Living Wide Awake

Hi everyone, I’m Rachel. I’m one of the pastors here at VCOV. Let’s talk about sleep today. Anyone here sleepy?! I am! If you’ve been into the enneagram, an attribute of a 9, the Peacemaker, what I identify with, is that we can fall asleep whenever wherever. I find that to be mostly true. I love sleep. Something else about me though… I’m a night owl. Which, those two things can work together if one doesn’t have any extenuating circumstances such as children. I love my kids. They’re awesome. But they sure don’t support my sleep and night owl habits. I thought having kids would change me and make me a morning person. They didn’t. Now I’m just a sleepy morning person. You’d think after 9 years I’d succumb to the sleep pressure, but y’all, they can’t beat me. I will win. Eden’s three so it might be another 15 years but I will win the sleep game. Ha!

Did you know there’s a bunch of stories in the Bible about sleeping? Folks in a deep sleep, some peacefully sleeping, a lot of sleeping on boats in various weather patterns, sleeping under the stars, drowsy sleeping in gardens, sleeping with long hair then waking up with short hair and no strength, peacefully sleeping in mangers, exhausted naps under a tree. Sometimes death is referred to in the Bible as being asleep. Jesus says that his friend Lazarus is “asleep” and that he’s going to wake him up, but we know that he actually meant Lazarus was dead and he performs an incredible miracle bringing him back to life.

One time, while Paul was preaching, he was preaching so long a guy fell asleep, and listen to what happens to him, the Bible says it the funniest way in Acts: [SLIDE]“9 Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead.” Don’t think Tyler, Joe or I haven’t noticed when one of you has fallen asleep while we’ve been preaching, haha! But the story doesn’t end there, don’t worry, here’s what Paul does next, he “10 went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” 11 Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left.” ACTS 7:9-11 NIV The end. Can you imagine?! Eutychus falls, dies, Paul brings him back to life, then Paul eats and regains his strength to talk til the sun comes up and then leaves.

But I don’t want to just talk about being sleepy, I want to share a sleep story in the Old Testament so that we can learn to be fully awake from a sleepy life. Fully filled with life instead of sleepy death. How do we live awake to our actual lives? To the Kingdom reality we’ve been talking about the last several Gatherings. Awake to the Spirit, baptized and living under the Spirit’s influence, walking in God’s Spirit, healing with the Spirit. I want to live fully alive, not numbed out to my life like what our culture and the powers of this world want us to be. And goodness knows, I can numb out like the best of them to my phone scrolling and endless entertainment on streaming sites. There are powers at work in this world that do not want you or me living fully awake.

Our main Scripture text today is out of the Old Testament in Genesis 28. Let me set it up a little. Major plot points up to [SLIDE] Genesis 28 include God creating the world, Adam and Eve living in union with God to serve and protect the Garden of Eden, a place where Heaven and Earth were connected. Then there were the consequences of Adam and Eve’s choice to act on the Serpent’s deception where they have to leave Eden but they leave with a promise from God of a messianic hope that a seed of theirs would crush the head of the serpent. The world continues on in a downward spiral, God sends a flood to wash it clean and Noah and his family are the only survivors along with pairs of every animal. After a while, the Tower of Babel is attempted by humans, because as the Bible Project describes it, “They want to take things further and build a new type of tower that will reach up to the heavens. They [the humans] will be the ones to reunite Heaven and Earth and make a name for themselves. This tower is the epitome of human rebellion and arrogance, the garden tragedy writ large. So God humbles their pride and scatters them around the world.”

Eventually Abraham comes along and God makes a covenant with him promising to make him into a great nation and bless the world through him. His son Isaac carries that same covenant with him, and then Isaac has twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Jacob is the second born but his life is defined by cunning deception. He cheats his way into receiving his firstborn twin brother’s blessing, and has to flee because his brother is so angry. This is where we’re picking up, on Jacob’s way out to his uncle’s land where his parents told him to go get married. You can use your Bible phones or read along on the screen. We’re in Genesis 28 starting at verse 10. We’ll read the whole section and then talk through it.

[SLIDE]10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” 17 He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

18 Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. 19 He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.

20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear 21 so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God 22 and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.” — GENESIS 28:10-22 NIV

There’s a lot there! Let’s talk about this section by section because I think you’ll find that you can relate. By the way, there’s an amazing Bible Project classroom module that really dives deep into the life of Jacob and one of the sessions focuses on this chunk of Scripture. Tim Mackie is a brilliant Bible teacher and really fun to learn from, and who I’m using for a fair amount of my source material today.

So Jacob is known as the deceiver, a very human human, looking out for himself. Keep this as a filter as we talk through the story because I find at first reading, I’m like, oh wow, Jacob’s really taking notice of God, [SLIDE] “Surely the Lord is in this place,” and honoring him by wanting to build him a house by setting up the stone he slept on like a pillar. It’s like he hasn’t paid too much attention to the God of his father and grandfather, but in a dream, he’s put face to face with the reality of what’s going on, God’s at work in the world. He “wakes up” to God’s Kingdom reality and wants to do something about it. But what’s funny is his response, it’s SO him. He makes [SLIDE] a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear 21 so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God 22 and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.” He’s negotiating his blessing, with a IF you do this, God, THEN I will do this. IF you’re with me, IF you give me food and clothes on this journey, THEN you will be my God, THEN I will set this pillar to be God’s house, and IF you bless me, THEN I will give you a tenth.

But let’s stop and think here, aren’t we all a little like Jacob sometimes, or maybe a lot of the time, when we pray? We pray conditionally like him like we’re making a deal with God, “if you help me God, then I’ll trust you.” I can connect a lot with that way of thinking. Faith is hard!

By contrast, God, in his promise to Jacob, simply states what he’s going to do, the same promise he made Abraham, Jacob’s grandfather, and Isaac, Jacob’s father. He says, [SLIDE] “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. [SLIDE] All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

He doesn’t add conditions or try to trick Jacob, he just lays it all out there. Like, here buddy, let me spell it out: I WILL be with you because you’re a lonely guy right now on this journey. I WILL bring you back to this land I’ve promised you and I WILL NOT leave you until I’ve done all I’ve promised. The Messianic promise is even there that “all people on earth will be blessed through you” which eventually leads to Jesus coming through Jacob’s lineage and all people are saved. Jesus comes for all of us. He’s the promise that goes all the way back to Eden and God telling Eve and Adam that a seed of theirs would crush the head of the serpent.

God, who is committed to Jacob, makes a covenant promise with him. Then when Jacob wakes up in awe and terrified, he acknowledges he is bound to God too, even if he returns the vow with his IF/THEN response. He’s now a part of this covenant that is his real actual life, it’s a spiritually wide awake moment. Tim Mackie comments in his class on Jacob about our consciousness getting in the way like this, “It's somehow when you're asleep, the socialized... The ways that we protect ourselves with our consciousness, actually prevents us from seeing reality the way that it is. And it's this deep assumption the biblical authors have that it's when our conscious mind is disarmed that we are open to the presence of Heaven in ways that we're not, right now.” Tim pauses and then says, “Like, that is worth a long walk and a cup of tea.”

It certainly is worth a long walk to ponder that about our consciousness getting in the way of seeing Heaven at work. I’d like to think I’d like a dream like Jacob, getting to see the angels moving up and down the staircase but I don’t know. I DO want to see the overlap of Heaven and earth, though. Tim Mackie also goes on to say, [SLIDE] “The imagery of Jacob’s dream reveals a core aspect of the Bible’s portrait of reality: Heaven and Earth are distinct realms, but they're not wholly separate. Rather, they are made for one another, and they intersect and overlap in ways that humans only dimly perceive. Eden is the foundational biblical image of a realm where Heaven and Earth are one. But this story takes us one step further, and it shows us how Heaven and Earth can overlap when a person's consciousness is heightened to awareness of this overlap.

The fact that Jacob is asleep and dreaming, and this is what makes him able to perceive Heaven’s presence linked to Earth, is of greatest significance. Our normal, socialized, conscious states only make us aware of some aspects of reality.”

[EDEN SLIDE] So what’s a human to do if one wants to perceive the overlap of Heaven and Earth and not just dimly perceive it? I mean, I wouldn’t mind sleeping more to have one of those dreams, but that can’t be the only way! There’s so much more to explore in this Jacob story, like how it parallels the Eden story and how the Tower of Babel is a callback from the angelic stairway because humans wanted to make their own path to connect Heaven and Earth, but can’t, only God can gift that overlap to humans like Jacob sees in the dream. So good! But anyways, onward to the New Testament, to Ephesians 5! Tyler talked about walking by the Spirit with this passage. I’m not going to give his whole message, but I think we have some things here that will help us figure out how to live fully awake.

Let’s read starting at 5:8: [SLIDE] 8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. Here’s a light and dark metaphor, one might say things are dark when you CLOSE YOUR EYES TO SLEEP. Living in the light to me, is a fully awake life.

11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.  [SLIDE] 13 But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. 14 This is why it is said:

“Wake up, sleeper,

rise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you.”

Scholars say this quick little poem is most likely referencing a traditional poem or a hymn they sang in their time that they would have all known. It’s really beautiful isn’t it? Wake up sleeper. Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. This is one of those sleep is death references and another little arrow pointing to Jesus as the Messianic hope. The one who bring things back to life!

[SLIDE] 15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.  [SLIDE] Instead, be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. — EPHESIANS 5:8-20 NIV

[SLIDE] Paul is telling us to be filled with the fullness of Christ and he lays out a few specific ways to do it. Ways to wake up and live in the the fullness of your life instead of living a counterfeit.

He says we are to be speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Welp, we’re all here, so way to go team! We just sang a song earlier called Fall Afresh, goes like, Spirit of the living God come fall afresh on me, come wake me from my sleep. Just like the little poem inserted in here, we have our own songs that are sinking down in our hearts to be little melodies of theology we sing all together that form us. Additionally, Paul says to sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, this expresses our love to God and breeds intimacy when we write him our own poems or songs. As well as submit to one another out of reverence for Jesus, we prefer one another.

I skipped one, and that is to always give thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the one I want to hone in on as we finish up. I mean, it is November and seems apropos to consider gratitude as a way to live more fully awake because being grateful reminds us of the order of things. It reminds us again that God is the one who does the overlapping of Heaven and Earth and HE is the creator. Tim Mackie reflects about this last verse saying, [SLIDE] “When I'm being grateful, I'm naming something in the moment that didn't come from me that I don't necessarily deserve or that surprises me as a gift. … And the habit of constantly naming everything in my life as a gift changes you - it changes your moral compass.”

There’s all kinds of science that backs up that thought, that gratitude changes your brain. Google it. It creates and strengthens new neural pathways, gratitude helps manage stress responses, improves your sleep, and too many more benefits to name.

Practicing gratitude, I think, is key to living wide awake. Thinking of the people in our lives, the things we have, the places we work, being outside in creation… if we practice noticing the good in our lives and actively name them, we’re growing a practice in our lives that is forming a more fully awake human being. One who exposes the fruitless deeds of darkness and lives in the light. We don’t just avoid the “bad things” in that chapter, we fill ourselves with the light and notice where the light is at work.

I don’t want to be like Jacob, trying to trick his way to more blessing, I want to be wide awake to the blessing God has in front of me. Would you join me in practicing gratitude the rest of this month in your real everyday life and see what happens?

An author and pastor I really respect, Jess Connolly, gives this simple Gratitude Practice. [SLIDE] There’s a daily, weekly, and monthly element to it. Stick with the daily if you only pick one of the 3 elements. To end our time today, let’s prayerfully sit in  silence and consider 5 things we’re thankful for. You can either write it down on the card or you can make notes on your phone. I’ll end our silence with a prayer from Jesuit priest Joseph Tetlow.

[WAIT 2 minutes]

You Have Called Me By Name by Joseph Tetlow, SJ

Oh, Lord my God,

You called me from the sleep of nothingness

Merely because in your tremendous love

You want to make good and beautiful beings.

You have called me by my name in my mother’s womb.

You have given me breath and light and movement

And walked with me every moment of my existence.

I am amazed, Lord God of the universe,

That you attend to me and, more, cherish me.

Create in me the faithfulness that moves you,

And I will trust you and yearn for you all my days.

Amen.

Let’s all stand. If we all practiced this through the end of the month, I wonder what new brain wirings we will all have developed and what new things we will have noticed in our lives? Places where we now live wide awake to God’s design.

Prayer teams come on up. If you need prayer for anything, we’d love to pray with you.

• I specifically felt like there might be someone who doesn’t see the glimmers of good in your life, or you can’t see them because you feel like you’re underwater. The picture I had was light filtering through the water, so let us pray and help lift you up out of that.
• Anyone who needs physical healing, come get prayer.
• Prayer is for all who are hungry for more.