Dreamcatchers

By Lisa Rzepka, August 8, 2004
Genesis 28:10-19, Matthew 10:24-33

Like Moses and Elijah, Andrew, James and Peter, I've had a mountain top experience - Black Mountain in Montreat, North Carolina to be specific. I spent a week with my three children and 1100 youth and older adults at Montreat Youth Conference -it was not a vacation - but it was an unforgettable mountain top experience. Now I better understand Jesus' prayer getaways in the mountains.

In this day and age, would you believe that the Montreat Conference Center hosts at least five, sometimes six, conferences a summer with between 1,000 - 1,200 Presbyterian young people at each conference? And that is just the East Coast, there is a Montreat West and a Montreat South. Would you believe that these young people go to worship not once but twice a day and attend nine 90 minute small group sessions exploring their faith? Would you believe they pay to do this??? Quick math tells me that between 10 thousand and 15 thousand Presbyterian young people are attending these events per year.

I know what your thinking - Presbyterians?? I'm sure - and they're even PC(USA)!!! Even more unbelievable is that many of these young adults come back year after year throughout their whole high school experience. My son Jake and I have been attending for the last four years and you know what I found? They really are searching for good news.

Building community and getting to know one another in a crowd that large is a challenge in itself. We play lots of get to know you games and answer hundreds of seemingly silly questions. Yet, answering 'silly' questions can be an insightful way to get to know one another better. How would you respond to the question, "If you had any type of superpower you could choose, what would it be?" One night our 'back home group' (that's a type of small group encounter) played this game. Some said they'd swing through the air like Spiderman, some said they would like to fly; some would like to breathe under water, be invisible, or have an unlimited supply of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And then, one young lady said - she'd save the world.

What a dream!
Perhaps this young lady was familiar with the First Testament story we read this morning. It's not an ordinary story. It may even be, for some, a story hard to fathom -- what with dreams and ladders and angels … Yet - it is a story that tells us about the reality of our lives through an extraordinary vision.

The Jacob we meet this morning is an exile. You remember Jacob, son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham. Abraham is whom God promised to make a great nation. Well, Jacob is the second son of Isaac and is a trickster - one who is manipulative - he has just stolen his brother's birthright and blessing. For this, Esau has threatened to kill him - so Jacob is on the run. He's a fugitive outside the protections of social guarantees. He's probably feeling a little guilty, more than a little fearful, and very vulnerable…

Unexpectedly - Jacob has an encounter - with God.
Probably the last thing Jacob had on his mind!

Wait a minute - We live for these encounters. We look for these encounters, don't we? Moments directly filled with God. Isn't that why we're here? Well, not many people expect to bump into God out in lonely field with a rock for a pillow. And - we're not told that there is simply a meeting with God that sets Jacob on the right path. Jacob has a dream vision and it's the details of that dream that deepen the meaning of Jacob's first divine encounter. I say first encounter, because later Jacob will encounter God again - and he becomes God's wrestling partner - a partner who comes away with a blessing. These divine encounters bracket Jacob's exile and - his restoration - his return home.

First detail - dreaming -- Jacob has a dream he'll never forget.
Have you ever had one of those dreams?
Ever have one with God in it?

This dream is so different from Jacob's wakeful world where he's in control - in that world he's figured out how to get what he wants - he thinks. But -- in his sleep his guard is down. His dream permits the entry of an alternative view into his life. And when his guard is down, the gospel message comes to Jacob.

Jacob does not psychologize his dream or fluff it off, he interprets this dream as reality saying, "Surely the LORD is in this place-- and I did not know it!" The text suggests we open ourselves to the possibility that our dreams are a method of divine communication.

Another detail is the very famous image of the ladder - Jacob's ladder leading to heaven. The word for ladder can also be translated ramp, which in Jacob's time would resemble what's called a Mesopotamian ziggurat, a landmass created as a temple. This temple is built so high it seems earth touches heaven. This temple ramp reflects the imperial religion of the culture (slowly gesturing to the building) and itself is transformed into a message of good news. Heaven and earth are connected - not only connected - but accessible! The message is that Earth is not left to its own resources and heaven is not a remote realm of gods unconcerned with life on earth.

Most intriguing to me is the detail of the angels going up and down the ramp. I say intriguing because I'll admit that for a long time the detail of the angels has been lost on me. I didn't pay much attention to angels in general. Hey, I'm Presbyterian and our confessions acknowledge that God created angels -- but worship is ultimately to be given to God made known in Christ. Angels have long been thought of as mediators -- yet -- we confess Jesus is our ultimate mediator.

Looking at this morning's reading I wanted to open myself up to a broader understanding of angels and possibly a connection to angel experiences. Sophy Burnham wrote a book called A Book of Angels and in it she makes the assertion that it's not that angel skeptics (such as myself) don't experience angels it's just that their angel experience is in a form that is recognizable to the recipient. She says that visitations and insights usually accord with the upbringing and conditioning of the recipient. So I decided to research angels in order to possibly recondition myself.

Hollywood has definitely shaped our understanding of angels. You may remember the Christmas classic with Clarence the angel in It's A Wonderful Life. Clarence is trying to earn his wings by showing George Bailey how precious his life is. Angels in the Outfield was a favorite of my sons, where angels come down and help the losing baseball team win the pennant. At the same time the angels transform the hopeless lives of a washed up coach and two orphaned boys. Warren Beatty played an angel who came to earth as a football player in Heaven Can Wait and climbed Jacob's ladder when his work was done. More recently there's Bagger Vance, where a guardian angel helps a down and out golfer. I'm beginning to sense a pattern here….perhaps, I haven't had an angel experience because I don't play professional sports!

Society is fascinated by angels - there's Touched by an Angel, Dark Angel, the movie Michael, Dogma …there is such a thing as fallen angels -- and the list goes on and on.

We wonder about angels, don't we? Some of us might like to think our departed loved ones are angels watching over us.

Biblically speaking you've may have heard it said that both the Greek and Hebrew words for angel can be translated messenger. So, think about messengers for a moment. First, the significance of being a messenger is in whom is sending the message - you can be a messenger for, say a political figure - Kerry or Bush, maybe??

But if you are a messenger for God --you are understood to be either a prophet -- or an angel.

A prophet is a human messenger and an angel is a divine messenger - both of which carry the Word of God. One theory holds that the rise in angelology occurred when the canon was closed on Books of the Prophets. In this period it was understood that God had stopped communicating directly to humans, becoming more transcendent -- further away from humanity, and the development of angels as divine mediators flourished. The view was held that angels serve to mediate the secrets of nature, the heavenly realm, and the last age.

The Hebrew term for messenger functions to reinforce the understanding that messengers, or in this case, angels are commissioned to be a connecting link - that they bring two separated parties together. This concept carries over into the Greek New Testament thought. The word for angel is related to euanggelion, the Greek word for good news, which is the word from which we derive evangelism.

Notice that there is an angel in evangelism -

the idea of connecting two separated parties with a message of hope.

Importantly, the doctrine of angels in Hebrew thought never involves creating an independent divine status. And never do angels inhabit the bodies of human beings. In fact, in Hebrew tradition the intermingling of humanity and angels resulted in evil spreading in the world.

Angels do serve to reveal and execute the power and presence of God. They provide divine care and direction. In rabbinic teaching, angels add color to the Hebrew Scriptures but they see to it that they do not detract from God. When necessity arises the faithful know to call upon God, not Michael or Gabriel. On the other hand, as is the case with Jacob, when necessity arises God doesn't send an angel.

Dreaming, a ladder, and angels prepare us for the crucial part of this story. Jacob, the fugitive, has a dream vision with angels bearing the message that in their activity between the two realms of heaven and earth, the Household of God is at work -- the Household of God at work.

There is an angel in evangelism. Evangelism is a scary word to Presbyterians. We don't like to think about standing on street corners trying to convert the masses. However, the image of the angels I think helps transform our ideas about evangelism.

Which reminds me of a story I heard one of the young people in my small group share. He said his friends will say (in a teasing manner), "So, are you going to church Ryan?" He said, I say (confidently), "Yeah. And, you can tell they're interested." Perhaps they're searching also??

This summer I was at a party where I met a woman and we were conversing when she asked what I did for a living. The next hour was spent engrossed in conversation about faith journeys. More than once she expressed her desire to get back to the church - and how she sensed her children were searching for something more…but things had gotten in the way.

Can we think of ourselves as God's messengers - as angels - called to reveal the power and presence of God in a hurting and fearful world - a world searching for meaning? How are we the Household of God at work here on earth?

When contemplating the Household at work it's important to remember the pinnacle of the story - it is none other than God who comes to Jacob. Walter Brueggeman calls our attention to the fact that this is an earthy example of justification by grace. God who is love comes to the undeserving and redefines life with promise speech:

Jacob, "I will be with you. I will keep you. I will bring you back home." We live with that promise -- I will accompany you, I will protect you, and you will be restored.

Catching the dream and holding on to God's promise is the good news that I believe Jesus is sending his disciples out to share with the world when he says, "What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. He's calling them to evangelize - to be as angels - spreading God's promise message and being about the work of the Household of God. And - sometimes sharing the message is not always easy.

Jacob's dream vision corresponds to the deepest longing of the human heart - to encounter God - and our desire for the truth waiting to be revealed beyond all lies and deceptions that we live with in our world. Jacob's vision catches our hearts, nurtures our spirit, and energizes us for the journey. We look for signs and confirmation along the way. That involves God's message - connecting two separated parties - and being living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds. We bear this good news because we trust in the God that comes to us, especially in the most unexpected places. Remember (the words of Christ), "What [God] says to you in the dark, tell in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops!"

Amen

© Copyright, 2004, Lisa Rzepka
All Rights Reserved.
Providence Presbyterian Church
Fairfax, Virginia