“The Power of Story”
Genesis 28:10-19
Matthew 18:1-5
Mark 10:13-16
Some stories are simple accounts of something that happened, told once or twice to explain a situation, to convey information, to reveal a slice of one’s heart, or just for fun.
Other stories reveal truths so deep and universal that they are told again and again and again. These stories are passed from generation to generation and sometimes across cultures. These stories sometimes become touchstones and guideposts and ways of better understanding ourselves, life, and the world. These stories sometimes help to explain the past, sometimes help us make sense of the present moment, and sometimes help us to shape the future.
It is these kinds of stories that keep us reading the Bible, which is full of tales from long, long ago—ancient stories that become new whenever they’re read or heard by successive generations, in different cultures, and by different genders, races, abilities, classes, and sexualities.
This is one of the reasons we give our children Bibles: because while we may teach them what the stories mean to us, our children will bring to them their own questions, experiences, challenges, and interpretations. This is one of the things we mean when we say that God is still speaking.
But these stories are not only for children. Even we adults who’ve heard them countless times, may hear new things or come to understand them differently at different stages in our lives, after we’ve learned or experienced something new, or in the context of what’s happening now in our lives or the world.
The focus of our first story this morning is Jacob, who was the younger son of Isaac and Rebekah (Isaac being the miracle child of Abraham and Sarah). Jacob was running from a mess of his own making. He had deceived his dying father and stolen his twin brother’s inheritance. What Jacob had done was so horrible that his own mother told him to run for the hills before his brother killed him.
But then he was running for his life. And then he was alone in the middle of nowhere, and it was getting dark. So desperate was he that he used a stone for a pillow, and fell asleep.
And then God came to him in a dream.
There was a ladder in Jacob’s dream, a ladder that was set up on the ground beside him and extended high up into the heavens, farther than he could see. And on the ladder were angels, coming down to earth from heaven and going up to heaven from the earth. Climbing and descending, going up and coming down, a constant parade of heavenly hosts, a holy thread connecting the human–even a conniving, greedy, home-wrecking human like Jacob–to the divine.
And then, just as Jacob’s unconscious mind was beginning to make some sense of that, the dream continued–and suddenly God was standing right beside him.
Now, the conscious mind might have expected God to give Jacob a serious talking to. Our rational minds might want God to punish Jacob.
But in this dream, a dream and a story for Jacob’s rock-bottom moment and for ours, that is not what happens. In this dream, a dream for Jacob’s loneliest moments and also for ours, that is not what happens at all.
Hear what God says to Jacob in this dream:
I am the Holy One, the God of your ancestors, the God of all your people, and also your God. I know things look pretty bad for you right now, but I want you to know that I am with you. Not only that, but I will always be with you, no matter what. I will bless you and keep you, and I will stay with you until every promise I have made to you–promises of a future with hope, promises of a land and a family, promises of a legacy–has been fulfilled.
Now, if you have any doubt about our primal need to know this fundamental promise of Presence–that God is with us and for us, now and always–let me tell you another story:
This story comes from our life together as a community of faith, and some of you have heard it before. Others of you don’t know that for many years, back in the pre-pandemic times, a highlight of our church year was a youth and family retreat at the Craigville Retreat Center on Cape Cod.
The weekend was always loads of fun and community building, but it was also much more than that. Most of all, we wanted our children to know that they were loved—not only by a church community but especially by God. And that meant working in some low-key faith formation.
The gift and the challenge of that was exactly the same: kids.
Right?
You never know what will work with them and what won’t, what will sink in and what will provoke the dreaded eye-roll. All you can really do is put your love out there and hope for the best.
One year we focused on the story you just heard, the one about Jacob at Beth-el, all angels and awesomeness and a pretty spectacular promise from God.
On Sunday morning we gathered on the beach for our closing worship service. Kids, worship, beach—what had I been thinking? The sun was shining. The waves were rolling in. The distractions were legion. Almost half the congregation was busy with shovels and buckets. Brendon, who sat with his back to me, was clearly not paying attention.
But what could I do? Being a preacher, I just kept talking. Again, I told the story of Jacob and his pillow and his dream. The ladder and the stone pillar. And when I got to the part where God stands beside Jacob and speaks to him, I said, “And what did God tell Jacob?”
Which was the whole faith-formation, remember-God-loves-you point, after all.
Sunshine diamonds danced across the water. Seagulls squawked overhead. And eight-year-old Brendon, who was still facing the opposite direction and playing in the sand, did not miss a beat. In a voice clear and strong and sure, he spoke the words of scripture, almost verbatim:
“I am with you and I will be with you wherever you go. I will bring you back home and I will stay with you until I keep all my promises.”
Kids. You just never know.
I’m pretty sure I was not the only adult who was stunned by Brendon’s almost word-for-word recitation of scripture. I don’t think I was the only one moved to tears by having a child speak the truth we all long to hear, no matter what our age, no matter what our situation:
I am your God, and I love you. I am with you now and I will stay with you always. I will be with you wherever you go. I will be with you whatever happens to you. I will never leave you, and you can never lose my love.
That’s true for us all—whether we’re a child just beginning to discover the world, a young adult who’s moved halfway around the world to study, a parent wondering how to fit church into an already overly-full, stressful life, or someone in middle age, retirement, or their nineties wondering if they still have something to offer the world.
That eight-year-old, scripture-quoting Brendon grew up to become a wonderful young man, and now he’s in college. Last year he became a church member; earlier this year he was elected to our church’s Elected Leadership Team; and right now he’s downstairs helping with Sunday School.
Kids. You just never know.
Jesus’ disciples didn’t know. Apparently, they considered children a nuisance or somehow disconnected from Jesus’ true purpose and ministry. But Jesus knew.
“Let the children come to me,” he insisted. “Do not stop the children, because it is to the childlike that the realm of God belongs.”
And what is it to be childlike? Surely, it has something to do with being curious, open, seeking, and wonder-struck. But I wonder if the most important things about being childlike are knowing that we are dependent beings—that is, knowing our need for others and for God—and, perhaps most important of all, trusting that God—often through others—will always be with us and will provide what we need.
Surely, Jacob realized, God was with him.
Surely, God’s love is with us.
And that may be the most important story of all.
