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.