LET'S MAKE A DEAL
Genesis 28:10-19a

A sermon given by the Rev. Dr. Gwendolyn Howard
July 17, 2005 / 9th Sunday of Pentecost

When I used to be a parish minister, every Sunday after the worship service I would stand at the entrance to the sanctuary and chat with folks as they headed out for the day or downstairs to coffee hour. It’s just one of those things ministers are expected to do. And I remember that, especially in the early years, what I didn’t want to hear at that point in the morning was a complex rebuttal of what I’d just offered in the sermon, nor a debate on the finer points of hermeneutical exegesis (remember, I used to serve Unitarian Universalist churches).

I have to confess that all I really wanted to hear at that point in the day was “nice sermon” or at least “that wasn’t a complete waste of my time.” Did I mention that, like many other young pastors, I was extremely insecure? One of the more interesting comments I used to hear was “Where do you get the ideas for your sermons?” It’s interesting because, depending on how you say it, it can be more, or less, complimentary. To avoid any ambiguity, I gradually made it a practice to talk about where the ideas came from, right in the sermon, itself.

Today, for example, I had a number of things I wanted to talk about but I couldn’t decide on which one, so I just turned to the lectionary instead. The lectionary was a collection of readings from the scripture that could be used at every worship service. The principle of the lectionary in liturgical use is quite old, but the current revised common lectionary used in many denominations came out about the time I was still in seminary. The modern version has a unique set of readings for every single Sunday and it works on a three year cycle. This morning’s reading from the Book of Genesis is one of the appointed readings for July 17th, 2005. Since it’s been quite a few years since I’ve heard anyone preach on this text, I thought I would take a look at it.

Mind you, when the international, interdenominational committee of officials and scholars got together to work out a cycle of readings for Sunday worship, they didn’t just pick their favorite bits from scripture then drop them onto a calendar at random. It seems like almost everything was chosen for a purpose. If you were to look, for example, at all the readings suggested for today, you would pretty quickly notice one or two themes that stand out. That does make life easier for a pastor, doesn’t it?

Having already done some of the reading myself, I can tell you that many people sitting in pews in churches large and small today are hearing a sermon on how we are chosen by God to be God’s people. It’s clear that this is the theme the folks who set up the lectionary expected to be a topic of the day. It feels as if they really wanted this. I say that because they did some editing of the texts to help them to fit that theme. They actually cut off the end of the Jacob story you just heard, for example. That ending makes the story more complicated. But I’ll say more about that in a moment or two.

Even without it’s ending, this is a very rich text. Let me first talk about the story as we’ve heard it.

The moment I saw this text, I thought to myself, “Ah, I already know one of the hymns we can sing.” Of course, I hate to be the one to say this, but that very familiar hymn about climbing Jacob’s ladder is based on a faulty translation. Most authorities point out that it shouldn’t be called a “ladder”, but rather a “stairway”. The angels of Jacob’s dream are described as going up and down on this stairway that went up to the sky. (As tempting as it was, I have refrained from asking our musicians to do Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” as special music this morning.)

If a better translation is known and generally accepted, why do we have the version we’ve heard today? For one thing, according to a number of commentators, people in general are familiar with the “ladder” and have grown comfortable with it and would be greatly troubled by a change in the language: in short, the general Bible-reading public wouldn’t want it.

There’s also another possible reason. E. A. Speiser pointed out many years ago that it isn’t just a substitution of stairway for ladder, but that the words used and the way they are used are quite obvious. They are meant to describe a ziggurat – or temple – which was commonly used in ancient Mesopotamia (that is, Iraq). Ziggurats were a bit like pyramids in shape, but they functioned more like artificial mountains. Rather than going inside to worship, you would climb the stairway on the outside that would take you up into the sky so that you could be closer to the god or gods that live in the sky.

For a long time, religious leaders (seeing themselves as “followers of the unique revelation of God’s only son” and as “God’s chosen people”) worked diligently to describe themselves as bearers of the “one true religion”. Do you think Christian leaders (or even Jewish leaders, for that matter) would have been very happy to have people reading in their Bibles about how Jacob had a dream and in it angels were going up and down the stairs of a ‘pagan temple’ and God comes along to say everything’s wonderful? I can’t imagine it is something many religious leaders would have wanted.

As I said, this text is rich in its detail and there are so many things I would like to talk about; Like, for example, why does Jacob use a rock for a pillow? - Scholars have written essays on this issue. Or, who wrote, edited, compiled this story and what might it have meant to them? – Even more essays on that.

But, of the many questions I asked while preparing this sermon, there is one other I’d like to share: Jacob was one of the ancient patriarchs and Bethel was the place he renamed because it is where he encountered God and he said it was the dwelling place of God and the gateway to heaven and it was the place where the promise was made that he would be protected by God, and his descendents would be God’s people (there’s that theme). This was clearly a very special, holy place. What happened to it?

Long after Jacob died – maybe a thousand years – there was a king named Josiah (he, himself, lived about 600 years before Christ). Josiah had a lot of problems to deal with. For one thing ancient Israel was no longer one country by that time, but it had split in two (the northern tribes and the southern tribes), and he was ruler of the southern kingdom. Josiah, supported by the prophets in the southern kingdom, charged that Bethel was a center for evil and idolatry. It was said that Bethel contained a temple where a golden calf was being worshiped. Josiah was able to stop what was happening in Bethel when he and his troops went there, and nearly wiped it off the map.

Why do you think King Josiah wanted to obliterate Bethel? Was it the pagan worship he said could be found there? Perhaps. But there is more to the story you need to know. The northern and southern kingdoms had long been in serious conflict. Bethel was once home to the ark of the covenant, but when the ark was moved to Jerusalem, the folks around that city said Jerusalem was the holy city of God, and the only place for God’s temple. It just so happened that Jerusalem was in the southern kingdom – Josiah’s kingdom. Bethel was in the northern kingdom and the folks there said that Bethel was the holy city. After all didn’t Jacob, himself, encounter God there? (Isn’t it starting to almost sound like “my temple’s better than yours”?) Josiah was trying to hold together his kingdom and it certainly could have been advantageous for the very center of the religion to be in his kingdom (and how much better would things be for him and his people if they had no rivals?). Bethel had to go, no matter how important it once had been. Of course there is a bit of guesswork in some of this since the northern kingdom was wiped out and we only have the story from the point of view of the southerners.

So far, as I’ve been talking about the story of Jacob there has actually been an underlying theme. That is, I’ve been talking about people who want things and want them to be a certain way. Starting from: what I used to want to hear at the end of a church service, then on to what the committee on the lectionary seemed to want for a theme, to what the general public seems to have wanted in a Bible translation, even mentioning what old King Josiah wanted. And in every one of these cases, I tried to explore the question of why someone wants something.

Almost everyone has wants sometimes, but how can you know if the want is selfish or worth working toward?

Ask why – why is it wanted?

I like this theme, but what has it got to do with the story of Jacob? I’d like to read to you the rest of the story, the part left off by the lectionary committee. As I’m sure you remember, we heard that Jacob dreamed God promised that the land would be Jacob’s and he’d have countless descendents and that God would never leave Jacob nor his descendents. After these powerful promises, here’s what happens next:

Jacob then made a vow saying. “If God remains with me, protecting me on this journey that I am taking, and giving me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and I come back safe to my father’s house – Yahweh will be my god. This stone that I have set up as a pillar shall be God’s abode and of al that you may grant me I will always set aside a tenth for you.” [Anchor Bible]

After the incredible promises made by God, Jacob turns around and, in effect, says: Okay God, I want to make a deal with you. Just get me through this trip I’m on right now, and, hey, you can be my God. How’s that?

Recently I saw three different situation comedies on television in just one week wherein one of the characters would find themselves in some kind of trouble (such as being stuck in an elevator, or losing their homework – things like that), they’d make an outrageous promise to God (something like “Oh God if you get me out of this mess, I’ll become a missionary.” Or, “I’ll give all my possessions to the poor”, or some other variation). And the joke was always that they quickly get what they wanted right away and are stuck with their promise to God. I think we can learn three things from this. One: I probably watch too much television. Two: Such bargaining is a very common experience for us human beings. Three: When you step outside of the situation as an observer (even in Jacob’s case), the bargains with God start to look pretty ridiculous (and even funny).

It is common, I think. We want stuff. Sometimes we want things so badly, we’re willing to try to make deals with God to get what we want (and like Jacob, ignoring what God has stated that God wants). But too often one can get so caught up in the desires of the moment, like Jacob who just wanted his trip not to be a disaster, that we lose sight of the real issues. We don’t take a step back, look at ourselves and our situation objectively. We may have lost sight of what’s really important. We might never have asked ourselves; “Why do I want this?”

There are never any guarantees in this life that we’ll get everything we want. There are never any guarantees that we’ll even get what we need. But when someone spends all their time and resources – making deals with God, or with the ungodly – just to get something they “want”, and that “want” is shortsighted, self centered or selfish, then that is a great tragedy. Perhaps instead of making deals, time would be better spent trying to better understand what God wants.

Take a moment sometime today to remember something you’ve really, desperately wanted (wanted so much that you may have even been willing to make a deal with God). Then ask yourself why you wanted it. Was it to cover one of your own failings or flaws, was it because you believed you knew better than everyone else what is good for them? Was it to put yourself (or maybe your country) in a better position than others?

What is it that God wants? Jesus answered that complex question with the simple words: Love God with your whole heart and love your neighbor as yourself. The answer that the prophet Micah offered was equally straightforward: Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

Always ask yourself “why.” When you want something, is it to just to satisfy one of your desires, to make yourself feel good, or is it to make God happy?

Amen.