Stairway
Genesis 28:10-19

July 20, 2008


We prefer stories that take place on big stages where the stakes are high and clear for all to see. Stories during wars and about kings and queens in their courts, and even football games contesting the Grey Cup, are the best kind of story, we believe. But these grand tales only imitate the small stories of long ago lives, the details of which at times appear irrelevant and too personal and insignificant to matter much to a larger world.

The story about the brothers Esau and Jacob continues, though the most infamous part has been ignored by the Lectionary. If you think you have a dysfunctional, conniving, divided and deceptive family, read Genesis 27. This is a rivalry 4000 years ago for the family inheritance and for the future of a whole nation as yet not formed so that for all its readers and listeners through the centuries the stakes could not be higher. That such a story could be Biblical and indeed can only be Biblical is still just amazing.

The game is on in which Israel’s destiny still lies unfulfilled with two unmarried, quarrelling fraternal twins, Esau and Jacob, sons of Isaac and Rebekah. The narrator never openly says that Isaac and Rebekah are arguing, but it is clear that they have attached their reputations to their favourites. At one point (Gen 27:6-7), Isaac speaks to “his son Esau” and Rebekah talks to “her son Jacob.” Isaac, old and blind, knows now is the time to bestow his blessing upon his oldest son Esau. Eavesdropping Rebekah knows too that it is time for Jacob to deceive, for the stakes are too high to allow what is normal to remain normal.

While Esau runs off gleefully to hunt his game for a savoury pre-blessing meal for his father, Jacob is sent out back for the fast-food version, a couple of young lambs, which Rebekah herself will prepare for the blessed meal. Jacob knows that this is all worthy of a curse rather than a blessing, but Rebekah assures him it will be her curse.

In the ancient world a blessing was not just a nice bunch of encouraging words, but an occasion when something human becomes downright divine. It is the sacred obligation of the father to offer a blessing that describes and foretells what will come to pass for the son, and the blessing being derived out of a relationship with God.

Jacob puts on a sheep skin to fool his blind father that he is the hairy Esau, and Isaac falls for the ruse and gives the blessing he would have given to Esau. “Be lord over your brothers, and may your mother’s sons bow down to you,” he encourages accurately. When poor Esau returns and both he and his father realize what has happened, the amazing part of the story is that Isaac does not have another blessing to give. It is as if the blessing possessed a physical quantity that he has expended and cannot possibly replenish. Our liberal ways of thinking are not heeded here, “Bless me also, my father,” is simply not doable. There is a limited supply of blessing and love in the world and to bless a second son is to invalidate both blessings. Years back I talked with a young wife and mother who had been having an affair with another man. Isn’t it possible, she asked desperately, to love two people at the same time? Let’s all answer that question first before we dismiss Isaac’s reticence to bless twice.

No philosophical questions for Esau, however, for he will wait until his father dies and then kill Jacob. Rebekah gets wind of this and tells Jacob, “Your brother Esau comforts himself by planning to kill you,” an intriguing choice of verb. She sends him back to her brother Laban in Haran up north until Esau has calmed down - should only take a decade or so. And don’t marry those dreadful Canaanite women! Esau hears that and goes right out and marries one, the daughter of Ishmael - another son who had been rejected.

This is the family from which we have all spiritually descended: two brutish and deceptive brothers, a shamelessly scheming mother, a patriarch who has been taken for a fool. One son is sent off in necessary exile, the other intentionally spites his mother by marrying the wrong kind of woman. And all of this is how God works out the salvation of the world. This is the golden age.

A funny thing happened on the way to Haran for the fugitive Jacob. The story transforms itself into an ode, a poem and song of praise, so what happens is real, perhaps surreal. It is a long walk, so one night he stopped at a certain place, not just any place. There were plenty of good stones lying around and Jacob chose one of them for a pillow as he lay down to sleep. Then he dreamed.

Throughout much of the history of humanity, people have held in awe those who have some kind of ecstatic encounter with God. Call it a vision, a revelation, a dream, a possession, nice people may behave the way God wants us to behave, but real prophets or shamans are filled with God in inexplicable ways. Modern religious thinking, especially mainline Protestantism, has tried to reduce the effects of these experiences, even to outright eliminate them. Yet, while you and I live in a very rational, scientific world in which the emotional is largely discounted, we are all here in a church worshipping because we know that there is another and critical dimension to human life and existence, one that cannot be quantified and seldom described and explained understandably. Jacob dreamed and another dimension became clear to him, and this time it was God’s.

A ladder was set up right in front of him, with angels ascending and descending upon it, a stairway to heaven. Many a painting has depicted what this might look like. Of course, for the slightly younger contingent here there is a famous rock anthem, “Stairway to Heaven,” which tells of a woman who thought it really possible that she could buy a stairway to heaven, could simply get whatever she wanted out of life, happiness for certain, salvation perhaps, for the right coin. Can you imagine someone actually believing that?

Jacob became aware that here was an entryway into the divine presence, a portal into a different dimension as in science fiction movies, not a normal place at all. Then before a thought could be thought, the voice of the Lord standing at the top of the stairway, speaks directly and personally to Jacob. After all the deceptiveness of Jacob and Rebekah, the violation of ancient family codes and traditions, indeed a great amount of lying and stealing, the Lord identifies himself as the God of Abraham and Isaac, and now of Jacob. This is your Promised Land and I will bring you back to it, no matter where you go. The promise to Abraham that became Isaac’s has now become yours, and it won’t be over until it’s over. Jacob awoke. “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”

That says it all. He has encountered God and there can be nothing more complete in this life, even though words are inadequate to describe what has happened. God was in this particular place, yet Jacob at first was completely unaware. He couldn’t see or hear or smell or touch or taste that God was here, and that’s our perpetual problem as well. God is present in every kind of place, at every imaginable time, and often in unimaginable situations, but it is rare for you and me to notice that God is right here. As a sad consequence, if God does not strike lightning or boom out over the PA system or hold up a sign with angels hovering about, we tend to believe that God is never really present anywhere.

Despite the shameless guile of this family and their antics which give no measure of pride, this story is Gospel in capital letters, the Good News writ larger than you imagine. Abraham was considered deserving of this great promise by God, a promise that remains ours not yet finished. He was a worthy man with a few faults. His son Isaac likewise was missing a few pieces, and a little foolish at the end, but he was a worthy one. But the dream and the promise is on flimsy foundations, for now here’s Esau and Jacob, abetted by Rebekah, and most moralistic sagas would have had the Promise extinguished due to lack of worthy exemplars. Few of us can claim any better for our clans and our own lives - a little bit of good, a little bit of not good, and some foolishness thrown in to season the lot. Jacob had no right, no human right, to bear the Promise, but the Gospel is that God is the one in control, who blesses those people we good people in society never want to bless. God sees something in these certain places and people that you and I don’t. Just remember, spiritually, Jacob, not Esau, is our ancestor, our family, and we are more like him than we prefer to admit. Remember as well, God is in this place and we do not know it.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan