"Struggling with People; Struggling with God"
Sermon Presented July 31, 2005
Genesis 32:22-32
Last week I heard a friend say: "I love serving God. It's the people I have trouble with!" I laughed but I understood. And if you're honest, you also understand. God doesn't seem to be as "in-your-face" as your coworker, family member, neighbor, fellow church member, classmate, or one in authority over you. Struggles in our personal relationships are stressful and exhausting - often continuing into the next day, week, month or year, causing loss of sleep and focus, and impacting our relationship with God. Relational struggles can lead to depression, unresolved anger, and unforgiveness.
Our story this morning encompasses a struggle with a person and with God. It's the continuation of a story we began several weeks ago - the story of Jacob's flight from the anger of his brother Esau. The estrangement has lasted for more than a decade, during which time Jacob has acquired wives, maids, children and a great deal of livestock. As you may recall, Jacob deserves the wrath of Esau, having cheated him out of his inheritance and his birthright. However Jacob is God's chosen and destined to lead God's people, and change must occur to accomplish the task.
Our text this morning is difficult to grasp with our rational minds. The idea of someone struggling with God physically and living to tell the story is beyond our comprehension. This is Jacob's second nighttime meeting with God. The first was in a dream as he fled from the wrath of his brother Esau. Now God is sending him back home and on the route to homecoming, God meets him again. The tension is high. Again Jacob is afraid. He has no idea how Esau will receive him. Has Esau's threat of death been forgotten? Is family peace possible? Jacob is alone when the struggle begins.
Genesis 32:22-32 (read text)
There are many different interpretations of this text, with no clear account offered to those of us who like neat packages. The text lacks clarity, which permits various interpretations. What we do know is that Jacob has an ominous encounter with an unnamed opponent who possesses divine qualities. Perhaps the narrative is opaque because the narrator doesn't want us to know too much. If we were certain, there would be little mystery in its telling. The text reveals the identity of the adversary only as "a man" which leaves all the options open. We assume that the hidden one is "Yahweh" - God. Before Jacob meets his brother, he must first deal with his God. In the night, the divine antagonist takes on the aspects of those with whom we struggle in the daylight.
The struggle lasts all night, but that is about as much as we know. It sounds like nearly an even match. Jacob may be frightened, but in this battle, he holds his own. The hidden One has the power to injure Jacob - which he does, but he doesn't defeat him. If this other one is God, what does it mean to say that Jacob comes to a draw with him? This isn't an ordinary story!
In the exchange between Jacob and the Other, Jacob holds on for a blessing. He has already received the blessing from his father and a blessing from God in a dream on the first night of his flight from Esau, but now he wants a deeper blessing, and he gets it! He receives both a blessing and a new name. He is no longer "Jacob" - meaning "trickster or supplanter," he is "Israel" - probably meaning "God rules" or "God protects." Israel is the one who has faced God, been touched by God, prevailed, gained a blessing and been renamed. The only thing he lacks is the name of his opponent. God remains hidden to him. In this battle, he is changed and receives new power.
When daylight comes, the stranger is gone. And so is Jacob. Now we see Israel - blessed, named, and limping. He has penetrated some of the mystery of God and lives to tell the story. Having gained a victory, he limps every day thereafter, as a reminder that his victory came with great struggle. God was in that place and Jacob knew it. He is a cripple with a blessing!
The same theology of weakness in power and power in weakness is exemplified in the New Testament gospel of the cross. Jesus' disciples wanted thrones and power and Jesus tells them about cups, baptisms and crosses. Like Jacob, they are invited to be persons of faith who prevail but do so with a limp. Israel has new power and new weakness. He's ready to face his brother.
Whatever occurred that mysterious night convinced Jacob that it was God that he met, struggled with and prevailed against. The text says that Jacob struggled with God and humans and prevailed. The encounter appeared to be a struggle with a man. It turned out to be a struggle with God.
How can a person win in such a struggle? That depends on your definition of "winning." If winning means growth, it's a win. If it means control - no! Attorneys work hard to win cases. Legislators push an important piece of legislation that concerns them. Teams try to win to keep a franchise or possess a championship. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times to prove something to himself and to others. But the struggles on the way to victory can be of greater value than the actual win. And these struggles against persons, ideologies or God can have crippling effects. Before Jacob can lead God's people, he has some growing to do, and growth often comes by way of struggle and pain.
Jacob is each of us. Like him, we work hard to control our lives so that we can ascertain the outcome. Hopefully, we aren't as conniving as Jacob, but we have detailed plans for most situations. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. Like Jacob, we offer prayers for God's deliverance when it doesn't appear our plans will work or that we can protect ourselves. And like Jacob, most of us must return to deal with our broken relationships, realizing in hindsight that our struggle was also with God. Jacob's sin against Esau was in the shadow of his struggle with God. His old ways of dealing with Esau will no longer work. Something new is required.
When Jacob's struggle ends; there is pain and there is blessing. Reconciliation has a price. Reconciliation doesn't mean life as before.
Those who know anything about life know that Christians who claim problems will go away if we just have enough faith are full of it! We lose our grasp on reality when we look for pie in the sky or a quick fix to broken relationships. Life and life's relationships include pain, and we don't receive healing or growth without a struggle.
About 10 years ago I went to London for two weeks with a group of alums from Midwestern and Central seminaries and William Jewell College. Since most of those going were couples, another woman pastor and I decided to make the trip together. This was during my second year in Marysville and I had lived alone for two years - a new experience for me. Even before making the trip, I realized that I was becoming much too self-centered because cherished friends were beginning to irritate me. We hadn't been in London long when my companion began to get on my nerves and I wanted to separate myself from her at every possible opportunity.
When she left for a short trip the second weekend we were there, I began to struggle with my issues. As suspected, the problem was primarily mine. I had concluded that she was just like my ex-husband and I didn't give her any leeway - any grace. I struggled with God at the River Jabbok and discovered that all of my relationships would disintegrate if I didn't give others the grace given to me. I emerged a winner in that I learned something about myself.
The lessons I learn most fully entail struggle. The struggles come in my relationships with people and God, and when the struggles are over, I know that my primary struggle was with God. It isn't pleasant to see ourselves as we are, but until we do that interior work our spiritual growth is stunted.
When we work on our relationships, we have no guarantees that they will heal - or that they should resume at the same level as before. (When there has been abuse, boundaries need to be maintained.) Scars can remain on our souls - even after reconciliation. We live with a limp.
The practical question for our faith is: How do we avoid a paralysis of our faith when we find ourselves in the shadow of a broken relationship? To answer this, we must first realize that problems with relationships are a given. It's part of life. But God wants to engage us where we are and work for transformation - for healing - and possibly for reconciliation.
When my grandsons were young, they had toys called transformers. A transformer might look like a polar bear, but with a few movements, it became a mighty weapon of war. It was transformed. This is what God wants to do with us in our human relationships. God wants to transform us and our relationships into something new. God can help us do what seems to be impossible on our own. God can transform us from "Jacobs" to "Israels" on the way to reconciliation.
Often we don't recognize what confronts us in the shadows. We don't recognize our sinfulness in the confrontation either. To let go of the struggle is to face defeat. To continue is to gain a blessing, even though we may limp along afterward carrying our battle scars.
But battle scars aren't necessarily negative - at least in the long term. We might want to think of the image of a wounded healer, made popular by Henri Nouwen, a recently deceased writer of books on spirituality. We are all wounded. But through our woundedness, we can be instruments of healing for others who are going through the same crisis as we. (It's the principle utilized in the self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous.) Through our woundedness and through the mystery of God's grace, we can bring healing to others in this alienated world in which we live.
God meets us in our struggles, helping us to heal our relationships. It's not an easy path, but it's the way to mental and spiritual health. It's transformation! It's life!
(Resource: Interpretation: Genesis by Walter Brueggemann, pp. 266-271)
