"If"

At my next visit I’ll be speaking about the dysfunction and subsequent redemption of Jacob, but that’s Shabbat evening, December 13th. This week’s Torah portion points to the problem our Patriarch possessed (one of many), one so related to Thanksgiving that I only wish it had been the sedra for last Shabbat.

      Jacob rests his head on a rock and dreams of a ladder with” beings” ascending and descending on a ladder…up to heaven, down to heaven, up to heaven, down to heaven… (I guess if we used a rock for a pillow we’d have weird dreams as well) When he realized that there was a Divine message in that dream he made a vow:  

   “If God remains with me, if God protects me on this journey
    and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if 
    I return safe to my father’s house; the Eternal shall be my God.” 

      That conditional word “IF” can be the barrier to fulfilling one’s destiny; only later in life did Jacob come to realize that his selfishness, even narcissism, will do him no good…no more “if”s” should he desire to mature.

      The strength of faith held by Abraham and Isaac, Jacob’s grandfather and father, might lead us to question if such faith is valid considering the consequences, such as the near-sacrifice of Isaac, but still, never did those gentlemen look towards themselves as above the God that motivated them to a new understanding of the world and their place in it. There are indeed some who think the world revolves around them; they are the ones who make so many things - maybe everything - conditional on how they and they alone might benefit.

       Fortunately, Jacob did see the light in a most compelling way, the battle he had with that entity at the river’s edge, but that’s for my sermon on December 13th which is entitled, “A Boy Named Sue, and Jacob, Too!”