Thursday, July 17, 2014

Despising Birthrights -Jacob Saga Part 2



A Reflection for VI Pentecost (Proper 11)                 All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. July 20, 2014                                                                  Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Last month I did a Trilogy (a three part series) of reflections on Abraham and this month I am continuing with a tetralogy (a four part series) on Jacob. We started last week with Esau’s despising of his birthright, and I mentioned the archetype of the “Hero’s Journey”, the mythic journey that each of us takes in order to move toward becoming a full human being. It can be a journey outward, but the point is not geography.  It is, rather, the journey inward into the soul, the sacred place where the Divine meets us.

Gail Godwin in The Finishing School, has a character offer this advice:
“There are two kinds of people,” she once decreed to me emphatically. “One kind you can just tell by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know can expect no more surprises from it. Whereas the other kind keep moving, changing  . . . They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion they are the only ones who are still alive. You must be constantly on your guard, Justin, against congealing.”

 Jacob is on his way to changing. In today’s lesson Jacob has to leave town - fast. He has, with the connivance of his mother, Rebekah, lied to and swindled his father and has stolen the blessing and birthright of his brother Esau. Esau, who is much bigger and stronger than mama’s boy Jacob, is looking for his trickster brother in order to kill him. Rebekah packs Jacob up and sends him to her brother Laban’s land for safety.

Jacob is on the run and there is no one who can help him. He knows that he is all alone. Jacob is rotten and no-good and he is responsible for whatever will befall him when Esau catches up with him. His life is out of control. For those of you familiar with the 12 step recovery program, Step One is “We admitted we were powerless over whatever it is that is lousing up our life—that our lives had become unmanageable.” 

Recovery begins only when you realize that life is out of control, and Jacob is stuck on the pre-step one. He is trying a geographical solution to his addiction to manipulation and, when he comes to this deserted place, it is beginning to dawn on him that he is up Ginguite Creek without a paddle. He cannot use his favorite crutch, manipulation. Not knowing what else to do, he goes to sleep in the hope that his dreams might give him an out. Come on now - don’t roll your eyes at me.  You knew I was going to look at the dream! 

Jacob has not been conspicuously religious so far in the story, so we are not surprised when he does not say his prayers before he goes to sleep. He is not thankful for the day which has just ended because he attributes to luck leaving before Esau caught wind of the scheme. He is not looking for God because he is still depending on his own cleverness. In his mindset, when you are clever and lucky (so far), why do you need God?

 Jacob had to flee from Beersheba and he had no time to pack anything, so he has no soft things to use as a pillow. The storyteller makes a point of the fact that he uses stones for a pillow as a way to tell us how desperate a regular person would be, except Jacob is a good example of a person being in denial. He is not ready to face the full reality of who he can become. He goes to sleep with a clear conscience because the nagging conscience has been repressed to the unconscious. Now if this were a tale of morality, we might expect a dream where the unconscious presents a condemnation story full of gloom, guilt, and punishment. However, the dream that comes is one of support by God. As the sower in the parable from Matthew in today's Gospel lesson suggests, it is not yet time for that condemnation of Jacob's actions - “`No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” There is still time for Jacob to grow and change.

As we do in our dream groups, I might say “If this were my dream . . .”  In my dream I hear God saying that God is patient and God has all eternity and will not push me, only invite me. I will need to do some changing, for as Lao Tzu says (God's messengers come in all different forms)  in the Tao Te Ching: “He who stands on his tiptoes does not stand firm; he who stretches his legs does not walk (easily). (So), he who displays himself does not shine; he who asserts his own views is not distinguished; he who vaunts himself does not find his merit acknowledged; he who is self- conceited has no superiority allowed to him.”

In Jacob's dream, there is a ladder which reaches from where Jacob is sleeping all the way to heaven. Now, if this were a moral uplift story, we would expect Jacob to make the long trek, one rung at a time, up that painful, laborious ladder before he is able to come into the presence of God. However, in this dream God is here, on earth, standing next to Jacob. The message is that God is telling Jacob that God is there with him and will go wherever he goes and will continue to bless him, even if he had obtained the blessing under false pretenses.  God says, “for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." God is telling Jacob that God is not finished with Jacob yet.

In my dream I hear God saying to me that God is faithful, even when I am not. God has a birthright, a blessing which is still in the process of unfolding each day. God is walking with me, standing with me, even when I am too busy with my own agenda to notice God.

In Jacob's dream, God does not climb down the ladder, Jacob does not climb up; the ladder, the connectedness to God, is maintained by the constant stream of angels. Remember that angels are seen as messengers of God, and God is constantly speaking to us (Jacob)  through all of creation when we are awake and in our dreams when we are asleep.

When I claim this dream as my own, for all of these stories are part of our inheritance, I would say, “In my dream, the divine within my soul is saying that I am loved and, to use the line from Paul's letter to the Romans for today, “you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” I hear that I am inheritor of God's Spirit; it is a blessing, a birthright even if I didn't appreciate it when I first received it.

In Jacob's dream, he wakes up and misses the point. He is terrified and he takes the stones used a pillows and makes  a pillar of them , anoints it with oil, and calls it “Bethel”, which means the “House of God”, the entrance to heaven, and he leaves as fast as he can. He makes the assumption that God dwells only in this place, and he wants to separate himself from his spiritual nature so he can go on with life as he defines it.
In my dream I would be tempted to leave the message from God in my unconscious because it calls me to become more fully aware that God is with me wherever I go and whatever I do. When I finish the course on dream group leader training, one of the things they will give me is a plaque of the translation of the Latin saying which Carl Jung hung as a sign over the entrance to his house - Vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit,  “Bidden or not Bidden God is here.” One of Jung's followers, Marie-Louise von Franz, wrote, “It seems to me that one of the greatest contributions of Jung and his work is that it taught us to keep our door open to the “unknown visitor.”

On our journeys, awake or asleep, I suggest we keep the door open to the “unknown visitor” who is at the center of our soul.


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