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| A 1966 painting by Albert Houthuesen (1903-1979), who owns the rights thereto, see:http://www.houthuesen.com/ |
Genesis 28: 10-19a
6th Sunday after
Pentecost/ 20th July 2014
There’s
more going on around us than we know. There’s more
going on within us than we can imagine. That’s what Jacob discovered
one night in a dream. Jacob the trickster, the fugitive, is running
from Esau, his brother; Jacob is running from God, running from
himself. Alone. The sun abandoned the day and gave way to
night, and in the night Jacob gave way to sleep. He crawled up beside
a large stone and slept. Tired. Exhausted. In
that place unnamed, Jacob slept. Some place. In this no-place, this non-descript, seemingly
godforsaken place, this wilderness place, Jacob was given a dream.
Given a dream. The Dream Maker
gifted him with an image of a ramp (not really a ladder, but a
ramp) that went from the ground and reached up into the heavens. The
kind of ramp Jacob no doubt saw in Mesopotamia, ramps built along the four
sides of a ziggurat, those terraced temples of Babylon, the top levels of which
were known as the “gates of heaven.” In the dream the ramp is a busy
place, fluid with movement, with messengers of Yahweh moving up and down,
conveying the Word of Yahweh, translating between heaven and earth. As
he was sleeping, as he was dreaming, Yahweh moved up over Jacob, poised over
him as if whispering in Jacob’s ear and said, “I, the LORD, am the God of
Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie,
to you I will give it and to your seed. And your seed shall be like
the dust of the earth and you shall burst forth to the west and the east and
the north and the south, and all the clans of the earth shall be blessed
through you, and through your seed. And, look, I am with you and I will guard you wherever you go, and I will
bring you back to this land for I will not leave you until I have done that
which I have spoken to you.”[1]
Jacob awoke into a new day, into a
world transfigured. He remembered the
dream and said, “Indeed, the LORD is in this place, and I did not know. How awesome is this place. This is the house of God. Here is the gate of
heaven.” Filled with holy fear Jacob realized that the encounter in that
place brought him up against the otherness of the Holy. In those moments awe overcomes us as we encounter
the Other who is Yahweh. You discover that the land upon which you stand is
holy and you take off your shoes. You bow before the Holiness of the LORD with
humility and begin to worship—worship like you’ve never worshipped before, for
you know you’re standing at the threshold of the Holy, the sanctuary, the house
of the One who holds the universe in love.
This non-place becomes some place
because in this place, and potentially any place, the Holiness
of God breaks through. I did not know the LORD was in this place. You
see, there’s more going on around us and within us than we know.
Yahweh is closer than we think or dare
to believe. Even though Jacob is running, he can’t run from
God. Even though Jacob thinks he’s in charge of his life, he’s actually
a pivotal figure in the larger drama of God’s plan and promise to provide a
land and a future to God’s people, and nothing Jacob does—selfish, scheming,
swindler that he is—is going to stand in the way of God’s promise.
But
Jacob is more than just a pawn in God’s cosmic scheme. God wants
Jacob to know who Jacob is and God wants Jacob to know who God really
is. God’s promise includes Jacob, it involves Jacob
realizing that the running can stop because his life is of greater meaning than
his self-absorbed preoccupations and all the guilt and the fear and the shame
of his past. He can let it all go. Jacob’s life has cosmic
significance. If he would just relax and stop running, he would
discover that.
Indeed, Jacob discovered that Yahweh
is close. Jacob discovered that Yahweh likes to appear in surprising
places, making mundane places holy. That’s
why I’m repeating the word “place” so often, because the text does. The
Hebrew word for “place” here, hamaqom, later came to be a name for
God in post-biblical times. Rabbis said that God is to be understood
as place, understood as place that
encompasses the world.[2] And so any place has the potential of
becoming the place where we encounter the Holy One. God is not limited to
sanctuaries or temples or churches.
Celtic Christians believed that there
are places in the world, such as Iona off the coast of Scotland, thin places
where there seems to be a permeable membrane separating heaven and earth,
places where one feels really close to God. You know something other is there, another world is close. I’ve
felt this myself several times in Iona.
Any
place can be the place where we encounter the holy. I sometimes
think the inside of a CT-scan or MRI machine must be one of the holiest places
in our world. Think of all the prayer that is offered in those places, people
asking for and experiencing God’s presence there. Think of a garbage dump
outside the walls of Jerusalem—otherwise known as Golgotha—a place of execution
that became the place where the glory of God’s suffering love was revealed on a
cross. If God can be present there, then God can be anywhere. What
about a drug and rat-infested row house in West Baltimore or a slum in
Kinshasa?
There’s more going on around us than
we know or can even imagine. We have to be open to it. We have to
pray that our hearts and ears and eyes are open to God’s presence. When you do,
you’ll meet God in very surprising places.
But if you’re the skeptical or logical
type, the type that only sees what you want to see, believes only what you want
to believe, if you like to be in control, if there’s a Jacob in you, maybe
running from God, running from yourself, then don’t be surprised if God meets
you in precisely those places where you’re not
in control, where your ego-defenses are down—as when you’re asleep, when you dream.
Just as there are geographical
places that convey the Holy, that allow us to engage in heaven-to-earth,
human-divine conversations, it is significant that scripture tells us there are
internal, psychic places that are like those ramps, where heaven and earth
converse, where we receive a divine word of promise and hope and assurance that
directs our steps and waking moments. A
dream is like a ramp between two worlds, between the unconscious and the
conscious. But a dream, scripture tells us, can also be a ramp
between heaven and earth, between the human and divine.
It is not surprising that Sigmund
Freud (1856-1939), shaped as he was by his own Jewish experience, would put so
much stock in the importance of dreams. His collection of
essays, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), was a bombshell
upon the moral, prudishness of Victorian Europe, and one of the great pieces of
Western literature.[3] Of course, Freud had problems with the notion
of God, but he showed us the power of the unconscious to shape our waking moments.
Freud’s colleague and close friend, Carl Jung (1875-1961) eventually separated
from Freud and severed their relationship, in part, because Jung wanted to
embrace the psychological importance of the God-experience, whereas Freud was suspicious
of Jung’s interests.[4] Freud
basically believed that the unconscious was like a trash compactor and that
dreams helped to “process” the events of waking life. Jung, on the other hand,
saw the unconscious as a vast source of wisdom. It’s claimed that 90% of who we
are is unconscious, leaving 10% for consciousness; like an iceberg, we see only
the tip. The wisdom of that other 90% is conveyed to us through our
dreams. Son of a Reformed pastor in
Switzerland, Jung said that in our time, “We
have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and
visions.”[5] If you want to know where God might still
be speaking today, pay attention to your dreams.
Now,
to be clear, not every dream is from God (thank God!), but
every dream has meaning, multiple meanings, and is given to us as sheer gift
for the purpose of health and wholeness. No dream is given just to
tell us what we already know but something we need to know for our well being,
to move us along life’s way.
Jung was only reclaiming something
that Jacob knew: God speaks to us through our dream life. Everyone
dreams, every night, whether you remember your dreams or not. You dream. Time and again the importance of dreams
surface in the Bible. They’re still
important. But unless you’re in analysis or know how to listen to them, we generally
don’t take our dreams seriously or see them as companions on our walk with
God.
Genesis
37:5 tells us, “Joseph dreamed a dream: and he told it to his brothers and
they hated him yet the more.”[6] Perhaps
that’s your experience with dreams. Maybe you discount them. How often have we heard it said, or maybe you
say it yourself, “It’s only a dream” or “It’s just a dream.” “Just…” “Just…”
“Just”–such a “soul-crushing word.”[7]
Dreams
are more than “just” dreams—they have immense power, and when used by God, they
have extraordinary power to redeem and help make us whole. For more
than twenty-five years now I have kept track of my dreams, giving greater
attention to them over the last seven to ten years, in particular. I write them
down in the middle of the night. I have a pen and pad beside my bed, and I write
down (sometimes in the dark) what I remember. I work with them daily. I
listen to them. I amplify them. I don’t try to interpret them. I live
with them. Over the years I have had three or four in which I know beyond
a doubt God was speaking to me. They
were significant, life-changing dreams that pointed me in a particular
direction, and they continue to shape me today. There’s more going on
around us than we know. There’s more going on within us than we know
or imagine.
Maybe you’re still skeptical. That’s
okay. Here’s a story from the last time I preached on this text, back in 2005. During
my time preparing for the sermon that week, I came across an interview with the
South African novelist and travel writer, Laurens van der Post (1906-1996); one
of his books became the film, The Lost
World of the Kalahari, produced by the BBC in 1956. I was
familiar with the name but didn’t know much about him. In the
interview, he talked about growing up in the Calvinist world of South Africa
where he read the Bible and was fascinated by the importance of
dreams. He later met Carl Jung, in 1949, whose own Calvinist
background and psychological underpinnings allowed them to become fast
friends. Van der Post believed, “a dream is the instrument of
creative change.”[8] In
an interview with the Bushman, one hunter said to him, “There’s a dream
dreaming us.” When pressed to explain, the hunter was moved by what
he said and simply replied, “I can’t tell you more, but there’s a dream dreaming
us.”[9] That stayed with me all week.
Then, on the Saturday of that week,
I was roaming through a used bookstore in Washington, DC, on Connecticut Avenue,
glancing over some books in the religion section, when my eyes rested on the
spine of a book. I was drawn to one book in particular with large letters that
read JUNG. Because of my considerable interest in Jung, I pulled it from the
shelf. I looked at the cover and discovered that it was written by Laurens
van der Post! I bought it, grabbed some coffee, and sat down to
read. In the first couple of pages van der Post talked about the
importance of dreams. Then I discovered that he devoted two full pages to
Jacob’s ladder or ramp dream, which he called, “the greatest of all dreams ever
dreamt.”[10] Now,
Jung wouldn’t call my experience a coincidence, but an example of synchronicity.
(Jung was the first to describe synchronicity.[11]) It’s
essentially a message of the psyche: pay attention to this, Kenneth,
this is important.
So
I drove back to Baltimore, to Dickeyville, and was about to sit down to write
the sermon around 6:00 p.m. (Now, I usually don’t wait until Saturday evenings
to write the sermon each week. Some weeks I sense resistance within me and
I put it off because it’s not ready to be written.) So, it was Saturday
evening, in Dickeyville, when—poof—the power went out. A fire truck
spun out of control on North Forest Park and hit a utility pole (thankfully,
the firemen were okay). Frustrated, I packed up my things and headed
for the Church House to write the sermon. I turned on the computer,
prayed, waited for the computer to fire up, and stared out the window behind
the monitor, facing north, when my eyes focused on what had been staring at me
for weeks, but I never really noticed it: a tree, with a ladder leaning up
against it. But on that Saturday evening the ladder was placed lower
down on the tree, making the ladder look more like a ramp. The
ladder. The ramp. The way of moving between two worlds. I
can see that ladder and the tree in my mind’s eye. The ladder seemed to shimmer,
as though illuminated. It wasn’t
actually glowing, but that’s how it felt.
Synchronicity again. I got it and I laughed out loud: this
is important, pay attention, Kenneth.
There is so much more going on
around us than we can imagine. There is so much more going on within us than we
know. Our world is connected to another world, and that other world,
so very close, as close as our dreams, is the source of life and grants meaning
to our lives. What matters most in the life of faith is making that
connection. The closing words at the end of E. M. Forster’s
(1879-1970), Howard’s End, says it
all: “Only connect.”[12] Only connect. What matters most is the connection,
the fluid movement between heaven and earth, up and down on that ramp. I
think van der Post gets to the heart of what Jacob discovered in his dream: “No
matter how abandoned and without help either in themselves or the world about
them, men [and women] are never alone because that which, acknowledged or
unacknowledged, dreams through them is always by their side.”[13] By their side.
And I would add, as I have learned, the one who dreams through us is also
on our side. On our side.
The one who dreams through us is
God—this is a bold claim, I know, but the text leads us to such conclusions. My
own experience backs it up. Jacob didn’t have to ask for help; it just
came. It was gift—sheer grace. He didn’t have a dream, the dream had him; it was
given to him. And the dream spoke so clearly to his situation—telling
him that his life is worthy of God’s divine protection and promise—“I am with
you and I will guard you wherever you go.” The dream grants a future,
grants him a telos. He didn’t have to
worry about his future. When Jacob realized this, it provided him with the
assurance he needed to fulfill the meaning and purpose of his life.[14]
Then
Jacob did what you would do: he began to worship, really worship Yahweh.
And he set up a reminder, established a shrine, so that he would never, ever forget
what he learned in that dream.
So,
what is God dreaming through you?
*I'm grateful to the folks at The Zurich Lab(oratory) for sharing a version of this sermon on their blog.
[1] Robert Alter’s
translation in The Five Books of Moses: A
Translation with Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004).
[2] Taken from The
Torah: A Modern Commentary, ed. W. Gunther Plaut (NY: Union of American
Hebrew Congregations, 1981). One rabbi said: “God is the place of
the world, but the world is not His place.”
[3] First published in
1900, with the German title, Die Traumdeutung, which could be
translated, “Dream meanings.”
[4] See Jung’s
biography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded and edited by
Aniela Jaffé; translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston (New
York: Vintage Books, 1971), in which he vividly tells his separation from
Freud, including accounts of Freud fainting when the subject of God came up in
conversations (146ff). See also Jung’s Terry Lectures delivered at
Yale University, Psychology and Religion. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1938.
[5] C. G. Jung, Man and His Symbols (1953). See also C.
G. Jung, Dream Interpretation Ancient and
Modern: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1941, edited by John Peck,
Lorenz Jung, and Maria Meyer-Grass (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2014).
[6] Robert Alter’s
translation.
[7] There’s a scene in the
movie Finding Neverland (Miramax,
2004) about the life of J. M. Barrie (1860-1937), the author of Peter Pan, in which Barrie scorns the
use of the word, “just”—as “such a soul-crushing word.”
[8] Laurens van der Post,
“Dialogues with Sir Laurens van der Post."
[9] “Dialogues.”
[10] Laurens van der Post,
Jung & the Story of Our Time (New York: Pantheon Books,
1975), 12. Jacob’s dream “remains,” he said, “the greatest of all dreams
ever dreamt and the progenitor of all the other dreams, visionary material, and
mythological and allegorical activity that were to follow” in the Bible.
[11] See C. G. Jung,
“Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle,” in Collected Works, Vol. 8 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1970).
[12] E. M. Forster, Howard’s
End (1910), "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect
the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be
seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast
and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."
(Chapter 22).
[13] Van der Post, p. 12.
[14] Van der Post, “For
Jacob had not even to ask for help from beyond himself. The
necessities of his being had spoken so eloquently from him that the dream
brought him instant promise of help from that which had created him, henceforth
to the end of his days, and of those who were to follow in his way after him.”
(12).
