July 20, 2008
(Tenth Sunday after Pentecost;
Proper 11)
Surely the Lord is in This Place
by
The Rev. Joe Behen, Clergy Assistant
Genesis 28:10-19a • Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23 •
Romans 8:12-25 • Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
(From
The Lectionary Page)
In this morning’s Old Testament lesson, we find Jacob traveling from place to place, and unexpectedly finding God. Now, one thing that the author is doing here is simply describing the holy origins of the city of Bethel. But he is also saying something about God’s presence, and about the relationship between the world seen and the world unseen. This image of a ladder going up into heaven with angels ascending and descending on it undoubtedly stands out to anyone who’s ever heard this passage. And yet, it’s hard really to know what to do with this image. What does it mean, and how are we to respond to it?
In the world of the story told here, this place in which Jacob finds God is not Bethel yet, but simply somewhere in between other places. It lies between where he came from and where he was going to. Jacob finds God right where he is, here and now. From his response to this vision, it seems that the God of his fathers is no stranger to Jacob. But Jacob has spent the past several chapters of Genesis living by deceptions and part truths, so his own dedication to this God had been questionable, at best. His concern to this point was primarily what you might call the horizontal dimension of life - with what can be seen and touched, counted, measured, and collected. And so it was that Jacob’s relationship with the Lord required renewal. He needed a re-introduction to the vertical dimension of life – to that which cannot be seen but can be trusted. God’s promise for all is reiterated in subsequent generations. “All the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.” It is uttered once again for Jacob as it had been for Abraham and for Isaac, and it is uttered to us in our lives also.
There is much in today’s lectionary readings that speak to what we call spirituality, to this vertical dimension. In particular, they speak of the connection between heaven and earth, places of spiritual renewal. Now, before I go any further, I want to clarify my use of the words spiritual, spirituality. It’s used a lot today, and I suspect it comes with a variety of meanings. I refer to spirituality as “the experiences of life in relationship with God, and the practices that make up this relationship and keep it going.” And as we all know, part of keeping any relationship going is regular renewal. As God renews relationship with us, we also must find ways to renew ourselves in this relationship.
Now, while Jacob finds renewal in a particular place, a place in which it seems that heaven comes closest to earth, the psalmist understands all places to be conduits between heaven and earth. “Where can I go then from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. If I take the wings of the morning, you are there; and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand hold me fast.” Earlier this week in the daily readings we heard God telling Joshua, “the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” So if God is in all places and is with us wherever we are, why consider God’s presence in some special place above and beyond others? Why would we go somewhere specific in the hope of finding God? Well, I will suggest that it is, in fact useful to find such places, but it has to do with our own limitations rather than God’s.
None of us are likely to experience the kind of thing that Jacob dreamed of, but we all long for the experience of God’s presence. It’s not always for some specific reason of our own that we want God to be with us, such as for comfort, healing, or guidance. Sometimes we simply need to experience God in our lives. We need to be reaffirmed that God is still with us. So why is it, then, that this need that we all have, to know God’s presence, seems so often to feel unfulfilled as we go about the routines that make up our lives?
What if we begin by looking at our routines. We all need routines, ways of living that we can count on. It is the customs, schedules and regular practices of our lives that allow us to do what we do. They give us a place that makes sense to us, a “base” from which to reach out to the world, but to which we can return, to orient ourselves once again. We need the routines of our lives. But we also need occasionally to be shaken loose from these routines. When we sink too deeply into the grooves our routines, they can have a shrinking effect on what we see in the world, what we see in life. We have to step away from them occasionally in order to keep them healthy, to keep them useful and relevant.
Last month I was fortunate to be able to spend a week in the mountains of Colorado with my family. I remembered my first trip to the mountains nearly sixteen years ago. I had been mesmerized by the experience as we hiked through high mountain passes and saw breathtaking views of God’s creation. I had never been so fully “in the present moment” as I had been there. In this last trip we purposely chose hiking trails that would take us to new places that would hopefully have a similar impact. They did. We found one particular place just above the tree line, in which a rock platform held us out over a river gorge, with the backdrop of snowcapped peaks around us, and a wild and colorful sky above. We sat down there and said nothing for about ten minutes. We were largely out of breath from the climb, but we were also taken aback by our nearly instant removal from the smaller world we had minutes earlier thought ourselves to inhabit. God’s presence with us there felt powerful and unmistakable. We had stumbled into a place that made us keenly aware life’s vertical dimension, and the boundaries of time and space seemed to fade.
My point in telling you this is simply to say that part of our spiritual nourishment is reminding ourselves in various ways that the world is not as small as we can be led to believe. Our mission is to find the vertical dimensions in the world, the connections between heaven and earth. Ann LaMott has said that, “we can be fooled into thinking that the world is not miraculous. But,” she says plainly, “it is.” When I find myself feeling disconnected from God, and like my prayer is more duty than delight, I know that the world has become too small, and my vision of God has become too tame. It’s time to take the Lord’s words, “I am with you,” and remove myself from the routine of life, even if only for a few hours. It’s time to go somewhere for the sole purpose of being present to God, because God is always and everywhere present to me. The result can be a renewed relationship with God, with the world, and with the people in my life. It is a beautiful and necessary thing. It allows me once again to say, “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!”
