{"id":1104,"date":"2020-07-19T08:24:25","date_gmt":"2020-07-19T12:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2020-07-19T17:51:49","modified_gmt":"2020-07-19T21:51:49","slug":"a-pillow-in-the-wilderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2020\/07\/19\/a-pillow-in-the-wilderness\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pillow In the Wilderness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Sermon for the First <a href=\"http:\/\/firstcongregationalalbany.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Congregational Church of Albany, NY<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor \u2022 \u00a9 2020 All Rights Reserved<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Seventh Sunday After Pentecost\/A \u2022 July 19, 2020<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=462124839\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Genesis 28:10-19<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio aligncenter\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/2020.0.19-sermon-71920-5.34-PM.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption><strong>Hear the sermon being preached<br \/><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>There\u2019s a lady who\u2019s sure all that glitters is gold<br \/>And she\u2019s buying a stairway to heaven.<br \/>When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed<br \/>With a word she can get what she came for.<br \/>Ooh, ooh, and she\u2019s buying a stairway to heaven.<\/p><cite><em>\u2014Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There aren\u2019t many stories that have two great songs about them. The story of Jacob and his dream has an old camp song, Jacob\u2019s Ladder, which we\u2019ll sing later and the Led Zeppelin song, <em>Stairway to Heaven. <\/em>We can enjoy the songs but what can we learn from the story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To really hear the story means knowing where we are in the larger story of God\u2019s people. Take Jacob, for example. Today we meet him in the wilderness, camping alone with a stone for a pillow. We heard the story of Isaac earlier this summer. Isaac married Rebekah and she had twins, Esau and Jacob. Esau was swarthy, hairy guy from the beginning, an outdoorsy hunter; Jacob was born second, grasping his brother\u2019s heel, with a prophecy that he would supplant his brother. The name \u2018Jacob\u2019 literally means \u201cThe supplanter\u201d and while Isaac loved Esau, Rebekah loved Jacob. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Early on, on a day when Esau came in hungry from hunting, Jacob was cooking but insisted his brother sell his birthright in exchange for food. Later, when Isaac is near the end of life, Rebekah helped Jacob fool Isaac into giving him the blessing meant for Jacob, so Jacob became the next in the line of patriarchs. Esau threatened to kill Jacob and Rebekah sent Jacob away to protect him. Now he\u2019s returning from that journey. Think how he must feel; think how tense and worried he must be about what kind of reception he will receive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just as we look back to a line of heroic people we call the Founders, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and others, Israel had a series of patriarchs whose encounters with God were touchstones of God\u2019s purpose. Abraham was the first, followed by Isaac, the child of promise, and now we come to the third, Jacob. The striking thing about these legendary figures is that not one of them shows up as a particularly morally upright figure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We like to make up stories that show our founders in an idealized way\u2014is there anyone who didn\u2019t grow up hearing the story of George Washington and the cherry tree?\u2014Israel remembered the good and the bad about their patriarchs. Abraham believed God but often wavered from the path of promise. Isaac is not portrayed as someone who ever understands what\u2019s going on. Now we come to Jacob, the trickster, the supplanter, who always has an eye on getting ahead, even refusing to feed his brother until he sells his birthright, even cooperating in a fraud to fool his father and gain the inheritance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s an important message here: God doesn\u2019t just work with the good. Later this summer we\u2019re going to hear that what God wants is to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. What Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have in common, what sets them apart, is that whatever their lapses, whatever their failures, they always listen to God, always pursue God\u2019s purpose when it becomes plain. That\u2019s grace: that\u2019s God\u2019s love. And it isn\u2019t just for the perfect, it\u2019s for all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later in the story, we\u2019ll see the principle again and again. Moses is a convicted murderer but he becomes the prophet who defines God\u2019s next chapter with God\u2019s people. David, King David, has so many lapses it\u2019s hard to really tell his story without embarrassment but he always loved God and God always loved him. This is the first and most important thing to take from this story: God meets us not because of who we were, but because of who we can become. You don\u2019t need fancy clothes or a great resum\u00e9 to come to God\u2019s party, God sees our hearts and embraces us when we hope in humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The story begins with Jacob setting up camp in the evening. He puts a stone under his head for a pillow. Even in the wilderness, we all seek some comfort. He has a dream. In the dream, he sees something where figures are going back and forth from heaven. It\u2019s come to be called \u201cJacob\u2019s Ladder\u201d but the figure is actually what we would call a ramp. Long ago, human beings decided God must be up above and so with that way we have of trying to use the mechanical to accomplish the spiritual, they built huge buildings with ramps so that you could literally get closer to heaven, closer to God. In the Ancient Near East, these were called ziggurats. Priests went up them to lead worship at the top; later they came down to speak about what God wanted. In Jacob\u2019s dream, figures, angels, are ascending and descending. Stop there for a moment; think how we often imagine God as inaccessible, we even have a song that describes God as, \u201cImmortal, invisible, God only wise, In light inaccessible hid from our eyes\u2026\u201d But here God is accessible and if we follow the Bible text with its ramp instead of the folk song with its ladder, heaven is even barrier free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In his dream, Jacob sees God standing with him, and God recalls the history of the promise. \u201cI am the Lord, the God of Abraham and your father and the God of Isaac, [Genesis 28:13a]\u201d This isn\u2019t a sudden intrusion; this is God reminding Jacob of the history of God\u2019s promise. What comes next is a renewal of that promise and that purpose. Just as God promised Abraham, God promises to be with Jacob, to give him a place and descendants an to make his family a blessing to the whole earth. A lot has changed since God first announced this purpose to Abraham. People have lived, people have died; some have been faithful, some have not, there have been wars and new babies and treaties and discoveries. God\u2019s purpose hasn\u2019t changed; God\u2019s purpose never changes. So if the free, forgiving embrace of God is the first lesson here, surely the second is the peace of God\u2019s permanent purpose.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We talk a lot these days about \u201cgetting back to normal\u201d as if our memory of a time when schools were open, sports were played in crowded stadiums, and going to a restaurant was the way things always were. But the truth is, all that was a moment, a nice moment perhaps, but a moment. If we want to be a part of what is truly permanent, it doesn\u2019t mean trying to get back to normal, it means going forward pursuing God\u2019s purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jacob reacts to all this in such a human way. If you read it seriously, you have to laugh. When he wakes, the first thing he does is to say that God is in this place and name it \u201cBethel\u201d, which means God\u2019s house. Then he takes the stone, as if any of this has to do with the stone, and sets it up as a marker. Isn\u2019t this just like us? How many things do you have that you can\u2019t get bear to lose? We\u2019re doing a lot of cleaning up and tossing out this summer. I have some boxes I\u2019ve moved more than 20 times that contain notes from my high school girlfriend. I don\u2019t know why I\u2019ve kept them. We parted long ago, I\u2019m sure I wouldn\u2019t even recognize her today if we met on the street. But there they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s the same with churches. We become attached to stuff in our churches. Just like Jacob setting up his stone, we think we need things because they\u2019ve always been here. Years ago when I was working with a committee on furnishing a new worship space, we had a long discussion about chairs versus pews. The chairs were promising, more comfortable, more flexible. But the issue was denied when most of the committee said, \u201cIt\u2019s not church without pews.\u201d I honor and value the historic things here. But I know this: it\u2019s just furniture. The communion table is just a table. The baptismal font is just a baptismal font. This pulpit is just a wooden pulpit. What\u2019s important isn\u2019t the furniture, what\u2019s important is the spirit. Without the people of this church, without our working together, without God\u2019s spirit, there would be no church. Without the table and the font and the pulpit, we would still be a church.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The final moment of this story may be the most important of all. It\u2019s beyond what we read today but in the next verses, Jacob chooses to take his place as a patriarch, he promises to serve God, to follow God\u2019s purpose. The stone he sets up is just a stone; the choice he makes will set his course for a lifetime. He will become the father of the tribes of Israel; his youngest son Joseph will have a dream of his own that will make the next chapter of God\u2019s people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What about us? So often we are like the lady in the song, trying to buy with our goods or our goodness a stairway to heaven. Jacob\u2019s dream is here to remind us the way to God is free and waits only for us to walk humbly with God, for us to seek God\u2019s purpose. This is a wilderness time: we\u2019re all going through unfamiliar things. In this wilderness, instead of lashing out in anger or holding on to a memory of normal, perhaps we should find a pillow, lay down, and wait for God to come to us, so that we too, in our time, may understand how we can serve God as part of God\u2019s purpose. For indeed, as Jacob said of Bethel, if we look closely not at this building alone but at the people it embraces, we will say, \u201cSurely the Lord is in this place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor \u2022 \u00a9 2020 All Rights Reserved Seventh Sunday After Pentecost\/A \u2022 July 19, 2020 Genesis 28:10-19 There\u2019s a lady who\u2019s sure all that glitters is goldAnd she\u2019s buying a stairway to heaven.When she gets there she knows, if the stores [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,161,3,2,69],"tags":[148,250,237,248,251,249],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-after-pentecost","category-genesis","category-sermon","category-worship","category-year-a","tag-covenant","tag-dream","tag-grace","tag-jacob","tag-revelation","tag-waiting-for-god"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1111,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions\/1111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}