"Stunningly Mundane Moments With
God"
By Dr. Mickey Anders
First Christian Church
Pikeville, Kentucky
July 18, 1999
Text: Genesis 28:10-19a
One of the resources I have really enjoyed studying in preparation for these sermons has been the book by Bill Moyers based on his television show in which various scholars discussed the book of Genesis. As I was reading the section about Jacob's dramatic experience with God, one sentence leapt out at me. Renita Weems, professor at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, observed, "These things happen in stunningly mundane moments." (Genesis - A Living Conversation, p. 288)
I guess that sentence meant so much to me because that's the way I have experienced God in my life. God has seldom come to me in the spectacular moments of life. Somehow during those dramatic, spectacular moments of life I must not be as receptive to God's message. No, God has most often come to me in the "mundane moments" of life, mundane moments that were made "stunningly mundane" by the awesome presence of God. And that's the way it was for Jacob that night at Bethel. When he awoke from his sleep, his first comment was, "Surely the Lord is in this place - and I did not know it!"
Jacob is the first character in the Genesis story with so many dimensions. One scholar observed, "Here we finally have someone we use adjectives for - 'deceptive,' 'clever,' 'shrewd,' 'subtle,' whatever. Before Jacob, the characters are mostly one-dimensional" (Genesis, p. 280).
Jacob appears to have had no experience with God before this point. The Bible describes his birth and points out that Jacob was born holding Esau's heel. Chapter 25 records the argument with his brother when he bought Esau's birthright for a bowl of soup. Chapter 27 tells of his collaboration with his mother to trick his father into blessing Jacob instead of Esau. But up until this point, we never once see the slightest interest in God.
What we have instead is a young man who is extremely ambitious. Jacob is self-disciplined, tenacious, and resilient. He has a strong introspective streak nurtured by many hours in his mother's tent. He is one who can think and talk himself out of predicaments. He's the wily one. He is too busy with his conniving ways to think about God.
In fact, Jacob is at Bethel in the first place because he was running for his life. He and Rebekah have just swindled Esau out of the blessing, and Esau is rightly furious and threatening to kill Jacob. At his mother's suggestion, Jacob has set out for his mother's hometown ostensibly to find a wife.
We wonder what it was that God saw in Jacob. In fact, Jacob hasn't shown any redeeming values in his life to this point. He hasn't presented himself as a particularly good role model for his millions of descendants promised to him. No, as God so often does, He chooses people for his own purposes, not because of their particular merit.
When evening comes, Jacob takes a stone for a pillow and lies down for the night. I always wondered about that stone pillow. That would be enough to give anybody bad dreams. But I recently saw a painting depicting Jacob lying on his side with his hand between his head and his stone pillow. That's better, but it still doesn't look very comfortable to me.
It was a mundane night. Nothing spectacular had happened. By all appearances, Jacob was camping for the night just as any other traveler of the day might have done. He certainly had no expectation that something out of the ordinary would happen. But in the night, he had a dream that was filled with the presence of God. He saw a ladder with angels moving up and down on it. Then God was beside him communicating to him the same promise that he had made to his grandfather Abraham, and his father Isaac. Among other things God says, "Your offspring will be like the dust of the earth. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go... I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."
Jacob awoke from his dream realizing that this was a holy place. He took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a monument to mark this occasion. Then Jacob made a vow to God saying, "If God will be with me, ...then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone shall be God's house, ...and of all that you give me I will surely give one tenth to you." Like his grandfather before him (Genesis 14:20), Jacob responds to the promise of God by committing a tithe. It was a "stunningly mundane moment with God."
Ever since that day, lots of people have had these kinds of experiences with God. Have you had such an experience?
In the Genesis discussion led by Bill Moyers, several of the scholars offered descriptions of their own "stunningly mundane moments with God."
Renita Weems described hers by saying, "I remember when I was in college, seriously contemplating suicide. I'll never forget one time, studying with some other students. I was wailing and crying about whatever it was. I was just at the point of contemplating suicide, when suddenly it was like something lifted. I don't even know what. I didn't say anything to anyone. I was just sitting there in the study carrel, along with other students, and I was crying and crying, when all of a sudden, something lifted. I knew that it was God, and that God was speaking to me. I don't know what God said, but all of a sudden, I didn't want to kill myself anymore." (Genesis, p. 289)
Have you ever had an experience like that?
Roberta Hestenes, professor of Christian spirituality at Eastern College in Pennsylvania, described her experience this way, "I think back to my time in a college dormitory where, sitting in quiet, I said yes to God in a way that I didn't even understand then - I didn't know what I was doing. But I woke up the next morning with an incredible awareness of the reality of God near." (p. 289-90)
Have you ever had an experience like that?
But Burt Visotzky, professor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America,
shared the most dramatic story:
Once I was with a friend, driving between New York and New Jersey.
My friend was really depressed, and he was smoking away in the car, covered
with ashes. He said, "I'm so depressed. Here I am, like Job,
sitting here, feeling lousy and beaten, and covered in ashes. You
know, if only I could have a sign from God."
I was just about to turn to him and say, "Martin, it's just not gonna
happen quite that way," when an enormous black Cadillac whizzed by us on
the New Jersey Turnpike, and we both saw the same thing. Martin pulled
over to the side of the road and turned to me. "Did you see those
license plates?
"Yes."
The license plate, a New Jersey plate, said "G-O-D." If I hadn't seen
it and he had told me he had, I would have said, "No, no, no, no, no."
But we both clearly saw it. Neither of us, of course, had the courage
to call the License Bureau and ask whether they would give a vanity plate
like that. We didn't want to find out. (Genesis, p. 293)
Have you ever had an experience like that?
When I was 17, I won a scholarship to go to the Minnesota Outward Bound School. For the first couple of weeks, I participated in wilderness training and survival skills. Then my brigade took a two-week canoe journey up into Canada. At the farthest point of our trek, each member of the group spent three days completely alone for our survival training.
It was the first time I had ever been so alone. I think it was the longest three days of my life and the hungriest. I "survived" by catching a frog and three little toads, which I skinned and boiled in a small can. And just like I was taught, I ate the tiny pieces of meat and drank the broth so that I wouldn't miss any of the nutrients.
We were given three matches, one for each day. I protected those matches as if they were gold, and, fortunately, started a fire each day with just the one match. A fire was very important for warmth on those cold, Canadian summer nights. But even more important, the fire provided a kind of companionship because, for me, I found God in the fire. For long hours into the night, I would sit alone and watch the leaping fire and then the glowing coals. It seemed to me that the spirit of God was actually in the mysterious movements of the flames.
Even today, I can read back over the journal I wrote some thirty-three years ago and remember the uncanny presence of God in that place.
Have you ever experienced anything like that?
I don't know how few students from the University of Arkansas attended church on that Wednesday night back in 1968, but I did. I can't remember what the service was like, and I am quite sure I didn't hear anything the preacher said that night. But sitting quietly on the pew on that "mundane" Wednesday night, I felt the call of God to be a minister. I had struggled with that call since I had been in the seventh grade, but on that mundane night, I made my peace with God. As I left the church, I told the minister that I had received the call of God that night and that I would be a minister. And here I am 31 years later speaking to you from a pulpit.
Have you ever experienced anything like that?
Just two months ago, in May, I was sleeping in the little apartment on Seventh Street, before my family arrived from Arkansas. I had been sleeping alone in that little garage apartment for four months, and I thought I had gotten accustomed to being alone. But suddenly in the middle of the night, there was somebody in the bed with me. I was lying on my side and he (it was a he) was behind me with his arms around me, holding me so tightly that I couldn't move my arms or turn around to see who it was. For some reason, I wasn't particularly afraid, but I wanted to know who it was. I kept struggling and asking out loud, "Who are you? Who ARE you?" And then I woke up with a strong impression that He was God.
Have you ever had an experience like that?
Keith Miller, a highly successful Christian insurance man, wrote in his book The Taste of New Wine about the time he pulled his car off to the side of the road and did what he'd known for some time he must eventually do. He gave his life to Christ. He pledged to God that he would do from now on whatever he felt God directing him to do. He'd been miserable for some time. Despite success in nearly everything he tried, life simply wasn't the kind of joyful existence he knew Jesus promised. Then he wrote this: "Something came into my life that day which has never left. There wasn't any ringing of bells, or flashing of lights, or visions. But it was a deep, intuitive realization of what it is God wants from a person, which I had never known before. And the peace, which came with this understanding was not an experience in itself, but was, rather, the cessation of the conflict of a lifetime. I realized then that God does not want our money, nor primarily our time. He wants our will. And if you give him your will, he'll begin to show you life as you've never seen it before. As I sat there, I continued to cry, only now the tears were a release from a lifetime of being bound by myself, of the terrific drive to prove that I am something, what I have never quite understood. Although I could not understand or articulate for many months what had happened to me, I knew in the core of my life I had made personal contact with the very meaning of life."
Have you ever had an experience like that?
Back in the days of the telegraph, a group of job applicants waited
in a room for their names to be called for the interview. They paid
little attention to the sound of the dots and dashes, which began coming
over the loudspeaker. Suddenly, one of them jumped from his seat
and barged right into the employer's office. Soon he returned smiling.
"I got the job!" he exclaimed.
"What do you mean? He hasn't even interviewed the rest of us,"
the others complained.
The new employee responded, "You might have gotten the job too if you
hadn't been so busy talking that you didn't hear the manager's coded message.
Those dots and dashes coming over the loudspeaker said, 'The man I need
must always be on the alert. The first one who interprets this and
comes directly into my private office will be hired.'"
The lesson is clear: Too many of us are not really tuned in to God.
We go through the mundane moments of life without considering the possibility
that God might break in at just such a time as this. Remember the
lesson of Jacob, "When God comes your way, the mundane moments of life
can become "stunningly mundane moments with God."