Search, Known, Named Sermon July 20 2014

Sermon July 20 2014 

Genesis 28:10-19a 

Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24 

Romans 8:12-25 

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 

“Search, Known, Named” 

God of dreams and visions, we enter into moments of stillness and feel your presence. Through relationships – our relationship with you and with others – we know that you are constantly with us. We thank you for your many gifts to us, but especially for the gifts of being named, known, and cherished by you. Amen.  

The psalmist wrote in Psalm 139,  

“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.” 

This is one of those texts that used to worry my friend, make my friend a little nervous, a little anxious to think about God always following, tracking, staying right there—all the time. But I think that reflected more about how my friend saw God, more than how God is with us.  

To me, Psalm 139 tells me that no matter how lonely I feel, how isolated I think that I am, and even how anti-social I decide I’m going to be, God does not quit pursuing me. God does not continually try to be in relationship to me. God doesn’t even turn away from me when I choose to say mean things under my breath or right out there in the open. And really, the reason I like this psalm the most is that it is God who sees and knows, and stays with me—not someone who makes quick judgments based on appearance or superficial criteria. God isn’t someone like me.  

I say that because when I look at Jacob, like I told you last week, I think he’d have been someone difficult to like, for me. He’s a little too charming, smooth, manipulative or something for my tastes. Between the scripture last time and the one Em read this morning, a few things have happened. Last week, you remember, Jacob traded Esau for his birthright. Then, after Isaac aged, became somewhat blind, he and Rebekah schemed together to get the official blessing that would affirm the trade. You may have heard the story. Isaac sent Esau out to hunt and make him a meal—in the meantime, Rebekah decided that Jacob should dress up like Esau, including goat skin on his neck and hands and fool their father into officially giving him Esau’s place in the family. That place included being the next head of household, Esau’s birthright. So Jacob did it. And Esau was angry, hurt, felt betrayed, and he rejected his brother and to get back at his parents, he married another Canaanite woman. Oh, and he threatened to kill Jacob for what he’d done. In order to give Esau time to cool off, Isaac sent Jacob to Haran where Rebekah had come from to get a wife for himself. He specifically told him to go to Laban, Rebekah’s brother, to find a wife. So Jacob is headed to Haran. He was going there to get a wife and he’s going there to save his own life.  

There’s a graphic on the internet that I’ve seen several times, it says in part: Jacob was a cheater. Peter had a temper. David had an affair. Noah got drunk. Jonah ran from God. Paul was a murderer—it goes on, but you get the idea. Then it says, God doesn’t called the qualified. God qualifies the called.  

Jacob was a cheater—and he had this dream in today’s text. He was running away from his rightfully angry brother and God reveals something incredible to him in this dream. As Jacob watched angels, the residents of God’s realm, go up and down the ladder between heaven and earth, Yahweh, the Lord stood with him. And as Yahweh God stood with him, God promised that his family would number like the dust—Abraham’s promise—and that the land on which he was sleeping would be his one day. But right now, it was time to go and God also promised that God would stay with him all the way. God would be with him, going out and coming back.  

Psalm 139: 

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.  Jacob the cheater, was now Jacob the dreamer. He dreamed of God’s angels coming and going on the earth, carrying God’s messages, filling humanities dreams with hope, warning, love, awareness. That’s how he knows they’re angels—angels are messengers.  

And Jacob awoke with excitement. He said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” He’d had a wonderful experience, an incredible dream. And as people did then and sometimes still do, in his excitement he gave the place a name. He called it Beth-el, Bethel, city of God. He stood up on end the rock he’d been sleeping on, anointed it with oil and blessed the place, commemorating his experience of God’s presence with him.  

He awoke with excitement, but imagine how he felt before he lay down than night. It was dark and full of the sounds of nighttime.  

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.  

Up until now, I’ve been kind of hard on Jacob, I know that. That’s why I’m glad God isn’t someone like me. My problem with Jacob may also have to do with what I have in common with him—and isn’t it difficult to see the character flaws in someone that reminds you of yourself? Jacob ran from his brother’s anger, on his mother’s advice and his father’s instruction. And he was sleeping outdoors. His brother Esau is the outdoorsman, the hunter, and wouldn’t have had any trouble surviving this trip.  

I can imagine Jacob’s anxiety this night as he lay down to sleep. It doesn’t really bother me to sleep outside on vacation, but I have lots of other fears. I’m not really afraid of spiders and snakes, though I want to see them before they see me. My fears are probably a lot less practical, less concrete than those fears: rejection, violence, anger, hostility, loneliness. 

But imagine Jacob’s fear of leaving home for the first time. Imagine your own fears, whatever they are. Maybe it is loss of home, being uprooted like Jacob for some very real reason. Maybe our fears are fears of losing those we love. Many of us fear death—not necessarily dying itself, but pain, loss of control, or leaving loved ones even for just awhile.  

Many of our fears stem from being uprooted or feeling insecure in our surroundings. But all of us will one day leave this place and go elsewhere in some way. And some of us have had to leave behind homes, roots, connections, friendships, and even sometimes family. Even leaving the hardest situation takes courage and the assurance that good, that God will accompany us on the journey, that for God nothing is in the dark.  

People all around the world today are refugees and usually in today’s world refugees are fleeing dangers that threaten large numbers of people all at once. Jacob was just one—yet he comes to represent, several times in scripture, a people who would be enslaved, defeated, exiled, occupied, oppressed, and driven out. Jacob will become Israel—and Israel represents all peoples like this.  

Refugees are people who have, usually through the violence of another, been forced to leave their homes and roots and seek shelter with people who know enough about life to offer hospitality to the stranger. You don’t have to know and fear God to know that hospitality is the right thing to do—if no one is hospitable and helps the stranger, we’re all going to be in trouble. But knowing God helps me anyway because I know that God has welcomed me whether I’ve earned it or not—and I’ve rarely earned it.  

A young woman in Canada wrote a poem about her own experience of being uprooted. I can imagine Jacob thinking something similar. (Daniela Luna Cárdenas Ibarra) 

Uprooted 

I was a young but strong tree in my home, 

growing sturdy. 

Taking the vitamins from the dark rich soil 

to bear fruit of the sweetest type. 

Until I was transplanted, 

told to leave. 

I grabbed the soil harder with my roots 

saying this is my home, 

my only home. 

But even a strong tree like me can be moved. 

I took one last look at the place I knew so well, 

getting farther away every second 

until I was no longer home. 

I wanted to stay, 

I had no choice, 

I was uprooted.1 

Jacob found hope in God’s promise to him—that the place he named Bethel would be his place, his home someday many years in the future. When we read that story, we realize how many years it is. But that was Jacob’s hope. So the hope was a land for all of his adult life—not really. Jacob’s hope and his roots were in God, no matter how imperfectly he carried off that rootedness. And God stayed with him, speaking with him, dreaming with him, encouraging him.  

And as a refugee, a traveller in need, someone threatened by the violence of his own people, Jacob will find a home for years a long, long way from this place he called Bethel. He will find Laban and both uncle and nephew will find out how much they have in common. And both were still a part of God’s story, the story of God’s people. God’s presence remained.  

I love Psalm 139 because I know that, if I know nothing else, I can know that God is there.  

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;    it is so high that I cannot attain it.  

And I can know that I’m going to do it as imperfectly as I do anything else—because that’s me, imperfect and okay with that. I have to accept that Jacob was who Jacob was and that I am who I am. There may be improvements along the way, wisdom to gain, bad habits to lose, good habits to gain.  

So we pray with the psalmist.  

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. 

To God’s glory, in this place and every place that people call home. Amen.