Jacob's Thin Place

Written by Ed Kauffman

Jacob’s Thin Place – Genesis 28:10-22

July 17, 2011

Last Sunday we were introduced to Jacob, the younger twin of his brother Esau, who took advantage of Esau’s hunger to usurp the birthright, thus gaining claim to more of his father’s estate than would normally be his.  The stories of Jacob, which occupy a major section of the book of Genesis, are an interesting and sometimes rather confusing series.  And we won’t look in depth at all of them.

After being introduced to Jacob and Esau in chapter 25, chapter 26 returns primarily to a story of Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob’s parents.  And there is some confusion, as this story closely parallels a story about Abraham and Sarah, told earlier in chapter 20.  In both cases, the setting is Gerar, and the king of Gerar is a man named Abimelech.  And in both stories, the men try to pass their wives off as their sisters, for fear of the men of the area. In the first instance, God warns Abimelech about the deception, while in the current case, Abimelech catches Isaac and Rebekah in a clearly non-sibling situation.  In both cases the stories end well. In this case Isaac becomes rich and needs to move on to his own land, there is a fight over wells, and the story ends with a covenant and truces between the parties.

Chapter 26 ends with a small note about Esau who, we are told, took wives for himself from among the Hittites, their neighbors, which, according to the text, “made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.” 

Chapter 27, then, begins the next conflict between Jacob and Esau, this time involving their parents as co-protagonists.  Isaac calls his favourite son Esau in and gives him instructions to hunt some game, prepare a savory dish, and be prepared to receive Isaac’s blessing, the other half of the ritual for the first-born.  At this point, Rebekah, looking out for her favourite son Jacob, enters the picture as a schemer, along with Jacob.  Together they devise a scheme to fool Isaac into blessing Jacob rather than Esau, thus stealing the rights of the first-born entirely.

The scheme obviously involves deceiving Isaac, whom we are told is now very old and nearly blind, into believing that Jacob is really Esau.  Fixing a young goat to taste like wild game would perhaps not be such a stretch, but Jacob wonders, “what if he wants to touch me?”  You will recall that Esau was described as hairy all over, while Jacob was more smooth skinned.  But covered in goat skin on exposed places, and dressed in Esau’s clothes, Isaac is fooled into giving the coveted blessing to Jacob.  (I’m not sure how hairy Esau was, but it does seem to strain credulity!)

Only after Jacob receives the blessing and leaves does Esau reappear from hunting and to his, and Isaac’s horror, discover that he has, once again, been robbed.  Moreover, although he pleads with Isaac to “also bless him”, the most he can get from Isaac seems more like a curse than a blessing.

“See, away from the fatness of the earth shall your home be, and away from the dew of heaven on high. By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother; but when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your neck.”  Gen 27:39-40 (NRSV)

Hardly a consolation and Esau immediately begins to plot against his brother’s life, whereupon Rebekah pleads with Jacob to leave and save himself.  The pretext she gives for Jacob’s leaving is so that he won’t take wives from among the Hittites, like Esau did.  And so, under that that high sounding motive, Isaac sends Jacob off to the old country to seek a wife from among Rebekah’s kinfolk.  (There is a bit of incongruity in the story at this point, as Isaac suddenly seems to have recovered his health and forgotten Jacob’s deceit.)

Again we have a short note interjected at this point noting that Esau, sensing his parent’s displeasure at his Hittite wives, attempts to rectify this by taking another wife, this time a daughter of Ishmael.  While a cousin, and thus more acceptable, you will recall that Ishmael was certainly not a favourite of the clan, and thus Esau probably gained no favor from this move either.

Which finally brings us to our text and story for the day, commonly known as Jacob’s ladder.  And, while most of our images and songs about this story still use the image of the ladder, most scholars agree that we should more likely picture this as a stairway, after the ancient near-eastern temple ziggurat, a place where it was believed humans could go to meet God.  But it’s a little hard to sing, “we are climbing Jacob’s ziggurat.”

The story itself, compared to some we have recalled is fairly simple.  Jacob is on his way to Haran, his ancestral home, and when night falls finds himself in on the way.  It’s interesting to note that no location is given, simply, “a certain place.”  He finds a rock to use as a pillow, and falls asleep.  And he dreams.  His dream is of a stairway, with angels, literally messengers, ascending and descending. And God appears.  Older versions often said God appeared above the stairway, but most modern versions say God appeared beside Jacob.  In any case, God appears and reaffirms the promise made to Abraham and Isaac, and now reassures Jacob that God will continue to carry out that promise through Jacob himself – that the land he was on would eventually be his, and that all the nations of the world would be blessed by Jacob and his children.

Upon awakening, Jacob takes the stone he was using as a pillow and builds an altar and names the place Bethel, or Bet El meaning House of God.  And he vows that if God keeps his promise, Jacob will faithfully serve God, and give a tenth back. 

This brief story in Jacob’s journey has sparked many commentaries, pieces of art, and conversation.  What did the stairway symbolize?  Who are the messengers or angels ascending and descending?  But I think perhaps the best explanation is the simplest – here was Jacob’s first true encounter with the God of his ancestors.  To draw on another Biblical analogy, this was Jacob’s Damascus Road experience. 

Jacob is alone, fleeing for his life, unsure of what lies ahead. He is on the road, at night in an evidently deserted place.  And there he meets God, perhaps for the first time in a very real way.  Jacob exclaims, “Surely God was in this place, and I did not know it!”

Geoff McElroy in an online post describes it this way.

Those eye opening moments, those moments and experience that expand our horizons, that open us up to God and God’s workings in the world often come in strange places and at strange times and in strange ways. For Jacob, it was in a place that held little to recommend it, at a time he was not looking for it, and in a way that emphasized to him that though the world viewed him as destitute and alone, the LORD was there beside him.

Jacob’s vision at Bethel speaks to one of the core beliefs of biblical faith: the Creator God, the God of Israel, the God of the covenant is not a God that abandons or ignores but is a God who is ever-present. Even in the dark times of life, when the biblical writers speak from their own places of abandonment and exile, there is usually a conviction alongside their laments, a conviction that God is somehow, someway still present and at work, that the promise still holds.

The journey of faith is often filled with these Bethel moments, moments of loneliness and fear and despair that are transformed by the presence of God standing beside us. And sometimes it is only after we emerge on the other side of the trouble that we see where God was at work, when we take stock and look back and see that “the LORD was present in that place—and I did not know it!”

Celtic Christianity calls those places where we encounter God like this “thin places.”  Mindie Burgoyne, in a book called Walking Though Thin Places, describes them like this:

Thin Places are ports in the storm of life, where the pilgrims can move closer to the God they seek, where one leaves that which is familiar and journeys into the Divine Presence.  They are stopping places where men and women are given pause to wonder about what lies beyond the mundane rituals, the grief, trials and boredom of our day-to-day life.  They probe to the core of the human heart and open the pathway that leads to satisfying the familiar hungers and yearnings common to all people on earth, the hunger to be connected, to be a part of something greater, to be loved, to find peace. 

Another author notes that while we may search for thin places, most often they find us.  For Jacob, Bethel became one of those “thin places” where the God who before had only been “your God” as he talked to his father, now became “my God” and the promise of God’s presence was made real.

For Jacob that thin place was on the road, at night, in a deserted place.  But thin places can be anywhere, for God is surely present everywhere, even if we don’t always recognize it.

There is an auditorium on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana that is one of those thin places for me, where God seemed to speak to me in the middle of 900 other High School boys.  More recently the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota have become a thin place for me, a place where it seems God is closer and I recognize God’s presence in new ways.  Sitting around the campfire with friends or seeing the sun rise over a calm lake, give me a sense of God’s nearness and presence like few other places I’ve been.

I suspect all of us have those places, whether in nature or in the quiet of our homes, or even in the middle of a city.  For Jacob this encounter was a turning point, of sorts, although as we will see not the only one.  And so I invite you to recall those thin places where you have encountered God, sometimes only recognizing God’s presence after the fact. Times when you said, “Surely God was in this place, and I did not know it.”

I invite you to remember and thank God for those encounters, for your own thin places, as we listen to a video made by Mindie Burgoyne of her thin places in Ireland.   ?Ireland Thin Places?? - YouTube

 Let us pray,

O God, you come to us in unexpected and unknown ways.  Sometimes when we least expect you, or in places where we think you surely can’t be, there we meet you.  Thank you for those times when we experience a thin place in the world, where we see heaven a little closer.  May we, like Jacob, renew our vows to you and live more fully in your presence from day to day.  Amen.