"And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it 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 descendants. . .”
Gen. 28:12-13
In his book Running on Empty: Contemplative Spirituality for Overachievers, Fil Anderson tells a story that has been circulating in his community of Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. It seems that an investment banker from New York happened to retire to this town. Late one morning he left his condo and took a walk down to the docks, where he watched as a young fisherman was unloading his morning catch of large yellow tuna. The banker looked at the fisherman’s catch and asked him: “How long did it take you to catch all these fish?” The young fisherman said, “Oh, not too long really, a few hours perhaps.” The banker said “Well, why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The fisherman said, “Well, this is all I need. I’ll sell most of these to the local distributor, and make enough for my family’s needs, give a few away to friends and everything will be just fine.”
The investment banker said, “Well, what do you do with the rest of your time?” The fisherman said, “Well, I spend the afternoons playing with my children, take a nap with my wife, we have long leisurely dinners. In the evening we stroll into town, I play a little guitar at the local bar; we drink and laugh with our friends.”
The investment banker said, “Oh, I can help you to do better than that. What you should do is stay out fishing twice as long; you’d catch twice as many fish. In time you’d have enough money to have two boats. Eventually you’d double again to four boats, then eight boats, sixteen, thirty-two. Before you know it you’d be the captain of your own fishing fleet with ports all along the eastern seaboard. We’d get you out of this sleepy little town, set you up in a corporate office in New York and you’d be the CEO of a seafood industry on the eastern coast, big enough to sell directly to the markets.”
The fisherman still standing in his boat said “Whoa, how long would all that take?”
The banker said, “Oh, I don’t know; fifteen, twenty years maybe.”
The young fisherman said, “Oh, twenty years! Well then what would happen?”
“Oh,” the investment banker said, “that’s the best part. When the time was right you’d sell off the business and you’d make millions of dollars!” “Millions of dollars!” the fisherman said. “Well then what would I do?”
“Well,” said the banker, “you’d retire to a little beach community, spend the afternoon playing with your grandchildren, take a nap with your wife; have long leisurely dinners…”
The point of the story is this – most of the things we are striving for in this life we probably already have. We often don’t realize it, which is why we, like Jacob, spend our lives striving after the blessings we already have. We need to take stock of these blessings and stop our striving and spend our lives on something of eternal value and purpose.
Last week we read how Jacob in his striving was able to steal his brother’s blessing from his blind father. He dressed up in his brother’s clothes so he smelled like Esau, he taped goat skin on his neck and arms so he was hairy like Esau, and told a bunch of lies so that his father was convinced he was Esau. So he stole the blessing meant for his brother, but he paid a big price for it. It cost him his father’s respect, his brother’s love, and his mother’s company. It did big damage to this already dysfunctional family. Now they were really divided, really hurting and really angry. So Jacob finds himself on the run for his life with Esau wanting to kill him.
In today’s passage, Jacob runs as far away from Beersheba and his brother as he can. He runs and runs until he is so tired he can run no more. And in the darkness of night he finds a rock for a pillow (fluffs it up as best he can) and lays down exhausted and falls asleep. Things were not going well for Jacob the striver and he has only himself to blame. But God is faithful, and does not forsake Jacob. God comes to Jacob in a dream - one of the ways God gets through to people when they aren’t paying attention during the day. And in the dream there is a ladder stretching all the way from heaven to earth…and angels are descending and ascending on the ladder.
Notice it doesn’t say that Jacob was climbing up the ladder! It’s a nice little song but we are not climbing Jacob’s ladder! The gulf between heaven and earth is never spanned by us climbing up to God…it is always spanned by God coming down to us. That is the message of the gospel – Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God, came down from heaven to earth to redeem us. So in his dream Jacob doesn’t climb up the ladder, rather angels of God climb down the ladder, and it is the Lord who stands beside Jacob and says these words to 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; 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 in you and in your offspring.
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.”
Notice who the principle actor is in this message: I am the Lord your God…I will give to you and your offspring…I am with you and will keep you…I will bring you back…I will not leave you. Jacob is being reminded that God is the source of blessing, not our striving. And this message is completely contrary to what we have been taught in our culture. We have been taught if you want blessings you must strive… “If you want to get ahead in this life, son, you have to study hard, work hard and keep your nose clean.” The Protestant work ethic is alive and well in our culture. Now what’s wrong with that, you ask. What’s wrong with study and hard work and keeping your nose clean? Nothing wrong with those things - the problem is tying them to blessing. We do not work hard so that we will be blessed, we are blessed already. When we tie hard work to blessings we make a mockery of God’s blessings and we also debase hard work…it becomes something we do for selfish gain instead of the higher purpose of serving God and others. So the Protestant work ethic is really self-serving and unbiblical.
Jacob seems to hear the message of God this time. Oh, he’s still a striver but he starting to make some significant changes After he wakes from the dream he names that place Bethel (House of God) and he sets a stone there as a marker. Then Jacob vows to give a tenth of everything he has back to God. This is the first sign of tithing we hear about in the bible and it’s significant. Tithing is usually tied to the law…we give 10% because Jewish law requires it. But Jacob’s tithing is pre-law. He isn’t giving to God because it’s required – it’s an act of gratitude…Jacob does it because he realizes that all that he has is a gift from God, not a result of his own striving.
When Craig Barnes was a seminary student, one of his professors used to break loose from his lecture now and then to offer little tidbits of pastoral advice to the students. Most of that advice Craig has remembered long after he’s forgotten most of his lectures. One day he pulled off his glasses in the midst of a lecture and offered this tidbit of wisdom to the class: “Men and women, I hope that when you begin your ministries you’ll start every day by getting down on your knees and thanking God that you are not necessary. Then he went back to the lecture.”
Craig wrote all this down, because it could be on the test, he didn’t know. But it sort of bothered him… “You are not necessary.” And for the first five years of ministry the piece of advice sort of banged around in his head – he was unable to come to peace with it but neither was he able to abandon it either. He argued with it – ‘Oh, I know other people can do what I do, but surely that doesn’t mean I am necessary. Does still needs us right? Isn’t that why God called us into ministry in the first place?’ Well no. So he kept struggling with it… “You are not necessary…does that mean we’re all unnecessary?”
Finally at his five-year reunion he went back, found this professor and said to him: “You know I’ve wanted to ask you about something that you said more than five years ago in a lecture. I’m sure it was just a throw-away line and you’d like to take it back…but you said we are not necessary. Did you really mean that?” And he said, “Yea, yea, Craig, you are not necessary.” (He said it as if to say especially you…you are not necessary.) But then he offered the second sentence which he wished he’d heard 5 years earlier. He said: “You are too important to be necessary. You are cherished. You are God’s own. God’s beloved child. And things that are necessary cannot be loved because they aren’t a choice…you gotta have whatever is necessary.” Then all the lights started to come on for him.
It was not necessary for God to interrupt Jacob’s sleep with this dream. God could have let him stew in his own juices …Jacob’s made his bed, let him lie in it! And it was not necessary for God to send Jesus to be with us and to die for us, we made our own bed, let us lie in it! But God does not do this…because we are cherished. God loves us with an everlasting love and will not abandon us.
There are Jacobs in every church, in every business, in every family who are knocking themselves out to be necessary when in their souls they long to be cherished. There is a Jacob inside each of us who needs to cease striving long enough to hear these saving words of God :
I am the Lord…know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.
Amen