Speaker 1: And sometimes thinking we know or assuming we know where the story goes, what that does is it lets our bias override what's actually there in the text. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad you're here and we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Hit thecommons.church for more information. Well, welcome today.
My name is Jeremy and I'm part of the team here. And I get the privilege of teaching regularly here at Commons. And so thank you for being here. We really are grateful that you would come and spend your time and your energy to worship with us today. But that said, we find ourselves back in our Jacob series.
And we had four weeks to get to know Jacob a little bit. And then last week, we took a detour to have a guest here with us. And I do want to say thank you for your graciousness to our guest, George Simon, last week. I realized that George speaks in a way that may seem foreign to us. And I'm not just talking about the accent.
I'm talking about the fact that it may sound a little bit churchy to our ears at times. Some of us probably love that. Finally, someone who actually sounds like a preacher up here. Then the rest of us may have found that unfamiliar, and I get it. So thank you for being so gracious and trusting that under our differences, and there are some, we are all deeply interested in growing and helping and contributing together to a better, more just world.
Now today, we are back into Jacob. And at this point, I think it's fair to say that Jacob is not the character that we might have been expecting when we started. In fact, I have had a couple people come up to me and say throughout the series, you know what? I just don't really like Jacob. Is that okay?
Am I allowed to do that? And if you feel that way, I wanna say, that's exactly the idea. No one likes Jacob at this point in the story. And if you do, you should pause and think about that because maybe you're the bad guy in your story too. You see, I think one of the real struggles that we have sometimes when it comes to the scriptures is that we know how the story ends.
We know Jacob is the hero, and we know he's gonna turn things around, and we understand that there is going to be this redemptive character arc. And so sometimes, what happens is we almost kind of gloss over the first half of the story to get there. But here's the thing. The payoff and the turnaround and the transformation that happens inside of Jacob, that only means something if we've stayed long enough in the first half to be surprised when it comes. And sometimes, the worst thing that can happen to your experience of the Bible is when you think you know how the story ends.
Now, is a sidetrack here. But a couple weeks ago, I posted a video on Facebook about this me too hashtag that emerged on social media. These women who were coming forward to talk about their experiences with sexual assault and sexual harassment, and I talked about how as a man, I really just need to be quiet and listen right now. As much as possible to these stories to hear them and absorb them, but as I did, it reminded me of the story of the Samaritan woman. In John four, Jesus meets this woman at a well, and he speaks with her.
And in the course of the conversation, it comes up that she has actually been married five times. And over and over again, I have heard that story told as if it is all about Jesus taking compassion on this terrible sinner of a woman and showing grace to her. Except that that reading completely ignores the cultural context. Women in the culture of the first century could not get divorced. Woman had zero choice about how or if or when she would be divorced, and as horrible as it was, that was entirely the decision of the men in her life in the first century world.
And what that means is that when Jesus listens to her story and he says, I know who you are. I know where you've been. He is not talking to her about her mistakes and her sins in that moment. He is talking to her about the fact that she has been victimized and abandoned and discarded over and over again. So Jesus listens without judgment to the stories of abuse in his world.
But here's what surprised me. Very few people have actually ever thought of that story that way, and because of that, it ended up getting shared across social media. So it's been viewed something like 12,000 times at point, and because of that, I started getting all kinds of messages from people that I had never met. And that was very interesting to me. Because while most of the messages were very gracious, there was one theme and one thread that came up several times, every time exclusively from men.
And it went something like this. I get what you're saying, but what about when Jesus says to her, go and sin no more? She's not just a victim, she's a sinner. Except, Jesus never says that to her. The woman at the well is recorded in John four, and then there is another story about another woman, a woman caught an adulterately in John eight, who, by the way, gets dragged out in front of the town to answer for her actions, and the man is never mentioned, which means that is another example of Jesus confronting injustice.
But there in that story, to a completely different woman, in a completely different situation, Jesus says something completely different. He says, I do not condemn you. Go and sin no more. But here's the thing. When we have preconceived ideas about the types of women who end up in the types of situations like this, what happens is that we read what we already know back into the story.
She's a sinner. And sometimes, thinking we know or assuming we know where the story goes, what that does is it lets our bias override what's actually there in the text. And I hate to say this because I actually do think that reading and memorizing your bible is a really good practice for all of us, but sometimes the more scripture we have up here, the easier it becomes to conflate and confuse and decontextualize what we read. And so the more you have heard a particular story, and the better you think you know a particular character, the harder you have to work to read with what Rakura calls a second naivete. And so if you find yourself frustrated with Jacob in this story, let me just say, good.
Because that's what you're supposed to be feeling right now. You're supposed to be ready to give up on him. You're unsure of why God doesn't, and yet you're willing to turn the next page and keep reading. And in that, when we experience these passages for the first time all over again, that's when the spirit is able to speak something new to us. Now before we turn the next page, let's pray, and then we'll pick up where we left off two weeks ago.
God, we come today to listen, to learn, to attempt to see ourselves in these stories, and to be reminded that you are ultimately the author of our story. And some of us have been the tricksters and the schemers, the plotters of our own way forward, and we, like Jacob, need to be reminded that you are in control. And so we ask that you would slow us down and fix us in place and perhaps hold on to us long enough that we might come to know this. Lord, we want to see our story in its proper perspective. And we want to see our choices in the light of your larger tale.
We want to be reminded that we are part of something larger. So we pray that you would grant us attention and empathy and insight and wisdom to know where we are in the story and where we need to make changes. And then would you give us the courage and humility to carry those changes out in our world? We ask that you would continue your patience with us. And we know that we are sometimes slow to grasp what you're saying, but Lord, trust that we do want to learn.
And so, thank you for never giving up on us. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. Two weeks ago, we left Jacob on the run-in the wilderness, sleeping on a rock, dreaming about God.
And in fact, God shows up in his dream and promises Jacob that despite all of his shenanigans, God is near him, and God is with him, and God is honestly, actually willing to continue with Jacob into the future. And if you have never seen that kind of unexpected turnaround in someone, like we're gonna see in Jacob as the story unfolds, then maybe that's a sign you haven't stayed long enough. Now hear me. There is a time to cut bait, and there is a time for boundaries and distance with toxic people. And if you want to go back to a series we did last year called Ashes, We talked about how to deal with these types of people in your life.
But sometimes hanging on longer than we might be expected to. This is what provides the context for transformation. So be slow to let go. And whatever you do, know that God has not given up on you. But because God has not given up on Jacob, God appears to Jacob in this dream and when Jacob awakes he says, surely the Lord was in this place and I I was not aware of it.
He was afraid and he said, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God for this is the gate of heaven. Now, we talked last time about those dual eyes. Jacob says, God was here and I I did not see it. And as we said, there has been lots of speculation and interpretation about this, but the common thread is that Jacob is recognizing that sometimes the only thing between him and the divine is him.
And maybe you can relate to that. I can. Right? At times, I am very acutely aware of God's presence with me. Sometimes a song or a walk.
Sometimes it is in the midst of my writing and preparing for Sunday. Sometimes that's the time I least experience God. But over time, what I've come to understand is that whenever I'm not aware of God's presence with me, that is only and ever because I have lost or become numb in my sensitivity to spirit. If God is not in this place, then it is I that have missed his presence. And sometimes, it is simply that realization that brings me back to him.
But that was last week. And so I wanna pick up where we left off because I think it helps us today. The text says that Jacob was afraid and he said, how awesome is this place? And before we move on, we have to ask what does this mean to fear the Lord? Because this is a really important question that goes to a lot of how we read this story.
And this is one of those old testament terms that I think we struggle to make sense of at times. Part of the reason for that is that in modern English, we just really don't have a word that works well for this Hebrew term Yare. Now, obviously, it was just Halloween this past week, and so I went out trick or treating with my four year old son, And he is very fascinated by this idea. Obviously, the first time you realize that people are just gonna give away candy. This is mind blowing stuff to you.
Everything you have come to believe about the world and the importance, the significance of getting candy by whatever means necessary. All of that just starts crumbling around you as people just hand it out for no reason. And all you have to do is dress up like Batman, which is what you want to do every day anyway. Incredible. But anyway, we go out trick or treating, and Eaton is walking up and down the block, and he keeps pointing out every house that has decorations and talking about how spooky it all is.
That's his favorite word right now. Spooky. Everything's spooky. That is not what Jacob is afraid of. God is not spooky.
And we get that. But at the same time, God is not terrifying either. In fact, when the text says Jacob was afraid, and then Jacob says, how awesome is this place? Those are both the same Hebrew word, Yare. So fearing the Lord and noticing how awesome God is and experiencing the indecipherable presence of the divine in and through you in that moment of recognition, that is all part of what this Hebrew word Yareh means in its context.
There's this old story about a rabbi who is asked by one of his Hassadim, which are his students, about what it means to fear the Lord. The rabbi thinks and he responds to the student. He says, have you ever seen a wolf? To which the student replies, yes. And were you afraid of him?
Asked the rabbi. Yes, of course I was, said the student. But were you aware of the fact that you were afraid? Well, no, I thought the student. I was just simply in awe of the moment.
This then is how it should be with us and the Lord, said the rabbi. And this is not just incidental. This is important because we've all seen just how deeply flawed Jacob's character is. But if we then read his words about being afraid as if they were punitive or reactionary, we would miss his meaning here. Jacob does not wake up scared of God because of his myriad mistakes.
Jacob wakes up in awe of the God who would chase him down and stand beside him just to let him know how loved he is despite his myriad mistakes. And there's a difference. But there is fear in that. I have a son, and there are moments where he looks to me with pure trust. And it's rare, and most of the time, looks go to his mom.
But in those moments, where there is love and it is pure and unadulterated by our interior motives, it's a little bit terrifying, isn't it? Now take that and magnify that by the scale of God, and you have something of what Jacob is trying to say here in this moment. Don't ever be afraid of God. Instead, like Jacob, learn what it means to be in awe of the fact that you are a sinner in the hands of a loving God. That's the fear Jacob is talking about.
That after all of his nonsense, he is embraced and welcomed and invited back home anyway, and it's awesome. And this is why I think we have now finally reached the beginning of the turning point in Jacob's life. For all the deception and trickery we have seen so far, it is God's act of grace that begins a change in Jacob. And I have said this many times before, I know you've heard it, but being told to be better will not change you. Knowing that you are loved, this is what will transform you.
And that's what we see in Jacob. That even with all of his baggage, once he comes to understand that God is willing to chase him down and stand beside him, things begin to change. And so in the morning, Jacob gets up off the ground, and he took the stone he had placed under his head, and he set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called the place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz. And if you lived in Luz, you'd probably be fine with Jacob changing the name too.
It's only slightly better than our friends to the north of the city in Balzac. But Bethel, and you've heard that word before, simply means the house of God in Hebrew. And if this whole idea of setting up a stone and pouring oil on top of it and unilaterally declaring a new name for a city seems strange, then simply understand that sometimes we need markers in our life. Now, ancient cultures did that with monuments. Sometimes we do that with rituals.
Things like the Eucharist or like baptism. Sometimes we do it with journals where we record what is happening in and through us in a moment. But if something has happened to you, maybe emotionally, maybe some kind of a breakthrough at work, maybe it's something spiritual where you have become aware of something that's true in a new way, Can I suggest that you find a way to remember that? Like, write it down or put it on Facebook or set up a rock in your backyard and cover it in oil, but don't let it go unremembered. Because if God was in there, in that place, someday, you may need to remember that.
Then Jacob made a vow saying, if God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father's household. Then the Lord will be my God, and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house. And of all that you give me, I will give you a tenth. Now, in the old testament here, there is this sense of giving a tithe back to God. And you see this a number of times all through the Hebrew scriptures and eventually it develops into a series of national taxes in the state of Israel.
And the rigidity of that doesn't seem to really carry over into the New Testament. In fact, the whole point of Jesus is really about God calling us into a place of relationship, where the rules don't matter anymore and we live out of a sense of connection rather than obligation. However, I think there is a sense of Jacob's desire to be generous with the one who has given freely. That is a natural outflow of knowing you have been welcomed. Now, the numbers may not matter anymore, but generosity sometimes begins as a discipline.
But eventually, by design, what it becomes is an overflow of our gratitude. And that's good. But there's still a lot of ground to cover today. And so I'm going to read through the next section, and then we'll make some comments to wrap up. Chapter 29 verse one.
Then Jacob continued on his journey and he came to the land of the eastern peoples. There he saw a well in the open country. Verse four, Jacob asked the shepherds, my brothers, where are you from? We're from Haran, they replied. He said them, do you know Laban, Nahor's grandson?
Yes, we know him, they answered. And Jacob asked them, is he well? Yes, he is, they said. And here comes his daughter Rachel with the sheep right now. Now, it could be that it's just because my wife is also named Rachel, and therefore I have a soft spot for all the Rachel's of the world.
But as I read what comes next, find myself completely unfazed here. We read in verse 10, when Jacob saw Rachel, daughter of his uncle Laban, and Laban's sheep, he went over. He rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well, and he watered his uncle's sheep. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and began to weep aloud. That seems completely normal to me.
Now, of course, that is not appropriate. Do not kiss women that you have just met. And if you want to weep aloud in front of them, then go ahead. However, I can't say I think that will be a strategy that's all that successful in wooing them. However, what we read next is that Jacob goes and he meets with Laban and he professes his mad love for Rachel who he has just met.
Laban says, okay. Well, what are you willing to do for me? Jacob says, well, I'll work for you for seven years, and then I get to marry your daughter. And Laban says, deal. And what's remarkable here is that this is almost exactly how I met and married my wife.
It's almost uncanny when I read this. I'm like, wow, it's my story. Now, jokes aside here. This is a patriarchal society where women were not part of their own marriage negotiations. And as we read, we have to acknowledge the movement that has been made in culture and the progress that has yet to be accomplished in the world.
And so even as we read and learn here, we recommit ourselves to a more just world for those around us. But I do want you to notice something here. Because in verse 20, we read that Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. More literally in Hebrew, this reads, Jacob worked seven years for Rachel, but they were to him as one day in his love for her. And after all the details that we have been given about Jacob's life, the intricate grammatical nuance we read about a few weeks ago, this time right here, seven years go by like nothing.
And I will bet that there were lots of great stories to tell during these seven years. Material they got left on the editing room floor because in the end, the author knew the poetry was better. You see, there are stories about things that we work really hard to accomplish. There are stories about digging in and paying the price and doing whatever it takes to make your dreams come true, and those are good stories, but this is not that story. See, this is a story about the joy of finding something worth investing in.
Something you want to work hard for, and something you love so deeply that all the effort seems to pass away. And all of us need something like that in our lives. Or we could pour ourselves in for seven years and turn around and say, man, I can't believe it went so fast. And yet, verse 22. Laban, after seven years, brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast.
But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob. Now, Jacob protests and asks Laban why he has deceived him, and Laban says, well, I did give you one of my daughters, and if you work another seven years, maybe you can marry Rachel as well. And this is the point where we might be ready to say that finally Jacob gets his comeuppance and everything he deserves. And there is definitely a part of that here in the story. But first, let's acknowledge that this is an incredibly difficult story to relate to.
And it's not just the polygamy, and it's not just the fact that Rachel and Leah function as plot devices in a story about a man. It's the fact that reading our sacred scriptures forces us to confront the history of patriarchy that is part of our shared story as humanity. And that should be uncomfortable to read because it's gross. And yet, at the same time, the beauty of the biblical narrative is that even in these texts written in a particular time and space, they push and they challenge and they call us to something larger. You see, if you read through the next chapter, you realize that Leah, who is presented to us as this unwanted bride, is actually blessed by God beyond her meager introduction.
The text says that when the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he blessed her and he enabled her to conceive. Now, that might sound like a consolation prize to us, but in the culture of the ancient Near East, this was a very big deal. In fact, it is Leah's last son Judah whose tribe becomes the strongest, and in fact Judah outlasts all the other tribes of Israel combined. And so just like Esau, and just like Ishmael before her, subtly, the text reminds us that God is actually deeply interested in those we might discard. There is no one that is off of God's radar.
And this really is the point of this section, that life is not simply about winners and losers. Life is complex, and God is present to each of us in the midst of it. You see, I think we might be tempted to expect that, okay, sure Jacob is a scallywag, but once he encounters God and he gets on the right path, that's when things will go well for him. Right? And yet they don't.
Just when Jacob encounters God, he gets scammed by his uncle, the woman he loves can't get pregnant, and to make it all worse, his uncle is getting rich while Jacob is managing the flocks for him. This is in many ways what the text wants us to notice here. That the promise of God's presence with us. In Jacob's dream, the image of God standing beside him facing the future, this does not mean that everything gets easy. In fact, sometimes it gets harder.
And some of us here know this all too well. You have lost someone. That may be cancer, or sickness, or accident, or betrayal. And it wasn't fair, and it wasn't time, and it didn't make sense. And so you struggle to reconcile God's commitment to you and God's presence with you to the frustration of a world where things did not go according to plan.
And it hurts. If this is how it is, then how could God be beside me? Jacob asks. Here's what I take from this story as I watch Jacob struggle just when he finds himself welcomed back into God's embrace. Sometimes your pain is not about punishment.
And sometimes your frustration, this is not about being disciplined. Sometimes your waiting is not about God's distance from you because sometimes this is simply how life goes. And I know that doesn't fix anything. And I know that doesn't make it go away or hurt less or feel better, but what you need to hear today is that God is not against you even when you struggle. Not when you are running away from God and certainly not once you turn back toward his grace.
Because what this episode reminds us of is that the promise of God to Jacob and the offer of the divine to you and I is not the avoidance of struggle in our lives. It's just not. In fact, think we could argue that things get worse for Jacob the moment he steps back onto God's path. But the promise that comes in our encounter with the divine is that God would stand with us and beside us in the moment even when we're not sure why we're here. And so if you find yourself today identifying with Jacob, And you are finally making some better choices, and you're not seeing any fruit.
Or maybe perhaps Leah, because you are caught up in a situation you did not choose, or maybe even Rachel and her infertility, and you are struggling with something that is completely beyond your control. My prayer is that in the midst of that mess, you might come to know God's faithful presence beside you, reminding you that faith won't fix everything else around you. It was never meant to. Faith was meant to fix you in the midst of everything else. And that doesn't make it easy, and it doesn't mean you won't struggle and you won't suffer.
What it means is that you won't be alone when you do. Let's pray. God, help us As we continue to place ourselves into the story of Jacob. Perhaps in the first half of this story, we have seen ourselves as Jacob, the one who grabs and grasps for things that aren't ours. But maybe today, we recognize ourselves as the Jacob who tries to make amends and attempts to turn things around and wants to be different, but still struggles and still suffers, and still wonders why things are the way that they are.
And God, pray that as we read this story, you would be present to us by your spirit. Reminding us that in the midst of our grief, and in the middle of our mourning, and of course, in our celebration and excitement, you are with us and beside us, facing into the future with us, working and transforming and helping us to become the kind of people who can face tomorrow with courage and humility and strength to begin to transform the world into the kingdom you imagine. God, thank you for your presence in this moment. Be with us as we leave this week. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Amen.