The Point of the Story

Genesis 28:10-19

Jacob’s alone.

He’s not lost, exactly, but he definitely isn’t “there yet.”

He’s running away from his problems: from the anger and grief and division he’s helped cause back home.  And it’s getting dark.

So Jacob finds a patch of ground – nowhere particular, any place will do – puts his head on a rock, and falls asleep.

This is what winning looks like, sometimes.

This is what achieving his goals, beating his rival, has done for Jacob.

He was born secondary, and he’s spent his life trying to change that. Now he has. His lifetime of scheming, fast talking, hard bargains, and conspiring with his mother in disguises and lying have now made him come first. He’s replaced his brother as he one who is going to inherit it all.

He’s won. So he’s in exile because all that scheming and conniving and planning and managing and relentlessly pursuing his goals have torn his family apart. His father is dying, his brother’s going to kill him, and his mother sends him away.

Winning is obviously not all it’s cracked up to be.

Maybe you’ve had that experience. Worked, planned, sweated, schemed for something: a promotion, a technological marvel or bigger home, the social connections that prove you’ve “made it” (in middle school or adulthood).

Then you get it, and achievement has its own set of problems; maybe succeeding has left you unexpectedly lonely, cut off from others, and vulnerable enough you’ve got to keep watching your back. I’ve seen it.

But that’s not what this story is about.

This isn’t a morality tale about how winning isn’t everything. It works that way if you want it to, but that’s not the point.

The point is what happens next.

When Jacob – alone, not-exactly-lost, and vulnerable – is directly connected to God.

Jacob has a vivid vision of the constant, two-way link between God and the world.

Then God speaks directly to Jacob: I am the God of your grandfather and father, and I am your God.

God gives Jacob the promise God gave first to Abraham and then to Isaac – a promise of familial abundance that blesses every family on earth; of a homeland and an unbreakable relationship with God.

Personally, directly, and unconditionally, God promises Jacob everything he has schemed and planned and cheated and manipulated to get. And this promise is not for Jacob alone, but for the world.

And God goes even further. Wherever you go, Jacob, I am with you, and I will bring you home.

That’s radical – Jacob’s grandfather was called to leave his home and journey to God’s land to receive the same promise and relationship with God. Now God promises to Jacob that whereever he goes, far from home, there’s God. With him.

Everything Jacob has spent his life scheming for is his not because he won it, but as an unasked, unconditional gift from God.

And more.

This connection between heaven and earth isn’t a one-time thing, in just this one place. It’s between God and Jacob everywhere, always.

Jacob’s not alone, now. It’s no longer just about him.

Now, Jacob’s whole future and present are about his relationship with God.

Of course, that doesn’t make him any less of a schemer. He’s tricky all his life, a manipulator who manages the people and situations around him all the time, whether they need it or not.
But it does change him.

He schemes, and also trusts and proclaims that his good fortune is the blessing of God.

He gets in a one-up contest with his tricky uncle to win his fortune and family, and he also listens to the voice of God telling him when to stop and go home.

And when he’s nearly home, about to confront the danger of his brother’s rightful anger, he plots bribes and diversions – and also prays to God, trusting God’s protection even as he acknowledges he’s not worthy on his own merits.

Because now Jacob – who’d destroyed his family by trying to write his own story – has found his place in God’s story.

That’s not a happy ending, it’s just the point of the story.  The point of the whole story, the one that starts long before Jacob and hasn’t ended yet: your story and my story too.

Many of us pour a lot of work and effort into writing our own stories – into planning and managing for success, however we define it. We even pour planning and effort into “creating” our relationship with God.

And sometimes – not always, but often enough – the success we achieve in our own stories is rather lonely, and leaves us vulnerable; afraid to lose what we worked so hard for, whether it’s the perfect job, the home of our dreams, status or relationships, the smoothness of our prayer practices, or anything else.

Vulnerable until that moment when, like Jacob, we see and hear that it’s God’s story we’ve been in all along, not our own story. When we know that because God has given us what we worked so hard to win, we have nothing to fear any more from losing anything.

In that moment of recognition, Jacob exclaims: “God was in this place, and I didn’t know it!”

And that’s the point of the story.

God’s been here all along. God’s been in Jacob’s story – or rather, Jacob’s been in God’s story – all along. Jacob just didn’t see it before.

Alert readers of Genesis realized this even before Jacob was born, of course. Saw that the promise and covenant to Jacob which we hear about today was all implied, if not explicitly promised, to Jacob through Rebekah, his mother.
Jacob’s place in God’s covenant with his family, in God’s promise to the world, doesn’t start in the dream where Jacob realizes it. Everything Jacob has worked and schemed for, that ongoing place in the promises of God he wants - that’s what God has been doing all along.

That’s our story, too. My story, your story.

God’s been here all along.

Not “here,” in the church building, or “here” where you are right now to watch worship and pray.  But here, in every single place and moment of our lives. Any place, wherever we are, God is with us in that constant two-way ink between earth and heaven that Jacob dreams and recognizes.

And that truth can change us, just like Jacob.

When we see and hear, recognize and accept, that instead of writing our own stories, we’re actually part of God’s story, we can let go of our fear of unhappy endings.
We can scheme with God for the blessing and healing of all the earth – God loves to have partners in that.

Or – since we’re not all clever, tricky, Jacob – we don’t all have to scheme. We just plan or network or help or laugh or wait or do whatever you do best with God, listening and trusting and knowing God is here.

This revelation of our role in God’s story, this reality of God’s promise claiming us, often comes as a surprise. But it’s not a secret.

I know this about you already, and you know this about me, just like we know it about Jacob: The futures we try to write for ourselves are already written into God’s promises. God’s been in this place, in our story, even when we didn’t know it.

And the best thing that ever happens to us is to know the truth that Jacob learns:

We’ve been part of God’s story, all along.

Failing

Romans 7:15-25a, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

I have some good news for you this morning:
We’re failing.

That’s right. We are failing.

As a nation, we’re failing to conquer the pandemics of COVID-19 and racism and systemic oppression.  We’re failing in the nearly impossible task of balancing the economy.

As a church, we’re failing to “make disciples of all nations”, as Jesus tells us to do. And we’re struggling, many of us, with “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  I mean, there’s a lot else clamoring for our attention.

As individuals, many of us are pretty well aware that we are failing at something right now, or in general. I know I am. It may be a relationship, a project, something at work, or just a way we are failing to live as we want to live.

We’re also succeeding at many things. Many of us are probably happy anyway.

But we are failing.

Okay, I know that doesn’t sound like good news, but stay with me.

We are failing because we simply can’t do it ourselves.

Paul knows all about this.

Paul comes right out and tells a bunch of strangers in the church in Rome that he cannot – just can not – really do what is right.

I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

Now, remember, this is Paul we’re talking about.

Irritatingly sure-of-himself Paul. By his own declaration: an elite Israelite; strict and devout follower of God's law; fiery defender of purity and faith, blameless in righteousness …

(Philippians 3:4b-6, paraphrased)

Paul is a type-A succeeder, who does not do false modesty.

So it may have been rather reassuring to hear he isn’t perfect. I know it’s been something of a relief to me when a mentor or hero of mine admits to struggling with the things that are hard for me.

Or it may just be disappointing that the most righteous man ever is falling short in public.

But either way, Paul is pointing out in extensive detail that he simply fails, constantly, to do the good he longs to do.

I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. … I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 

Many of us have experienced that, too.

I want to take good care of my health, and I sit on the couch eating popcorn and bingeing Netflix. 

I long to fight against oppression and use my power for good, and I step on other people’s toes or self-worth anyway. (Or I get sucked into hours of Facebook instead of action because the problem feels too big to act on.)
I want a cleaner atmosphere, but I still drive when I could have biked.

We know those experiences, and we often chalk them up to problems of willpower.

But Paul is talking about sin. Not the wrong actions we may take, but the power that overpowers us.  The sheer, simple fact that the evil in the world is bigger than me, or you, or even a bunch of us together.  That there are forces you and I can’t defeat, that work against our ability to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and our neighbors as ourselves.  We can’t, actually, succeed on our own.

It may be a little reassuring to hear Paul say it’s not just about willpower, but it still hurts to fail.

To feel a relationship turn sour because I failed at generosity, respect, or attention.

To watch good go undone, wrongs not put right, because we didn’t get around to unraveling injustices. Or because you can’t really love that neighbor.

To lose touch with the joy in our faith because we feel like we’re not good enough for God.

When we fail, conventional wisdom says try again, work harder, do better, suck in your gut and use your willpower: if you fail it’s your own fault.

But Paul knows that’s not true. That try as we might, we are not going to win this on our own. We are not going to succeed at righteousness, or faith, or being good people by intention and will.

And the more we try to do it on our own, the more we flex our willpower and convince ourselves that we can and should get life right ourselves, that we’ll be okay on our own, the less we see what God is up to in the world.

That’s what Jesus is talking about today.

He reminds the crowds that because they think they’re already okay, they’ve dismissed both Jesus and John – one for being too ferocious and uptight, the other too relaxed and irreverent. And so a whole society is completely missing God’s action right in front of them.

Jesus even thanks God for hiding from the “wise and intelligent” – from the succeeders, the ones who are making it on their own, or at least seem to be.

And then he invites the weary and burdened – the “ignorant” and ignored and oppressed, the losers and failures – to rest in his gentle humility. 

To rest in Jesus’ own refusal to succeed – or at least to succeed on the world’s terms. 

To rest in depending on God’s grace and letting Jesus choose our path, instead of striving for independent success and self-determination.

It’s not easy to rest that way. Everywhere else we go, you and I are going to hear that we need to succeed. To earn our place, to get it right, to beat a system that’s rigged against us, or work the system that’s rigged in our favor, and above all, to depend on ourselves and strive to succeed.

But Jesus is clearly and explicitly not offering this invitation to the successful.

Anyone who can do it on their own, who can save themselves, isn’t going to get into Jesus’ yoke.  If I believe I can make the life I want, I’m not going to enter into a relationship where Jesus sets the direction, the stops and starts, and hitches me to some chunk of the rest of humanity or creation that I don’t get to choose.

And right here is where our failure turns out to be good news.

If we could do it on our own, we wouldn’t need God.

If we don’t need God, we miss out on miracles that turn the world from a struggle against defeat into a wave of limitless possibility. If we don’t need God’s help, we miss seeing abundance beyond our imagining pour out of hardship or disappointment or a couple loaves of bread and a fish.

If we don’t need God, we miss falling in love with the one who loves us more than we could ever imagine.  And if we don’t fail, and find ourselves loved even more fiercely, we’ll never really believe we’re worthy of that all-powerful, unconditional love.

That’s why when Paul (the best succeeder) sums up all his own failure, exclaiming “Wretched, worthless me! Could anyone even save me?!” his very next words, without missing a beat are “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ!!”

Thank God that we fail.

Thank God we break; we lose; we need to be saved. 

Because the miracles that heal our brokenness open worlds we could never have imagined.

Thank God we can’t trust in our own success, because trust in God is abundant life beyond our dreams.

Thank God that we cannot earn love, and that we are loved more fiercely when we merit it the least.

We’re failing, yes. And we are invited to fail right into God’s hands. Good news.

Thanks be to God.