God is in this place, every place

Image Credit: Diminish and Ascend by David McCracken (2013).  Christchurch Botanic Gardens, New Zealand
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diminish_and_Ascend,_Christchurch_Botanic_Gardens,_Christchurch.jpg

Proper 11 (16), Year A
19 July 2026

Genesis 28:10-19a
Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

When I signed up as a candidate for ministry with my home synod I was interviewed. Among other things, I was asked why I sought to be a pastor, whether I saw myself as a shaman, or a therapist, or a mediator between God and people. I had been a Christian for many years yet the questions puzzled me, in part because I did not realize that the skepticism they conveyed had something to do with the interviewer’s perception of my home congregation, and in part because the theological concepts on which the questions were based eluded me.

Our reading from Genesis continues the story of two brothers, Jacob the younger and Esau the elder, born to Isaac and Rebekah. Last week we learned of their rivalry in their mother’s womb, and of Jacob’s exploitation of his brother’s hunger when Esau was famished. This was how Jacob the second-born gained the blessing reserved for the first born. Perhaps he was the first capitalist for he knew how to benefit from his brother’s need, and instead of responding with kindness and compassion he commodified his hospitality. In the ongoing ploy to receive his father’s blessing he is supported by his mother Rebekah who not only had a favourite but was also unable to check herself or to hide this.

We too are born into families and our family can be a gift in the way it provides safety and community. Yet family can also be a burden. The story of Jacob and Esau and their parents Isaac and Rebekah is an example of how family can go wrong. We may recognize in their story injustices we enacted or suffered in our own families.

Rebekah, having learned that Esau plans to kill Jacob, urges Jacob to flee from his brother’s wrath and go north to his uncle Laban (Rebekah’s brother) in far away Haran (today’s Turkey) and stay there until Esau’s anger and fury fade and Esau forgets what Jacob had done to him.
And this is the moment at which our first reading begins.

Early in his long journey to Haran Jacob stops at night fall. He finds a place to lie down to spend the night and arranges a rock perhaps to be his pillow, but more likely to be his protection. As he sleeps, God comes to him in a dream, the beautiful vision just proclaimed to us. … he dreamed that there was a stairway set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And God comes to him and reminds Jacob of the promises the Lord had made to his ancestors. It is a moment of extraordinary grace when God appears to Jacob, a fugitive by his own doing. Later Jesus will say that he has come to call not the righteous but sinners. (Luke 5:32) The scriptures tell us, And [Jacob] was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

It is not surprising then that this story inspired the Christian imagination; in hymns, in poetry, in the naming of churches.
Bethel became a metaphor for the presence of God. In Germany where I was raised Bethel is the name of a large centre that cares for people with various disabilities and ailments,¹ founded in the 19^th century as a small hospital for people suffering from epilepsy and founded by a Protestant pastor. The story of Jacob’s ladder – as the story is often known – explains why Bethel has become synonymous with the experience of the presence of God.

When I first sought to register as a candidate for ministry and was asked how I viewed the role of clergy, I was asked whether I saw myself as an intermediary between God and the people. Such understanding would suggest an inordinate amount of power resting with the clergy. But because my experience of God was not dependent on my pastor, I did not understand the question.

Much of the Bible was written during the Babylonian exile when God’s people needed to understand their relationship with God in a new way. One question they asked was how they could understand the catastrophe of the exile, their defeat at the hands of the Babylonions and their being carried away to a strange and foreign land, the other question was what one is to do when one can no longer worship at the temple in Jerusalem.
Our reading speaks to these questions, especially the second one: The word place appears six times in our short passage. And Jacob says, “Surely the LORD is in this place – and I did not know it!”

And so the story of Jacob’s ladder affirms that God can be met in any place.² The book of Genesis affirms that the God of creation can be encountered anywhere and everywhere and without mediation by priests or temple. Remember that Genesis begins by telling us that all is made good and that all people are created in the image and likeness of God. And today’s Psalm reminds us that we cannot flee from God’s presence.

Jacob’s experience is beautiful, personal, and overwhelming. His story is told in the context of the story of a people. When Jacob encounters God, God identifies as the God of Abraham and Isaac. Besides, Jacob is also one of the ancestors of Israel, of a people, and the story is told to answer the question of where to worship. Therefore, this is not about my personal Jesus or my personal spiritual experience, but about God’s care for a people, which means that our experience of God always happens in a social context and has social implications. Meeting God is not primarily about feeling good. It is about meeting God.

A number of years ago the theologian and pastor Lillian Daniel wrote, “Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn’t interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.”³

John 4 tells of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. Like all of the stories the Gospels tell us, this is a story about God, community, and our place in community. The story includes a reference to place, to the place of worship. ¹⁹The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ ²¹Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. (…) ²³But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.

When the Covid-19 pandemic forced us into isolation we were blessed by Jordan’s commitment and expertise to set up the streaming of our worship. Because of this, I did not have to stream from my kitchen table or some other place, but you were able to see your church building (and those of us who lead Sunday worship) and perhaps find comfort in this. For the same reason I took pictures of the church and its grounds and plants, shown during the singing of hymns, so that we would continue to feel connected to this place and find comfort in such connection.

And yet, it turns out that the place does not matter, that God meets us anywhere, for this is not only our deepest longing but God’s deepest longing, too. And despite isolation or individualism, God meets us not only as individuals but as a people whom God shapes to be a blessing. We know this because God was with the exiled in Babylon. And we know this because during Covid, even more than this beautiful place we missed each other.

Where can we go from your spirit? Or where can we flee from your presence?
If we ascend to heaven, you are there; if we make our bed in Sheol, you are there.
If we take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead us, and your right hand shall hold us fast.

Amen.