Genesis 28:10-19a & Romans 8:12-25
07/19/2020
None of my children had the easiest entries into the world. My eldest had to be revived. My middle son heart crashed in the midst of labor. But it was, of course the youngest, whose first few months were both terrifying and harrowing. Harrowing because anytime you were in his room, your eyes could not help but be drawn to the monitors above his little house. I will be forever haunted by the sounds of those alarms going of every time his heart rate dropped to zero, every time he pulled a feeding tube out of his nose, every time his O2 level was deemed to be dangerously low and requiring outside intervention. I imagine that most of us take these things for granted. Heart rates, and the ability to eat without having a NG tube stuck down our nasal passage, the ability to breathe. Both eastern and western religions have found that it is in paying close attention to the breath that we come back to our sense of calm, that we find our peace, that we stop and observe something that is so routine that 99.9% of the time we hardly even think about doing it. For my youngest, absolutely none of this could ever be taken for granted. Moreover, his experience was utterly terrifying. Terrifying because of the specter of death that forever hangs over NICUs everywhere—the knowledge that no matter what the percentages, that babies fall outside of them everyday and there was no way to know if your baby was going to be one of the lucky ones or one of those who were simply born too weak to face the challenges of living outside the womb. And so, for weeks, months, we found ourselves living in paralysis. Rising and falling with each new procedure, each new recording of his weight, each new check of his vitals. And the thing about paralysis is that it also blinds you. It makes everything some kind of an excruciating shade of gray when what you really need is a definite sign, a sure signal from God or the doctors or the nursing staff or someone that in the end everything will in fact be ok. And, like I said, we lived in that place for a really long time. And then it happened. All the circumstances of this moment have sort of melted away and so I really can’t remember what I was doing before hand, nor what I did afterwards, but it was in the middle of the day one that I came by his room expecting to see the big plastic thing that encases premature babies. You’ve no doubt seen this thing that looks like a plastic sarcophagus with wires passing in through slits in the side and little openings with little doors that you can stick your arm through if you want to touch your baby (but only if you have sung “Happy Birthday” while washing your hands in hot soapy water). All-in-all its presence is an unmistakable sign that not all is right with the situation and that because of the threat that it could become dire at any moment, this little plastic observation bubble is equipped with a steady supply of air, and heat controls, and a little tanning bed light that helps with the jaundice. And honestly, you become so used to seeing that thing sitting in the room that you become numb to all of that. But on this day, it was not the same. On this day, I walked in and for the first time, my youngest son was on just regular room air, laying in a crib, able to be touched and held and loved on. I honestly can’t tell you how fast I sung through the three stanzas of the Happy Birthday song because I simply could not wait to pick my child up and hug him and press him against my chest and bathe his little hairless head in the tears of joy that can only arise when you know for the first time that your child is going to be all right. That day, the whole of the room felt different. From the shared glances between me and my wife, from the light which felt bright even though it was still a dimly lit hospital room, from the feel of the air in all our lungs which no longer felt heavy, canned, stuffy, medicinal. And often times, when those handful of moments come in our lives, it takes looking back to say and declare, “surely the presence of the holy one was in this place,” but not this time. For the first time in months the light that the darkness can never overcome was blazing all around us, the stillness that was first born when the savior stood up in a boat and calmed the raging storm telling his followers with his actions that everything was going to be ok, the sheer silence that Elijah spoke about, the silence that came after the mighty wind, after the earthquake, after the fire, that silence enveloped the whole of the room and we could no longer hear the constant beeping from monitors, or babies crying out for affection in other rooms, or the nurses calling our vitals and stats to one another. In that moment we returned to the earliest covenantal relationship first forged between the Holy One and Abraham. In that moment it was just the three of us and God and we knew that that specter of death which seems omnipresent had completely dissipated and all that was left was the presence of holiness. We were standing, holding one another, on holy ground.
In our first reading for this morning we find that Jacob, it would seem, was in something of a hurry. Having stolen his elder brother’s blessing from his father, Isaac, through deception and trickery, having been told by his mother, Rebekah that he is to go to another part of the world where his relatives live in order to find an adequate bride for himself, having known of his brother’s fury and his father’s inability to do much about it given his advanced age and lack of sight, aware of all this going on around him, finds himself in something of a hurry. And it’s one of those hurries that we all sometimes get in, in which we don’t know where exactly we are going to go but we reassure ourselves that we will figure it out once we get going. And having left as fast as he could, and having pushed his pack animals to move as quickly as they could, he eventually finds safety and security in the cloak that is offered by the darkness of the night when there is no other light around. And we have to imagine at this point, the reality of everything that he has left behind begins to dawn on him as he stairs up at the stars and relives the past day in his mind. But, we also know that this doesn’t last long because we are also told that in order to sleep he places a rock under his head and he is soon in a deep slumber. Now, I have never had the opportunity to use a rock as a pillow but I cannot imagine that there is any universe in which that could have possibly been comfortable for him. But, in his exhaustion, we are also told that he is lost in the dreams that come in the deepest part of the night soon after shutting his eyes. And almost immediately he has a vision of a ladder that is extending down from heaven and on the ladder are angels going down and then heading back up. And just as he is starting wrap his mind around what anyone would consider a curious vision, we are told that God comes and stands beside Jacob. And standing next to him God offers him the reassurance that he had to have been seeking since leaving his parents and his very angry brother behind. And God reiterates to Jacob the same promise that he made to his grandfather years and years ago. And God promises the land that Jacob is on as a gift to him and those who come after him. Moreover, God tells Jacob, in the middle of a desert no less, that his offspring will be like the dust of the earth. Finally, God concludes reassuring Jacob by telling him that God will be with him wherever he goes, that God will keep him safe from harm, that God will return him back to this land, and that God will do everything promised to Abraham and to Jacob. And just as he had slipped into the dream, the vision, the truth, so he came back to the world and looked around, he saw, maybe for the first time, the presence of holiness surrounding him. He was on Holy Ground. And all he could do was raise his Ebenezer, just like that old great hymn says, and sanctify it with oil that he might always remember that it was here that he first found the presence of God moving all around him.
In both of these accounts for this morning, mine and Jacob’s, we see the role that faith and lack of faith, play in our daily lives. I am sure that I am not alone when I say that I have spent large swaths of my time on this planet alongside Jacob running for my life. We all do. We all have those periods of darkness and sadness and hurt and loss and loneliness and depression. None of us are alone in that way, though it often feels like it. Nor are we as aware of it as Jacob. For Jacob it was the seemingly imminent threat of a brother who had been swindled by Jacob and the scripture tells us his fury engulfed the whole of him. There seems little doubt that post-swindling the only real option for Jacob was to tear out of the camp and go until he could go no further. And even though there was something tangible for Jacob to see and fear, our own demons, our own challenges, our own monsters are no less real for us just because we can’t see them. In fact it is the unknowing that makes them all the more potent and dangerous and threatening. And so it is that we run until we can’t run any farther. And just when it seems as it the grand totality of our existence is that running from something with little awareness of where we are going or how we will know when we get there that we encounter the words from our second scripture passage for the morning.
Paul’s letter to the church in Rome contains as much poetry as prose. He uses metaphors and images and turns of phrase to give his readers as many opportunities as possible to get the message that he is trying to deliver. Moreover, Paul gets human pathos more than any other writer in the New Testament. He understands the part of life that are gut-wrenching, that test your faith in God and the world and one another, he understands that moment when you are so close to rock bottom that you open your mouth and nothing comes out and all you can is lean on the spirit to arise in you sighs too deep for words. And in this reading from chapter 8, and the Wednesday Night Bible study guys will tell you that the whole theological and spiritual journey comes to a zenith for me in the words of chapter 8. And in today’s portion of the chapter the great apostle calls on all those with ears to hear to live following a new movement—one in which it is not flesh but spirit that moves in and about our souls. It is not flesh but spirit upon which we come to depend. It is not flesh but spirit that whispers in our ear and constantly reminding us that we are, as we have ever been, children of God, heirs of salvation, and infused with a deep sense of hope that overcomes everything else. And it is a hope that bears all things. Paul helps us put our contemporary moment in context when he reminds the Romans that sufferings that they, that we are experiencing right now are nothing compared to the glory that is slowly being revealed to us. And so we wait, united with one another, united with all creation, groaning for that which is to come.
And yet. And yet we in the Reformed Tradition know well the brokenness that plagues all of us—the constant search for something to fill in that yawning chasm that sits at the center of all of us, the groaning, the excruciating waiting, the running for our lives, the search for the Holy in our midst. And that is why these two passages are united as one on this day. Just as our spiritual ancestor Jacob ran until he could go no further and then saw that the ground that he was on was holy ground, so, too are we, on our wild and chaotic journeys surprised when we encounter holy ground rising up over the muck and the mire of this life. And just as our spiritual ancestor Paul spoke of being commanded by the spirit, children of God, so, too, when we realize that unbreakable connection to the Divine that all around us becomes holy, indeed holiness is all that we see. But in order to see that holiness, in order to claim our given birthright, to live into freedom and the glory that is our inheritance we must have faith in the power of God to carry us through whatever trials and tribulations that we encounter on our travels. We must have faith that the words we read each week are true and life-giving. We must have faith that all the ground around us is holy because God’s presence is indeed everywhere. And then we must be the hands and feet of the savior, always working for reunion, reconciliation, resurrection.
Friends, this journey we find ourselves on is not an easy one. This journey we are on contains moments when it feels as if we are running from our lives and will never escape our inner demons, the darkness, will never escape the scourge that is our feelings of complete and utter unworthiness of a God who loves, a God who carries, a God who calls all to come back home. This journey we are on contains moments when we do see our better angels shout down the demons in our heads, and that light shines in darkness and that darkness is never able to overcome it, and that we are made in the image of God, heirs in Christ, free in the Spirit. There is nowhere that you can go, no thing that you can do, indeed nothing in all of heaven and on earth that can ultimately separate us from the love of God experienced in Christ Jesus. May we sense the holiness all around us that we can stare into struggles and know that we are always beloved in the eyes of God. And glory be to God in the highest and on earth, peace amongst all God’s children. Alleluia, amen.
Image: Jacob’s Ladder by Marc Chagall (1973)