“From Dreams to Promises”

Genesis 28: 10-19a

Scott Huie

Westminster Presbyterian Church

July 27, 2008

I have never been one to put much stock in my dreams. It’s that they are just so weird, so surreal, and so incomprehensible. When I wake up, I have fun recalling my dreams, including the one where Bill Woodward was washing my windows with a popsicle, but I can’t say I see my dreams as anything more than mumbo jumbo.

Reading my Bible, however, I should probably pay a little more attention to my dreams. Dreams at times in the Scriptures seem to be means by which God communicates with God’s people. Remember Joseph’s dreams about bales of hay bowing down to Joseph, representing his brothers’ bowing down to him. Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams got him in trouble with his brothers, but it also enabled him actually to become Prime Minister of Egypt.

Mary and Joseph had dreams that came from God. God spoke to Joseph in a dream to take Mary and baby Jesus and flee to Egypt, and when the threat of Herod had passed, again God spoke to Joseph in a dream instructing him to return to Israel. I also think of Samuel, Daniel, and others in the Scriptures who received a word from the Lord in their sleep. But I suppose I’m a little more like the prophet Jeremiah, who wasn’t big on dreams. In fact, he seemed to reject dreams altogether as a means by which God speaks (Jer 27:9, 29:8-9).

I have heard dreams described as the “subconscious co-mingling of the past and the future with the present.” I have heard dreams described as “spontaneous and significant eruptions from the depths of the psyche.” That is just too deep for me. I tend to think of dreams as the stuff from which comes bad cable TV!

There is one dream, however, that I find so fascinating in the Scriptures, Jacob’s dream. I’ve heard it called “the world’s most famous dream.” It was an amazing dream of the presence of God, the power of God, and the promise of God.

Jacob surely didn’t deserve such a dream. He was a two-timing double-crosser, a huckster to the nth degree. He had stolen his brother’s birthright and his blessing. He had pulled the wool over his own smooth hands and his father’s blind eyes to claim what should have been his twin brother’s, Esau. Esau was the first son. He deserved the birthright, and Jacob was a dirty, lying, greedy thief.

Jacob was also a momma’s boy. Apparently Rebekah loved him more she loved his brother Esau. I suppose we younger sons tend to win over the affections of our mothers. Anyway Rebekah was the one who first hatched this idea to trick her husband Isaac. It was her idea for Jacob to skip town and to become a fugitive from his brother, Esau, who was so mad he wanted to kill Jacob. This dysfunctional family could have used some therapy!

The bottom line was, Jacob’s future looked dim. He was a fugitive on the run. He was wandering towards his mother’s hometown likely with little more than the clothes on his back. He was alone. He was frightened. He was tired. He walks as long as there is daylight. His bones ache as he stops in the middle of nowhere. He finds a suitable rock to be his pillow, and then he lies down for the night.

You can’t help but feel for this pitiful soul. Sure, he had been a con man, but to have to sleep with a rock as your pillow in the middle of nowhere all by yourself not really knowing where you are going and what you are going to do. That’s not the kind of life I would want. I figure that Jacob was finally at the end of himself. He probably had come to the realization that he would never prosper based on his own schemes. It is at precisely at this deeply vulnerable moment in his life that God appears. God appears not in judgment, but to confirm Jacob as the one chosen to carry on the promise.

God speaks to him in a dream. There are two parts of the dream. In the first, there is a ladder extending from earth to heaven with angels, messengers of God, descending and ascending. Heaven and earth are connected in this dream. I suppose it looked a little like Spaghetti Junction at rush hour, everybody going every which-a-way.

While the first part of the dream gets all the attention, the second part is really where the action is. Here God whispers in Jacob’s ear a promise. It is essentially the same promise that God had made to Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham. This is what God said to Jacob: “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.”

What a glorious promise! First, it is a promise of land, the same land promised to Abraham. It is the same land in such dispute today in the Middle East. Second it is a promise of blessing, a blessing not just for Jacob and his family, but one that would extend to the entire world. Third it is the promise of presence; the Lord will not forsake Jacob no matter what. And fourth it is the promise of protection, and this fugitive needed protection. The promise was land, blessing, presence, and protection. Now that, my friends, is a dream to remember.

When Jacob awakes, he doesn’t brush if off, as I probably would have done, as some sort of hallucination. He accepts it as God’s gift to him. This is when faith suddenly becomes real to him. He has heard about God many times before, sat at the feet of his granddaddy Abraham for countless hours hearing about a God who makes and keeps promises. Out of respect to his parents and grandparents and likely out of empty habit, Jacob has gone through the motions of faith, honoring God and attending worship throughout his early years. But it is on this night that God becomes real. It is on this night that his doubts are silenced. It is on this night that God speaks to Jacob and becomes a living reality.

This is Jacob’s spiritual awakening. He believes. As I recently read (Barbara Brown Taylor), It is “a true thing that happened to him in a reality lodged somewhere between this world and another, a true vision of the ladder connecting the two in the middle of nowhere.” Jacob finds the world of the dream more convincing than his old world of fear and guilt. In his wakefulness, he resolves to embrace this new reality of the dream. He accepts the fact that the kingdom of God is at hand.

Have you ever had one of those moments, those unmistakable times when you felt the presence of the Lord in powerful ways—one of those God moments? Maybe it was through a dream or maybe while awake. Mine tend to come when I am awake. I think back to experiences at those Montreat youth conferences, 14 of them as youth pastor, four as a youth, and one in particular as a high school senior, when I felt God just get a hold of me at worship one night as I felt overwhelmed by his grace and unconditional love. It was an amazing experience.

Another God moment came as I preached my first sermon ever, as a lay preacher at my home church, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, almost twenty years ago. It was through that experience that I felt God was calling me into the ministry.

Another God moment came back during my seminary days. Funds were tight, and we needed to pay medical bills. For the first time in my life, I decided to ask a friend for a loan, $1000. He was bringing it over on a Saturday afternoon. However, that morning the mail came. In it was a check from my Aunt Verna Lee from South Georgia, who I rarely saw or spoke with, who simply wanted to help out some with my seminary education. The check was for exactly $1000. All I could say was, “Wow.”

Another God moment came during my mother’s death. Last week I spoke to you about the day before she died. But let me tell you about the day she died. You see, about a year earlier, Mom’s cancer had returned with a vengeance. The prognosis wasn’t good. Mom had one wish—one prayer—that she could live long enough to witness the birth of her first granddaughter. She already had four grandsons, and it wasn’t long before a granddaughter was on the way half way around the world in Australia.

As the due date approached, Mom was deteriorating fast. The end was really near, and Mom was in a coma. But then suddenly, a phone call came from my brother in Australia sooner than we expected. His wife’s water had just broken and they were on the way to the hospital. We put the phone up to Mom’s ear, and my brother David pleaded, “Hang in there, Mom. Your granddaughter is coming.” A few hours later, the phone rang again. Little Nicole Vee had just been born. We put the phone up to Mom’s ear and her first granddaughter spoke her first cry over the phone.

It was a bittersweet moment, joy and sorrow all wrapped up together. Nothing seemed to be registering with Mom. She was almost dead. After things calmed down a bit, a nurse friend who was visiting took Mom’s hand and, knowing that hearing is the last sense to go prior to death, spoke with much determination: “Vee, if you realize that your first granddaughter, your namesake, was just born in Australia, please blink your eyes.” You know what happened? Mom blinked. The nurse asked again, and again Mom blinked. It was unmistakable. Six hours later, Mom died. Her prayer had been answered, and now she had the peace to let go. That was a God moment unlike any I have ever experienced.

When you have God moments in your life, whether dramatic or rather ordinary, those times when heaven and earth meet, you just can’t help but be changed. Jacob was without a doubt changed. When he awoke from his dream, he said, “Surely God is in this place—and I did not know it!” What looked like no place turned out to be God’s place, so he took his pillow, his big rock, and constructed some sort of shrine. He poured oil on the rock to mark it, and he called it, Bethel, House of God. From this point forward in the journey, Jacob has a purpose; he now bears the promise. He now knows God, and knows that God is a promise keeper. Now Jacob is compelled to become one as well.

Nowhere in Biblical history does anyone see Jacob as a hero of the faith. By no means was he any paragon of virtue. He was no “Father Abraham.” And yet, God still chose him and used him for God’s purposes. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saves even a wretch like Jacob.

This was no accident, no fluke of history. It was the unfolding of God’s will. Salvation is about God’s initiative. Jacob contributes so little to the Bethel experience, except to say yes to the living God. I once heard a little proverb: if we take one little step toward God, God will take 100 steps toward us. That has stayed with me: if we take one little step toward God, God will take 100 steps toward us.

Of course, we know that God took 100 steps and then some toward us in Jesus Christ. We today can see this ladder in Jacob’s dream as only a shadow of the real connection between heaven and earth. Jacob’s ladder is but a preview of the Incarnation, when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The true ladder by which angels and humans ascend and descend is the Son of Man. Jesus bridges the gap between this world and the next.

In the gospel of John, in fact, Jesus is getting to know the would-be disciples and inviting them to join his movement. Jesus tells them: “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Jesus is real, my friends. He is alive, and God is in this place. God made a promise first with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and now through Jesus Christ with you and with me. God has blessed us, and God has chosen us to be a blessing to the world. How can we not respond?