Dreaming of A Holy Place
Genesis 28: 10 ~ 19a
Have you ever heard Brandi Carlile sing? If you haven’t, you should. As they say she has a set of pipes. One of my favorite songs she wrote and sings is “Dreams.”
Dreams, I have dreams when I’m awake when I’m asleep / And you, you are in my Dreams / You’re underneath my skin, / how am I so weak / And now in my dreams, / I can feel the weight, / I can just come clean / I keep it to myself, / I know what it means / I can’t have you, / but I have dreams.
Do you have dreams? Oh, I hope you do. I hope your life is filled with dreams, dreams of those you now love and those whom you once loved; dreams of children’s potential and promise; but most of all I hope you have dreams of what is to come. Because, you see, I suspect that without dreams of what is to come we shall be resigned to accepting what already is. And we should never settle for that.
Man is a dreamer ever / He glimpses the hills afar / and plans for the things out yonder / where all his tomorrows are / and back of the sound of the hammer / and back of the hissing steam / and back of the hand on the throttle / is ever a daring dream. (Unknown)
“Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”
In the dream God makes to Jacob the same promise he’d made to his grandfather, “I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the east and to the west, to the north and to the south. All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.”
As you read the Genesis stories of the patriarchs, you have to wonder, however, why God would make such a promise to Jacob. Maybe it was fitting the dream was a dream of a ladder because Jacob seemed to be one with a self-ignited drive to climb the ladder of success. After all this is the Jacob who, with a bit of help from his Mama, stole his brother’s inheritance and is now running for his life.
But he comes to this place called Bethel. He makes his camp for the night. He uses a stone for his pillow and sleeps. And he dreams of a ladder with its base on the earth reaching to heaven. And the angels of the Lord are ascending and descending upon it.
Rabbi Harold Kushner points out that the ladder is representative of the distance between “who we are” and “who God intends us to be.”
Do you dream? Do you? Let me make a guess. You don’t dream like you used to, do you? Can I suggest to you what made the dreams stop? The dreams stopped when you settled for who you are and where you are and decided you could live with things being like they are.”
What happened to the dream? Most of us are not like Jacob; we’ve not swindled our brother out of his birthright; we’ve not tricked our father into giving us a blessing. And we’re not like Jacob in another aspect, also. We have not dreamed a dream linking us with heaven.
What happened to the dream?
“When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware of it,’ He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’ Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel.”
It occurs to me the place was not considered holy until there was the dream, a dream of that place and heaven being linked, of angels ascending and descending. First came the dream and then came the sense of the place being holy.
What happened to the dream?
Look about you this morning. You know, someone visiting this morning, walking into the sanctuary before we sang the first hymn might have wondered if they were in the right place. We’re not a big church, so we have to use the sanctuary for the Vacation Bible School assembly. Look at this place. It’s decorated like a café. Granted, it’s decorated like “The Shake It Up Café, Where Kids Carry Out God’s Recipes,” but it still doesn’t look like a sanctuary.
But is it holy? I guess that depends. I guess it depends on the dream.
Are we just doing the business of the church or are we dreaming of a ladder ascending from here to heaven? Are we doing a Vacation Bible School or are we dreaming of children coming to an understanding of God’s call upon them? Two Saturdays from now are we going to cloth and provide school supplies to indigent children or are we dreaming of the day when they shall be poor no more?
And here, this morning, are we having a worship service or are we dreaming of a time when God shall speak to us in our dream and show us a ladder reaching toward the heaven with the angels ascending and descending upon it? And do we see the foot of that ladder right here at this altar? Ah, if we do then surely this is none other than the house of God. And we will be compelled to call this place "Holy."
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