Proper 11A’26
19 July 2026
Gen.28; Ps.139; Rom.8.12-25
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone <+>
“Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it.” Amen.
Some of you who know me well know that I have this habit of picking up rocks wherever I travel. I do this as a way to remember some of the significant places I’ve been. Some of these places have been made special by occasional brushes with fame. There’s the pebble from the parking lot of All Saint’s Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills where I got to talk and pray with Debbie Boone for an hour. There’s a rock from the ground at Edinburgh castle where Smantha Brown, travel show host of the Travel Channel walked up next to me to look over the castle wall, and we had a delightful conversation. There are other places like a downtown theatre in my hometown where I met, and got a hug from Donna Douglas, better known as Ellie Mae Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies. At another auditorium in Jonesboro, where I got to meet and shake the hand of the creator of the Star Trek TV series, Gene Rodenberry. While in seminary I got to meet and shake hands with the former Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, and also with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Other places have become much more than destinations they’ve become sacred places of pilgrimage on my spiritual journey; like the church where I was baptized. The two churches where I was ordained deacon, and priest. Then the church yard in London where I got a piece of the actual roman wall the church is built on, and where a distant cousin, The Rev. Samuel J. Stone was rector, and who composed the hymn, ‘The Church’s One Foundation.” At Grasmere, England, there’s an arbor covered bench in the backyard of Dove Cottage, I once sat on and it was the very spot where the poet William Wordsworth once lived and sat contemplating the glories of creation and writing mesmerizing poetry. Last but not least, there’s an orange couch somewhere (probably in a landfill now) that I once sat on in my first tiny apartment in Pine Bluff, where the felt presence of the Holy Spirit became manifest, and I knew that I would never ever be truly alone. I can look back on that day and place, and say, “Surely the Lord was in that place, and I did not know it.”
Sacred Ground, is an ordinary place that has become extraordinary due to a significant event, or a visitation. This is why we have come to refer to Israel and other territories in the middle east as “the Holy Land.” Places like Mount Sinai, Gethsemane, or Golgotha mark a special encounter with the divine. Even today in our diocese we refer to Petit Jean Mountain and Camp Mitchell as a thin place where God is encountered.
Anytime we enter a foreign country we have to go through customs. At the desk we are usually asked why we are going to be in their country “will these be for business or pleasure?” We answer one or the other or sometimes its both. There can be a third reason for travel when in danger and on the run. This is the kind of travel we encounter in today’s reading form Genesis. We drop in on the journey of the great but flawed patriarch- Jacob who is literally running for his life from his brother Esau, whom he has just cheated out of his inheritance, and who intended out of revenge to kill him. By the trickery of impersonation, he had fooled his legally blind father Issac into believing that he was the eldest son, Esau. With his life on the rocks and running on empty, he finds a hiding place near the town of Luz. He located a rock to use as his pillow, lies down and quickly falls asleep. While asleep his has a dream where he sees a ladder of cosmic proportions with the bottom touching the earth and the top part touching heaven. Jacob then notices what appear to be angels ascending and descending. Then he suddenly becomes aware that God is standing next to him who reminds his of the promise God had made to his fathers before him; Abraham and Issac, to give them the good land, and to bless all nations through God’s people.
Jacob then woke up and said:
“Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!”
The awareness that he has been sleeping on holy ground moves Jacob with awe and he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” So, he picks up the rock he had used for a pillow and sets it up as a sacred pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He then changes the name of the town from Luz (that meant almond grove) to Beth-el which means house of God. The name change indicated how an ordinary town named after a very ordinary almond grove, as a place where God dwells. It is here that God promises not to abandon Jacob and that God would be with him wherever he went.
“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!”
This very flawed man goes on to accomplish great things for God.
When he pulled in that day to the town of Luz “almond grove” he had no idea what was in store, that it would become a place of transformation and of promise. This is just how God continues to work through his modern day people. In the psalm today we find that there is no place on earth we can go that God is not present:
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
As we reflect on Jacob’s experience, we are invited to recall the places where we have known and felt God’s presence.
Faith invites us to see ourselves not as wanderers hopelessly lost but as pilgrims on a sacred journey. God meets us in our lowest, most broken moments—turning places of lonely exile into sacred places of hope and of divine promise. The Holy Spirit is our constant companion, even we can’t feel anything, the fact remains that the Spirit of God dwells within us. This power of God can take the ordinary and make them extraordinary.
French Jesuit Priest and Paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said:
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience”.
“Surely the Lord is in this place, and did not know it.” Amen.
“Jacob’s Ladder,” by Marc Chagall
“Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” – John 1.51