Jacob was between a rock and a hard place. Having skillfully and despicably maneuvered his brother out of the birthright and blessing that belonged to the older Esau, Jacob’s cleverness had finally failed him. All he could do was flee and trust that his mother would find some way to keep Esau from following and killing him – Esau, the bigger, stronger man, the skilled hunter, who had a temper as fiery as his red hair. But unlike Jacob, and unbeknownst to Jacob, Esau had some respect for their father, Isaac, and decided to wait until after the old man died, before pursuing his brother. So Jacob ran. 

When darkness arrived, he was exhausted. Pillowing his head on a stone, he fell into a deep sleep in which he had an extraordinary dream. Upon waking, he recognized that God was in this place where he had slept – and he hadn’t even known it. At exactly this point of limbo — landless, rootless and with no real prospects for the future — God met Jacob at a place of no special significance and transformed it into the house of God, the gate of heaven. His dream of a stairway did not give Jacob access to heaven; rather, God spoke to Jacob where he was, denoting God's immanent presence rather than a faraway removed God calling from a distance. 

To this point in the Bible’s account of Jacob – whose name means “the one who trips up” or “trickster”– there is no mention of Jacob paying any attention to God or to the covenant God had made with his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham. Undoubtably, Jacob had observed Isaac offering prayers and sacrifices, but God wasn’t “real” to him, in the way that food and water, love and anger, stones and stars are real. Nothing beyond Jacob had yet laid hold of him and claimed his life. Not until this dream of a stairway or ladder with God’s messengers going up and down, did Jacob experience the presence of God – and it filled him with fear and awe.

Jacob didn’t pray to God, asking to be kept safe. He didn’t have any idea that he could. It was God who first approached Jacob and made unqualified promises of protection and blessing; land, descendants and prosperity. God came to Jacob when he was most vulnerable, when he knew he was alone and lost, when he was most aware that there was nothing he could do or offer in exchange for the gift of his life. Nor did God call Jacob to account for the ways in which he had manipulated, used and betrayed the people closest to him. The encounter was all grace, all promise, all reflecting the nature of God, not Jacob’s fitness or worthiness.

Who and what Jacob was – his flaws, his personality disorders, his weaknesses, his fears, doubts, worries, self-centeredness – God knew it all. God knew. And of all the characters God could have chosen, God still chose Jacob. Today’s story attests to the ability of a divine reality to break into a world of fear, terror, and loneliness. In this text, Jacob’s dream, which he dreamed somewhere in the middle of nowhere, offers a different way of looking at the world. When the dreamer sees a world that is infused with the divine presence, it transforms both the dreamer and the world around him. 

Holy ground – the gate to heaven – may be anywhere. There is no way we can know where or when God will reveal God’s self. We human beings often seem to think it will be on mountains – whether Mount Sinai or Mount Olympus. Or in a grove of ancient trees – oaks or redwoods, say. Or in a building dedicated to worshiping God – a temple or a church. There will be at least a shrine or a circle of stones or something to indicate that here is a place where God once put in an appearance and might again. 

In scripture, though, God is most often encountered in the middle of nowhere. It’s in the literal and/or figurative wildernesses of life that God tends to break into human awareness. I think that’s because when we feel lost, alone, at the end of our resources, that’s when we are most likely to be our true selves – without rationalizations or illusions, without pretense or defense. 

Frequently, it’s only in hindsight that we recognize that “God is in this place – and I did not know it.” Sometimes, it’s only looking back that we realize God walked with us through the valley of the shadow of death. On the other side of grief or terror or depression we may come to understand that we survived because God was there, even though we did not know it.  

But occasionally, it’s right there in the middle of the all-gone-wrongness of things that it hits us, God is in this place – and I didn’t know it.

For me one of those times was when my husband and I were divorcing. Although we speak of divorce as if it were a single moment in time, it’s not like that at all. There is a long time – months, maybe years – that can be compared to the grinding of tectonic plates, building an awful tension before the final rupture. And then, of course, there is the slow work of putting things in order after any earthquake. Well, I knew the earthquake was coming – indeed, I had helped to precipitate it. And I both wanted and didn’t want the break. In the middle of the realization of how wrong it all was, in the middle of the dining room – who knows what I was doing? – God suddenly brought me up short. No words, no vision, just the simple understanding that I was God’s beloved, that God had not and would not desert me. 

Why then? Why when all my worst traits and fears were so in evidence? When I knew most clearly that grace was completely undeserved? That’s just when God found me available, I guess.

Unlike Jacob, I didn’t immediately erect a stone or create a shrine. That dining room and everything it contained is long gone from my life. What I have is the memory and now the putting into words of my experience. My shrine is this testimony, this story, unremarkable though it is. But putting words together takes time. If, like Jacob, we need a more immediate, more tangible mark of an encounter with God, a stone will do. Any old stone. 

On your way out of church, on the side of the road, in your own yard, pick up a stone today — whatever catches your eye. Over the course of this week, perhaps you will pause – or be forced to pause by circumstances beyond your control – and realize “God is in this place, too – and I didn’t know it.” If so, a rock could come in handy as a marker, a reminder that God is apt to find us anywhere.

The place may be your vehicle – when you are stopped in a long line due to road repair. 

The place may be your garden that, far from the paradise of your imaginings, is playing host to beetles and slugs, a woodchuck and powdery mildew.

The place may be your bedroom, when something – moonlight through the window or the cat or your aging body has awakened you in the wee hours and you can’t fall back to sleep.

It may be your place of work, when the umpteenth interruption prevents you from accomplishing what you had intended this day and the stress is leaving you exhausted.

Or, just perhaps, God may find you in a place of beauty – some place that has always managed to restore your soul, or a place that you have visited many times and only now does it hit you how extraordinary it is, or a place that you come upon for the first time, whose loveliness makes you catch your breath. You feel immensely grateful, while knowing there was nothing you did to deserve such a blessing.

The apostle Matthew did nothing to deserve the honor of having Jesus as a guest at his table. Matthew, a Jew, a Son of the Covenant, had, like Jacob, betrayed his family when he turned to collecting taxes for the enemy occupiers. If you think of yourself as a good, patriotic, spiritual person, wouldn’t you wonder what in heaven’s name Jesus was doing, enjoying the hospitality of a traitor? Why did Jesus choose Matthew of all people? Why not one of the law-abiding, respectable, honorable Pharisees?

How does Jesus answer that? “Law-abiding, respectable, honorable folks have no need of me,” he says. “It’s the law-breaking, unrespectable, dishonorable ones who need healing.”

Now we’re caught, just like Jacob, between a rock and a hard place. Either we hold on to the image of ourselves as decent, upright, virtuous, and having it all together — and thereby forgo grace — because why would we need it? 

OR we admit to that piece of ourselves that is unwell, shameful, dishonorable — and thereby open ourselves to the possibility of amazing grace. There’s a catch, of course. If we acknowledge our need for grace, we are joining the company of other needy, unrespectable, immoral people whom Jesus came to heal. That is, we can hold ourselves aloof and forfeit Jesus’ presence in our lives, or risk reputation and honor by partying with all the other low-lifes Jesus calls friends. But hey! We can be a whole congregation of partying low-lifes and have a rousing good time together!

Easier said than done, though, isn’t it? We have buried shame so deeply; who wants to risk exposure?

Steven Garnaas-Holmes, on his blog, Unfolding Light, put it like this:

There are two religions in the world:
the religion of being right
and the religion of being loving.
They are incompatible.
Get it right and you may hurt someone.
Love, and you may break a rule.
We are always practicing one
or the other every moment,
always choosing.
This is Jesus' faith in a nutshell:
not religious orthodoxy but loving behavior.
Not being right but being loving.
I know this, and believe it deeply.
Yet Jesus' words stick:
“Go and learn.”
I'm not there yet.
I'm still right, and proud of it.
Still learning, still learning.

Just so. Nevertheless, God can find us anywhere, at any moment, to sneak grace into our hearts and entice us toward new life. Thanks be to God. Amen.