- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: Genesis 28:10-19a

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.

1When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called his elder son Esau and said to him, “My son”; and he answered, “Here I am.” 2He said, “See, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. 3Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me. 4Then prepare for me savory food, such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may bless you before I die.”

5Now Rebekah was listening 9Go to the flock, and get me two choice kids, so that I may prepare from them savory food for your father, such as he likes; 10and you shall take it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.”

“Look, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a man of smooth skin.

she put the skins of the kids on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck

18So he went in to his father, and said, “My father”; and he said, “Here I am; who are you, my son?” 19Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn.

21Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.” 22So Jacob went up to his father Isaac, who felt him and said, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” 23He did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy

24He said, “Are you really my son Esau?” He answered, “I am.”

30As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of his father Isaac, his brother Esau came in from his hunting.

41Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”

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.

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.

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.

I love verse 16 which says, Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it!”

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. 293)

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?

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!"

I am such a skeptic that I have seldom responded to what I call "the manufactured moments with God." Do you know what that is? It's the kind of planned experience with God.

I've never liked pep rallies because it seems to be manufactured emotionalism. Sometimes we do that in church.

The Gaithers wrote a song in the sixties that said, "Get all excited go tell everybody that Jesus Christ is King, I said get all excited go tell everybody that Jesus Christ is King…"

God doesn't usually speak to me in those times. Instead, it’s in the mundane moments that God comes to me.

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 forty-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 41 years later speaking to you from a pulpit.

Have you ever experienced anything 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.

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…

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."