Sermon notes from 10/16
I wonder when was the last time you wrestled with God. Perhaps it was some time ago, in a season of doubt – a time when you were young and passionate and sleepless with uncertainty. Perhaps the last time you wrestled with God you were angry. You had done everything correctly - everything you were supposed to do - and yet there you were, suffering despite the things you had so properly ordered. Perhaps the last time you wrestled with God, something was breaking - your family, your identity, your health, your sense of wholeness or wellbeing. Perhaps you sifted through the pieces late into the night and paced or prayed or cried out in fury. Perhaps you weren’t even sure you believed in God - not then, not really - but there wasn’t anyone else to listen when you wept into the dark.
Jacob knew all about darkness. In Genesis this morning we find him in the midst of a cosmic wrestling match in the night. In many ways, this battle is the enfleshed representation of the conflicted, combative unfolding of his life. When Jacob is born, Genesis tells us that he comes into the world grasping the heel of his brother Esau. His name means “the usurper” or “the supplanter” - or even, “the crooked one.” He is born already wrestling for higher position. When the boy Jacob grows older, he famously disguises himself as his elder brother in order to trick his father, Isaac, into giving him his blessing. Esau discovers the treachery, and he vows to kill the usurper, and Jacob flees into the night. He is driven far to the northeast where for years he works for his uncle, Laban, in a sort of exile – in fear of his brother’s wrath. And this morning, in Genesis 32, Jacob is trying to come home.
At this moment in the story, messengers have reported to Jacob that Esau is approaching with 400 men. In terror, Jacob sends his family on to safety and waits near the riverbank alone. Jacob has no assurance that his brother will accept his offer of gifts or apology. He has no certainty about whether or not his family will survive or whether his plan will succeed. He has nothing of earthly value or military superiority that will guarantee him anything at all, but what he does have is a promise. Jacob has a promise from God. When he first fled the wrath of his brother and began his journey north, Jacob fell asleep upon a stone and dreamed. It was here he saw the ladder stretching from heaven to earth, flush with angels ascending and descending, and the Lord stood over him and said, “I, the Lord, am the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie, I will give it to you and your children. And your children shall be like the dust of the earth and you shall spread abroad to the west and the east and the north and the south, and all the clans of the earth shall be blessed through you. And look, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
And so when the stranger comes to Jacob along the river, and when Jacob realizes that this stranger is no ordinary man, and when in fact this stranger reveals his staggering divinity, Jacob does not let him go. He is in terror. This could very well be the last night of his human life, but he has not forgotten the promise. “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
Is this not our own desperate prayer into the darkness. There is something deep within us that believes – sometimes against all reason – in a promise. This is the promise thrumming beneath all of creation, the promise that cradles our faith. In the midst of terror and grief, there is a part of our heart that believes, somehow, that we are meant for wholeness and life. How can we exist on the riverbank in the dark when we know we are meant to wake up in the morning and go home?
When we are wrestling with God in the night, we are crying out with Jacob, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
This was the lament of all creation for a long time. The desperation of brokenness and the burdens of sin and death were like an eternal night alongside an impassable river. For generations, the cries in the night seemed to go unanswered, and yet something within us believed in that possibility of wholeness and life. “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
And so God gave us the only possible perfect blessing. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” God did not give us skill or wealth or mighty military power, but his very own Son whose Cross would become the bridge across the river from exile into our true homeland of eternal life.
The intimacy and profound nearness between Jacob and the divine wrestler became freely given to each of us. When all of creation cried out for God’s blessing, all of creation received nothing less than his Body and his Blood.
It is true that we still may wrestle into the night in our uncertainty or our fear. We may not make it through the night without our own limp, our own transformation, or without leaving behind our own name. But in our intimacy with Jesus, the Son of God, we rise in the morning. We sing out with Jacob, “I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved.”
Preached by Mtr. Brit Frazier
16 October 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia