Jacob’s Dream: Team Ministry Evensong on 19th August 2007 at St Michael's Woolmer Green: Genesis 28 v10-22 Revd. Julia Boothby

Tonight we progress further with the adventures of Jacob and come to the part where he leaves his father's house and sets out on a visit to his uncle Laban in Haran. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, he is to find a wife from within the family; not to intermarry as Esau has done with the Canaanite women, and, second, to upset Esau’s plan to murder him in revenge for Jacob stealing his birthright. Well, as this biblical version of Eastenders continues, so Jacob, lying down to rest, has a dream. A dream in which he sees a ladder reaching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it, and God then speaks directly to him.

Dreams of course are ripe for interpretation. In fact, the Jewish teaching in the Talmud comments that;
“A dream un-interpreted is a letter unread.” As you may imagine there have been many, many interpretations of Jacob's dream and all that it means. Early Jewish interpretations of the dream include the one which suggests that what Jacob sees is the future giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, the ladder representing the Torah and the angels going up those who obey the law, and those coming down those who fail to observe it. Alternatively there is an interpretation that the ladder signifies the exiles which the Jewish people would suffer, each angel representing a particular historical period.
Well and so it goes on. Then of course there are the classical Christian interpretations of this event which see the ladder as representing Christ, the one who is the bridge between heaven and earth, and as a reflection on Christ’s words to Nathanael in John chapter 1;  “ Truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”  Finally there are any number of books and websites that from a purely secular perspective will interpret dreams. Ladders can be a good or bad thing depending on if you are going up, success at work, promotion, or coming down them, losing your job, house etc!  Not that it takes a genius to work that out!

Well as someone who dreams a lot I have a sort of vested interest in understanding more of Jacob's dream. My dreams tend to be of really bizarre and colourful kind, but I was quite surprised when I did actually have a dream about Jacob this week. In my dream Jacob was offering up to God a beautiful glass, which came out of a very special box, and in it was cold, clear water. When I woke up and remembered this I was for a moment quite excited….had God spoken, what was he saying? Then I remembered. The night before I had been unpacking from the carefully wrapped boxes in which they had been given to me, a new set of wine glasses. So much for my dream!

But seriously, I think that actually what is fascinating about this dream of Jacob is not the interpreting of the ladder and the angels, but rather the whole appearance of God to Jacob. As Susanna reminded us last week, Jacob was not exactly an innocent man. He had successfully schemed and lied his way into stealing his brothers birthright. He was, as one of my commentaries so aptly put it ‘selfish, calculating and cold-blooded’. Now, I am not condoning Jacob’s behaviour. There is no doubt that he was a liar and a thief. But, I just wonder if perhaps his motive was actually a good one.

Let your imagination loose for a moment and imagine the scene around the camp fire in the evening as Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Esau sit around eating a stew from Esau’s catch of game. As they sit there so the family stories are told and retold, in a way not so very different from the way we do today with our families. As they eat so Isaac tells them the story of their grandfather Abraham and how he meets with the one true God. They hear of the promises that God makes to Abraham, promises of land and descendants, promises of a future. Perhaps Isaac tells them of his own story, of the time that Abraham was going to sacrifice him, tells them of the times that God has appeared to him and promised that he will bless him and that his descendants will be as numerous as the grains of sand, if they will obey God. And as the stories of God at work in his family are told and retold perhaps Esau, with the contempt of one who knows how to look after himself, brushes them aside, but Jacob, the quiet one (as we are told) thinks about them and so begins to long for the same sort of blessing to come to him, for him to be the one who will inherit the promises that have been made.

Blessings are clearly very important to Jacob as we have already seen, and as we shall see again in his struggles with the angel, whom he refuses to let go until he receives a blessing. So, perhaps Jacob was not all bad. Certainly his methods were, and there is no excuse for them. But perhaps his motives were good ones, inspired by a desire to inherit the blessing of God.

Whatever we may think, what is certain is that he was guilty. Now he was effectively a fugitive on the run from his brother. And so far away from home, he lies down on just a rock for a pillow and there, perhaps of all the most unexpected places, he meets with God. The God of his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac comes to him in a dream and speaks with him. God reveals himself in a real and personal way to Jacob with a promise that he will be with him and bless him. God promises to give him the promises made to his ancestors, the land on which he is lying and many descendants, through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed. This was no confused dream of blurred images and mishmash from the day's events, but a dream of extreme clarity and truth that meant when he awoke he could remember everything and immediately set about marking the place as a sacred one. Jacob knew that he had met with God and from now on his life was marked as the one who was the inheritor of the promises that had been made first to Abraham then to Isaac and now finally to himself. So what do we make of this encounter? Whatever we may think of the motives of Jacob, he has clearly been wrong in his actions, and yet here is God promising to bless him and watch over him.

It seems to me that here we have God showing himself to be the God of grace. So often we think of grace as coming with Christ, and yes it is in him that God’s plan for salvation comes to fulfilment. But here we have God displaying grace to Jacob. Grace is when God gives us the things we don’t deserve, and here we can see God bestowing his blessing upon Jacob the liar and the thief. In many ways we are all Jacob. We are all sinners and not one of us deserves the blessing of God. Nothing we can do will ever be enough to make ourselves worthy of the blessings that God has for us. Just like Jacob we are thoroughly undeserving, and yet in his mercy God has reached down through Christ and offers us all his forgiveness and his love. So, you can see why the Christian interpretation of the ladder representing Christ in the dream is not so far fetched. Here is a prefiguring of the ultimate act of grace that is the cross. And, what is more, the promise that he makes to Jacob reminds us that it is through him and his descendants that all people will come to know him. Jesus the Jew, direct descendant of Jacob, would be the one who brought salvation to the Jews but also would be the means of grace to the Gentiles. Here, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, his coming is prefigured as God reveals himself to Jacob in a dream. This is our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who we can know as our Father in heaven through Christ Jesus our Lord. And, just as grace was shown to Jacob, so God’s grace is shown in all its fullness in Christ to us. How will we respond? Jacob responded with worship; ‘How awesome is this place’ he cries, and sets up his pillow as a marker of this sacred place. But not only this, he promises to follow God and to offer to him a tenth of all that God gives him. “ Jacob made a vow saying; ‘if God will keep be with me, and will keep me in the way that I go, and if he will give me bread to eat and clothes to wear, so that I come again to my father house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God”.

Now, some commentators argue that the shifty Jacob is back to trying to make a bargain here…if you will do this then you will be my God. Others, including myself, read it as...since you have promised this to me then I will follow you. Read and decide for yourself!  Jacob responds with obedience and worship. How will we respond? Do we daily take time to ask God for his forgiveness and thank him for the wonderful mercy he has shown to us? The God who forgave and showed mercy to Jacob is the same God who reaches down to us in love and forgiveness in Jesus.

But, if we can all learn from Jacob something fresh about God’s grace in our own lives, then surely we can all learn something too about the way that God speaks. As the writer to the Hebrews reminds us, ultimately God has spoken to us in Christ. But is that it? Does that mean we cannot expect to hear God speaking today?

I find it interesting that at Pentecost we so often read and hear people speak on those verses from Joel...
“In the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out my Spirit on all mankind”. We hear of God’s gift of the Holy Spirit to all who believe. But how many sermons have I preached or heard on the words that come next...
“Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”

Does God simply not speak in dreams and visions any more? Does God in fact speak at all? Of course, we are all rightly wary of misinterpreting dreams, of thinking that we see things when they are really only the product of our imaginations. But I do believe that very often we miss God speaking to us simply because we fail to listen. God does still speak, that I am convinced of. Not always in dramatic dreams and visions, but often in a still small voice. A voice that speaks to us through the beauty of creation, through the comment of a stranger or the unexpected encounter. A voice that speaks through the moments of silence that come with the early morning or late at night. And in order to hear we need to listen, and to listen we need to stop and stand still and let God speak to us. We may never have an encounter of the kind that Jacob had, but God longs for us to hear his voice. May we have the ears to listen.