“I Will Keep You”

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

July 23, 2017

“I Will Keep You”

Genesis 28:10-19

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran.

He came to a certain place

and stayed there for the night,

because the sun had set.

Taking one of the stones of the place,

he put it under his head and lay down in that place.

And he dreamed that there was

a ladder set up on the earth,

the top of it reaching to heaven;

and the angels of God were ascending

and descending on it.

And the Lord stood beside him

and said, “I am the Lord,

the God of Abraham your father

and the God of Isaac;

the land on which you lie

I will give to you and to your offspring;

and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth,

and you shall spread abroad

to the west and to the east

and to the north and to the south;

and all the families of the earth

shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.

Know that I am with you and will keep you

wherever you go,

and will bring you back to this land;

for I will not leave you

until I have done what I have promised you.”

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said,

“Surely the Lord is in this place—

and I did not know it!”

And he was afraid, and said,

“How awesome is this place!

This is none other than the house of God,

and this is the gate of heaven.”

So Jacob rose early in the morning,

and he took the stone that he had put under his head

and set it up for a pillar

and poured oil on the top of it.

He called that place Bethel;

but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

**************************************************

I am not making this up;

it is not fake news.

Many hotels have them,

especially higher-end hotels,

luxury hotels in larger cities.

They are called “pillow concierges”.

Yes, you heard right: “pillow concierges”.

Someone on the hotel staff who will see to it

that you have a pillow that is just right for you,

a pillow that is neither too hard, nor too soft;

feather pillows, memory-foam pillows;

a pillow that’s perfect for side sleepers,

back sleepers,

and those who sleep on their stomachs.

                                   

The pillow concierge will remember

your pillow preference,

so on your next visit

your room will have your preferred pillow,

right there on your bed,

ready for you, ready for you to lay your head down,

for a restful, refreshing night’s sleep,

“flights of angels singing thee to thy rest!”

How far we’ve come over the past 4,000 years

since poor Jacob was forced to

lay his head on a rock;

a cold, hard stone for his pillow

as he slept outside under the stars.

Of course, as our text tells us,

the rock on which Jacob rested his head

would become the next morning an altar to God,

an altar Jacob set up and anointed with oil

to mark the place where he had slept,

the place Jacob would thereafter call, “Bethel”,

Hebrew for “house of God.”

But it isn’t the stone as a pillow

or even as an altar,

that captures our attention in this story.

It’s that ladder,

that ladder with the angels going up and down:

“…a ladder set up on the earth,

the top of it reaching to heaven;

and the angels of God

… ascending and descending on it.”

It’s that ladder we call, “Jacob’s ladder”

that fascinates us,

artists by the scores over the centuries

capturing the image in mosaic,

oil,

pen and ink,

sculpture,

perhaps most majestically,

carved into the towers

of Bath Abbey in England.

Jacob always sound sleep in the pictures –

he’s dreaming, after all -

his head on that awful rock,

the ladder in the background,

angels going up one side and down the other.

What our text calls a ladder, though,

is probably better translated as, “ramp”,

a ramp as part of a building

built to rise up to heaven,

a building with ramps leading from earth to heaven.

Such structures were not unknown in Jacob’s time.

A ramp, or perhaps a stair,

that’s probably what the author of our text

had in mind as he wrote the words of our lesson.

But there’s something about a ladder

that makes for a more compelling story,

something about a ladder that’s more fascinating

than a staircase or a ramp –

they both sound so ordinary.

A ladder is vertical, steep,

wobbly, dizzy-ing.

A ladder can pierce the clouds

and reach the highest heavens.

Of course, with all our fascination

about the ladder,

all those artists capturing angels

going up and down,

no one seems ever to have taken a step back

and asked,

why would angels need a ladder,

or for that matter a staircase or a ramp

to travel between earth and heaven?

Don’t angels have wings?

The angels in every work of art that I’ve seen

capturing Jacob’s ladder

all have wings,

wings presumably that allowed them to fly,

fly about,

But setting aside the ladder,

the ramp, the stair,

angels flying or not flying—

even the stone,

there is something more here,

something that is easy to overlook,

buried in a single verse,

“And the Lord stood beside [Jacob]”,

The Lord God, Yahweh,

the one we call holy, eternal,

loving, gracious,

our Creator,

our Redeemer,

the one we praise—

this God,

this very God

appeared,

and stood by Jacob;

not delegating his message to the angels who were—

and the pun is clearly intended—

just a stone’s throw away.

The Lord God stood by Jacob

and spoke to him:

“Know that I am with you

and will keep you wherever you go…”

“I am with you…”

“I will keep you.”

God’s promise to Jacob;

a promise all the more extraordinary

because it was a promise made to a liar,

a cheat,

a thief,

a coward.

The Lord God stood there and spoke to Jacob,

the son who conspired with his mother;

the son who lied to his father,

the son who took advantage of

his father’s age and blindness;

Jacob, who stole his brother Esau’s birthright,

cheated his brother out of what was rightfully his,

and then having done the deed,

fled like a coward,

ran away, afraid of Esau’s wrath.

Was there anything good,

anything honorable,

anything decent about Jacob?

Still, God did not hesitate to make the promise:

“I will be with you.

I will keep you.”

The Hebrew word we translate as “keep”

also meaning “watch over”.

And this is God’s promise to all God’s children,

the scoundrel as well as the saint,

that God will watch over us,

for God’s love for us is unconditional.

There is no more beautiful evocation

of this promise than the words of the Psalmist

found in Psalm 121:

“I lift up my eyes to the hills—

from where will my help come?

My help comes from the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved; 

he who keeps you will not slumber.

He who keeps Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;

the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil;

he will keep your life.

The Lord will keep

your going out and your coming in

from this time on and forevermore.

This is God’s promise to us,

each of us,

all of us, you and me,

God’s promise to us even when

we ourselves lie as Jacob did;

even when we ourselves cheat, as Jacob did;

even when we behave cowardly,

run away from responsibility, as Jacob did.

But this promise,

like all God’s promises,

is not something for us

to just sit back and praise God for.

It is a promise that should evoke a response

in us, from us.

To use the imagery we used a few weeks back,

this is a vertical promise

that comes down to us from God,

and it calls us to respond horizontally,

taking God’s promise to keep us, watch over us,

out into the world,

we—you and I—

responding to God’s goodness

by keeping and watching over all God’s children,

especially the most vulnerable,

the young, the old,

the sick,

the stranger, the hungry,

always remembering that the answer

to Cain’s infamous question to God,

“am I my brother’s keeper?”

(Genesis 4:9)

is YES.

It is so obviously “YES”,

that God didn’t even bother to respond.

“The Lord bless you and keep you,”

is the blessing Moses taught his brother Aaron

and the first group of priests

to offer to all God’s children.

Moses didn’t make up those words himself;

it was the Lord God who taught them to Moses.

The Lord God who wanted

all God’s children to know

that they are blessed,

that they are kept,

they are loved.

                                                     

We are blessed,

we are kept,

we are loved,

not for who we are

or how we worship,

or where we live,

or what language we speak,

or where we are from.

We are blessed,

we are kept,

we are loved,

scoundrel and saint,

for who God is,

And so, in our the words of the Lord our God:

“The Lord bless you and keep you;

the Lord make his face to shine upon you,

and be gracious to you;

the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,

and give you peace.”

(Numbers 6:24-26)

AMEN