August 3, 2014: Genesis 32:22-31

  Year A, Pentecost 8                  

            My family gathers at a cabin on a lake in upstate New York in the summer.  If you walk into our basement, you will see a rather strange pictorial wall of fame…or really a wall of pain.  It’s all pictures of injuries that were acquired while at the camp.  I am not sure how this bizarre custom began. I think it  had something to do with one of my brothers who seems to always be around when someone is injured.  We started documenting all the injuries that happened in his presence.  Then it just took on a life of its own.   Of course a fascination with injuries is not really surprising when you have a family with three boys.  I remember them telling me early in life not to be friends with someone who did not have scars.  Apparently, scars were the sign of a life well lived and experienced, even at age 9.  It signified a tough individual who knew what it was to experience pain.  I guess my brothers did not want their little sister to be friends with anyone who could not hold their own in a street fight. 

            According to some (who have absolutely no way of proving this), this story from Genesis is one of the most frequently preached stories in all of Genesis.    That is just one book of the Bible, so perhaps that is not very impressive to you.  But Genesis is full of awesome stories.  You have the creation of the world, Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, the Tower of Babel, Abraham and Sarah, Joseph and the coat of many colors (they even made that into a musical)… So what is it about this text that attracts so many preachers and commentators?   I cannot speak for every preacher in the world, but there is something mysterious and wild in the text.  We all love a good mystery and this story has a couple mysterious elements.

            The first mystery is who Jacob is wrestling.  It’s so mysterious that most of us do not even realize that it is a mystery.  Most Bibles provide handy subtitles which make it very clear that this is an angel or God, or both.   What we sometimes forget is that subtitles were not in the original text.  Some translator just added them so we could find things more easily.  The text really just says it is a man.  Many infer that it was God or an angel because Jacob commented at the end, “For I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved.”  Because of that, it seems like a fairly safe assumption.  Why some struggle with the idea of Jacob wrestling God is that it sounds a little ridiculous.  Why would God wrestle someone?  And if God did, I don’t think the other person would last very long.  This is God…all powerful God.  What human could possibly contend with that? 

            That brings us to the next mystery: who won?  Some conclude that Jacob won because the mysterious wrestler asked Jacob to let him go and Jacob was in a position to demand a blessing.  If this is true, then it would be really hard to believe that the wrestler was God.  It’s one thing to think that God might wrestle a human, but to lose to a human…that’s just too much.  However, others contend that the stranger won because Jacob walked away with a limp.  Also, the wrestler named Jacob, and naming someone often implies having power over that person.

            Here’s my theory on both mysteries.  Jacob was wrestling God and there was no winner or loser.  That was not what this match was about.   This match was about a couple of things.  We learn something of the character of God.  Our God is a God willing to get down in the dirt with us, to struggle with us in very real and concrete ways.  God is even willing to let us be a part of that struggle.  Sure God could have pinned Jacob in less than a second, but that would not have taught Jacob very much about himself or his relationship with God.

            Let’s consider the context for a moment.  So far in the story of Jacob, he has been a bit of a twerp.  He cheated his brother and lied to his father.  Instead of facing either of them, he ran away.  When he ran, God provided for him and Jacob agreed to follow the one true God as long as God continued to provide for Jacob.  It was a provisional acceptance.  Jacob found two wives and did pretty well for himself.  He became quite prosperous.  He decided it was finally time to return home, but realized that he would encounter his brother, who was out for blood when he last saw him.  Right before our story for today, Jacob had sent people ahead of him to try to bribe his brother so that his brother might spare him.  It would be a stretch to say that things had been easy for Jacob, but he seemed to consistently come out ahead without ever having to sacrifice much.   His relationship with God was one of give and take.  God gave and he took. 

            The wrestling match changed that.  God was no longer at a distance.  God was there trying to wrestle him to the ground.   There was no easy way out.  Even so, Jacob remained true to his nature and demanded a blessing.  God would not give him the blessing until Jacob provided him with not only his name, but his truth.[1]  The name Jacob literally means heel.  When he came out of the womb, he was grasping the heel of his brother Esau.  When Jacob revealed his name to his opponent, he was telling more than his name, he was telling his past which was rather shameful.  God would not allow Jacob to be defined by his past.  This match meant that the sins of the past would no longer define Jacob because God would not just provide a blessing, he provided a new identity.  The name God gave Jacob was Israel, which means, “You have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”  One commentator summarized that as “scrapper with God.” [2] That sounds a lot better than heel!

            The last sentence of our reading for today is: “The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel limping because of his hip.”  The limp was a result of God dislocating his hip during the all night wrestling match.  It was a small price to pay for a new identity and a more profound understanding of God, but it was a price.

 I think it’s easy to forget that being a Christian is not an easy path.  It is not the path of least resistance.  Life will be full of struggles and some of those struggles will leave scars or maybe a limp.  Those scars tell a story of times when we have taken risks, times we have gotten so close to God that we have ended up a little singed by God’s blinding light.  Yet it is not only we who bear the scars of life, Jesus did as well.  Even after Jesus was resurrected he carried the scars of his crucifixion because they told a truth that could not be denied and should never be hidden.  It’s why we have crosses all over our church- not so we can remember triumph, but so we can remember a God who was nailed to a cross just so we would wake up and realize that God will always be down in the grime with us and he’ll stay there until the struggle is over.

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[1] This understanding of name came from David Lose’s article found on: https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=1597

 

[2] Interpretation: Genesis Bruggemann p. 427

July 20, 2014: Genesis 28:10-19a

Year A, Pentecost 6                                          

                                                           

When I was preparing for this sermon, I spent a lot of time thinking about holy places, places where I encountered something sacred and divine.  I got a little frustrated because I could not really think of any specific place.  Then I stopped filtering my thoughts and I realized that when I thought of sacred encounters, I did not think about places. I thought about experiences and emotions.  Sometimes they were in churches or places of natural beauty; but usually I could not even remember the place.  What I remembered was times of weakness, times of desperation and fear.  These were the times when my mind shut down and the barrier fell down and God broke through.  That is where I found my holy places.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Jacob.  On the one hand, he’s sneaky and manipulative which irritates me.  But he’s also pretty scrappy and tenacious.  Jacob was the younger son born to Rebecca and Isaac.  His brother (Esau) was born just seconds before him.  Because he was the oldest son, Esau was guaranteed a birthright and a blessing.  Having the birthright meant that he would be the head of the family when his father died.  He would own all the property and have authority over any younger siblings. Jacob wanted that birthright and convinced Esau to give it to him by tempting him with food.  Esau was hungry after a long day of work.   When he asked Jacob for food, Jacob said he could have it if he gave him his birthright.  Esau must have been terribly hungry because he agreed. 

Years later, when their now blind father was on his deathbed, Jacob presented himself to his father and claimed he was Esau.  Since Isaac could not see, he gave Jacob the blessing that Esau deserved as the first born thus giving Jacob both the birthright and the blessing.  As you can imagine, Esau was pretty angry. He vowed to kill his brother. When Jacob learned of this threat, he ran away.  

When he left his home, he had nothing and no one.  There was no one to accompany him on this journey.   We know he did not have time to pack since he was using a rock as a pillow.  I assume he was experiencing some guilt, maybe wondering whether it was worth it.  While he clearly had the brains in the family, Esau had the hunting skills and he was angry and out for revenge.  It didn’t seem as though having the birthright and blessing was doing Jacob much good since he couldn’t even stay in his homeland. 

The text tells us that he came to a certain place and stayed there for a night.  The phrase, “certain place” is an interesting choice of words.  We know where he left and we know where he was heading to, but neither the reader nor he knew where he was.  He was just in-between his home and an unknown future. He must have been very tired because despite his fear and the lack of comfort, he slept. 

I imagine it was one of those dreams that felt real and unbelievable at the same time because it combined his immediate surroundings with something that was glorious and almost unimaginable.   Our translation of the Bible says it was a ladder, but most scholars say it was more of a ramp, like a land mass in between earth and heaven.  Jacob knew that the ramp led to heaven because he saw angels ascending and descending.  If that was not convincing enough, the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord….”  God proceeded to promise Jacob the gift of land and offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth. It was a very similar blessing to that which God had given his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac.

Then God added even more to the blessing.  He said, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land…”  Imagine how that must have sounded to someone who had been forced to cut all ties to his family and his homeland.   God was promising him that he would be with him at all times and that he would protect him from all peril.   That was an added blessing.  That was even more than God had promised Abraham and Isaac.           

That confuses me a little.  What had he done to deserve that?  He deceived his father and stole from his brother and now he gets an extra blessing?  Maybe he needed a little extra blessing.  He was alone and scared.  He was not the hunter that Esau was.  If Esau wanted to find him, he would.  But there was something feisty about Jacob.  God knew that he was going to fight for his blessings. He would doggedly pursue a blessing that he desperately wanted. 

Let’s face it, it’s not like it was fair that Esau got the blessing just because he came out of the womb first.    Jacob fought for that blessing and that birthright and he never gave up.  While his methods were questionable, I think God saw something promising in this him.  God knew that if he was at Jacob’s side, that persistence would no longer be so selfish.  It would be a persistence that would bring blessing not only to him, but to an entire people.  It would be a persistence that the Hebrew people would emulate for generations.      

So not only did God give him this blessing, he showed Jacob something that very few had ever experienced. He showed him a place where heaven and earth met.  What is so amazing about that  ramp to heaven was that it was a two way street.  Angels were ascending and descending.  Angels are messengers of God.  That is the literal translation of the Hebrew word: messenger.  That ramp was proof that the lines of communication were going both ways.  God was speaking and God was listening.  There was no and is no barrier between heaven and earth. 

The only barrier is the one that we create in our minds.  Maybe God chose Jacob to be a witness to that message because he was a man without roots.  He was a man in-between the home he left and a home he was searching for.  He was (as the text says) in a certain place.  And that is where God often reaches people; in that in-between place where we are still open to revelation.  It’s when we get comfortable that we stop having those vivid dreams that allow us to encounter true holiness.  If he was sleeping in a comfy bed instead of on a rock perhaps he would not have seen that vision. 

When he woke up he proclaimed, “Surely the Lord is in this place---and I did not know it!”  He took the rock that he had slept on and set it up as a pillar so he could remember that place where the Lord had appeared.  He declared the place to be a gate to heaven.  It is understandable that he wanted to remember that place and honor that place.  But I wonder if he kind of missed the point.  That place was not holy because of where it was.  That rock was not holy because he had dreamt on it.  That place was holy because of what was missing from that place, and that was the barrier between heaven and earth, between the sacred and mundane. 

I feel the Lord in St. John’s and I hope you do as well.  But I really hope that in your moments of pain, and fear and loneliness---in those certain in-between places where we feel lost and we have no idea where we are…I pray that we will find the Lord in those places as well.  Because that is where the Lord will find us.