Genesis 28:10-19a

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the LORD stood beside him and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place-- and I did not know it!” And he 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.”

So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called that place Bethel.

Stone (by Charles Simic)

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.

Sometimes it’s the little details that stick in our consciousness: the color of the sky the day we graduated from college, the way the light came in through the window the morning our first child was born, the hat a woman was wearing at our father’s funeral. Sometimes it’s the little details that stick in our consciousness.

It’s the same way with Biblical narrative. Sometimes it’s the seemingly little details that stick in our consciousness and that suggest a world.

And so in the story of that rascal Jacob in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures for today, that rascal Jacob who cheated his twin brother Esau out of his birthright and blessing, that rascal Jacob who had to leave his home because that same brother came after him to kill him; in the story of that rascal Jacob, it isn’t the ladder with the angels that gets my attention right away. Instead, what attracts my attention is the stone pillow.

The stone pillow. It somehow says it all. It says: “I, Jacob, have botched my family life and have lost my home.” It says: “I, Jacob, am now alone in an open, deserted and nameless place with no creature comforts.” It says: “I, Jacob am all that I have left, my cheek upon a rock, the contour of my body upon the stone that is the earth.”

Yes, in our reading from Genesis, the stone pillow somehow says it all about Jacob and the turn his life has taken.

And I believe that it can and does speak to us as well.

For this seemingly small detail suggests a world we have inhabited. We may not have come to that world on account of fleeing our families or even as a result of our own serious missteps. But each of us knows what it’s like to come to the end of a day and to put our head down upon a stone pillow; to lay our body against the stone that is the earth. Each of us know what it’s like to inhabit a world where it seems as if all that we have left is ourselves.

But this perhaps is where the similarity between Jacob’s story and our story ends. For in Jacob’s story, in this place of utter aloneness comes a powerful dream—a dream of a kind of ramp that connects heaven and earth, a ramp upon which God’s emissaries, the angels, are constantly going up and down linking the human and the divine. And then suddenly in that dream God is there beside Jacob reassuring him and promising him a future, promising him safety, children and land, and promising not to leave him.

Jacob then wakes up and declares: “Surely the LORD is in this place-- and I did not know it….How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” And Jacob takes the stone, the one that was under his head, and sets it up, pours oil on it, creating a shrine there and naming the place Beth-el, that is, the house of God. And so the stony pillow becomes a shrine to the presence of God in the midst of human life, lived in a particular time by a particular person.

So you may be wondering what all of this has to do with an important, joyful event happening this morning in our liturgy. What does that rascal Jacob, his dream and his stony pillow which becomes a shrine to God’s presence on earth have to do with Lisa and Neil making their vows to one another and establishing a new household?

Perhaps I’ve given it away in the way I’ve posed the question.

Both, of course are about Beth-el, the house of God here on earth. Let me say more.

Both are about God’s presence with us in the day to day, the ladders to the divine that are situated in the places where we did not suppose God would be, and which take the vulnerable and receptive consciousness of a dreamer to perceive.

Both are about stone and star charts, stone pillows as the place from which this vulnerable and receptive consciousness can emerge and through which God’s presence can be perceived.

And finally both are about being people of the promise—God’s promise that we do not have to have all the answers about our future figured out. We just need to trust that God has walked with us before, that God has walked ahead of us and that God will walk beside us as the future unfolds.

And so this morning is a special morning because of what is about to occur. And at the same time it is a morning like any other, a morning in which the little details matter, the little details bless us: the orange color of the bride’s dress, the sound of the fountain in the garden, the breath of the person sitting next to us.

For all of these are a part of Beth-el, the house of God here on earth, the house that our Jewish forebear marked with the stone upon which he laid his head that night, the house that Jesus secured for us when, crucified, he went inside a stone and when resurrected, he walked out of that stone tomb and into the light, filling all creation with his presence and with a new blessing.

There’s a prayer from the Prayer Book used by Jews in the Reform tradition. Neil and Lisa, let this prayer be a gift to you as you begin your married life, a life that moves among domestic things, among domestic matters. May we and you never forget that this is the realm of Beth-el, the house of God.

“Days pass and the years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing; let there be moments when Your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness, and exclaim in wonder: How filled with awe is this place, and we did not know it!”