“Surely the LORD is in this place — and I did not know it!”

Genesis 28:16b

a sermon by Rev. Sonja Dalglish, M.Div. for Weslaco FPC

July 17, 2011, the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

Introduction

 

The Old Testament is a treasure trove of knowledge about God and about us.  It shows us that the people that God chose to work through are just as human and flawed as we are.  A clergy friend of mine, who did not grow up in the church, came to the Bible later than the average person.  She was afraid of church and the Bible at one time because she thought all the people of God were so very good – so very perfect.  You can tell she did not grow up in the church to think that!

 

She said that when she finally read the Old Testament, it gave her great hope because she found herself saying – “I can do better than that!”  She could do better than stealing a birthright and having to escape across the wilderness so that her brother would not kill her.

 

The Bible is full of flawed people, trying to live their lives the best way possible.  And today we have the story of a very important member of our spiritual family, Jacob, and a dream that gave him great peace and comfort, the dream of the ladder that sits on earth and rises into heaven.  I have included a picture of the Tower of Babel because scholars think this was more like a ramp, like that of the Tower of Babel than like many artists’ renditions of the ladder.

 

I want to talk about Jacob’s dream.  Dreams are important in the Bible.  They frequently reveal a message from God.  In today’s text, a dream reveals to Jacob that God is with him, even in the middle of nowhere, even in a site that may have been a sacred place for pagan people.  That is the most important message of this text and of our Psalm today.  God is everywhere.  God precedes us when we go someplace new and does not leave us.

 

For some people, saying that the Lord is in this place might sound like a threat more than the message of comfort that Jacob meant for it to be.  Think of this young man, Jacob, who has run away from home, trying to find his way across the wilderness to his mother’s people.  He is afraid that his twin brother, Esau, who is bigger and stronger than he is, will follow him and kill him.  He is alone, afraid, in the wilderness with the lions.  And, then, God finds him and come to him in his sleep through his dream.  God is with him, even in this unknown territory.  And, the second message is that God can communicate with us through our dreams.

 

The third message is that God’s presence with Jacob was a blessing.  God would stay with Jacob and see him through all the hard times – and there were many.

 

1.  God is With Us and Precedes Us into the World

There is a way of doing ministry that celebrates that God is everywhere and in everyone’s life.  The Jesuits did this when they brought the news of Jesus Christ to the New World.  When they arrived in this hemisphere, they lived with the native people.  They learned what was good and beautiful about their culture and celebrated that as gifts that God had given them.  They learned the language in order to communicate the love of God and good news of Christ in a way that the people would understand.

 

I learned about the Jesuit way of doing evangelism in seminary and have embraced it as a way of doing ministry.  This is the way that I approach people, sure that God loves them and has been present with them from their conception on.  As a hospice chaplain, I would minister to people who had any kind of spiritual background.  Some people had been hurt by Christians or by the church.  Others knew nothing about God what so ever.

 

Whether or not they were a Christian, I would approach them with the assurance that God loved them and had been present in their lives.  As they told me their stories, I would look for the light of grace that would shine through showing the presence of God with them.  Always, they needed to hear the words that God loves them.  And, in a few cases, of people who had been badly hurt by those around them, I cried as I prayed, and reassured them that God had not sanctioned the hurt they endured.

 

In my own life, I have been strengthened by knowing that God is always with me.  Perhaps you have been as well.  If not, I hope you grow to know that God loves you more than anyone on earth can love you.  As a student, it helped to know that God was with me as I walked into a new classroom, took a test, or later when I interviewed for a job.

 

 

2.  God can communicate with us through our dreams.

There is a book that I have enjoyed called Dreams, God’s Forgotten Language by John Sanford.  Sanford says that God speaks to us each day.  That is the identifying statement of the UCC these days, “God is still speaking,” and they end it with an ellipse or a comma, indicating that the sentence is not yet complete.

 

God is speaking to us everyday, sometimes in the words of the devotion that we read, sometimes in the words of a friend, or of a book or movie, or in the memory of a Bible verse or story.  God is still speaking to us.  Sanford says that when we are so busy and distracted, that sometimes, God can only make it through when we let down our defenses and sleep.  Then, God can come to us in our dreams.  Throughout the Bible dreams are important.  Today’s scripture is one of many.  But dreams speak in a different language than the waking knowledge.  Dreams speak in symbols.  And, Jacob understands that.  I wonder is he teaches his son, Joseph, how to understand dreams.  In future weeks, we will see that Joseph becomes famous for his dreams and the ability to interpret them.

 

It is something like learning another language to learn the symbolic language of dreams.  That could be a very enjoyable class some time, to explore prayer and dreams.

 

3. God stays with Jacob and with us, making our lives into blessings.

God’s blessings are strong and lasting.  Jacob became the father of the nation of Israel and is our ancestor as well.  However, that does not mean that all went well with him and he had no troubles.  Jacob was blessed but the day to day occurrences of his life were not trouble free.  Fortunately, he had this dream to strengthen him.

 

Jacob had the gifts for leading a family, but was born on the heels of his brother.  He got the birthright by trickery and had to run away because his brother threatened to murder him.  He fell in love but he, in turn, was tricked into marrying the older, plain sister.  He had to work fourteen years in all to have the woman he loved, and then for years she could not bear a child.  And his children had many problems.  One son raped his sister, another frequented prostitutes, one favorite son is sold into slavery, and a second is put into jeopardy by his brother’s actions.  And, yet, with all these horrible occurrences, Jacob’s family became the God’s people.  We are part of that family today.  He was blessed in time, but not with a trouble-free life.  This scripture has many wonderful comforts for us as we realize the love and presence of God making enduring blessings even out of our imperfect lives.

 

Conclusion

God is with us.  Every day, God is trying to communicate with us.  Every night we dream.  Consider recording those dreams so that you can meditate on what God is saying to you.  God is still speaking…  even to Presbyterians.

 

Let us pray a part of the Prayer of St. Patrick, a prayer that can be used at the beginning of the day.

 

May Christ shield me today.

Christ with me, Christ before me,

Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me,

Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

 

Let me always realize that you are with me Lord.

Open my mind and heart so that I can hear what you have to say to me.  Amen

———————–

References

Sanford, John, Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language, paperback, March 8, 1989.

Sanford, John, Dreams and Healing:  A Lively and Succinct Interpretation of Dreams

Prayer of St. Patrick from the internet, http://www.2heartsnetwork.org/Patrick.htm

 

UCC logo in the Power Point presentation comes from www.ucc.org

 

 

Revised Common Lectionary Readings for Sunday

July 17, 2011, the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

First Reading Genesis 28:10-19a

¹⁰Jacob 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. ¹²And 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; ¹⁴and 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. ¹⁵Know 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.” ¹⁶Then 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.”

¹⁸So 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. ^19aHe called that place Bethel;

 

Psalm Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24

¹ O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

³ You search out my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.

⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue,

O LORD, you know it completely.

⁵ You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

⁷ Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

⁹ If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night,”

¹² even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my thoughts.

²⁴ See if there is any wicked way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Second Reading Romans 8:12-25

¹²So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh — ¹³for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. ¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ — if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

¹⁸I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Gospel Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

²⁴He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; ²⁵but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. ²⁶So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. ²⁷And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ ²⁸He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. ³⁰Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

³⁶Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” ³⁷He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; ³⁸the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, ³⁹and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. ⁴⁰Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, ⁴²and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”