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July 17, 2005 Tom Drewer SERMON:
"And I Did Not Know It” Then
Jacob woke from his sleep and said "Surely
the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!" Over the years I have met
and become friends with people whom others would consider but little better than
the devil himself.
I
have known murderers, cheats, thieves, and adulterers, and I have come to one
conclusion about all these people who have crossed my path, and that conclusion
is that you cannot know what is going to come next, nor can you pin down just
where God is and what God is about. I want you to hold onto that thought today! I
want you to hold onto it when you meet people that strike you as evil, and I
want you to hold onto it when you feel that you yourselves are out of the reach
of God.
I
want you to hold onto it when you watch the news at six and when you walk into
in a courtroom to face a judge. I want you to hold onto it when you see the
neighborhood gossip going on her rounds, and I want you to hold onto when you
encounter an unscrupulous salesman doing his pitch. We do not know what is going
to come next, nor can we pin down just where God is and what God is about.
This
is the message of Jacob's story, the Jacob who cheated his brother and stole his
birthright, the Jacob who fled to do his father's bidding fled not because he
was particularly obedient, but because he feared that he would be killed if he
stayed at home.
And
as he fled he came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, he took a
stone of the place and put it under his head and lay down, and he slept and he
dreamed and in that dream God came to him God came to him who was tired and
fearful, to him who was alone and thought that he was loved by none except his
mother.
God
came to him who was a cheat and a rascal and God knows what else, and God gave
to him a vision of a staircase reaching into heaven, of a ladder upon which the
angels ascended and descended to do God's bidding and as Jacob looked upon this
scene God gave him a promise the promise made to his grandfather Abraham and to
his father Isaac, saying "know, that I am with you and will keep you
wherever you go, that I will not leave you until I have done what I have
promised you."
And
Jacob awoke and he said, and catch this line he said "Surely the Lord is in
this place, and I did not know it!" Does that fit your experience? Have you
ever been in God's presence and hardly noticed it? Have you ever suddenly
realized that God had been with you long before you knew God was there? Have you
ever been in exile or in fear only to discover God coming to your aid? Have you
ever had your picture of someone completely painted only to discover that the
light has shifted, that the person you thought you saw has completely changed?
Changed for the better?
Have
you ever painted a picture of yourself, a
picture in which the colors are all blue all depressed all unlovable only to
discover that someone loves you? That
someone believes in you? That you
are more than welcome in God's presence?
The
good news of Jacob's story is not simply that there are links to heaven.
The good news is not that God sometimes comes to us.
The good news is not that heaven and earth are somehow connected.
The good news is not that Jacob was a special kind of guy despite his
tricky ways. Nor is the good news
simply that we see God keeping - and renewing God’s promise to Abraham and to
Isaac to raise up a people and to bless them to be a blessing.
No!
the good news is all but hidden in that single sentence: "Surely
the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.!" Do
you understand? Do you get it?
Do you have ears to hear?
The
gospel reading today the reading about the parable of the wheat and the tares is
instructive for us. It
is instructive
- not because it prophecies the ultimate destruction of evil doers,
- nor because it teaches us that the blights on our lives and the weeds
that suck up the nutrition of better plants
are afflictions that come from Satan - No,
it is instructive for us because it counsels patience ---
-
Patience in the face of situations that seem bad to us,
- patience in the face of attacks by Satan,
- patience in the midst of our urge to go out and fix things and make
them right.
- Patience in the face of our desire to make judgments about others
and to act on those judgments. We
do not know what is going to come next, nor
can we pin down just where God is and what God is about. In fact we can't
even be sure that the weeds about us will remain weeds and that the wheat will
remain wheat. Consider
Moses - a murderer, Consider
David – a murderer, an adulterer, Consider
the Apostle Paul - a religious vigilante, Consider
the disciple Peter - a hypocrite and a coward. Who
would think that God would work with them? That
God would be present with them? That
God would love them? That
God would make them great? That
God would grant unto them the blessings of God’s kingdom?. Consider
yourselves.... What
judgment do you make upon yourself? Master,
say the servants in the parable of the wheat and the weeds - Master,
do you want us to go out and gather the weeds for burning - do
you want us to pluck out the evil sown by your enemy to try to separate out the
roots, to destroy that which is doing harm?
No,
says the master for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with
them. Wait till harvest time. Wait till the reapers go forth.
Wait! Let
anyone with ears hear... Where
is God? What
is God doing? We
do not know what is going to come next, nor can we pin down just where God is
and what God is about. But we can be sure of one thing, we can know one truth we
can rely on one reality, and that is, God will surprise us.
God
will surprise us by embracing us when we feel dirty and unclean, God will
surprise us by turning our greatest afflictions into sources of strength and
healing. God will surprise us by taking the lost and isolated and making them
great lights. God will surprise us by changing the wicked into saints and by
casting down those whose righteousness turned out to be only something they wore
on their sleeves. God
will surprise us by making sour lemons into thirst quenching beverages. God
will surprise us by converting moments of pain into stripes that heal.
God will surprise us by changing a time of death into an eternity of
glorious life. Surely
the Lord is in this place and I did
not know it.
This
could be a cry of despair coming as it does from Jacob's most unworthy lips, it
could be the kind of cry we have all uttered when we have done one thing when we
ought to have done another, it could be a cry of despair and a moment of longing
for that which is past, But it is not! For
Jacob that cry signals a moment of awakening, a
time of opening his eyes and truly seeing, a
time of opening his ears and truly listening. a
time of coming from the night of uncertainty into the daylight of a holy hope.
For
Jacob that cry signals a moment of discovering that, yes, God is here: here even
when we do not know it, here even when we think that God can not, should not,
will not be here, here even when we are not looking for God to be here. And in
discovering that God is here, it is for Jacob a moment in which he understands
that God is here to bless and to heal; that God is here to comfort and to guide;
that God is here to change to transform; that God is here to help and to
reassure. And
Jacob woke from his sleep, and he said "Surely
the Lord is in this place - and I did not know it" and
yes, Jacob was afraid, afraid not because he had made some mistake, but afraid
because he realized just how holy was the place he was in, and as he looked in
that fear upon the sand and rock and the dry plants and soil of that place, he
said "How
awesome is this place, this is none other than the house of God and this is the
gate of heaven"
And
Jacob took the stone upon which he had laid his head while he slept and he made
of it a kind of memorial, a kind of altar, and he poured oil upon that stone
upon which he had his vision and he named the place in which he had slept---
Bethel---"The House of God" How
awesome indeed is the place of God -
the place in which the weeds are allowed to grow up with the wheat -
the place in which all we have for pillows are stones -
the place in which we fear and long for comfort and think we have none -
the place in which the lost are found and the blind given sight. We
do not know what is going to come next, nor can we discern just where God is and
what God is about. But
if we wait, if we let God do whatever it is God is doing, if we let God move in
mysterious ways, God’s wonders to perform we will find ourselves surprised in
the most wonderful of ways, we will discover that where we are, wherever we are
is the House of God and that next to us is the gate of heaven. Lift
up your heads, O Gates! And
be lifted up, O ancient doors that
the King of Glory may come in. Who
is this King of Glory? The
Lord of Hosts, God is the King of Glory Hallowed
be his name, now and forever. Amen.
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