Tuning in
Commentary
It has gotten very crowded out there in the last century. Oh, to look around you wouldn't see this particular overcrowding problem. That's because it is invisible to our eyes. But if you want to do any number of things that are now commonplace in our 21st-century world, then you are going to feel the squeeze.
The "out there" that has gotten so crowded is the "airwaves." We have found so many uses for radio frequencies that there just is not enough "bandwidth" to go around. First there was just radio, and then it was television. Now there is also "high-definition television" that requires different and broader spectrum frequencies than the traditional television signals we still have with us. A battle has raged over the past several years between "micro broadcasters" using very low-power radio broadcasts that are still strong enough to mess-up the reception of your favorite top-40 station.
And along the way we have added "cordless" phones, and analog cellular phones and digital cellular phones with "internet connectivity." There are pagers and two-way messaging devices. Tired of unsightly cables connecting your computer and its peripherals? Then use a cordless mouse and a wireless network!
To think that less than 130 years ago there was nothing reverberating through these airwaves as a consequence of human technology. Today, we are literally awash in radio waves. But to look around, you would never know it. As you are reading this, almost certainly several television broadcasts, dozens of radio programs, and who knows how many telephone conversations are abuzz in the air all around you without drawing any of your attention -- that is unless you purposely try to tune into it.
Sometimes, of course, because of all the overcrowding, we do pick-up transmissions we don't want to hear. Perhaps your church, like mine, is close enough to a broadcast antenna that your wireless microphone system picks up a faint (or not so faint) radio program in the background. Or maybe your neighbors' high-powered cordless phone has unknowingly turned their "private" phone conversations into a party line. Yet even these nuisances are only possible when you are deliberately trying to tune in to some frequency of the airwaves to which you would be totally oblivious without the appropriate electronic gadget.
With so much swirling all around us without us even being aware, do you ever wonder what else might be going on to which we are not tuned in?
Genesis 28:10-19a
Long before Freud came along, the scriptural writers understood that sometimes it takes a dream to awaken us to reality. Such is certainly the case in the Old Testament lesson appointed for this Sunday. Through the medium of a dream, Jacob perceived reality that had been hidden from him. As he himself expresses it, "Surely the Lord is in this place -- and I did not know it!"
One can posit any number of reasons as to why Jacob might have been oblivious to God's presence. Certainly the stories about Jacob to this point in Genesis do not leave one with the impression that he was inclined to look for God unless it were back over his shoulder, as it were. Jacob was from the beginning, when we are told he earned his name by grabbing his twin brother's "heel" in an effort to gain the rights of the firstborn (Genesis 25:26), only concerned about himself and getting ahead in this world. Or maybe he truly believed that God had promised the land of his birth to Abraham and his descendants, and that was one reason he was so eager to buy (swindle?) the birthright away from Esau (Genesis 25:29-34). If so, then he may not have expected to encounter God as he was leaving the place of God's promise.
Whether for one of these reasons or some other, Jacob did not drift off to sleep that night expecting to see angels or to hear God's voice. Nevertheless that was precisely the shocking truth that confronted him in his dream. God was actively at work in the world, with messengers in constant movement to and from God's presence, carrying out God's bidding. Nothing indicates that all this activity was specifically on Jacob's account. Rather it was the normal, constant work of God in engagement with the world about which Jacob was completely unaware.
There is nothing peculiar or unique about that particular geographical location which made it "Bethel," the "House of God." Nor is there any particular ritual or personal attitude on Jacob's part that transformed an otherwise ordinary place into God's house. After all, Jacob was only trying to get a good night's sleep, and his actions in setting up and anointing the pillar were to commemorate the epiphany that came to him there, not to cause it. What transformed Luz into Bethel was God's presence.
Indeed the message that God revealed to Jacob in his dream at Bethel was precisely that God will not be confined to any particular place. The house of God is neither to be found only in the land promised to Abraham and his descendants nor only in his ancestral homeland. As God instructed Jacob, we all need to "know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go" (28:15). Jacob may be able to leave Isaac's house, but there is nowhere he can go that is outside God's house.
This promise of divine presence and protection at the time of Jacob's first encounter with God at Bethel begins the process of transformation in his life that will be completed in his wrestling with God at Penuel (the "face" or "presence of God," Genesis 32:22-32). The giving of a new name, "Israel," will mark the completion of that process. It is interesting to consider the possibility that Jacob's original name plays a role already here at Bethel. We have noted that the folk etymology given for the name "Jacob" relates it to the Hebrew word for "heel." But the more likely linguistic development of the name would relate to the expression "May [God] protect" (see Ronald S. Hendel, "Jacob," Eerdman's Dictionary of the Bible [2000] 666). Without changing the name, the divine promise of protection shifts its focus away from Jacob's treacherous dealings with others in the past to God's actions on Jacob's behalf in the future.
Yet clearly Jacob's transformation is not yet complete. Had he truly and completely understood God's promise to be "with you and ... keep you wherever you go" then he would not have been so quick to try to isolate the experience. Could the fact that he was "afraid" (28:17) be a hint that he was trying to limit God to "this place" by setting that pillar as the cornerstone, if you will, for the "house" that he would build there for God?
Romans 8:12-25
This portion of Paul's letter to the Romans can be read as a kind of bridge linking the Old Testament and Gospel lessons appointed for this Sunday. With Jacob sleeping at Bethel, Paul is aware of two realms of reality that interact with one another. Paul describes them in the terms "flesh" and "Spirit." With the parable of the weeds in the field, Paul sees this current age as a time of patient waiting for God to redeem creation from the wickedness that has been sown in it.
Those who "live according to the flesh" are unaware or even hostile toward the world of the Spirit. Conversely, those "who are led by the Spirit" are aware of God's presence and protection with them and respond with the cry, "Abba! Father!" In this passage, Paul suggests that there are two ways of explaining why it is that some are not able to tune in to this world of the Spirit and rejoice in it.
First, one must be willing to "put to death the deeds of the body." In terms of Pauline theology, these "deeds" are generally called "sins." Too often, however, we become so caught up in defining the specific actions that qualify as "sins" and so must be "put to death" that we miss the broader picture.
In Greek, there are two different ways of understanding the expression, "the deeds of the body." It can mean either those things that are done by the body, or those things that are done for the body. The former understanding leads to understanding sin as the list of things to be avoided. The latter understanding suggests that sin arises from acting only for the body, being concerned only with the material and not the spiritual. It is this broader understanding of sin that is corrected by an awakening to spiritual awareness.
Secondly, some people cannot tune themselves in to the world of the Spirit because they are so obsessed with the problems of the physical world. Paul does not deny the real presence of evil that results in "the sufferings" under which "the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now." But his metaphor of "labor pains" is important. Even in the midst of such suffering, there is reason for "hope" in what is about to be born.
"Hope" is the watchword for this present age. It is what allows one to reach the conclusion that "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us." It is what tunes us in to the reality that cannot otherwise presently be seen.
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The "parable of the weeds in the field" (as it is explicitly named at 13:36) raises the classic issue of parable interpretation of roughly the past century: the relationship between parables and allegories.
In strict literary terms, there are fundamental differences between parables and allegories. Parables are more or less extended (cf. the parables of the yeast at Matthew 13:33 and the prodigal son at Luke 15:11-32) metaphors that make a single point by way of comparison. Although they may include many details, many or perhaps even most of the details are incidental to the story. They make the comparison vivid and engaging, but they do not necessarily contribute to the point of the comparison.
Indeed sometimes pressing the details of a parable is misleading. God is definitely not a heartless judge like the character in the parable about prayer (Luke 1:1-8), even though God is certainly the recipient of our petitions in prayer. In order not to be misled, the interpreter must identify the pertinent point from the end of the parable and then purposely avoid pressing what may be extraneous details that do not contribute to that point.
Allegories, on the other hand, have few if any extraneous details. Rather than developing a single comparison by their cumulative effect, each of the elements in the story stands in comparison to something else related to the overall theme of thrust of the narrative. Sometimes the comparisons are very explicit (as in Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress) while other times they can only be teased out (as in the social satire of Swift's Gulliver's Travels).
Because for centuries it was common practice in both Judaism and Christianity to read all scriptural narratives utilizing an elaborate and well-defined allegorical method, it hardly comes as a surprise that literary parables in the Bible were interpreted as if they were allegories. The problem is only compounded when the allegorical interpretations stand with the parables in the Gospels themselves (as here, and most familiarly with the "parable of the sower," Matthew 13:3-8, 18-23). Did Jesus himself construct these stories as allegories, or were they strictly parables as designated in the Gospels themselves and only allegorized as part of the tradition?
The fact that this parable of "the weeds in the field" appears in the Gospel of Thomas without the allegorical interpretation would suggest at the least that the allegory was not considered an essential and inherent aspect of the story. Consequently, the preacher must decide whether to interpret the story as a parable, or to follow the allegorical reading in verses 36-43. In point of fact, reading the story as parable and allegory gives two quite distinct but not contradictory interpretations.
Read as a parable, the salient point of the story is patience in awaiting God's judgment and justice. Both the wheat and the weeds must be permitted to "grow together until the harvest." Only once the plants are fully mature will it be possible to distinguish those who are to be gathered into the "barn" (v. 30), that is the "kingdom of heaven" (v. 24). To get ahead of God's timing only risks "uproot[ing] the wheat" along with the "weeds" (v. 29).
The allegorical reading provided in verses 37-43 does not deny the need for patience in awaiting God's judgment, but it does significantly shift the focus of attention. Almost every detail of the story is given an allegorical correspondence in verses 37-39, and then these applications are set not so much in the present age as in the time of judgment. The interpretation gives far more emphasis to the weeds and consequently to the theme of judgment.
Application
So what is it besides radio waves that are constantly swirling all around us but which we simply fail to tune ourselves in to? It is the fact that despite too many apparently contrary indications, God is at work in the world.
Some of us, like Jacob, may be so completely absorbed with the material world and the machinations and schemes needed to get ahead in the world that we are asleep to the spiritual dimension of life. We need to be awakened to the fact that God is busily at work, and we do not even recognize it.
Others of us, like the laborers in the field, may be so distracted by the problems in the world that all we can see are the weeds. The situation is intolerable. The weeds are so destructive that they themselves must be destroyed -- and destroyed now -- before one can even begin to think about the spiritual things of the "kingdom of heaven." Sure the material solution of uprooting the weeds may only compound the damage, but these are the only means available.
What we need is the receiver of "hope" to tune us in so that we can become aware of what the eyes cannot see. Yes, hope is something of a dream -- a dream of what the future might be because of what God is already doing now. But sometimes dreams awaken us to what is really going on. Yes, hope requires patience -- patience to trust God's time rather than our own, patience to trust God's actions rather than our own. But such patience with us is the way God's Spirit works in the world.
Just as the benefits of our technological age are lost on those who do not tune in to the myriad signals in the airwaves all around us, so are the blessings of the spiritual world lost on those who do not tune in to what God is doing. We need dreams, patience, and hope to tune in to this spiritual world. May these receivers help us to tune in to the truth that "surely the Lord is in this place -- and I did not know it!"
Alternative Applications
1) Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. Focus on the one detail of the Gospel lection that does not find a correspondence in the allegorical interpretation. Remember those slaves kibitzing on the sidelines? Why don't they figure in Jesus' allegorical explanation of the parable? Maybe because we have been so quick to identify ourselves as the wheat in the fields, "the children of the kingdom" awaiting our time to "shine like the sun," we have simply forgotten about them.
But aren't we God's servants, those laborers that the "Lord of the Harvest" has sent out to work the fields? It may be unpleasant, but one can easily find a correlation between the slaves narrowly focusing on the necessity of getting rid of the weeds and the church's sometimes narrow, judgmental focus on ridding itself of those identified as sinners. Maybe we also need to be restrained in our zeal to root out and destroy evil, lest we uproot and destroy some of the "children of the kingdom" in the process.
Like the person who transformed Jesus' statement, "By their fruits you shall know them," into a t-shirt emblazoned with the title, "God's Fruit Inspector," we are all sometimes just a little too sure of our own abilities to separate the wheat from the weeds. We are overly confident that we can not only distinguish between the bad and the good, but that we can devise failsafe plans that will allow us to dispense with the one while leaving the other unscathed. It is a misguided self-assurance that affects us at all levels of our social engagements with others, limiting our ability to recognize correctly both the good and the bad.
2) Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43; Genesis 28:10-19a. Relate the Gospel with the Old Testament lesson. Like Jacob on his journey, there are many Christians who see the world and culture all around them as places devoid of God's presence. Life at the beginning of a new millennium is a field full of weeds, an isolating and desolate place that offers only stones for the comfort of a pillow. What we need is a new vision, a dream that will awaken us to the reality that this is still a place where people find access to the realm of God. We need to confess with Jacob, "Surely the Lord is in this place -- and I did not know it!" Even places that we are confident in our own judgment God cannot be present -- these places are still for some "the house of God, and ... gate of heaven." No matter how thick the weeds that we see, there is almost certainly wheat growing there that God desires to protect until it can be harvested.
First Lesson Focus
Genesis 28:10-19a
God promised Abraham that he would give him many descendants, grant them a land to call their own, and use Abraham's descendants as the people through whom God could bring blessing on all of the families of the earth (Genesis 12:3). That is still an important promise for us, for the question still is, Do we live under God's blessing or under his curse upon our sinfulness? Are we sentenced to death for our sins or to goodness and to eternal life with God? Was the promise to Abraham fulfilled?
Indeed, was God's promise to Abraham passed down through the generations to his children and grandchildren and so kept in effect through the centuries? If we read Genesis 26:3-5, we learn that the promise was passed on to Abraham's son Isaac. But according to our text, the promise has not yet been given to Isaac's son Jacob, and that is the principal subject of our Old Testament reading.
We enter into the story at the conflict between Jacob and his brother Esau. Genesis 27:14 tells us that Esau hates Jacob, because Jacob has stolen his birthright and blessing. So Esau is determined to kill his brother. The mother Rebekah, however, learns of Esau's threat and warns Jacob to flee to Mesopotamia and there to live with his uncle Laban until Esau's wrath cools. As an excuse for Jacob's departure, Rebekah points out to Isaac that Jacob should go back to his relatives in Haran to find a wife, rather than marrying one of the resident Hittite or Canaanite women (Genesis 27:46). Isaac agrees and Jacob departs, escaping his angry brother (28:1-5).
On the arduous journey north from the southern encampment of Beersheba, Jacob spends the night at a place that he will soon name Bethel. Using a stone for a pillow, he falls asleep and is granted a strange dream. He dreams that there is a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. It is not like our ladders, however, despite our song about Jacob's ladder and its rungs on which we climb "higher, higher." Rather the ladder is more like a stairway or a ramp (a ziggurat). And on the stairway Jacob sees the angels of God, God's messengers, descending and ascending, as they carry out God's orders on earth. But above the top of the ladder stands the Lord himself, and to Jacob he speaks the momentous words. "The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants, and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth ... and by you and your descendants shall all of the families of the earth be blessed." God's promise is passed on, and God's purpose continues, to reverse the deadly effects of our sin and to bring blessing -- wholeness of life, shalom -- to all people everywhere. Thus does God work steadily toward the goal of returning his creation to the goodness that he intended for it in the beginning.
Jacob wakes in fear and awe from his dream and realizes that he has been granted to hear God's voice speaking to him at the very gateway of heaven, at the place where the holy, heavenly realm touches the earthly, profane realm of ordinary human beings. Jacob therefore consecrates the place by setting up his stone pillow on a pillar and pouring oil on top of it, as a sacred site. And he names the place "Bethel," which means the "house of God." "This is none other than the house of God," he whispers in awe, "and this is the gate of heaven."
It has been a common practice among many preachers to lift that awe-filled statement of Jacob's out of its context, and to apply it to all sorts of sites -- to a modern church building or to a campsite on a retreat, to a stage presenting a religious musical or even to a hospital trauma ward. Some preachers seem to feel that heaven meets earth any time any piety or religious emotion is present. But according to the scriptures, heaven has finally invaded the earthly realm in one place -- in the person of Jesus Christ. "No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man," Jesus says (John 3:13). And no one forms the gateway to heaven but that Son of God. "No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6), declares our Lord. Thus the Old Testament stories of God's meeting with human beings form the foretastes of that final revelation.
We 21st-century Christians are the inheritors of this promise given to Jacob, and we can rejoice that God's blessing can indeed be bestowed on all the families of the earth through Christ who is the promised descendant of Jacob. But there is a further sentence in God's promise to Jacob in which we also can rejoice. The Lord tells that patriarch, "Behold, I am with you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you" (v. 15). In the stories that follow this one, the Lord does indeed return Jacob to his homeland, and God never abandons him until his promise is fulfilled.
"I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you." As the inheritors of God's fulfilled promise to Jacob, that promise of our God is also made to you and to me and to all of God's people. "Lo, I am with you always to the close of the age." God in Christ will not leave us. He will keep his promises to us. He will fulfill for us too, as he fulfilled for Jacob, all the words that he has spoken to us -- all those new promises that Jesus has given us, as recorded for us in the New Testament. In Jesus Christ, God meets us on earth. And he will never fail to keep his word.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 44:6-8
In these soaring hymns from the prophecies of Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) that he proclaimed to the exiles in Babylonia between 550 and 538 B.C., we have the strongest statements of monotheism to be found in the Old Testament. Earlier Israel believed that there were other gods, who were worshiped by all of the peoples around them. Thus it was necessary for the Lord to state the first commandment in the Decalogue, "You shall have no other gods besides me" (Exodus 20:3). And the principal fight of the prophets of Israel was against the fertility gods and goddesses of the ancient Near East.
Other deities existed, Israel believed. But the reason Israel was to worship the Lord alone was because the other deities of other peoples had no power. They could not deliver their people out of danger or bondage (cf. Exodus 12:12). They could not command the rain and the fire (cf. 1 Kings 17-19). They could not raise the dead (2 Kings 4:32-37). They were helpless idols, who themselves had to be carried by their worshipers (cf. Isaiah 46). But in Old Testament thought, to have power was also to have existence. And because through seven centuries, the Lord worked his mighty acts of power in Israel's life, the nation finally arrived at this absolute monotheistic statement that we find here in our text.
So what is the power of the Lord that is here celebrated? It is the power to encompass all of history in his purpose, to oversee the whole of human activity, and to work within human life and the natural world until his final purpose is fulfilled. The Lord God's unique power is that of Lord over all time. He begins events and he brings them to their end. He inaugurates and he completes. " 'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' " says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come" (Revelation 1:8). Thus, in our text from Second Isaiah, God declares that he can tell what is coming and what is yet to happen, because he is sovereign over all happenings, bending them or using them in his loving purpose.
No other religion in the world knows such a God. Indeed, most of the other major religions of the world try to escape human history. But the God of Israel works in earthly and natural events and shapes them according to his purpose. Beside him, there is no other God.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
Psalm 139 begins with a strong statement that God knows us as we really are and concludes with a sincere prayer that God will further search our hearts and reveal to us our sinfulness. If that's not enough to throw a chill into us, then what is? Affirming both God's omniscience and his omnipresence, this psalm reminds us that whether we are in the womb (v. 13) or the tomb (v. 8) or anywhere in between (v. 2), whether we be in this world (v. 2) or in another realm altogether (v. 8) God is there. Even darkness does not keep him from seeing us (v. 12).
Yet the purpose of this psalm/prayer is surely not to frighten us, but to help us pray those final lines: "See if there is any wicked way in me."
Do we believe it when we are shown a wicked way? How do we feel singing hymns like: "Alas! And did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?"
On many days, we might object to being called a worm, but sometimes, when we have done something we consider downright selfish or wrong, our sense of ourselves as a good person collapses and the word "worm" doesn't sound all that farfetched. But even when we have not committed conspicuous wrong, our "goodness" pales next to God's holiness.
Then it's important not to forget to pray the very last line of the psalm: "Lead me into the way everlasting." The psalm reminds us that we can be forgiven, redeemed, and made whole.
The "out there" that has gotten so crowded is the "airwaves." We have found so many uses for radio frequencies that there just is not enough "bandwidth" to go around. First there was just radio, and then it was television. Now there is also "high-definition television" that requires different and broader spectrum frequencies than the traditional television signals we still have with us. A battle has raged over the past several years between "micro broadcasters" using very low-power radio broadcasts that are still strong enough to mess-up the reception of your favorite top-40 station.
And along the way we have added "cordless" phones, and analog cellular phones and digital cellular phones with "internet connectivity." There are pagers and two-way messaging devices. Tired of unsightly cables connecting your computer and its peripherals? Then use a cordless mouse and a wireless network!
To think that less than 130 years ago there was nothing reverberating through these airwaves as a consequence of human technology. Today, we are literally awash in radio waves. But to look around, you would never know it. As you are reading this, almost certainly several television broadcasts, dozens of radio programs, and who knows how many telephone conversations are abuzz in the air all around you without drawing any of your attention -- that is unless you purposely try to tune into it.
Sometimes, of course, because of all the overcrowding, we do pick-up transmissions we don't want to hear. Perhaps your church, like mine, is close enough to a broadcast antenna that your wireless microphone system picks up a faint (or not so faint) radio program in the background. Or maybe your neighbors' high-powered cordless phone has unknowingly turned their "private" phone conversations into a party line. Yet even these nuisances are only possible when you are deliberately trying to tune in to some frequency of the airwaves to which you would be totally oblivious without the appropriate electronic gadget.
With so much swirling all around us without us even being aware, do you ever wonder what else might be going on to which we are not tuned in?
Genesis 28:10-19a
Long before Freud came along, the scriptural writers understood that sometimes it takes a dream to awaken us to reality. Such is certainly the case in the Old Testament lesson appointed for this Sunday. Through the medium of a dream, Jacob perceived reality that had been hidden from him. As he himself expresses it, "Surely the Lord is in this place -- and I did not know it!"
One can posit any number of reasons as to why Jacob might have been oblivious to God's presence. Certainly the stories about Jacob to this point in Genesis do not leave one with the impression that he was inclined to look for God unless it were back over his shoulder, as it were. Jacob was from the beginning, when we are told he earned his name by grabbing his twin brother's "heel" in an effort to gain the rights of the firstborn (Genesis 25:26), only concerned about himself and getting ahead in this world. Or maybe he truly believed that God had promised the land of his birth to Abraham and his descendants, and that was one reason he was so eager to buy (swindle?) the birthright away from Esau (Genesis 25:29-34). If so, then he may not have expected to encounter God as he was leaving the place of God's promise.
Whether for one of these reasons or some other, Jacob did not drift off to sleep that night expecting to see angels or to hear God's voice. Nevertheless that was precisely the shocking truth that confronted him in his dream. God was actively at work in the world, with messengers in constant movement to and from God's presence, carrying out God's bidding. Nothing indicates that all this activity was specifically on Jacob's account. Rather it was the normal, constant work of God in engagement with the world about which Jacob was completely unaware.
There is nothing peculiar or unique about that particular geographical location which made it "Bethel," the "House of God." Nor is there any particular ritual or personal attitude on Jacob's part that transformed an otherwise ordinary place into God's house. After all, Jacob was only trying to get a good night's sleep, and his actions in setting up and anointing the pillar were to commemorate the epiphany that came to him there, not to cause it. What transformed Luz into Bethel was God's presence.
Indeed the message that God revealed to Jacob in his dream at Bethel was precisely that God will not be confined to any particular place. The house of God is neither to be found only in the land promised to Abraham and his descendants nor only in his ancestral homeland. As God instructed Jacob, we all need to "know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go" (28:15). Jacob may be able to leave Isaac's house, but there is nowhere he can go that is outside God's house.
This promise of divine presence and protection at the time of Jacob's first encounter with God at Bethel begins the process of transformation in his life that will be completed in his wrestling with God at Penuel (the "face" or "presence of God," Genesis 32:22-32). The giving of a new name, "Israel," will mark the completion of that process. It is interesting to consider the possibility that Jacob's original name plays a role already here at Bethel. We have noted that the folk etymology given for the name "Jacob" relates it to the Hebrew word for "heel." But the more likely linguistic development of the name would relate to the expression "May [God] protect" (see Ronald S. Hendel, "Jacob," Eerdman's Dictionary of the Bible [2000] 666). Without changing the name, the divine promise of protection shifts its focus away from Jacob's treacherous dealings with others in the past to God's actions on Jacob's behalf in the future.
Yet clearly Jacob's transformation is not yet complete. Had he truly and completely understood God's promise to be "with you and ... keep you wherever you go" then he would not have been so quick to try to isolate the experience. Could the fact that he was "afraid" (28:17) be a hint that he was trying to limit God to "this place" by setting that pillar as the cornerstone, if you will, for the "house" that he would build there for God?
Romans 8:12-25
This portion of Paul's letter to the Romans can be read as a kind of bridge linking the Old Testament and Gospel lessons appointed for this Sunday. With Jacob sleeping at Bethel, Paul is aware of two realms of reality that interact with one another. Paul describes them in the terms "flesh" and "Spirit." With the parable of the weeds in the field, Paul sees this current age as a time of patient waiting for God to redeem creation from the wickedness that has been sown in it.
Those who "live according to the flesh" are unaware or even hostile toward the world of the Spirit. Conversely, those "who are led by the Spirit" are aware of God's presence and protection with them and respond with the cry, "Abba! Father!" In this passage, Paul suggests that there are two ways of explaining why it is that some are not able to tune in to this world of the Spirit and rejoice in it.
First, one must be willing to "put to death the deeds of the body." In terms of Pauline theology, these "deeds" are generally called "sins." Too often, however, we become so caught up in defining the specific actions that qualify as "sins" and so must be "put to death" that we miss the broader picture.
In Greek, there are two different ways of understanding the expression, "the deeds of the body." It can mean either those things that are done by the body, or those things that are done for the body. The former understanding leads to understanding sin as the list of things to be avoided. The latter understanding suggests that sin arises from acting only for the body, being concerned only with the material and not the spiritual. It is this broader understanding of sin that is corrected by an awakening to spiritual awareness.
Secondly, some people cannot tune themselves in to the world of the Spirit because they are so obsessed with the problems of the physical world. Paul does not deny the real presence of evil that results in "the sufferings" under which "the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now." But his metaphor of "labor pains" is important. Even in the midst of such suffering, there is reason for "hope" in what is about to be born.
"Hope" is the watchword for this present age. It is what allows one to reach the conclusion that "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us." It is what tunes us in to the reality that cannot otherwise presently be seen.
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The "parable of the weeds in the field" (as it is explicitly named at 13:36) raises the classic issue of parable interpretation of roughly the past century: the relationship between parables and allegories.
In strict literary terms, there are fundamental differences between parables and allegories. Parables are more or less extended (cf. the parables of the yeast at Matthew 13:33 and the prodigal son at Luke 15:11-32) metaphors that make a single point by way of comparison. Although they may include many details, many or perhaps even most of the details are incidental to the story. They make the comparison vivid and engaging, but they do not necessarily contribute to the point of the comparison.
Indeed sometimes pressing the details of a parable is misleading. God is definitely not a heartless judge like the character in the parable about prayer (Luke 1:1-8), even though God is certainly the recipient of our petitions in prayer. In order not to be misled, the interpreter must identify the pertinent point from the end of the parable and then purposely avoid pressing what may be extraneous details that do not contribute to that point.
Allegories, on the other hand, have few if any extraneous details. Rather than developing a single comparison by their cumulative effect, each of the elements in the story stands in comparison to something else related to the overall theme of thrust of the narrative. Sometimes the comparisons are very explicit (as in Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress) while other times they can only be teased out (as in the social satire of Swift's Gulliver's Travels).
Because for centuries it was common practice in both Judaism and Christianity to read all scriptural narratives utilizing an elaborate and well-defined allegorical method, it hardly comes as a surprise that literary parables in the Bible were interpreted as if they were allegories. The problem is only compounded when the allegorical interpretations stand with the parables in the Gospels themselves (as here, and most familiarly with the "parable of the sower," Matthew 13:3-8, 18-23). Did Jesus himself construct these stories as allegories, or were they strictly parables as designated in the Gospels themselves and only allegorized as part of the tradition?
The fact that this parable of "the weeds in the field" appears in the Gospel of Thomas without the allegorical interpretation would suggest at the least that the allegory was not considered an essential and inherent aspect of the story. Consequently, the preacher must decide whether to interpret the story as a parable, or to follow the allegorical reading in verses 36-43. In point of fact, reading the story as parable and allegory gives two quite distinct but not contradictory interpretations.
Read as a parable, the salient point of the story is patience in awaiting God's judgment and justice. Both the wheat and the weeds must be permitted to "grow together until the harvest." Only once the plants are fully mature will it be possible to distinguish those who are to be gathered into the "barn" (v. 30), that is the "kingdom of heaven" (v. 24). To get ahead of God's timing only risks "uproot[ing] the wheat" along with the "weeds" (v. 29).
The allegorical reading provided in verses 37-43 does not deny the need for patience in awaiting God's judgment, but it does significantly shift the focus of attention. Almost every detail of the story is given an allegorical correspondence in verses 37-39, and then these applications are set not so much in the present age as in the time of judgment. The interpretation gives far more emphasis to the weeds and consequently to the theme of judgment.
Application
So what is it besides radio waves that are constantly swirling all around us but which we simply fail to tune ourselves in to? It is the fact that despite too many apparently contrary indications, God is at work in the world.
Some of us, like Jacob, may be so completely absorbed with the material world and the machinations and schemes needed to get ahead in the world that we are asleep to the spiritual dimension of life. We need to be awakened to the fact that God is busily at work, and we do not even recognize it.
Others of us, like the laborers in the field, may be so distracted by the problems in the world that all we can see are the weeds. The situation is intolerable. The weeds are so destructive that they themselves must be destroyed -- and destroyed now -- before one can even begin to think about the spiritual things of the "kingdom of heaven." Sure the material solution of uprooting the weeds may only compound the damage, but these are the only means available.
What we need is the receiver of "hope" to tune us in so that we can become aware of what the eyes cannot see. Yes, hope is something of a dream -- a dream of what the future might be because of what God is already doing now. But sometimes dreams awaken us to what is really going on. Yes, hope requires patience -- patience to trust God's time rather than our own, patience to trust God's actions rather than our own. But such patience with us is the way God's Spirit works in the world.
Just as the benefits of our technological age are lost on those who do not tune in to the myriad signals in the airwaves all around us, so are the blessings of the spiritual world lost on those who do not tune in to what God is doing. We need dreams, patience, and hope to tune in to this spiritual world. May these receivers help us to tune in to the truth that "surely the Lord is in this place -- and I did not know it!"
Alternative Applications
1) Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. Focus on the one detail of the Gospel lection that does not find a correspondence in the allegorical interpretation. Remember those slaves kibitzing on the sidelines? Why don't they figure in Jesus' allegorical explanation of the parable? Maybe because we have been so quick to identify ourselves as the wheat in the fields, "the children of the kingdom" awaiting our time to "shine like the sun," we have simply forgotten about them.
But aren't we God's servants, those laborers that the "Lord of the Harvest" has sent out to work the fields? It may be unpleasant, but one can easily find a correlation between the slaves narrowly focusing on the necessity of getting rid of the weeds and the church's sometimes narrow, judgmental focus on ridding itself of those identified as sinners. Maybe we also need to be restrained in our zeal to root out and destroy evil, lest we uproot and destroy some of the "children of the kingdom" in the process.
Like the person who transformed Jesus' statement, "By their fruits you shall know them," into a t-shirt emblazoned with the title, "God's Fruit Inspector," we are all sometimes just a little too sure of our own abilities to separate the wheat from the weeds. We are overly confident that we can not only distinguish between the bad and the good, but that we can devise failsafe plans that will allow us to dispense with the one while leaving the other unscathed. It is a misguided self-assurance that affects us at all levels of our social engagements with others, limiting our ability to recognize correctly both the good and the bad.
2) Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43; Genesis 28:10-19a. Relate the Gospel with the Old Testament lesson. Like Jacob on his journey, there are many Christians who see the world and culture all around them as places devoid of God's presence. Life at the beginning of a new millennium is a field full of weeds, an isolating and desolate place that offers only stones for the comfort of a pillow. What we need is a new vision, a dream that will awaken us to the reality that this is still a place where people find access to the realm of God. We need to confess with Jacob, "Surely the Lord is in this place -- and I did not know it!" Even places that we are confident in our own judgment God cannot be present -- these places are still for some "the house of God, and ... gate of heaven." No matter how thick the weeds that we see, there is almost certainly wheat growing there that God desires to protect until it can be harvested.
First Lesson Focus
Genesis 28:10-19a
God promised Abraham that he would give him many descendants, grant them a land to call their own, and use Abraham's descendants as the people through whom God could bring blessing on all of the families of the earth (Genesis 12:3). That is still an important promise for us, for the question still is, Do we live under God's blessing or under his curse upon our sinfulness? Are we sentenced to death for our sins or to goodness and to eternal life with God? Was the promise to Abraham fulfilled?
Indeed, was God's promise to Abraham passed down through the generations to his children and grandchildren and so kept in effect through the centuries? If we read Genesis 26:3-5, we learn that the promise was passed on to Abraham's son Isaac. But according to our text, the promise has not yet been given to Isaac's son Jacob, and that is the principal subject of our Old Testament reading.
We enter into the story at the conflict between Jacob and his brother Esau. Genesis 27:14 tells us that Esau hates Jacob, because Jacob has stolen his birthright and blessing. So Esau is determined to kill his brother. The mother Rebekah, however, learns of Esau's threat and warns Jacob to flee to Mesopotamia and there to live with his uncle Laban until Esau's wrath cools. As an excuse for Jacob's departure, Rebekah points out to Isaac that Jacob should go back to his relatives in Haran to find a wife, rather than marrying one of the resident Hittite or Canaanite women (Genesis 27:46). Isaac agrees and Jacob departs, escaping his angry brother (28:1-5).
On the arduous journey north from the southern encampment of Beersheba, Jacob spends the night at a place that he will soon name Bethel. Using a stone for a pillow, he falls asleep and is granted a strange dream. He dreams that there is a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. It is not like our ladders, however, despite our song about Jacob's ladder and its rungs on which we climb "higher, higher." Rather the ladder is more like a stairway or a ramp (a ziggurat). And on the stairway Jacob sees the angels of God, God's messengers, descending and ascending, as they carry out God's orders on earth. But above the top of the ladder stands the Lord himself, and to Jacob he speaks the momentous words. "The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants, and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth ... and by you and your descendants shall all of the families of the earth be blessed." God's promise is passed on, and God's purpose continues, to reverse the deadly effects of our sin and to bring blessing -- wholeness of life, shalom -- to all people everywhere. Thus does God work steadily toward the goal of returning his creation to the goodness that he intended for it in the beginning.
Jacob wakes in fear and awe from his dream and realizes that he has been granted to hear God's voice speaking to him at the very gateway of heaven, at the place where the holy, heavenly realm touches the earthly, profane realm of ordinary human beings. Jacob therefore consecrates the place by setting up his stone pillow on a pillar and pouring oil on top of it, as a sacred site. And he names the place "Bethel," which means the "house of God." "This is none other than the house of God," he whispers in awe, "and this is the gate of heaven."
It has been a common practice among many preachers to lift that awe-filled statement of Jacob's out of its context, and to apply it to all sorts of sites -- to a modern church building or to a campsite on a retreat, to a stage presenting a religious musical or even to a hospital trauma ward. Some preachers seem to feel that heaven meets earth any time any piety or religious emotion is present. But according to the scriptures, heaven has finally invaded the earthly realm in one place -- in the person of Jesus Christ. "No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man," Jesus says (John 3:13). And no one forms the gateway to heaven but that Son of God. "No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6), declares our Lord. Thus the Old Testament stories of God's meeting with human beings form the foretastes of that final revelation.
We 21st-century Christians are the inheritors of this promise given to Jacob, and we can rejoice that God's blessing can indeed be bestowed on all the families of the earth through Christ who is the promised descendant of Jacob. But there is a further sentence in God's promise to Jacob in which we also can rejoice. The Lord tells that patriarch, "Behold, I am with you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you" (v. 15). In the stories that follow this one, the Lord does indeed return Jacob to his homeland, and God never abandons him until his promise is fulfilled.
"I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you." As the inheritors of God's fulfilled promise to Jacob, that promise of our God is also made to you and to me and to all of God's people. "Lo, I am with you always to the close of the age." God in Christ will not leave us. He will keep his promises to us. He will fulfill for us too, as he fulfilled for Jacob, all the words that he has spoken to us -- all those new promises that Jesus has given us, as recorded for us in the New Testament. In Jesus Christ, God meets us on earth. And he will never fail to keep his word.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 44:6-8
In these soaring hymns from the prophecies of Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) that he proclaimed to the exiles in Babylonia between 550 and 538 B.C., we have the strongest statements of monotheism to be found in the Old Testament. Earlier Israel believed that there were other gods, who were worshiped by all of the peoples around them. Thus it was necessary for the Lord to state the first commandment in the Decalogue, "You shall have no other gods besides me" (Exodus 20:3). And the principal fight of the prophets of Israel was against the fertility gods and goddesses of the ancient Near East.
Other deities existed, Israel believed. But the reason Israel was to worship the Lord alone was because the other deities of other peoples had no power. They could not deliver their people out of danger or bondage (cf. Exodus 12:12). They could not command the rain and the fire (cf. 1 Kings 17-19). They could not raise the dead (2 Kings 4:32-37). They were helpless idols, who themselves had to be carried by their worshipers (cf. Isaiah 46). But in Old Testament thought, to have power was also to have existence. And because through seven centuries, the Lord worked his mighty acts of power in Israel's life, the nation finally arrived at this absolute monotheistic statement that we find here in our text.
So what is the power of the Lord that is here celebrated? It is the power to encompass all of history in his purpose, to oversee the whole of human activity, and to work within human life and the natural world until his final purpose is fulfilled. The Lord God's unique power is that of Lord over all time. He begins events and he brings them to their end. He inaugurates and he completes. " 'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' " says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come" (Revelation 1:8). Thus, in our text from Second Isaiah, God declares that he can tell what is coming and what is yet to happen, because he is sovereign over all happenings, bending them or using them in his loving purpose.
No other religion in the world knows such a God. Indeed, most of the other major religions of the world try to escape human history. But the God of Israel works in earthly and natural events and shapes them according to his purpose. Beside him, there is no other God.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
Psalm 139 begins with a strong statement that God knows us as we really are and concludes with a sincere prayer that God will further search our hearts and reveal to us our sinfulness. If that's not enough to throw a chill into us, then what is? Affirming both God's omniscience and his omnipresence, this psalm reminds us that whether we are in the womb (v. 13) or the tomb (v. 8) or anywhere in between (v. 2), whether we be in this world (v. 2) or in another realm altogether (v. 8) God is there. Even darkness does not keep him from seeing us (v. 12).
Yet the purpose of this psalm/prayer is surely not to frighten us, but to help us pray those final lines: "See if there is any wicked way in me."
Do we believe it when we are shown a wicked way? How do we feel singing hymns like: "Alas! And did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?"
On many days, we might object to being called a worm, but sometimes, when we have done something we consider downright selfish or wrong, our sense of ourselves as a good person collapses and the word "worm" doesn't sound all that farfetched. But even when we have not committed conspicuous wrong, our "goodness" pales next to God's holiness.
Then it's important not to forget to pray the very last line of the psalm: "Lead me into the way everlasting." The psalm reminds us that we can be forgiven, redeemed, and made whole.
