The first symbol of the Christian church was a boat at sea.  The disciples were fishermen, after all.  Our gospels feature stories of the disciples together in boats on water much like Christians are gathered in the church in time.  

One of those stories has been particularly meaningful to Christians navigating in other tumultuous times. 

After Jesus feeds the multitude, needing some time alone to pray, he sends the disciple ahead of him in a boat.  While he prays through the night, the boat is “battered by the waves… for the wind was against them” (Matt 14:24b).  

As the sun rises, Jesus “came walking toward them on the lake” (Matt 14:25b).   We might well expect the disciples, of all people, to recognize Jesus coming to their rescue and to be relieved when they see him.   Instead they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear (Matt 14:26).  

Their cries are a form of prayer as familiar to us as is the comfort Jesus gives them:: “Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid’” (Matt 14:27b).

There are twelve disciples, but only “Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water’” (Matt 14:28).

Peter believes he does not need to be afraid like the others.  He speaks for  those times when we ourselves recognize discipleship is about stepping out of the boat and into tumultuous seas believing Christ will meet us there. 

Jesus said, “‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water and came towards Jesus” (Matt 14:29). 

Alas, when Peter “noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’”

Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’ Matt 31-33

Peter demonstrates the conflict of discipleship, the courage to take the first step toward our fears and the thrill of discovering again the power of faith to sustain us, and in taking a second step finding anew we cannot make it on our own.  

This vision of discipleship is put into verse in a familiar hymn:

Jesus calls us o'er the tumult
of our life's wild, restless sea;
day by day His sweet voice soundeth,
saying, "Christian, follow me."

We are sailing tumultuous waters in our homes, in our schools, in our national politics, and in the church.  It is our natural, human tendency to look for safety however we can find it, even if it means believing other powers can calm the troubled seas, or that discipleship requires neither risks nor courage nor stepping out in faith.  

We emerged from 2023 dripping wet, like Peter.  Jesus has reached out and taken us by the hand, and rescued us yet again, as always.  We have learned a lot about faith and discipleship along the way.  

Though we began the year with a deficit budget, we ended the year with a surplus.  Our members are participating in the worship life of the church as never before–our Serving in Worship program is thriving.  Our Council emerged through the tumult with a plan for two steps of faith our congregation will take in the coming year.

First, we will begin a Conflict Transformation Process. Our goal is to transform conflict into energy for growth and renewal through change.  Second, it is time for our congregation as a body to clearly define who we are and where we are going together–our Vision and Mission.  Working toward this clarity will enable us to constructively and cooperatively plan for our future.

Finally, and speaking of steps of faith, Bob Mutton completes his service as our moderator after guiding our Church Council with courage and compassion these past two years.  Bob would love to serve as our Moderator for another two-year term, but other important matters call him away from us.

We are grateful to Bob for his passion, humor, and discipleship.  We are thankful the Spirit called him to serve as our Moderator, and trust the Spirit will guide him as he answers the call to leave us to sail other seas. 

God bless you Bob. We love and are grateful for your faithfulness.  

Yours in Christ,
Pr. Craig

I have begun attending a Community of Practice, hosted by the Wisconsin Conference of the UCC.

Six UCC pastors meet each month as a community to talk about pastoral ministry. It is a chance to talk with friends who have answered the call to ordained ministry and how we put this call into practice.

It is a great help to gain perspective of congregational life in other churches, sharing the joys and burdens of ministry.

Our leader, Bob Ullman, a retired pastor, has many years of experience serving as the church, and now works with the Wisconsin Conference to develop pastors and to help congregations.  

Bob shared an article recently on the page that follows.  

The article, originally published in the Wisconsin Conference Newsletter, summarizes a talk Cameron Trimble delivered to local pastors and church leaders. I hope it speaks to you as it did to me.

Yours in Christ,

Pr. Craig 

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Congregations Provide the ‘Circles of Sanity’ We all Need

The pandemic is over, but the challenges to mainline churches remain: Although 50 to 60% of people are regathering in person, there’s nothing to suggest that the other 40 to 50% of the congregation plans to return. How can the church thrive in the face of those statistics?

The answer, suggests the Rev. Cameron Trimble, is to engage our collective imagination to shape the church we want to see. Trimble, a UCC pastor, futurist and church consultant, earlier this month delivered a Leadership Matters Lecture hosted by the Damascus Project. Her talk, “Church Post-Doom: The Future of Spirituality and Congregational Life,” took dead aim at the malaise gripping many segments of the church.

“What we’re suffering from in the human condition is a poverty of imagination,” she said, noting later that “innovation comes at times of desperation.”

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated existing trends, Trimble said, including the breakdown of democracy, the climate crisis, the racial reckoning around the death of George Floyd and widening economic inequality, as well as the declining size of religious institutions and their influence on society. One result of these trends is an epidemic of loneliness.

“It feels like a hot mess,” she said.

The antidote: Build “circles of sanity . . . communities that hold the values we want to see in the world.”

“I would call them ‘congregations,’” Trimble said. Among the keys to building the congregations that serve the future we want:

• Build trust. “Change moves at the speed of trust,” Trimble said, and people increasingly find institutions untrustworthy. As we create “circles of sanity,” let’s make sure they provide a trusting, safe environment where relationships can blossom.
• Be authentic. For trust to grow, congregations and individuals must be accountable for being who they say they are.
• Nurture community and connection. “That’s the subversive act of congregational life,” she said. 
• Communicate. Lack of communication erodes trust. In her work with congregations, “Almost universally one of the first complaints is ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’” Trimble said, noting that “surprised people behave badly.”
• Recover a deep sense of spirituality. People of faith must cultivate the inner life, to “recover a deep sense of spirituality, of experiencing the faith we proclaim.”

These imperatives are vital to innovation. “What we need to be doing is building and rebuilding trust, identifying and living values, building connections and bringing forth our greatest creativity to meet the moment,” Trimble said.

This passage ends with a beginning: “She named him Moses because, she said, “I drew him out of the water. She is a princess, Pharaoh’s own daughter, violating his genocidal decree that every male child be thrown into the Nile. Pharaoh’s purpose is to keep girls for sexual exploitation and domestic slavery, but he is thwarted by women who subvert, and undermine him at every turn, exposing his absurd belief in power that seeks to counter God’s creative power, which like water flows through the compassion of women: unstoppable.

Pharaoh’s plan begins with the hands of taskmasters, who oppress the Hebrews with forced labor to build his city, storehouses for his wealth and places to worship his gods.  But the more the Hebrews are oppressed, the more they thrive. They grow and multiply, a teaming and unstoppable force, so that the taskmasters dread them, and redouble their ruthlessness, making the lives of the people bitter in every way possible. 

When oppression fails, he then turns to cruelty, commanding Hebrew midwives to kill the male infants they deliver.  The two midwives who receive his command represent many, for two midwives would surely be unable to deliver all the babies born to thousands of Hebrew slaves.  

Their names speak the truth of God’s power invested in them. The name Shiphrah translates as “beauty.”  The name Puh’ah means “gurgle,” as the mothering sound made to sooth a child.  For Pharaoh to command Hebrew midwives whose lives are devoted to the beautiful, soothing work of bringing Hebrew children into the world is failed and absurd from the start. 

The power of God is manifest in the midwives use of Pharaoh’s own blindness against him to subvert his will, which is no match for God’s intent to liberate the Hebrews:

But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.  So, the king of Egypt summoned the midwives  and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?  The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them. Ex. 1:17-18

The word translated to vigorous derives from the Hebrew hayot, which in its verb form means “to live,” but in its noun form means “animal.” Thus the midwives are saying the Hebrew woman are not human like Egyptian women, but are like animals when they give birth, using Pharaoh’s own racist views to undermine him.

Pharaoh then assigns his genocidal plans to the whole Egyptian people in his effort to be rid of the Hebrews:

Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.’ Ex 1:22

We have no records of whether the Egyptians followed this command. It hardly seems possible, given the failure of the task masters, the subversiveness of the midwives, and the turn soon to come in the story—Pharaoh’s own daughter defying his command and obeying compassion.

Pharaoh’s demise comes by way of a Hebrew marriage, resulting first in the birth of a daughter, and then in the birth of a male child, hidden until he can no longer be kept quiet. His mother fashions a basket, a tevah, the same word used for Noah’s ark, sets him afloat, with his sister, Miriam, to tend him.

The part the Egyptian princess plays is sketchily told, as is the distress of the mother in this momentous risk she undertakes. But if a mother’s care for a child is a universal constant, then we might well imagine that she knew the the place and time the princess bathed, and floated the ark in a carefully timed moment, into the reeds, across which the Hebrews will later escape.

What develops in this moment is God’s power again manifest through human compassion, as with Shiphrah and Pu’ah, subverting the force of death represented by Pharaoh.

Upon discovering the child, the Princess knowingly says, “This must be one of the Hebrew children” (Ex 2:6c). Then, with courage seldom spoke of or preached on, Miriam speaks:

Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you? Ex 2:7

When the Princess says, “yes,” Miriam fetches her mother. This, too, is a rare moment of deep compassion and courage that is seldom spoke of or preached on.

Could it be possible for the Princess not to have seen that the woman who Miriam brought to her was the child’s mother, her breasts full of milk and her countenance, surely, telling her love for the child?

This moment of compassion is the power of God and of life undermining the power of death. Pharaoh’s fate is sealed because the power of death is no match for the power of compassionate love.

It is good to note another part of this story and of God’s power that is too often overlooked. The story of Exodus, beginning with the courageous compassion of these women, is a story of redemption, not for the expiation of sin, but for a people by no fault of their own.

God’s redemption is multifaceted.

There are qualities of the narrative that strongly suggests a multidimensional character of God’s compassion.  The mercy of God is not simply reactive, returning love for love.  It is proactive—securing human need even more profoundly than they who endure that need, and benevolently intruding into their lives unbidden. TIP 454 (italics mine)

It is for us as modern Christians to ask how God is benevolently intruding with redemptive, compassionate power in the world today on behalf of those, like the Hebrews, who are seen as of no-count, as threat to order and decency, and who depend on people of faith and courage to show compassion on them, though it means defying and subverting the powers of death who absurdly believe they can defy the power of God.

Resources
Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses. New York: Norton & Company. 2004.
Brueggemann, Walter. New International Bible. Vol. I. Nashville: Abingdon. 1994.
Charles B. Cousar, et al. Texts for Preaching. Louisville: Westminster John Knox P. 1995.

Exodus begins with the fulfillment of the creative work of God declared Genesis: 

…The Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. Gen. 1:7 

As Genesis ends, God has provided for the Israelites through Joseph, the last of the patriarchs. With his death begins a new chapter in the story of God’s covenant: the liberation of the Hebrews from the power of death embodied by an evil King:

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.  He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we.  Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join with our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Gen. 1:8-10. 

While the story of the Patriarchs of Genesis—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—is a “sharply etched story of individuals” (Alter 299), Exodus tells the story of a people. The God of Genesis who engages with humans, is easily mistaken for a human until he reveals his identity, in Exodus becomes unseeable, speaks without becoming visible, and is represented by fire. While Abraham sees God and talks face-to-face, Moses cannot look at God, lest he die (Alter 301).

The change in the ways God is revealed in Exodus has to do with the fulfillment of the covenant with Abraham, the movement of the story of God relating to individuals to the God of a people. In this sense, God’s power is revealed in history on a grand scale:

God in Exodus has become more of an ungraspable mystery than he seems in Genesis, as he moves from the sphere of the clan that is the context of the Patriarchal tales to the arena of history.  His sheer power as a supreme deity as implacability against those who would threaten his purpose emerge as the most salient aspects of the divine character.  Alter 302

Brueggemann says the core theme of Exodus is covenantal liberation:

What happens in [Exodus] thus serves to make abused, oppressed persons subjects of their own history, able and authorized to take responsibility for their own future. 683

This central theme is written in socio-economic, and political terms.

The teaming masses Pharaoh fears migrated to Egypt during the famine to be fed on the grain of Joseph’s storehouses. In exchange for food, these migrants were put to work making bricks, building Egyptian buildings. They are not the literal descendants of Jacob / Israel; they are called Israelites because they are the offspring of Joseph’s provisioning. These people are diverse among themselves, migrating from the lands around Egypt, but they look the same to the people who enslave them:

They are named “Hebrews,” referring to a category of people who “have no social-standing, no land, and who endlessly disrupt ordered society.  They are low-class folks who are feared, excluded, and despised.” Brueggemann 695 

The term “Hebrew” is rendered from the original apiru, a term denoting not a religion or a religious community, but no-count people who have nothing and are socio-economic burden and threat to the established order.

The story of Exodus is of God’s mighty power to create a nation by librating these people from the power of death, giving them a law to live by, establishing a covenant with them, and being present with them on their journey through the wilderness to the promised land.

Exodus is a story of creation—creation through liberation, law, covenant, presence—organized around the theme of water. Egypt, on the Nile, is associated with water, and water will figure in Pharaoh’s demise. When the Hebrews are delivered, they set out into the Sinai wilderness, a land of parched dryness.

The story begins with the King of Egypt’s genocidal plans eventuating with Moses afloat on an ark into the reeds, drawn up out of the water at the behest of Pharaoh’s own daughter, who later takes him (adopts him) as her own, and raises Moses as a prince in Pharaoh’s own house.

Resources
Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses. New York: Norton & Company. 2004.
Brueggemann, Walter. New International Bible. Vol. I. Nashville: Abingdon. 1994.
Charles B. Cousar, et al. Texts for Preaching. Louisville: Westminster John Knox P. 1995.

Gen..: 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
Ps.: even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
Matt: Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.

God is Here?! With Me?!

Our study of Genesis brings us to another beginning story, Jacob on the mountain, discovering, much to his surprise, that God is there with him. 

He is fleeing his brother’s sworn oath to kill him. 

His mother and father send him away for his sake and theirs–his father will soon die: Jacob will not be there to bury him.

He will never see his beloved mother again.  

He is there on the mountain because he is a cheat and a scoundrel, as a consequence of his misdeeds…

Because of what my own momma was talking about when she said to me, “be sure your sins will find you out.”

Not sure why she said that to ME all the time….

This is not a planned journey. He has no provisions, no companions.

Sunset falls.

He looks for high ground intending at sunrise to see whether he is being followed.

But in the night, he sees a stairway connecting heaven and earth, with heavenly beings ascending and descending. God speaks to him, assuring him that the promises made to his ancestors belong to him as well, that in time he will return home.

It is a moment, a story, illustrating the parable Jesus tells of weeds growing in the wheat, a parable told to help us see that judgment belongs to God, not to us

We are not to go out weeding in the name of God. Jacob is a weed, after all, a scoundrel and a rascal.

Esau wants to pull him up by the roots, and with good reason.

This is the story that puts him on the mountain:

His father Isaac is old and dying, too blind to distinguish one son from the other. He calls for Esau, sends him out to hunt game, cook it, and bring it to him. Isaac’s dying wish is to eat one last meal with Esau to give him his final blessing.  

But Rebekah overhears this conversation, calls Jacob, and sends him out to get choice kids from the flock. She prepares Isaac’s favorite meal, dresses Jacob in Esau’s clothes and puts the skins of the kids on his arms,  so he feels as hairy as Esau to her blind and failing husband.. 

When Jacob goes into Isaac, Isaac smells him, feels his clothes, he believes Jacob is Esau, and so gives Esau’s blessing to Jacob.

This is why he sleeps on a stone pillow on a mountaintop. He has burned all of his bridges and cannot go back and undo what he has done,  No one trusts him, they all know he is a cheater; there is nothing he can say or do to undo or fix the trouble he has made…

If I were Jacob on the mountain, I would be doubting myself, feeling deep regret, second-guessing my decisions, blaming my mother for continually pushing me to stick up for myself, pushing me forward, pulling strings….talking about some old prophecy, using that get me into all sorts of trouble…into THIS trouble….

I would be thinking about how this family pattern was in play from day one, all the mess and conflict between my mother and father–there from the start and all that needed to happen was for my father, saint Isaac, to treat me and Esau the same and give up all this nonsense about the eldest son. 

And then there was Esau, wooden-headed brute, he could have spoken up for me, shown a bit of concern for me, told my mom to lay off and my dad to see us as twins and equals, but noooo.
Not Esau….

Looking back would be sickening enough; and looking forward?

What will Jacob’s reputation be when he gets to where he is going, to his mother’s family who have no doubt heard about him, a younger son who tricks his blind, dying father, tricks gentle old ISAAC, the promised son of Abraham, for God’s sake! 

Gosh, if I were Jacob on the mountain? I would be imagining how people would look at me, what they were saying about me, whether I could ever live this down….

And go to them looking for a wife, expect them to trust me with a sister or daughter?

If it were me?  I would be crying out to God, asking for forgiveness, praying for a miracle. 

Protect me from Esau, please God! Bless my dear father and mother. Make a way for me when the sun rises…If you get me out of this God I will never cheat again!!

Wouldn’t you be praying your heart out? Making promises and looking for divine deal?  

No, none of that. Jacob has no thought of God, offers no prayers at all, makes no sacrifices….

He just….goes……to …..sleep.  

Odd, no?

Okay, a brief aside for modern people:  

Our modern understanding of dreaming does not fit this story. Jacob’s dream is not the result of a psychological state as we understand it today, of working out stress and anxiety or of subconscious fears. No, dreaming in scripture is a form of divine communication. God revealed Godself to Jacob. Jacob is not tortured in his sleep, the ladder is not a way his subconscious deals with all the trouble he has caused.

No, none of that. Jacob’s ladder is not a resolution of psychic trauma but God speaking to him.  

So then, back to the question, why does he make no prayers, no sacrifices, why is he not thinking of God at all as we know we would all do if we found ourselves in the same position, why in fact does wake up surprised to find God was there…

Jacob knows nothing of God, nothing himself of God. He knows of the God of his father Isaac, and of Abraham,  that God made promises to them and took care of them in a way that does not fit his experience, not at all. 

He is not like Abraham desperate for a child, for a future…Not like Isaac, the blessed “only” son, loved by both his mother and father, who follows in his father’s footsteps without question and with little difficulty.  

No, the God of Abraham and Isaac belongs to home, to the past, to others, not here, not to him, not to this moment, not to the future…

He does not pray to God, makes no sacrifices, because he does not yet know God is with him too, is for him too.

We might well think of this in modern terms.

The quaint God of the last generation, you know, when everyone got along pretty well and things worked out and life wasn’t so busy…..a time now passed when there weren’t all these conflicts and divisions…something of an antique God, you know, of another era, not relevant to this moment.

If we could go back to that God, to that time……

Jacob has no thought of God because he does not yet know, nor does he expect, the God of his ancestors is also his God, speaks to him like he spoke to his forefathers….

He does not pray because the quaint God of his fathers seems irrelevant to the predicament he finds himself in, 

But the dream on the mountain changes all of this. 

Jacob reaches that place familiar to many of us: he knows he can’t go back and fix things, that he can only go forward when the sun rises, unsure of what lies ahead.  

I was looking over my notes from three years ago, from the last time we read the story of Jacob’s ladder together….Well, this is the first time we read it together; three years ago, I read it to an iPad, with the sanctuary as empty as a mountain top.  

What God says to Jacob was a comfort to us then, as I hope it will be today.

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.

And after Jacob gets over his surprise, he names the place Beth El–House of God, and says he has discovered a gate to heaven.  

This is the house of God, the gate to heaven….

And then Jacob piles up some stones to mark that place, and puts oil on it to signify its sacredness, its healing power, and because he believes he will come back that way again.

He then walks into the sunrise and into an  unknown future with confidence that God walks with him.

And so may we also walk my friends, and so may we walk.

The Story Develops; Conflict Abounds 
The lectionary jumps over two chapters, from Jacob tricking Esau out of his birthright to Jacob cheating Esau out of his father’s death-bed blessing.  

Chapter 26 tells the story of Isaac establishing a place for his family as an alien in a land so hostile, he is afraid to claim Rebekah as his wife. Because of her beauty and his lack of power, he is afraid he will be murdered so she can be taken as the wife of another. He negotiates with the Philistine King, Abimelech. He establishes a place for his family, digging wells and prospering.

Chapter 26 ends foreshadowing what is to come:

When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.  26:34-35

Old and dying, too blind to distinguish one son from the other, Isaac calls for Esau. He sends him out to hunt game, cook it, and bring it to him. His intention is to eat one last meal with Esau to give him his final blessing.

Rebekah overhears this conversation, and prepares to trick Isaac into blessing Jacob rather than Esau.

She sends Jacob out to get choice kids from the flock, and prepares Isaac’s favorite meal. She dresses Jacob in Esau’s clothes and puts the skins of the kids on his arms, so he feels as hairy as Esau.

When Jacob goes into Isaac, Isaac smells him, feels his clothes, he believes Jacob is Esau, and so gives Esau’s blessing to Jacob.  

When Esau discovers he has been cheated out of his father’s blessings, he swears vengeance:

Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, ‘The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.’ 27:41

Word of Esau’s plan to kill Jacob reaches Rebekah, and she again intervenes:

…so she sent and called her younger son Jacob and said to him, ‘Your brother Esau is consoling himself by planning to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran …27:42b-44a.

Rebekah then goes to Isaac and tells him that they have already suffered enough because of the Hittite wives Esau has married. The bitter experience they have shared at the hands of these wives Isaac to send Jacob away, back to Rebekah’s home to find a wife there among their people (thus, Laban reenters the story with surprising results ahead).

To end the chapter, out of spite and revenge, rejecting his own family, Esau goes Ishmael, and takes a third wife:

Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath daughter of Abraham’s son Ishmael, and sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had. 28:9

Thus the stage is set for the story of Jacob fleeing home and finding himself as isolated as any human can be. He is exiled from his family by his own doing.  Will not be home to bury his father, and will never again see his beloved mother.  His brother Esau, a fearsome and powerful character,  has sworn to kill him.  We might well imagine he wishes he could go back an undo what he has done; he has no idea what lies ahead of him, what his reputation will mean when he arrives in Rebekah’s home.

Jacob’s Ladder
Two points of clarification for modern readers.

First, our English transition of ladder is unfortunate, as we imagine it to be a vertical up and down fit for one direction at a time.  The Hebrew more accurately tells of a stairway or ramp, with heavenly beings ascending and descending simultaneously.  Jacob dreams of a connection between the sacred and heavenly with the ordinary and earthly, a passageway, a gateway.  

Second, our modern understanding of the function of dreaming does not fit this story.  Jacob’s dream is not the result of a psychological state as we understand it today, of working out stress and anxiety or of subconscious fears.  Dreams in scripture are an external forms of divine communication.  “They are one means by which God’s own self is revealed.  …When Jacob awakens, he does not speak of God’s presence in his dream; he speaks of God’s presence in this place” (NIB 542).  

Jacob makes this discovery while he is in flight. He flees from home lest his brother kill him. When sunset falls, he looks for a safe place to sleep until he can continue to flee at sunrise. His stone pillow speaks to the ordinary place he finds himself, to his lack of preparation, to his vulnerability. He is not looking for God, not expecting rescue, not praying, not sacrificing. He himself does nothing to invite God to that place and with good reason: he finds himself there because of his misdeeds.

It makes sense for Jacob to expect judgement from God because of his deception and trickery.  But what he experiences instead is God’s unconditional faithfulness to him, and this is a surprising discovery to him:

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ 28:16

His surprise is two-fold.

First, the place is ordinary, not extraordinary, not a known holy place, not a place he or anyone would expect to experience God.  

Second, until this dream, all Jacob knows of God has been the God of his father, Isaac, in the circle of his father’s home.  At this moment, he discovers God is not limited to the home place he had known, nor available only to his father, but God is with him even in this place, even with him.  

As part of this experience, we see Jacob on a journey, from the past, to the present, to future. Again as with all stories of beginnings: to begin is a transition, a time of discovery and transformation. Jacob’s understanding of himself and of God is new, a beginning. Jacob discovers he is part of a larger story which brings him to this place of transition. The beginning of the story of God and Jacob is indeed a new beginning for Jacob, a chapter in the ongoing story of God’s faithfulness to Abraham.

In this sense, this is a story of Jacob’s ladder is a story of call, of vocation. Jacob hears God say that the promises of given to his ancestors are given also to him. He then wakes in the morning to continue his journey with a sense of purpose, believing the promises given to him.

As with all beginnings, Jacob’s belief in this promise will be sorely tested, but on the mountain he discovers God’s promises are unconditional, given even to scoundrels such as him. 

Thanks be to God for that!

Resources
Genesis 12-36.  A Continental Commentary.  Claus Westerman.  Fortress Press Ed.: Minneapolis.  1995. 
The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. I.  Abingdon P.: 1994. 

This brief text contains two stories.  First Rebekah suffering pregnancy with twins, foretelling coming struggles between them.  Second, conflict between the brothers, foretelling the birth of the nation of Israel.  

At the outset, we would do well to recognize main character in these stories, Jacob, is later given the name Israel, his offspring are thus the Israelites.  The telling of the story is at the same time a telling of the character of a nation of people chosen by God.  Christians often forget that Jacob is Israel, and Israel is a person. The story, then, of Jacob becoming Israel, is a story of transition  of a culture from one state to another.

The foretelling of the coming struggle is the oracle of prophesy given to Rebekah suffering a  difficult pregnancy.  

And the LORD said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.” 25:23

This prophesy is a kind of riddle which  seems to predict the subjection of the older and greater people to the younger and smaller people.  There is a common theme introduced here that repeats often in scripture, the unlikeliest chosen over the likeliest, as is the case with the next ancestor story of Joseph, and famously by the choosing of runty David over his burley elder brothers.  This same theme enters the New Testament with Jesus choosing rough-hewn fisherman and ministering to the last and the least.

But the prophesy remains a riddle, when the sons are born with Jacob gripping Esau’s heel. Who is born first?  The question is no small matter, given the law of primogeniture in the ancient world, the eldest son by law inheriting the family fortune, or at least (according to Babylonian Law) a double-share of the fortune.  Doesn’t Jacob have an equal claim? Is Esau entitled to primogeniture because he was born seconds before Jacob, though the entered the world as a one?

This conflict beginning introduces a story of further conflict, cultural, symbolic, and spiritual.

Esau is a hunter of animals, living outdoors, pursing game—a hunter gatherer.

Jacob lives a more pastoral life, indoors.  While he cannot be called an agrarian, he represents a more civilized lifestyle.  Esau, on the other hand, follows in the footsteps of Isaac and Abraham, representing an older lifestyle that was giving way to new forms of civilization.   

There is opposition and conflict as new forms of civilization arise (Jacob) and old forms disappear (Esau).  

The cultural and symbolic conflict between Esau and Jacob becomes a spiritual conflict between God and Jacob-Isreal as his story develops. This struggle begins with the bowl of lentil stew Jacob prepares for his famished brother (Does Jacob know from past hunts that Esau would storm in demanding to be fed?  Is this why he has food prepared with a proposition at the ready?)

Esau comes in hungry from a hunt, talking like a brutish sort, with crude vocabulary and thought only for the moment:

Let me eat some of that red stuff, for I am famished!” 25:30b

“That red stuff”?  

When Jacob sets the price as Esau’s birthright, Esau responds:  

"I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me? 25:32b

Then, we see the strength, power, and shortcoming of Esau with five verbs in rapid succession: 

“He ate and drank, and rose and went his way.” 25:35b

The story concludes:

Thus Esau despised his birthright. 25:34e

The movement of the story shows Esau satisfying his hunger and thinking nothing at all about selling his birthright. Focus only present hunger, he squanders his future inheritance. 

Given the representative role this beginning story plays on the unfolding story of Jacob struggle in becoming Isreal, we might see in Jacob’s gripping his brother’s heel spiritual longing to be seen and recognized as equal and worthy of his father’s blessings.  By not passively accepting the lesser role assigned him, he represents both the transition from a dying cultural past to a new form of civilization, but also the spiritual struggle of coming to grips with who he is with God. This struggle is told and retold in scripture, with Jacob-Isreal showing us what it means to value our birthright in God.  

Resources
Genesis 12-36.  A Continental Commentary.  Claus Westerman.  Fortress Press Ed.: Minneapolis.  1995. 
The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. I.  Abingdon P.: 1994. 

Chapter 24 is the longest, sustained ancestor story in scripture.  The sole conflict is whether the servant will be successful with his commission.  It is important to note that the outcome is unsure, even to Abraham who sees the getting of a wife from his ancestral home to represent his covenant God. There is a clear sense that how humans will behave is unknown and unpredictable, even to God.

At this point in Abraham’s long life, he us unable to act himself, but is forced to trust his servant to secure a wife, and thus also to continue the covenant with God.  As an old man, his future is not in his own hands, but relies on the trustworthiness of his representative (servant).

Part of this story is its genealogy certifying the family of Abraham.  Abraham insists that the servant find a wife not in Canaan, but by going to the ancestral homeland, Haran. Rebekah is the granddaughter of Nahor, Abraham’s brother. Her father, Bethuel, and Isaac are cousins.  Laban, who negotiates with the Abraham’s servant, is Rebekah’s brother. (Laban will reappear later when Isaac’s son, Jacob, comes looking for a bride.) 

The story of the wooing of Rebekah continues God’s covenant with Abraham and certifies it with ancestral genealogy—God working through human relationship over time.  The other part of the story is how Abraham is forced to depend on the faithfulness of his servant. He cannot do the work himself.  

Resources
Genesis 12-36.  A Continental Commentary.  Claus Westerman.  Fortress Press Ed.: Minneapolis.  1995. 
The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. I.  Abingdon P.: 1994. 

In Chapter 23, Sarah dies, and Abraham negotiates with the Hittites place to bury her, a reminder that Abraham is an alien in a foreign land.  As seems to be the case in all of Abraham’s negotiations, he appears to be wealthy and is treated deferentially.  

He buys a cave and plot of land that faces Mamre (Hebron).  Keen readers will recall that Abram and Sarai are visited by God there, at the Oaks of Mamre.

In Chapter 24, Abraham resolves to find a wife for Isaac, but he is too old for this task, so gives it to a trusted servant, with instructions to go back to his homeland to find a wife. In extracting an oath from his servant, Abraham remembers God’s covenant with him.  His purpose in sending the servant away to find a wife is in honor of the covenant. 

There is concern—this part of the story is cut out of the appointed reading—that the woman found and her family will required Isaac to come to them to get her, or to live there with them. Abraham rejects this concern, saying that under no circumstances will Isaac leave his home to get a wife.  

Rev. Craig Jan-McMahon: Windsor UCC
A Pentecost +4; Sunday after Father’s Day; 6/25/2023
Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39

Gen..: for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.n.
Ps.:	  be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all day long.
Rom:  Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?
Matt:  Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

When Family Fails

On the Sunday after Father’s Day, with public School and Sunday school on recess, with many of our families away on vacation…

We read the story of Abraham casting Hagar and his son Ishmael, into the desert with a bit of water and a crust of bread…

Family.

The families of our first ancestors, those whom God chooses, with whom God makes covenants feature murder, as with Cane and Able, betrayal as with Isaac and Esau, treachery as with Joseph and the brothers who sell him into slavery.

And then of course there is king David, whose adultery with Bathsheba leads him to murder her husband, and then whose son Absalom rebels against him and dies when his lovely hair gets caught in a tree as he is fleeing on mule.

What is that you say, “but that is the Old Testament? 

Hah..as if..

Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

This he says to the same disciples he has called away from their families.

Follow me and I will make you fishers of men, and the they follow him, abandoning wives and children, shirking obligations to take care of aging parents. 

Not returning home to bury their dead loved ones… walking away from family businesses and their responsibility to provide for their own families….  

Jesus himself is no family man but seems rather to uphold something like an alternative family with Mary, Martha and Lazarus.

Later, the Apostle Paul comes on the scene with no family connections whatsoever, and proceeds to declare social structures, gender roles, family hierarchies to be antithetical to grace.  

Given the fraught family relationships in our scriptures, what Jesus says about families it is a wonder that we Christians have so identified ourselves with family, focus on the family, with so-called traditional family values.  

But then, in quiet moments,  when we talk privately with people we trust about our families, the stories we tell of our family struggles are biblical in their complexities…

Yes, surely and truly, we have much to celebrate and honor in our families, but there is a lot of heartache too, and betrayals, and anger and grudges…. 

The struggle to love and support one another in our families is at the very core of faith, to fully engage in that struggle and work out the details of forgiveness and healing, of truth-telling and patience is what we all pray for, we all aim for, long for

To raise up a family in faith means aiming for the ideal of family we pray for and accepting the reality of family we live with, =living in the gap between our prayerful longings and the real living of our lives is the very essence of faithful living…

On earth as it is in heaven…this is our prayer…

If we were to be honest, and if we were to trust enough to tell our own stories…..

Some of us know what it is like to be Ishmael, to be seen as a threat and and a danger thus cast out for no reason at all save for the fear and narrow vision of people we want to love us, who should love us, who should see us as a gift and a joy rather than a threat…

Some of us know what it like to be Hagar, with no power and with no say, our well-being dependent on the whim of others, our suffering easily dismissed with fine sentiments–God will take care of you.

And then, too, some of us know what it is like to be Sarah, to see trouble coming long before anyone else does and raising the alarm, demanding action, seeking to limit damage we see coming, to secure the future of the family no matter the cost to others.  

Those who have been hurt or injured, like Ishmael and Hagar, surely understand what Jesus says about family, because there are times in family life when family fails us, fails  to take care of us, to love and accept us; there are times when it necessary to tell the truth and call family members to account, and these are those times Jesus speaks of… times when division is faithful,  as Jesus says, times when peace is not about pretending everything’s okay or about keeping quiet.

We all have capacity to grow and change and adjust, to share our stories with honesty and humility…

To be willing to lose life in order to gain life…

To distrust and question our Sarah-like fear and certainty of the future as if we can see as God sees…

To ask for forgiveness and to give it, and harder still, to accept forgiveness ourselves…

To foster family relationships that extend beyond those we have known or imagined to be.  

It happens all the time, and these are stories we need to tell, love we have experienced, love we see growing all around us….

Ask a grandparent about loving an adopted grandchild, some neighbor child whose grandparents live across the country or who are no longer living, about birthday cards sent and cookies baked and watching them grow with delight and wonder.

Or look at the many children who have been so well loved by two families when their one family suffers divorce, about the ways they work together apart for the good of their new families, about how the work out ways to honor their vows in ways that transcend what can be imagined, save by faith.

Talk to a someone who has lost a spouse and found love again, a miracle, a life lost, a life gained; see families thriving after they have helped one of their family members recover from addictions.

Listen to the stories of reconciliation, late in life, between family members who have lived their lives angry at one another, about time and time and time lost, but the joy of life gained…

Look at the strength and power of families to extend belonging and dignity to those whose own families failed them, who have taken them in and made them part of their own families, their own lives.  

Talk to those who live alone but have families of friends to celebrate their lives with, the pride and joy the find together, a family of friendship, of shared companionship.

The challenging and difficult stories we find in our scriptures are a gift to us, because they allow us to see our own humanness in them and again to find God’s faithfulness to us even when our own families fail us, even and especially when we fail them.

God is big enough to rescue Hagar and Ishmael and to bless Abraham, Isaac and Sarah, too.  

The brothers Jacob and Esau reconcile, and so we learn about forgiveness.

Joseph rises to power and repays his brothers’ treachery with kindness, and so we learn about generosity.  

King David’s sense of guilt and depth of grief inspires him to write psalms, and so we learn how to pray. 

The Apostles Paul expands the boundaries of family and tribe that divide us one from another and thus we are called to expand our notion of what family means in the light of God’s love. 

And Jesus teaches us to pray, Our Father, for we are brothers and sisters in Christ, the family of God, which nothing can divide, we are bound together by faith, in peace, in the name Christ, and God will never fail us.  

Jesus sees our struggles and heartaches and love and understand the our deep, primal, human need of family to accept us and nurture us and care for us, to see the best in us even when we don’t meet their expectations of us, even when we don’t measure up to their hopes for us, and especially when they reject us and abandon us.

Jesus speaks for us, for the truth of who we are just as we are. 

He wants us to see and to believe what is true and what we see when God rescues Hagar and Ishmael in the desert,

While our family may at times fail us, God never will. Amen.

Matthew 10:24-39
[Jesus said] ‘A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. 

If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

‘So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. 

What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

‘Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 

Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.