Sermon August 3 2014
Genesis 32:22-31
Psalm 17:1-7, 15
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21
“Deepened Relationship”
Life is a struggle. I don’t think there’s any real doubt about that. The chances of being conceived and the processes by which we are formed from a few cells into the complex, living beings we become are difficult and all but impossible. There are a number of things that can go wrong every step of the way from those few cells to our birth. Once we are born, life is no less a struggle. It’s just different. We depend upon adults to feed, clothe, and shelter us for years before we are capable of taking care of ourselves. And throughout our lives, we struggle to eat, learn, love, work, stay healthy or get healthy after illness, stay fit or get fit. We struggle to support ourselves and our families. We may struggle to find someone to love or to love someone with whom we struggle to stay in relationship. We desperately need one another, those closest to us and those far away, and yet those relationships cause us to struggle even more, I would say.
God knows that life is a struggle—that life is busy, messy, and full of difficult times and difficult people—the ones we love and the ones we are still learning to love. God’s actions in history are always moving toward the greater good of humanity and the greater good of all creation. And sometimes God’s actions are difficult to understand, especially in the stories told to us from thousands of years of history and cultural change.
The story of Jacob in today’s First Testament reading continues our exposure to those stories that happened so long ago and so far away. We’ve been reading the story of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah and with Abraham’s and Sarah’s descendants one event at a time for several weeks. This morning we read about another big event in Jacob’s life as God’s agent for his generation’s presence in that covenant. It was just in last week scripture that Jacob married Leah and Rachel. He lived in Haran with Laban for decades—he was given a chance to build his own flocks while he was there. With clever breeding methods, he increased his flocks at the expense of Laban. And over years of struggling with infertility and conflict between the women who were his four wives, his family has grown to include eleven of the thirteen children I mentioned last week.
With God’s prompting, it seems, Jacob has decided to return to the land God promised him among the Canaanites. The land where he dreamed and God’s covenant became his. He was going back to the place he had named Bethel, the city of God.
On the way back to Bethel, he has to reenter the land where Esau lived. Esau, the brother he tricked out of Isaac's blessing and his inheritance. So he was afraid and sent gifts ahead of him to appease his brother's anger. Then, as the text said, he sent his wives and children ahead so he could be alone, alone with God or alone with his own thoughts.
Jacob had a lot to think about; he had had many years of experiences that he was bringing back to the land he had called home as a child. What do you suppose he was thinking about as he sat alone that night waiting to meet his brother again? And as he waited to take up his new life in the land God promised? Nighttime was a dangerous time in that age and place. It was a time of wild animals, utter darkness, and when people then and sometimes now believed that spirits were free to interact with people. Nighttime was often seen as a time of chaos, like the great seas were a place of chaos, as well. And then that night someone began to wrestle with him. Did he wrestle with chaos? Did he wrestle with justice? Did he wrestle with God? Whoever and whatever it was that someone wrestled with him until the sun began to come up.
The struggles we experience in the most difficult times in our lives are often the events that are the most significant in shaping us. When I say most difficult, I don't necessarily mean just the worst things—the deaths of loved ones or another great catastrophe—I also mean times like the one Jacob was experiencing. He had come to a time of great transformation for his life. His had been a life of dependence, in many ways, up until this point. He was the younger son, the favorite son, the fugitive, the poor relation, the subservient son-in-law. Though he had been a father for years, but things were changing because when he crossed the Jabbok, he would become the founder of a nation and the ancestor of twelve tribes.
The struggles we experience make us who we are. When we struggle to learn some skill or another, we either prevail and learn that skill or lose hope for the accomplishment behind. Either one shapes us. When we stand at a crossroads of decision: am I going to college right now? Am I taking a job? Will I do both? Do you pursue a relationship with someone you have found you like? Will you or I seek out new friends or build and strengthen current relationships? Will you or I reach out, broaden our hearts to include those that others exclude?
All the decisions we make have the potential to transform us as Jacob's decision to return to Bethel would change him. Oh, not in exactly the same way—but he decided to claim God's promise to him--the covenant of a nation, the covenant of a home and a family. And more significantly, God promised that God would never leave him. God accompanied him through all of the changes that Jacob experienced, the painful and the pleasant, those full of sorrow or betrayal, suspicion and accusation and those that were joyful and welcome.
Think of a time when you have been aware of the presence of God in your life—or think of a time when you moved from a time of seeming alone, full of sorrow, or unsure of tomorrow and with time—perhaps suddenly, maybe gradually, you were assured, aware of God and had a certainty within. Sometimes these experiences are like a bolt of lightning—or like a night of wrestling when you are suddenly granted a new purpose, like the name that Jacob received. Sometimes we experience transformation over time—and we look back over our lives and recognize a moment when our lives began to turn in a new direction, toward God or God's purpose.
Those moments may not mean moving from one land to another like it did for Jacob. The transformation that God brings in the difficult times, may be internal--that is, after all, the big change for Jacob as well. During the long time of wrestling with this strange man, Jacob persevered, and as the dawn begin to break Jacob asked for a blessing and the man gave him a new name. He became, overnight, the nation of Israel, in a way. God's promise was fulfilled. Jacob, the supplanter—a sort of substitute or cheater—became Israel—the one who struggles with God. He was Jacob, who tried to slip into the place where another was—like his brother, Esau. Now he was Israel, who would contend with God face to face, as in this night of wrestling. And, like us, his struggle that night (and the struggles he experienced before and after) were all part of who he had become.
It could be argued that Israel had a born again or baptism experience in Jabbok. People who are baptized as adults often see the experience as a threshold moment where the shedding of their old self leads into something new. In many traditions it is customary to wear new clothes after baptism to symbolize newness in Christ. In the moment of baptism the hope is that the baptized will start the process of loving and accepting themselves as God loves and accepts us all. In baptism, we embrace and are embraced by the identity that God gives us as children of God, heirs with Jesus, the Son of God.
In this week’s scripture readings, evening and night are portrayed as sacred times for building relationships, and receiving blessings from God. It is during the night that Jacob finds himself “alone in his thoughts,” wrestling with the memories of his past and current deceptions, wondering if he will be able to make amends. Jacob survived an identity-changing transformation and, when the sun rose, a blessed Jacob declared that he had “seen God face to face.” The psalmist cries out to God through the night and concludes by stating: “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.” Jesus feed a multitude with the five loaves and two fishes late in the evening. Night is portrayed as a sacred space of both hardship and joy in the scriptures.
Perhaps we won't always have the fortitude to revel in difficulty—and we certainly aren't called upon to celebrate suffering—but we can know that God accompanies us, striving with us, perhaps wrestling with us, but never leaving us until we reenter life at the dawn of a new day.
To the glory of God of transformation, bringing us to hope for all that tomorrow can be. Amen.
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