light, no darkness will hold you back anymore, salvation has come from the presence of God."   Evangelical Lutheran Church 16:4

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen