"I am with you" - Sermon for July 23, 2017 Lectionary 16

Sermon:

Text:

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who is right here with us.

            Last week I said that Jacob was my favorite old testament figure. And it’s because of this passage here.

            Jacob sleeps and dreams of a ladder to heaven, angels ascending and descending and then God appears to him, promises him descendants and land, and then God promises to be with him in his journey. It’s wonderful, God with him, God with us. But we have to ask, How did Jacob end up here in the wilderness?

            Last week we heard of Jacob taking his elder twin brother Esau’s birthright, he gets all of his inheritance, all for a bowl of red stuff, lentil stew, that Jacob was making. But, that’s not all that was Esau’s right to have as the elder, he would also receive the blessing of his father. But, Rebekah, who loved Jacob more than Esau, wanted Jacob to receive Isaac’s blessing. So, they devise a plan. By now Isaac is old and blind, and Esau as we remember is a hunter and is also very hairy. So, Rebekah has Jacob go and prepare the best lamb of the flock, and taking it’s furry skin make arm bands for himself, and bring the meat to his father. I don’t know if he does his voice differently, but Isaac because of the “hairy” arms and choice meat, assumes that it’s Esau and gives Jacob Esau’s blessing.

            Esau is out on a hunt preparing for this exact blessing, comes back from his hunt, also having killed and prepared wild game for Isaac, and brings it to him to receive his blessing.

“Then Isaac trembled violently, and said, “Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me, and I ate it all before you came, and I have blessed him?—yes, and blessed he shall be!” 34 When Esau heard his father’s words, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, “Bless me, me also, father!” 35 But he said, “Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing.” 36 Esau said, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright; and look, now he has taken away my blessing.

            Esau then says to himself, I will kill Jacob as soon as my father Isaac dies. But, Rebekah hears this, and says to Jacob, flee my son, they go to Isaac and he says, go, find your kinsman Laban, your mother’s brother, and find a wife from him.

            So, that’s where we find Jacob. He’s not just out for a stroll in the wilderness, he’s fleeing for his life. He’s outcast now, a refugee from his own family. He didn’t even have time to pack anything, if you notice he uses a stone for a pillow. Doesn’t even have an extra cloak or tunic to ball up to use. He doesn’t know where he’s really going, he knows the name Laban as his mother’s brother, but has never been there or met them. He can’t go back, and he doesn’t know the way forward. Everything in his life has been changed.

            It’s not an uncommon thing for us as well. Do we face the same situation as Jacob? No, but we face our own. Change comes and we don’t know how it will end up. A death happens, and we don’t know how life will be afterwards. We lose a job, an illness occurs, cancer, heart disease, anxiety, depression. Things change the whole of our lives, and we find ourselves in wildernesses with nothing but a rock to use as a pillow.

            Jacob sleeps, he can do nothing else at the moment. And he dreams. He sees a ladder, angels go up and down it. We usually envision a simply step or extension ladder, but the reference is to the steps or ramp up to the top of temples that many of the other cultures around them would construct. Such as this. The idea is that we humans are on the bottom and we go up to meet God. God is not present with us, but in that separate place above.

            But, in his dream, God is right there. God is with not on top, but right beside him.

 ““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[d] 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.”

            I am with you. We see it in Psalm 23, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; We see it in Jesus words at the end of Matthew, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” This is the first instance of it, this is what those other moments reference. God is with us, in all that we do, wherever we are, whatever is happening. In your wildernesses, in the midst of the change you are facing now.

            In those moments of life where you don’t know what’s next, when what was is gone, God is with you. In grief, in illness, in depression, God is with you. Not some far off place, not at the top of some temple, but right there with you. In green pastures and dark valleys, God is with you.

Amen.