The Bible is not a history book, at least not in any traditional sense. It lifts up some stories and skips some centuries completely. Beginning with Abraham and Sarah, Genesis takes 40 chapters to tell us about four generations. And what mattered to our spiritual ancestors may baffle our modern minds. Why is an entire chapter dedicated to Abraham buying a funeral plot for Sarah and why repeat the contract details three times? (Genesis 23) Why did Moses carry Joseph’s bones out of the land as they left Egyptian slavery? (Exodus 13) Is the Bible telling my children to bury me in Kentucky? Why spend whole chapters describing ancient disputes over water or 67 verses describing Rebecca and Isaac’s arranged marriage? I was happy to read that our matriarch Rebecca is kind of a cowpoke, feeding, saddling, and riding a camel across the desert. She only dismounts and covers her hair in modesty when her newly arranged husband walks across the grain fields to meet her for the first time. That kind of flips the western romance novel on its ear.  

What do we glean from these old stories? Some more literal friends might degrees towards arranged marriages or strain to explain Abraham’s passing off Sarah as his sister as part of God’s plan. But we can read these stories symbolically, parables with misdirected actors, understanding that the story of God’s matchless grace unfolds across the Bible’s story arch. As we do our interpretive work, it helps to remember that these monotheistic pioneers are fumbling through life without a Bible, the Ten Commandments, or any Judeo-Christina tradition whatsoever. They seem to get more wrong than right, and if they are the imperfect human reporters of their own stories, they may at times get what they think God is saying to them wrong as well. I do not think the God who said, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test,” would have Abraham drag Isaac up that terrible mountain. Do you? (Matthew 4)

Our story is a story of family strife. Jacob and Esau are twins, born maybe two minutes apart. Jacob comes out of Rebecca’s womb grabbing after his older brother’s heel. And so the parents name him Jacob, one who grabs the heel, that is tripping in sports and life, and cheating is kind of what Jacob is about. Jacob will steal from his brother and lie to his dying father. Esau’s name is Red! Esau grew up to be hairy, athletic, outdoorsy, popular, and rough. Esau takes long fishing and hunting trips up in the mountains with his dad. Jacob hung out around the tents, tending to farm fields, flocks, and gardens. Jacob is a good cook and a fair enough actor to deceive his dying father. I’m going to say that ‘lying to his dying father’ thing, at least three times as these ancient stories enjoy triplet repetition. Both twins suffered as Rebecca loved Jacob and Isaac loved Esau. How is it that our dreams for our children can limit our love and keep us from letting them be who God created them to be?  

In our story, Jacob has run out of breath, energy, and daylight. He is running for his life, stopping only after the sun has set. He collapses, so tired and empty handed that he uses a rock for a kind of pillow. The schemer has not prepared for the journey, having no camel, backpack, bedroll, or even bread for supper. Jacob is driven by his fear that Esau wants to kill him. He has run away from the family, stables, flocks, and fields he plotted to control. 

Jacob runs knowing the last thing he did was to deceive his dying father to steal a family inheritance that belonged to his brother. Maybe Jacob did not think it all through when he slipped on his brother’s unwashed clothes, padded his shoulders, bolstered his beard with goat hair, and attempted to drop his voice. Three times his dad asked him, “Who are you?” Three times Jacob pretended to be someone else. When Esau learned of his brother’s successful deceit, the narrator tells us Esau wept bitterly and furiously thought (to himself) about killing Jacob. Rebecca heard a rumor that Esau planned to kill Jacob. So, Jacob took off running with nothing to show for all his scheming… a prodigal without a coin purse.

Now, maybe Jacob is running from himself more than Esau. It seems that Esau never saddled up and rode out looking for Jacob. It would have been a pretty quick hunt for such an outdoor expert. The Bible never mentions Esau pursuing Jacob or tells some story of Jacob hiding in a cave to evade Esau. I think that would have been something Jacob’s people would have shared if it happened. Maybe, just maybe, Jacob is just running from Jacob not Esau; maybe the one who grasps the heel is fleeing themself. Why do we chase after distractions instead of facing our messes?  

Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham are not role models, but who is, besides Jesus? God’s grace is the real story in the Bible, showing up in spaces, places, and people where we never really expected to find God- lying in a manger, healing the sick, eating with the party people, flipping over tables, crying out alone on the cross, and rising victorious over the grave.  Has your soul ever awakened and realized that God was in a place, a conversation, or an experience, and you did not know it?  God is with us even when we are pretty sure we have broken it beyond repair. 

The sun is not shining when Jacob dreams about a raised staircase linking heaven and earth. God’s messengers walk up and down the ziggurat like priests before the altar, when suddenly the Lord God- God’s very self- stands on the staircase of Jacob’s dream and declares, “I am the Lord, the God of your ancestors. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying… and every family on earth will be blessed because of you and your descendants. I am with you now….” 

I wish I could tell you that Jacob wakes up a completely changed person, that Jacob goes home, faces the messes he created and seeks Esau’s forgiveness. However, Jacob remains a pretty transactional person. Jacob will only lose his name ‘the cheating tripper’ and get a new name, Israel (‘striving after God and people) after decades of stumbling around. That is usually the way of sanctification, a slow movement of grace opens us to God’s radical love. Few of us pray one prayer and become holy.  And yet, Jacob wakes up, maybe for the first time freer from his pattern of always scheming to beat his brother, taking every advantage to win, and striving to earn his dad’s love.  Maybe Jacob wakes up to God’s radical love. Jesus tells us that when we learn to give, to love, to lend, to forgive, to be, and to do without the expectation of reward, we “have become children of the Most High”. (Luke 6) Maybe Jacob claimed some of that birthright that morning. Maybe Jacob woke up and said, “I am beloved. God is with me. God was in this place, and I never knew it.”

Maybe when the sun finally rose and Jacob flipped that rock up on its end to be a pillar instead of a pillow, making an altar, a marker of change, a signpost and promise, Jacob for the first time understood that God loved him, not because of what he earned or achieved, but because God is love.  God is in this place, even when we don’t know it.  Maybe Jacob saw the world in a new way, not something to grab, or scrap and fight for, but maybe Jacob dreamed for the first time that he might be a blessing to the world- that coming generations might be blessed by his life.  Knowing we are loved changes us like that. (1 John 3-4)

Every week as our youth end their UMYF time together, they circle up passing around a Christ candle sharing where they saw God during the week. Where was God this week but maybe we missed seeing God? That question ‘where did we see God today’ is a beautiful way to end every day. I thought I would close out our sermon with some of our youth and leaders sharing when, where or with who did they see God when they went on the ASP trip to Magoffin County Kentucky. Come and share with us where you saw God, maybe unexpectedly.