Genesis 28:10-19
Surely, Jacob stammers wiping the sleep from his eyes. Surely, Jacob stammers adjusting to the light. Surely, Jacob pauses to understand the things that he heard in his sleep. Massaging his stiff neck, Jacob stammers. Surely, there couldn’t have been a ladder. Surely, there weren’t angels. Surely, it wasn’t God. Surely not. Surely, Jacob takes a moment to absorb these things. Surely the Lord is in this place.
Jacob didn’t settle on this place knowing that this would happen. He didn’t curl up with that stone hoping it would be transformed. No, Jacob was just tired. The sun had set and Jacob had been running for too long. And he should run. He stole his brother’s birthright. It wasn’t his to take but that didn’t matter. Not to Jacob. He snatched it from his starving brother as quickly as he grabbed his father’s blessing. So, he had to run. He had to get as far away as possible. He had to be sure that the outcome was not reversed. So Jacob ran. Jacob ran until he was so tired that a pillow of stone felt comfortable. And he sleeps.
Jacob immediately falls into REM sleep, but it is not Jacob that is rapidly moving anymore. Now it is God. It is God that interrupts the rapid movements of this tired man. God comes close but it’s not clear how. The translation is funny. In most translations of this dream, “the Lord stood above it.” God is perched at the top of this stairway. God is above the dancing angels. God is looking down on sleeping Jacob. But the Hebrew is not so clear. This phrase could mean above but it could just as easily mean beside. And so, the New Revised Standard Version imagines God beside Jacob.
We reach for God enough. Like Jacob, we’re tired. We’ve been trying all of our lives to contort ourselves into what God wants us to be. We’ve been reaching and reaching so that our lives will change with all the drama of Jacob’s. We want to finally stop running, but instead it seems that God is just outside of our reach. God is too far away. God is looking down on us. God is so distant. God is never beside us, but as one Hasidic master wonders, this ladder – this stairway that stretches from the pillow of stone upon which Jacob sleeps straight up into the heavens – this ladder might reveal that we can be firmly planted on this earth and still find God beside us.
It’s the mystery that God could appear in this place. It’s the awesome possibility that this could be the house of God – that God could come and make a home with us. God could be beside us, but that’s hard to imagine as we worry about our nation’s budget and our own debt. We don’t find God beside us while balancing our checkbooks. No. As we attempt to secure our future as carefully as Jacob, we miss God’s interruption. We miss what God is doing with the ordinary stones in our lives.
Jacob didn’t think anything of that stone either. It was just an ordinary stone. It wasn’t going to be anything more than that. Jacob didn’t have the imagination of Annie Dillard’s friend Larry who has been faithfully trying to teach a stone to talk. But it’s just an ordinary stone. Most of the time, that stone just sits there on the shelf but every so often Larry takes it down and begins the ritual of teaching the stone to talk. There’s no ritual for Jacob. He’s too busy balancing his checkbook. He’s too tired to notice that the stone has changed.
We can argue about that. The stone couldn’t have changed. That’s ridiculous. The stone will never start to talk like we do. It will never be as soft as pillow. No. It’s too hard. It’s too cold. It’s too rough. Still, it happens. Not as we expect. Never – it seems – as we expect. But the stone is transformed in the palm of Larry’s warm hand. That cold, hard stone can become – as it did for Jacob – as soft and warm as a pillow. He doesn’t rub it between his fingers. He doesn’t teach it to speak. Jacob’s just tired of running. He’s tired of reaching.
So he simply lays his head upon the cold, hard, rough stone and falls asleep. And from underneath that stone, a ladder reaches to very top of heaven. On this ladder, angels dance. Up and down. Down and up. It’s not explained anymore than that. We may attempt to explain this ladder by properly calling it a ziggurat, but it doesn’t captivate our imaginations quite as much as that stone. For surely, we know that stone. We know how heavy it was when Jacob lifted it. We know how it felt underneath his head. We know how tired he was to have found comfort upon that stone. No, more than stairways to heaven that we might belt out in song when no one is looking, we know that stone.
It’s an ordinary stone. Jacob didn’t do anything to change it. It was the same stone he made into his pillow. That may seem like transformation enough – but then, God comes and stands beside it. This is why I opt for the translation in the New Revised Standard Version. It’s too hard to imagine how the hard, cold realities of our world will change when God is far away. Certainly it’s possible. The early Christians believed this so much that they called themselves “living stones.” They were as ordinary and determined as Jacob. It might be easy to kick them out of the way while walking down that path, but those early Christians knew they were alive. They knew that God was beside them. It was rough. It was hard. But God was beside them. And there is so much more for us to imagine when God comes and stands beside the things that seem impossible to change.
In those hard, rough places, in our checkbooks and our broken hearts, God comes beside us. God moves beside that stone and angels begin to dance. Up and down. Down and up. Across the heavens, these messengers of possibility climb. If that were not enough, God speaks when the stone will not. God comes beside sleeping ordinary Jacob who might be kicked out of the way otherwise. To this sleeping stone, God says:
“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.”
Surely, this would make anyone stammer. Surely, this sudden awareness would make anyone pause. Surely, it can’t be as we have heard it. As Jacob adjusts to the light and massages his stiff neck, he stammers to describe what he has experienced until the words flow out of him.
Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
And there – in that awkward stammer – is the change that we wanted all along. It’s the certain realization that God was there. God is there. We didn’t know it but God was there all along. God is beside us. God will go with us wherever we go. God will take us into her hand so that we can be transformed from the cold, hard stones we once were. Surely the Lord is in this place!