A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — August 15, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts: Genesis 32:22-32

Then he said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob,

with humans and have prevailed.”—Genesis 32:28

In “The Miracle Worker” (the story of Helen Keller), there’s a scene where this same scripture is read as a table blessing for a Thanksgiving meal.  When the mother objects that it’s inappropriate for the occasion, the reader (I think his name is Jim) says that surely any passage from the Good Book is always appropriate.  Besides, since the turkey’s leg is out of joint, the passage is clearly pertinent.

The Bible can be twisted for almost anything.  Still, this passage does raise and answer some questions, but surely it raises far more than it answers.  We hear answers to three unspoken “Why?” questions—why the name Israel (it means “one who strives with God”), why the place name Peniel (it means “the face of God”), and finally why the dietary restriction against eating a part of an animal’s thigh muscle (this is where Jacob was struck).  But the entire story itself—well one commentary makes the statement that “there is no more strange and perplexing narrative than this in the whole of the Old Testament” (Cambridge Commentary).  Perhaps it is appropriate that a story about a great struggle—about Jacob wrestling with with…(well that’s a real questions—with what or whom is Jacob wrestling?)—perhaps it is appropriate that this story of struggle should require some amount of struggling to wrestle meaning from it.

 

Asking questions is a form of struggle, and you’ve heard me say many times before that we always need to keep asking questions.  Questions allow us to grow and develop and change in our understanding of ourselves and of God.  They are steps along the way of living into the abundant life that God promises to us (see John 10:10).  If we settle for rigid answers and refuse to allow questions, then we stagnate and risk fooling ourselves into thinking that we know everything, even that we are capable of defining God.  Scientist Richard Feynman once said about science, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you’re the easiest person to fool.”  This applies as much or more to theology.  In our questions we often struggle with ourselves and with others.  But what about those times when we don’t know who or what we are struggling with?  Or when we seem to be striving with God?—even struggling against God?  Perhaps the story of Jacob’s nightlong battle offers some insight

To step back one step, I used to wonder why there even are stories in the Bible about Jacob.  He’s not an admirable character.  His very name means “one who supplants another through deception”—a liar, a cheat, a thief.  Imagine going through life with that label on you.  Well, Jacob lived up to his name.  He tricked his older brother Esau out of his birthright.  Then he stole the blessing that should have gone to Esau from their father, Isaac.  For this last act, he had to flee for his life, but he never really suffers any consequences.  In fact, his life is blessed by wives, children, riches.  Where’s the moral in that?  Where’s the moral lesson we so often were told to look for and so expect to find in the Bible?

Doug Adams, who was a professor religion and the arts at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley when I was going to seminary, used to say that there is no moral lesson here because the stories of Jacob (like many of the Bible’s stories) are “grandparent stories” as against being “parent stories.”  He says that “parent stories” are mainly concerned with rules and consequences.  For example, imagine a situation where you are failing a class in school, let us say in French.  Your parents have always urged you to succeed.  They have impressed upon you the awful consequences of failure, talking about college admissions and scholarships.  Perhaps this the very first time you have failed, and as far as you are concerned, life is now over.  Even worse is the lecture you’re about to receive, one you’ve heard many times before.  As a kid I’d almost rather die than have to tell my parents I’d failed. 

But grandparents are different.  In fear and trembling you take the news of your failure to your grandparents, and what do you hear?  They say something like, “Oh, that’s just like your mother.  She never could pass foreign languages either.”  You ding the fender of your dad’s car, and while he’s yelling at you, your grandmother says something like, “Did I ever tell you about the time your dad took the station wagon without permission and totaled it?”  Where “parent stories” deal in rules and consequences (admittedly with the overriding concern of protecting their children), “grandparent stories” are about love and grace.  “Grandparent stories” about a flawed patriarch such as Jacob (soon to be named Israel) show us that God’s grace and blessings are not withheld from us because we aren’t perfect.  “Grandparent stories” tell us we can have life despite our faults.

 

So back to the story of Jacob’s struggle.  Just who or what leaps out of the night to do battle with him there in the darkness beside the Jabbok River?  In the end, Jacob is sure that he has been striving with God, that he has seen the very face of God yet still lives.  But the story itself is remarkably unclear.  The writer leaves many possibilities open as the story develops.  At first it seems to be a human being.  We hear, “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”  Who is this man?

Some say that this is a way of saying that Jacob wrestles with himself—with his conscience and with his fear.  He is about to approach his brother, Esau, and beg for forgiveness, but he has received reports that Esau is accompanied by 400 men.  Things aren’t looking so good.  He fled from an angry Esau years before, and Esau may be bent upon revenge.  Even without such a threat, it can be a fearful thing to seek forgiveness.  We all dread allowing ourselves to be so vulnerable.  In the various 12 Step Programs such as A.A., one of the scariest steps is Step 9.  This step involves seeking to make direct amends wherever possible to all persons we have harmed, except when to do so would injure them or others.  Perhaps Jacob tosses and turns in the lonely dark struggling with doubts and fears about what he plans to do.  But in the morning he realizes he has struggled through the night with the God who operates by freely offering forgiveness.  And when comes before Easu and he experiences forgiveness in his brother’s welcoming embrace, Jacob will cry out, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God.”  Forgiveness as the face of God—what an answer!  But of course it raises yet more questions.

Continuing, perhaps this is not an internal struggle, but a wrestling match with some stranger who, by attacking Jacob, would seem to threaten the very existence of the people of God.  What are we, as people of God, to think about apparent attacks from the outside world—from other religions or atheists or secular authorities?  To take one such area, the church has often viewed the study of science as a mortal threat to itself.  And it is easy to understand why, because the questions and discoveries of science about the nature of the universe have always shaken one religious group or another.  Yet new discoveries do nothing at all to change the true nature of the universe.  Rather they force us to grow in our understanding of God’s creation; they lead us to an expanded understanding of God’s truth.  In this light, we can realize that the questions of science are themselves from God.  Perhaps this attacker represents God’s presence in the stranger or outsider who questions and challenges us, forcing us to keep thinking, to deepen our understanding, and to refine our ideas.

The story of Jacob’s struggle continues, and suddenly we’re not so sure his opponent is a mortal man.  The two have seemed evenly matched, but at a touch this opponent cripples Jacob.  Then it, whatever it is, begs to be released because dawn is breaking.  Is this some demon that loses its power with the rising of the sun?  Many commentators claim that this part of the story is an artifact from a much earlier story about Jacob battling a demon.  But in its present form, the story seems to say that God’s presence can (at least eventually) be recognized even in situations that seem evil or demonic.  We all face circumstances from time to time when we cry out anguished questions asking why.  Why is there so much suffering in the world?  Why does my mother have altzheimer’s?  Why does my child have cancer?  Why am I in such pain?  We echo the words of the Psalmist and of Jesus and demand—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken…” the world?… my mother?… my son?… or me?  Surely these are the most difficult times for us to be able to recognize God’s presence!  Yet we call out our questions to God, and they are perhaps the most real prayers we ever pray.  We struggle on, yet we also know that there came a time when a small band of disciples realized in their anguish that one of the essential meanings of that terrible and horrendous scene of their leader hanging on a cross was that there is no place—not one place!—where the divine presence does not dwell.  Nothing ever can separate us from God.

Finally, for Jacob, daybreak comes, and for the first time he can just make out his opponent’s face.  It is not the face of a demon, but in a way it is far more terrible.  For it is the face of God—the face of a suffering love that seeks out lost sheep, lost coins, and lost children—the face of a saving Lord who makes all things new, even the mess of our old lives.  The questions that point us the way to new life are more clearly from God, yet we wrestle with them and with God all the same.  For some the question is, “What am I to do when all I ever wanted isn’t enough?”  For others it is, “What can I do that will make a difference in this world?”  For others it is, “Do I really want to go on doing what I’ve been doing?”  For me, my question came more than 27 years ago at the age of 34, not long after I got sober—“Now what do I really want to do when I grow up?”

When Jacob saw the face of God, he was Jacob no longer.  He was no longer the liar, the cheat, the thief.  Instead he became Israel, meaning “one who strives with God.”  In the New Testament, the church is called the new Israel.  We are all the new Israel.  In our questioning and struggling, whether we know it or not, we are ones who are striving with God.  Jacob declared that he saw the face of God, yet he still lived.  This seems odd, because the Biblical injunction is that no one shall see the face of God and remain living.  What must be meant is that no one shall see the face of God and go on living as they did before.  We are called to seek out and see the face of God and so come to live new lives.

I’ll close with a prayer from the Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig like the one we used for our Prayer for Healing and wholeness earlier.  This one is from his book, A Common Prayer (Australia:Collins Dove, 1990)  Let us pray…

Dear God,
    We struggle, we grow weary, we grow tired.  We are exhausted, we are distressed, we despair.  We give up, we fall down, we let go.  We cry.  We are empty, we grow calm, we are ready.  We wait quietly.
    A small, shy truth arrives.  Arrives from without and within.  Arrives and is born.  Simple, steady, clear.  Like a mirror, like a bell, like a flame.  Like rain in the summer.  A precious truth arrives and is born within us.  Within our emptiness.
    We accept it, we observe it, we absorb it.  We surrender to our bare truth.  We are nourished, we are changed.  We are blessed.  We rise up.
    For this we give thanks.
Amen.

And amen.