Gen.28:10-19a; Ps.139:1-12,23-24; Rom.8:12-25; Matt 13:24-30,36-43
Misdirection. I think that’s the reason why we have the reading from Genesis and the reading from the Gospel of Matthew matched up this morning. Misdirection. Let me explain.
As you may or may not know, our church uses what we call the “Revised Common Lectionary” to decide what scripture readings we use on any given Sunday. This Lectionary uses a three year cycle so that we read the majority of all four Gospels by the end of that three years. We are currently in Year A, and in Year A Matthew is the primary Gospel that we read from.
The second thing the Revised Common Lectionary strives to do is to match an Old Testament reading with a Gospel reading of similar meaning. In most cases it’s not too hard to figure out why the two readings were selected together. But on a Sunday like today I have to believe that the amazing story of Jacob and his “ladder” to heaven was selected in order to soften Matthew’s message of ultimate judgment today.
Jacob’s story is pretty straight forward. Jacob leaves his parents Isaac and Rebekah and heads off to find a bride among his kinsmen in Haran. But primarily Jacob leaves to escape the wrath of his brother Esau, the eldest son, whose blessing Jacob has stolen from his father Isaac. Along the journey Jacob camps for the night in the middle of nowhere and realizes through a dream that he has slept in the presence of God, and in the process he receives a special revelation from God.
On his way to somewhere else Jacob finds God in the wilderness instead, and names the place Bethel, or in Hebrew “Bait-El”, House of God. We’re left with the inspiring imagery of a sleeping Jacob, his head resting on the landing to a ladder that leaves the ground and towers up into heaven, with angels ascending and descending the ladder at will. Interestingly most illustrations of this scene replace the ladder with a staircase, which seems odd to Christians. The Hebrew word used is “sullam”, usually rendered in Hebrew translation as “staircase or steps”. But “sullam” is not used anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible, it is completely unique to this passage, and exactly what meaning was intended can’t be certain. For whatever reason we Christians see a ladder, some more modern thinkers see a teleporter or even a wormhole. Exactly what Jacob saw is lost to time, but the importance of the story is not whether it was a ladder or a staircase or a wormhole, what’s important is that what Jacob saw was for Jacob alone. What Jacob saw and heard enabled his faith. God offered Jacob a glimpse of the divine in action, and with that revelation Jacob saw what he needed to see and he heard what he needed to hear to free him for unquestioning faith.
Others in the bible had visions that enabled their belief, too. Moses beheld a burning bush that, though it was burning was not consumed, and by stopping to examine it found himself in the very presence of God. Joseph, Jacob’s son, was a dreamer like his father, and his visions enabled him to believe that he would one day surpass all his older brothers and save his entire family. Joseph’s dreams also enabled the Pharaoh of his time to believe in the Hebrew God, allowing Pharaoh to plan for a devastating famine that exceeded all the years of feast that preceded them and would have killed many of his people with starvation. Jonah found his faith in the belly of a great sea creature, and after his release he found the courage to deliver God’s warning of coming doom to the city of Nineveh, allowing the entire city to repent and be saved before it was too late.
Some of us find God during those times of wandering through our own wildernesses, too, times when we are in the middle of nowhere, times when we are running from our past and fearing our future. Those who search rarely find God during times of feast and comfort. More often than not God gives us the glimpse we need to sustain our faith when we’re lost deep in the dark belly of our own metaphorical whale, or when we’re moving about the business of this life and something that looks out of place makes us pause and investigate, or in our dreams and visions, when things that seem impossible in real life come to us and challenge us to believe in the impossible.
God came to me in two critical times in my life. God came first when I could not find a human Lord who could possibly understand the pain and loneliness of a teenager horrified by the violence and heartlessness of the world. God came to me when I could not even consider a human Lord who could accept and even love such an imperfect and flawed reject such as me. God acted through a single person to teach me about the unconditional love held for me by a very human Lord.
God came to me a second time as an adult when I could not find a divine Lord to have faith in, when I was so deep in my own self-destructive attempts to think my way to faith in a divine Lord that only a direct intervention, a vision of exactly what I needed to see exactly when I needed to see it, no more and no less, a sign just for me. God acted through a vision of a transfigured Lord to teach me that a divine Lord and a human Lord are one Lord, and both are in my life.
Neither of the times God came to me were times that were expected or even convenient, and they certainly were not something I anticipated. For most of us God comes to us when it’s most inconvenient and uncomfortable for us: when we’re standing in line deciding which credit card to use to buy that latest pair of jeans or shoes or golf clubs and we turn and accidentally lock eyes with that person in dirty clothes who’s digging frantically through their change to buy that out-of-style shirt from the deep discount bin. God comes to us when we’re in the grocery store check-out emptying a cart plump with organic fruit and vegetables, seafood, deli meats, fresh baked goods, bottled water, all those things we need for that perfect dinner party, and we overhear the checker at the next register telling a woman with a baby that her WIC check isn’t enough to pay for the milk, butter, eggs, and formula that she has on the belt. God comes to me when I’m checking out in the convenience store with my cappuccino and my candy bar and my Cherry Garcia Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for later, and that beater pickup truck rumbles up to the pumps with three kids standing on the front seat and the dad comes into the store and pays $10 cash for gas and redeems a $1 winning scratch-off so that three skinny, scruffy kids can share a box of Sour Patch Kids. God comes to us when we’re stuck in traffic and we notice a man wandering between the stopped vehicles, and when we panic because he’s coming to our car next and we wonder if we have any change or if the light will change quickly enough or why we should even be put in a situation where we have to decide whether or not to give him any money, and then we notice his sign is a picture of an infant and it reads in shaky letters, “Please, anything you can spare to help me bury my daughter”. God comes to you when you’ve lost your job or lost your most important relationship or lost your most cherished possessions or lost your very selves. God comes when you finally hit bottom so hard that in order to get back up again you have no other option but to cry out and to freely and finally hand over all your burdens to the One who is waiting to take them from you and to bear them for you –then will He truly come to you and you will truly be free.
The Good News today is that sooner or later all those who search fervently for God will be given a glimpse, but it will probably be at a time that’s inconvenient for a visit from our maker, and it will always be at a time and at a place and in a circumstance of God’s choosing, not ours. We need to just let that go. God will be where and when and who God will be, and we just have to have that kernel of faith that when we ask we will be given exactly what we need to believe.
The Good News today is that, despite the very clear warning in Matthew’s Gospel reading today about how the children of the Kingdom and how the children of the evil one will be treated at the end of time, God comes to each and every one of us and offers us the choice of whether we will be “good seed” or whether we will be weeds, whether we will be children of the light or pawns of the darkness. We don’t have to worry about those weeds in our lives that try to poke us or to limit our growth or to choke us out; God will deal with the weeds of this world when the time is right. God calls on us to have the faith to simply open our hearts. God calls on us to have faith that God loves us unconditionally. God calls on us to have faith that God forgives us completely. God calls on us to have faith that when we are barely treading water in our lives and we frantically call upon His name, he will show us exactly what we need to see and to hear and to feel, to believe in his Good News.
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