Pentecost 8A

Jacob was on his way home. He simply wanted to make things right. Guilt-ridden over the way he treated his twin brother Esau for stealing his birthright and snatching the blessing from their father Isaac, Jacob just wanted to say sorry for everything he had done to them.

He wanted to apologize for betraying his brother and humiliating his father. He wanted to apologize knowingly hurting those closest to him. He wanted to apologize for destroying the family.

God had asked him to return home and ask forgiveness from everyone he had harmed. While it wasn’t his idea, Jacob knew it was the right thing to do.

And he was going to do it himself. He didn’t ask God to solve his problems for him. Nor did he ask God to protect him against his brother Esau. Nor does he devise yet another clever trick to fool his brother into forgiving him.

Jacob merely prays for the strength to do the right thing. He prays for the courage to reconcile with his brother. He prays that he will have what it takes to set things right between him and Esau. Jacob simply prays that Esau will find it within himself to forgive his brother.

And it is at that moment, that moment in prayer, that Jacob is attacked. It’s night, the stars are hidden behind the clouds, and so Jacob can’t see his attacker. He has no idea who just jumped him. All he can feel is a sharp jab to his hip, knocking it out of its socket. They fight all night and Jacob could barely stand the pain.

Then the attacker says, “Let me go, the sun is coming up.”

But Jacob says, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”

Interesting request.

Does this mean that Jacob knew his attacker? From whom is he looking for a blessing?

It’s hard to say. No one really knows who this attacker is. Some say it’s an angel. Perhaps even Esau’s guardian angel. Others say it’s a demon out to prevent Jacob from reconciling with his brother. Still others see him as the personification of the dangers lurking in the darkness. And yet others say it’s God.

But I like what Rabbi Harold Kushner says. Rabbi Kushner notes that Jacob is alone. And that the attacker is exactly as strong as Jacob. No stronger, but no weaker. Which is why they can’t beat each other and they last all night.

The rabbi says, “The attacker, the angel, is Jacob’s conscience, the part of him that summons him to rise above his bad impulses. The struggle is between the part of him that wins by cleverness and fraud, and the part of him that feels summoned by God to climb a ladder to heaven, to become someone exemplary.” (Kushner, Living a Life That Matters p. 26)

In other words, Jacob is at war with himself. Yes, he is clever and gets what he wants through craftiness and deceit. He’s smart. Perhaps too smart. And he’s proud of his abilities because they have given him the life he’d been looking for, and helped him walk the path that God put in front of him.

But he also knows the cost his cleverness and deceit took on his relationships with others. Especially with his brother Esau and his dad Isaac. He regrets what he’s done to them. He feels cut off from his family. Estranged from his past. He’s lost. Without a history. Without a home.

So Jacob finds himself wrestling in the dark with an adversary that is his equal, because that adversary is himself.

“Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ So the man said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’

This fight was with himself. This battle was between his past and his future. This adversary was the competing impulses that turned every decision into a war.

What Rabbi Kushner doesn’t notice, however, is that it was God who put Jacob in all those impossible situations, knowing that the only way out of them was deceit and cunning, because those were the tools that Jacob was born with, those were the skills that God had given him..

Jacob clearly was the right person to receive the birthright, the inheritance of land and leadership, from their father Isaac, but Esau was the first born, and not up to the task. And since the birthright went to the oldest son, Jacob had to manufacture a way to obtain what was legally his brother’s, but divinely appointed to Jacob.

And Jacob, with his mother Rebekah as an accomplice, needed to receive the blessing from his blind father Isaac, so they schemed to steal the blessing away from Esau, the official passing of the reigns of authority, to Jacob and not Esau. So Jacob tricked a blind old man into giving to him something meant for someone else. This was the only way he could do the work that God had given him to do.

So, Jacob had been wrestling with God long before the midnight encounter at Jabbok. He’d been wrestling with God since before he was born. God wasn’t making it easy for Jacob to receive his destiny as the one to be called “Israel.” Jacob was always at war with himself, and with God.

“You have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” And he could also add, with striven with yourself and you have won. 

But that win came with a cost. Jacob was left with a limp that would remain with him for the rest of his life, reminding him of that night, reminding him of the battle between his worst instincts and his best self. Reminding him of his shameful past, which prepared him for his future. But also reminding him that he can be hurt by life and he can survive.

His limp, which would follow him for the rest of his life, was why he was now “Israel,” meaning “one who has striven with God” would be a constant reminder of the cost of being chosen by God.

This is a new day for Jacob, now called “Israel.” With a new name comes a new life, a new identity, a new way of seeing the world and his place in it. It was an affirmation of the victory of his better self over his worst impulses.

God had given him the name Israel, perhaps in admiration, and maybe even as a reward. Because in losing that battle, Jacob had won the war against himself.

I think that’s a war that we all fight. We all live in constant struggle, battling between our worst impulses and our best selves.  Sometimes, like Jacob, we can’t tell the difference between the two. Sometimes, like Jacob, we wrestle with God’s call on our lives.

We wrestle with our past. We wrestle with lost dreams and blurred visions. We wrestle with disappointment and discouragement. We wrestles with circumstances not of our own making but beyond our control, circumstances that take us down a path wouldn’t have travelled if it were up to us.

We wrestle with an accident or an illness. A downturn in the economy. The collapse of a marriage. A surprise trip to the doctor’s. Or an unwelcome visit with the funeral director. And you can feel the pain run down your leg from your hip socket, and you know that it won’t go away. It will always be with you. You will walk with a limp for the rest of your life.

So you find yourself wishing, wishing you could go back and make better decisions. You wish you would have taken a different road. You wish you had more courage, and less regret. You wish you could re-live those life-altering moments so you could create a better outcome. You wish you could stop the pain before it started.

I think we all make those wishes. Especially when we throw God into the mix.

We wish that being a person of faith were easier. We wish faith was something we could simply get up and do, much like brushing our teeth or eating breakfast. We wish we could see God’s plan for us and lives so clearly that we could follow it and never doubt nor stray from that path.

We wish that our best selves drove our lives and our choices all the time. But we know that we are - at best - a muddle of mixed motivations. And we trust that God works within us and through us, as our lives go in directions we don’t expect. But have outcomes we would never had anticipated.

My divorce is something that neither I, nor Rebekah, nor God intended when we got married. But the divorce experience has taught Rebekah and I the power of a reconciliation that allows us to part ways blessing each other’s future.

A friend’s cancer came as a shock. While it was a treatable form of melanoma, he said it helped him to see the world with new eyes. The disease opened to him the generous preciousness of life. He actually calls his cancer “the gift” because, he says, because of his cancer, he’s become more loving, and can live in joyful gratitude for whatever time he has on this planet.

The marriage and sexuality debate in our ELCIC has created division and acrimony. But it also gave us the opportunity to learn how to disagree as Christians, and to show the world a different way of disagreeing, a way of disagreeing that is marked by compassion, grace, and healing.

I’m sure you all have your own stories. Stories of victory from failure, and life from pain. Stories of survival.

Maybe you’re still waiting for the victory, maybe you’re still wrestling. Maybe, for you, it’s still midnight at Jabbok. But that means that you’re still fighting, and that means that you haven’t given up. The sun will rise and a blessing will be given.

This is why you can be called “Israel,” you - ALL of you - you who have striven with God and with others and you have prevailed.

This is why you can be proud of your struggles. This is why you can be proud of the journey your life has taken. This is why you can be proud of your bruised and battered heart. Because you have striven with God and with life, and you have survived. You have prevailed.

I know that you have prevailed because you are here. You are still walking the path that God put in front of you. You are still following the voice that calls your name. You are still communing with God among fellow survivors.

Like Jacob, you may walk with a limp, but that pain is a constant reminder of your victory, that you haven’t given up. That pain is a constant reminder that God can create something new and beautiful out of the ugliest circumstances. That pain is a constant reminder that you are stronger and better because of your battles. 

You may walk with a limp that life gives you, but that limp is a constant reminder of your strength, a constant reminder that God will raise you up from any defeat, and at the end, God will give you - and all of us - the final blessing.

And may this be so among us. Amen.

Pentecost 3A

Today’s Old Testament reading begins in the middle of a story. Actually, it starts in the middle of a sentence, and we only hear part of the conversation that sets the story in motion. And in this reading that we’re told to hear only bits and pieces, as the lectionary folks suggest that we leave out a few verses.

It’s as if they’re in a hurry to get to the point of the story, they want to rush to the end, bypassing some conversation along the way.

And I guess it makes sense. After all this story is about the next generation taking over. It’s a passing of the torch. An opportunity for fresh blood and new ideas to emerge. And as we all know, the younger generation tends to be in more of a hurry than their elders.

Genesis chapter 24 starts out by saying “Abraham was now old, and advanced in years...” This may sound like an innocent enough saying, but we have to remember that Abraham was almost 100 years old when God called him out of retirement to be a father of nations.

But everyone is called home at one point, no matter how many years they’ve put on this earth. And when that happens, someone new needs to take over, a new leader needs to step in and take charge.

And Isaac, for better or for worse, was that person.

Isaac can be, at best, described as a placeholder leader. He’s in between two towering figures. His father Abraham and his son Jacob.

It’s not that greatness was not in him, he was simply uninspiring. While his father Abraham is said to have “hungered and thirsted for righteousness,” Isaac seemed to hunger only for his lunch

Even next to his brother Ishmael, Isaac seemed small. Ishmael was the motorcycle driving bad boy who probably got all the girls, while Isaac stayed home and played video games all night, never giving any thought to his life or his future.

You might remember that Isaac and Ishmael were half-brothers. Ishmael was born of Hagar, a maid that Abraham impregnated; while Isaac was the miracle child that Sarah bore. And even though Isaac was the fruit of God’s faithfulness, he never really lived up to expectations. After all, if you’re born from a barren womb, how to do top that?

It wasn’t that Isaac was lacking in brains or potential. He was just unambitious. He was passionless. He had no direction. He simply floated down the current of life, not really thinking about where he ended up.

He even waited until he was almost forty before getting married. While I’m sure that Abraham and Sarah were dropping the occasional hint about how wonderful it would be to have grandchildren, Isaac probably came home from work each day, crashed in front of the TV, and let the days and evenings slip into weeks and years, with little to show for it.

So when Rebekah agrees to be his wife (the first time EVER in the bible where the bride actually gives her consent to be married), it’s like an alarm clock had woken him up, and he wanted to get married RIGHT away, even though both their families suggest that they wait a while before rushing into a lifetime commitment.

Isaac’s anxious to get going. This was HIS time! Maybe he knows that his dad is sick. Maybe he can see his mom slowing down.

Maybe he looked around and saw that all Abraham and Sarah were asked to do was accomplished and realized that it was his turn to lead.

And he was right. Although the story doesn’t come right out and say it, Abraham does die, as does Sarah. And now Isaac is left alone, trying to figure out how to take charge of a people looking for guidance.

But his initial enthusiasm soon fizzled into settled mediocrity. If you follow his career you’d probably give Isaac a B or B-. He enjoyed some success and endured some failures; but accomplished nothing of note. He was involved in some shady business dealings and lost a lot of money, but gained most of it back.

He ruled competently but charted no new course, he had no new vision for his people, and inspired no devotion. It wasn’t the force of destiny that compelled him to grab hold of the leadership reigns. It was like he was just taking over the family business and lacked the passion that gave rise to its institution. If Isaac weren’t Abraham’s son and Jacob’s dad, we probably would never have heard about him.

His personal life was also troubled. Like his parents, Isaac and Rebekah had trouble getting pregnant. And when they did have kids he couldn’t control his sons, Jacob and Esau. He even fought with his wife over who was the favorite. Rebekah favored Esau where Isaac favored Jacob. That must have made for interesting dinner conversation.

Isaac was a leader, but he was not a role model. He is the bridge between his father Abraham “The Father of Many Nations” and his son Jacob whose sons formed the twelve tribes of Israel. He was a transition. An interim. No one to admire or hate.

So what can we learn from Isaac? What does he have to teach us?

I think Isaac represents what most of us are.

The point of Isaac’s life wasn’t that he was an uninspiring, mediocre, leader who didn’t quite live up to expectations. The point of Isaac’s life was that he was a promise fulfilled. He was a child of Abraham and Sarah, the miracle child, who has his own place in salvation history.

He is the father of Jacob, who was the father of Joseph, who led Egypt through a terrible famine, and brought prosperity to the region.

Isaac may be the middle-child of history, but he did his job the way he was supposed to. To me that’s bac-handed good news

When I worry that I haven’t lived up to my potential (and I know I haven’t) I know I’m in good company, and that God can and does use me for God’s own purposes just the way I am.

This doesn’t mean that I can stop striving to be better at what I do. 

It doesn’t mean that I can float through life until my days come to an end and have nothing to show for it. 

It doesn’t mean that I can stop and rest on the laurels I’ve inherited from other church leaders. 

It doesn’t mean that I can stop flexing my muscles to help Christ’s church become stronger, looking for new and better ways to share God’s love with the world.

It DOES mean that I can fail, I can be human. It means that I don’t have to worry about God’s promised future for the church or the world, because I’m not in charge of that future. I’ll let God worry about that future instead.

And for US it means that WE know the future is in God’s hands, not ours. We know that some days we will succeed and some days we will fail. But our every days, the daily moment-by-moment encounters of our lives may seem small and insignificant, but they add up to a larger vision of what God wants for us and the world, and moves God’s salvation story forward.

So today, we can remember Isaac not as a cautionary tale of ignored potential, but as a parent of grace, an example of God choosing the wrong people for the right reasons, as evidence that we are not in charge of the world’s salvation.

And for that I can say, “Thanks be to God.”

May this be so among us. Amen.