Sermon by John Brierly McCall, D. Min.
Genesis 32:22-31
Back in my high school days I wanted very much to be an athlete. I tried football but was too small and too kind-hearted. I tried basketball but was too short and clumsy. Then I tried wrestling and I was pretty good… at least I got a bronze medal for a third place finish in a big tournament.
High school and college wrestling have little in common with the televised version such as the WWF – World Wrestling Federation – which is mostly about showmanship. School wrestling is about agility and speed and strength, yes – but it’s also about leverage and finesse – out-thinking your opponent more than out-muscling him.
So it was on that dark night so long ago, as recorded in Genesis chapter 32 – Jacob wrestled with the angel… with God made manifest. Maybe it wasn’t an elegant match with rules and a referee. Maybe it was more of a back-alley brawl. But I can assure you it wasn’t done for show. This was life and death – or more accurately death and rebirth, as Jacob recognized God’s promise and intention in his life.
We’ve walked with Jacob the past two weeks. His very name, “Jacob,” comes from the Hebrew word for “heel,” because Jacob was the second twin, born holding on to his elder brother Esau’s heel. He behaved like a heel, too – as a liar, a schemer, a deceiver.
Last week we talked of how holy will trumps human will – how God’s divine intention may be postponed but never prevented. If you read past that story you known that Jacob and his father-in-law Laban made a covenant, beautifully captured in what we still call the Mizpah Benediction: “The Lord watch between me and you while we are absent one from another.” (31:49)
Chapter 32 begins with Jacob sending his messengers to his brother Esau whom he hadn’t seen in more than 20 years, offering gifts in the hopes of appeasing Esau who had wanted to kill Jacob for stealing his inheritance from their father. The messengers returned to tell Jacob that they had found Esau surrounded by an army of 400 men. On hearing this Jacob feared the worst. He fell to his knees and prayed saying “O God, you promised you would make my offspring as the sand of the sea because there would be so many… deliver me and save me from my brother’s wrath.” (32:9-12)
Our lesson this morning tells what happened that night – the eve of the day of reckoning. On the banks of the River Jabbok Jacob wrestled. We usually speak of Jacob wrestling with an angel, but Jacob knew it was God. Later generations called this place Peniel (“face of God”)—”for I have seen God face to face and I’m still alive!” (32:30).
So many times Jacob had rebelled, pulled away, lied, and deceived and now he was facing his moment of truth. Even after God put Jacob’s hip out of joint during the wrestling match, Jacob wouldn’t let go until he was granted a blessing. Finally God said Jacob would abandon his name and become, instead, “Israel” meaning “the one who contends with God.” (32:28).
His life was changed forever, marked with a limp from the strength of his adversary who, in fact, had been blessing him his whole life. Jacob the liar and deceiver died that night and Israel was born into his place.{http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching_print.aspx?commentary_id=116}
Many wise authors speak of “the dark night of the soul,” which is the title of a poem by St. John of the Cross, a 16th century Spanish mystic and priest. That profound experience is familiar to any of us who pays attention to our spiritual lives. It feels for all the world like death. It can be a time of spiritual dryness and brittleness when all we can feel is the apparent absence of God. But it can become a time of rebirth.
That feeling of absence isn’t the same as abandonment. It’s common for us to wrestle and feel genuine confusion. Scripture is filled with such stories and we could tell them as well. {see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul}
Is there any blessing you can imagine that would give you the strength to wrestle with God through the night and into the early morning? Might it be pleasure or fortune or fame… or meaning, or authentic life? If you knew God would give you a blessing, what would you ask for?
Jacob was wise enough to trust that God would give him what he – Jacob – most needed. That’s the true blessing, isn’t it? Sometimes the world tells us a real blessing would be to get what we most desire, what we think we deserve. God knows we dream of such things.
Our prayer (or demand) for trivial this or temporary that is a waste of our relationship with God. How much better to pray simply for a blessing in general rather than anything specific that might deceive us into thinking it will ultimately matter. “O God, give me what you think I most need…” sounds like a faithful prayer.
That’s as far as today’s story goes, but I won’t leave you hanging here: morning came, as it always does. Jacob, now Israel, still had to face the brother he had cheated and cast aside. Even with the transformation of the night before he certainly must have trembled a bit.
He saw Esau coming with his four hundred men so stepped ahead of his company prepared for the worst. Esau saw him and charged toward his brother. Rather than an angry blow there was a powerful hug, and a kiss, and tears.
It was a scene of reconciliation, relief and joy. It seems Esau must have had his own dark night of the soul, and deep, deep, healing. Peter Paul Rubens, the master painter from the 17th century, beautifully captured both this scene and the earlier one of Jacob wrestling with God. Jacob/Israel recognized it for what it was, saying to Esau: “seeing your face is like seeing the face of God” (33:10).
He never slipped back to the man he had been, or reverted to the way he had misbehaved.
As one author writes of Jacob at the end of his life: “It is hard to recognize the egocentric youth in this careworn old man, who is rendered almost transparent by surrender to the demands of the blessing he once stole.” www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=8/3/2008&tab=3
The same blessing is there for us: when we open our hearts to the Holy One and push through the pain, it transforms us, our relationships, our world. That’s what happens when Holy Will meets human will.
Amen.