 | The New England Church PulpitNew England Congregational Church UCC |
Promises From the Dark | July 21, 2002 |
Perhaps Jacob, the fugitive, is on the run not only from his brother’s wrath but also from his own shame. Perhaps he feels manipulated by his mother into stealing his brother’s blessing. Now that he has usurped the mantle of the covenant, he doubts whether he can fulfill its obligations.
Having acquired his father’s blessing under false pretenses, maybe Jacob feels none of the validation he had hoped for. In fact, he feels the opposite: like a fraud and a thief. He may have been chosen by God to lead the next generation, but he doesn’t feel deserving or blessed. He is starting out on a lonely journey of indeterminate length and uncertain destination. He feels lost and vulnerable, unsure of his ability to persevere. All he knew was that he was terribly alone. As the sun set it got darker and darker both outside and within. He groped along the path for a place to rest. His hands found a round stone, still warm from the sun. So he drew this ancient Certa Sleeper toward him and rested his temple on the stone and prayed for refuge in sleep—perhaps to dream. Indeed he had a dream, a wonderful dream.
In the billowing multicolored clouds there appeared a ladder–luminous and long–so long it spanned the great gap between earth and the vault of heaven. There were angelic creatures going up and down this ladder, back and forth between his world and that other world with ease and gracefulness, beauty and strength.
Then there was a voice–surely the voice of the Almighty. The voice spoke to him promising to him the same promise given to his grandfather Abraham and to his father Isaac. When he awoke, he knew that the dream was somehow more than a dream and that this place was made sacred by this vision. So he named the place Bethel–the house of God.
Jacob’s ladder is the first explicitly recorded dream in the Bible. Other messages from beyond may have come in dreams but they are not so labeled. Naomi Rosenblatt claims that this “first biblical dream paints a compelling portrait of the psychological crossroads where Jacob now finds himself. And it shows us just how sophisticated the biblical authors were in portraying the unconscious mind several millennia before the advent of modern psychology.” (Wrestling with Angels)
She suggests that if we examine the juxtaposition of Jacob’s miserable day and the symbols at work in his dream, we can see how his unconscious mind is working overtime to resolve the conflicts that threaten to tear him apart. By tapping in to the same source of faith and inspiration as his father and grandfather before him, Jacob prevails. The ladder can be seen as a desire for deliverance from the many earth- bound conflicts.
Note that the angels are first going up, and then returning down the ladder. Messengers to God expressing Jacob’s hope for comfort. Jacob cries out for help from the dark.
God visits Jacob for the first time. Even if this should be called a “wish-fulfillment” dream, God promises him all that he has lost: a family, a homeland, the feeling of being blessed. In this promise from the dark, God offers Jacob a ladder out of his despair.
Can we identify with Jacob? Do we know what the poets call the dark night of the soul?
Peggy Noonan, writing for The Wall Street Journal, comments on a scene from the recent film, Black Hawk Down.. The movie is about the Battle of Bakara Market in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October, 1993. In this particular scene, the actor Tom Sizemore, in the role of a tough, hard-core U.S. Army Ranger colonel, is in command of a small convoy of Humvees trying to get back to base with mortar and rocket fire exploding all around. In this violent vortex, the colonel stops the convoy, brings some wounded on board and yells at a bleeding sergeant who is standing in shock nearby, “Get into that truck and drive.” “But I’m shot Colonel,” the sergeant replies.
The colonel shouts back, “Everybody’s shot, get in and drive.” Noonan is struck by those words: “Everybody’s shot.” They suggest a metaphor for life. Everyone has taken a hit, everyone’s been hurt. We’re all walking wounded. We all know the darkness that Jacob knew.
Maybe some tragedy makes the lights go out:
when we’ve lost someone dear,
when we’ve been told unpleasant news about our health,
when we open our quarterly stock statement,
when we didn’t get the job or promotion we were counting on,
when we opened the letter that brings bad news–
It seems like the lights go out in broad daylight. Having people around does not keep us from feeling alone; having light pour into the window does not keep us from knowing darkness. Sometimes there is no big outside event, no tragedy, but a flagging of energy, a spiritual staleness. A darkness hovers, haunts, lingers, covering our spirits, draping our soul. We wish for a switch to flip, a string to pull, a flashlight to turn on. Yes, we know the darkness Jacob knew.
But Jacob’s dream, the promises he got from the dark can be ours as well.
Like Jacob, we are always standing before the “gateways to heaven,” which wait to swing open when we least expect them. The promise of the Biblical record is that when we dispatch emissaries of hope, angels of faith may return to us. Ladders are constantly being lowered into our lives when we have bottomed out. It falls to us to take the first steps, one rung at a time, beginning at the bottom of whatever ladder we face. The good news of the Gospel is that God has already planted deep within each of us grace and strength of soul. I am persuaded that there are reservoirs of strength and peace and assurance and perseverance and calm deep within each of us that we may not know are there until we need to call upon them and use them. There is a hidden grace of God planted deep in the soul. The grace of God is present within each of us in abundance far beyond what we dare to expect or hope to believe or imagine.
Surely that is what the psalmist had tapped when he wrote in Psalm 139:
O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me! . . .
If I say, “Let only darkness cover me, and the
light about me be night.”
Even the darkness is not dark to Thee;
the night is as bright as the day;
for the darkness is as light with Thee.
We promised this morning to assist Grant (who was baptized today) to make sure that he will know that he has a spiritual identity that cannot be diminished or modified by external circumstances. He is a child of God. So are you. So am I. The promise to each of us from Jacob’s dream, the promise from the dark is that our enduring identity with God is the ladder of hope within our grasp.
Amen.
Joe Dunham
| Copyright © 2002 by Joe Dunham. All rights reserved. |