Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

August 3, 2008

by The Rev. Constance Jones

Gen 32:3-8, 22-30

I don't have any formal connection with wrestling,
except maybe for some epic battles with my little brother when we were little.
I've seen wrestling in the Olympics, though,
and I can't imagine a match lasting all night, like Jacob's did.

It is interesting that Jacob's battle with –
well, one who is not exactly identified –
comes not only in the middle of the night,
but at the middle-point of a crucial story
about a key character in the saga of God's relationship with his chosen people.
Jacob, of course, is the bearer of God's covenant and promise,
and the wrestling match is on the eve of his encounter
with his estranged brother Esau.
Those of us who've tossed and turned and lost sleep
the night before a critical event is to unfold in our lives
may know this sort of heart-pounding fear.
Years ago Jacob cheated his twin brother out of his birthright and their father's blessing. What will Esau do now?
Will his anger and resentment burst into flame
and consume Jacob and his wives and entourage tomorrow morning?

So during the night beforehand, Jacob, all alone, is set upon by.........what?
A man? An angel? God himself?
The opponent will not say his name.
It is a titanic and very physical struggle that lasts until dawn.
Its resolution cannot be rushed.
Jacob is injured – his hip dislocated (and imagine the pain of that) –

but he does not succumb.
"I won't let go until you bless me," Jacob insists.
The opponent blesses this man who's lied and cheated,
who's known failure and estrangement,
and who might be killed tomorrow morning.
Jacob is given a new name, Israel,
which means the one who has struggled with God.

In retrospect, Jacob knows
he has contended with God himself, locked limb-in-limb, seen face-to-face.
He knows he has become the bearer of the promise.
But his hip has been permanently damaged,
and he will limp all the days of his life.
The blessing and the injury, it seems, come together.

I have to confess to having focused on the limping part in the last couple of days,
because of a bad-knee episode.
And also conversation with a parishioner about a situation
that will never ever be made completely right this side of heaven.
Also because I've been in the presence of two blessings
– a marriage and an ordination.
What strikes me so deeply is how the blessing comes in the middle of the story.

My friend being ordained is nearly 70.
Nothing is going to turn her clock back,
but she has embraced God's call to her unreservedly.
My dear daughter is now married to a wonderful young man.
The sorrow that has lived with our family the last few years
did not diminish the joy or compromise the miracle of love.
It's almost as if sorrow was respectfully given a place at the table
and invited to join in the blessing.

I'm pretty sure that every one of you here this morning
is in the middle of a story.
It may involve an uncertain future, or a big regret.
There may be a pending decision or a "tomorrow morning scenario"
that keeps you awake at night.
If each of us is honest, we'll admit our hands aren't altogether clean,
and we're utterly dependent on the mercy of God.
What's about to come may require
more wisdom and strength and goodness than we have in store.
So the only time God's blessing is of any use to us is now
right here in the midst of the turmoil,
and all that we can't control.

And as it was with Jacob, what keeps us awake at night
is not just personal stuff.
It's our families and friends and the whole sprawling interconnected scenario.
There's Grace church with its long and sacred history,
and decisions to make for the future.
There's the diocese of Southern Virginia,
moving towards the election of a new Bishop,
and the worldwide Anglican Communion.
A temptation exists to retreat to a kind of wistful nostalgia
for the apparently untroubled church of our childhood,
when the English and North American Churches were in charge,
when ladies wore hats and gloves to church but didn't serve at the altar,
and when polite people didn't air disputes or mention sexuality out loud.

But when an angel of God engages you in a great wrestling match,
and dawn is no where in sight,
the only honest course is engagement.

We are called by God to be the Body of Christ,
but we are fallible people, short-sighted most of the time,
trying to do our best, but pretty cranky sometimes,
stumbling and hurting with our dislocated hips and worse.
We earnestly hope for resolutions
that are quick and neat, painless and virtuous,
we look for that elusive "closure" --
but instead the struggle continues through the very long night.

So again, a very good thing it is indeed for Jacob and for us,
that the blessing comes in the middle of the story.

In the middle of real experience --
dilemmas and regrets,
choices between half-good and three-quarter good,
the blessing comes, praise God.
Jacob sees that Esau is greeting him with open arms instead of an army of slaughter.
We wake up and see that God has been with us all along,
and has new life for us.
It isn't "closure" and it isn't a negation of all that has gone before.
God's story reaching from Creation to the final restoration of all things
forgets nothing, eliminates nothing.
Does not demand that we pretend certain things don't exist.

The story is sprawling and infinitely complicated,
but it is meaningful, integrated, coherent, and holy.
The world and all that is in it, including your story and mine,
don't make sense unless we acknowledge that they
are part of the narrative of God's loving relationship with us,
God's blessing even of what is incomplete and broken and frail.
Our own stories are there, if we have ears to listen and eyes to hear.
This is God's promise – that the story does not pass us by.
It isn't about people out there who are interesting aliens.
It's about us, and how our wrestling with God gives us a new name.

Because you and I,
and Grace Church and the big wide Episcopal Church,
and everything in creation, including
the upcoming election, crazy gas prices, or a war that just goes on and on,
– are all part of God's holy narrative.

God's love and God's promise are all-embracing
and give meaning to everything under the sun,
everything that finds itself, like us, in the middle of the story.

The promise for us as for Jacob is this:
that in all our fears, our striving, our struggle,
our sinfulness and our woundedness,
we are heirs to God's promise.
When we recognize as Jacob did
that God has been with us through the night –
then we also have a holy responsibility
to act as God would have us do,
to the best of our ability with his grace.
We hear God speak our new names as we rise in the morning.
We give thanks for the blessing and the grace,
and go forth in the name of Christ. Amen.