2023-07-27
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
6-11-23 Sermon God in the Night Rev. Betsy Wooster
Here’s some background about today’s scripture reading. It’s one of those Bible stories that should really be portrayed on the big screen. One of those sweeping stories of family rivalry being played out across the years and generations of the family of Abraham, with sweeping desert scenes and plenty of pathos and danger to keep us on edge as we chomp away on our popcorn.
It’s essentially the story of two brothers, Jacob and Esau, rival sons of Isaac, all descendants of Abraham, the father of the faith. Jacob and Esau have been estranged from one another since they were young men and had not laid eyes on each other since then.
The sibling rivalry between Jacob and his older twin brother Esau is almost as infamous as that of Cain and Abel. As a young man, Jacob conspired, with his mother’s help, to pretend to be Esau, so that his father, who was on his deathbed, would mistake Jacob for Esau and offer Jacob his blessing. When a father was passing on a blessing to his son it was a benediction that could not be taken back, it was understood to be breathing his very soul into the other.
The plan works: Isaac offers his blessing onto his son Jacob, and Esau’s birthright is taken out from under him. Through this blessing Jacob became the inheritor of the all the land – the source of the family’s wealth. Esau comes back from the fields, learns what has happened, and, furious, he begins planning Jacob’s murder.
Their mother tells Jacob to flee to Haran, where her brother Laban would protect him until Esau’s fury calms down. That calming down period turned out to be a very long time.
As you about to hear, now Jacob has traveled all this way to reconcile with Esau. Jacob sends his servants ahead of him to tell Esau that Jacob seeks his favor and reconciliation and that he has brought his entire entourage of family and animals with him, plenty to share with his brother.
The servant makes the delivery and comes back to Jacob with the news that Esau and 400 of his men are on their way to meet Jacob. This news frightens Jacob, and afraid for his life and the lives of his family, he sends the servants back to Esau to give more presents as a peace offering. Night is falling on Jacob, now alone with his family, and this is where our story picks up.
A reading from the book of Genesis, Chapter32, verses 22-30
22 The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
26Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ 27So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’
28Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’
29Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. 30So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’
Let us pray: God of blessings in the night, open our hearts and spirits to you as we worship this morning. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts, be pleasing to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
This whole story is strange, right? There are ways to pick it apart and try to make sense of it, but despite some of the details we learn by diving into it, it remains a strange story.
The text says that Jacob wrestles with a stranger, who is described as a man, and then as God, and in some translations is an Angel.
Which is it?
And how is it that Jacob, a human being, is said to be besting the divine in the fight?
The story tells us that the “man,’ or “God,” did not prevail against Jacob, how could the mortal be beating God at anything?
Why does God appear for the fight to begin with?
Why does God knock Jacob’s hip out of joint?
Lots and lots of questions come up. And I’m not able to answer those questions in this sermon! It is a strange story. Let’s not try to tame the story. Let’s just let it be strange.
Karen Armstrong, a well-known author of books on comparative religion, describes the challenge that scripture sometimes presents in this way: “Reading our scriptures demand an imaginative effort that can sometimes be as perplexing and painful as Jacob’s wrestling match.”
She goes on to say that the scripture can never be wholly comprised in a literal reading of the text, since the text points beyond itself to a reality which cannot adequately be expressed in words and concepts.
And what might this reality beyond the written words of the story be? It points, Armstrong suggests, to the sacred reality that is present in our lives, a sacred reality that we often don’t pay attention to, or even search for.
Jacob wrestled with God. And he was blessed at the end of the struggle. This is astounding: Our Judeo-Christian heritage has a foundational story about a flawed person who wrestles with God and is blessed in the wrestling, to the extent that the very name of the people is the new name given to Jacob, Israel, which means one who wrestles with God.
Think about what that means.
If you would have guessed about a foundational narrative for religious faith, you might have guessed that this story would be about a person who was profoundly obedient to God, or a person who whole-heartedly believed in God, or a person who consistently acted in moral or upright ways. Instead, we learn that God blessed the ones who wrestled with God and made the effort and stayed in the struggle.
We all know how strange life can be. Sometimes we get knocked down out of nowhere. Sometimes we are forced to struggle, like it or not, and it seems as though the struggle will make life worse.
But later we realize that we have become stronger and more aware of who we really are because of the struggle. Just like Jacob, who is our ancestor-in-faith, sometimes we may struggle and wrestle with God. Maybe our wrestling with God is that we’re not sure what to believe, sometimes the ideas and concepts of our faith make sense and sometimes they seem confusing.
And we might wonder if it has to make perfect sense to us in order to be a faithful people, but here we are wrestling with what we understand and what we believe.
Sometimes we wrestle with God because we are angry with God because of the tragedy and suffering in this world. And we are angry with God about injustice and the terrible unfairness we see. Why would God allow this to happen? Where is God’s help? Where is God’s support? We wrestle with God when God does not show up and do what we so desperately want God to do.
When we wrestle like that, it seems like we are losing faith. It seems like God is far from us. But maybe we are like Jacob. Maybe God is never closer to us than when we wrestle with God, and at the end of the struggle, we will be blessed. Jacob stayed in the struggle all the way through, even when he was injured.
His injury may be a way of saying that there can be a cost to our struggle. If we are going to grow, confront our demons, or face difficult things that need to be faced, it will be hard, but this is what leads to being blessed.
There are times when the blessing comes from the struggle to grow and to get free of the burdens or demons or shame that we carry around. When we remember this transformational encounter between Jacob and God, it reminds us that faithfulness is not simply asking God to spare us from difficulty, but trusting that God will be with us through the things that are hard, and in our wrestling, God will give us a blessing that we didn’t see coming. A blessing we couldn’t have predicted.
The part of the text that we didn’t read today was what happened next, when Jacob and Esau finally came face to face with each other. Here’s how that went:
Jacob drew near to his brother and “Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.” Jacob looked at Esau and said, “please accept my present from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God.”
In the end, after years, and a lifetime of struggle, they found the blessing of God in one another. Amen.