Wrestling with Faithfulness and Transformation

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

This is a recording of a sermon I gave on October 20, 2019 at Bountiful Community Church in Bountiful, UT.

For context, the day's scripture readings were the story of Jacob wrestling with the man and the parable of the widow and the unjust judge:
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Genesis 32:24-31 (NRSV)         
Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.  When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”  So he 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.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 

Luke 18:1-8 (David Bentley Hart translation)
And he told them a parable on the necessity of their always praying and not becoming remiss, Saying, “In a certain city there was a certain judge who did not fear God and who had no concern for humankind. And there was a widow in that city, and she came to him saying, ‘Grant me justice over against my adversary.’ And for some time he would not; but thereafter he said within himself, ‘Though indeed I do not fear God, nor do I have any concern for humankind, I shall grant her justice simply because she bothers me, for fear that at the last she will entirely exhaust me with her visits.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says; Will not God then surely bring about justice for his chosen ones crying to him day and night, and not delay over them for long? I tell you, he will swiftly bring them justice. Yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he then find faith on the earth?”
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• Let’s talk first about Jacob wrestling with the man.
  • Every lovingly hit someone upside the head to knock some sense into them? This is a story of hitting someone upside the hip
• Father Abraham & Sarah -> Isaac & Rebecca -> twins Esau & Jacob
  • living in Canaan
  • Jacob is born grasping the heel of Esau, and named thusly
  • later Jacob barters Esau’s favorite soup for Esau’s birthright (greater inheritance, yay)
  • then on Isaac’s deathbed, Rebecca helps Jacob steals Esau’s blessing, wraps him up in animal skin
    • Isaac blesses Jacob with promises of grain and wine, and says he will lord over his brothers, and nations will bow down to him
    • Esau complains, says Jacob is living up to his name
    • Isaac says, “yes, blessed he shall be,” whoops, well, it is what it is
    • Isaac says, “By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother; but when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your neck.”
    • This is not enough, and Esau vows to kill Jacob as soon as their father dies, so Rebecca decides to send Jacob away to live with her brother Laban
      • She tells her husband Isaac: Jacob shouldn’t marry a local, idol-worshipping Canaanite woman like Esau did (so pious)
      • Isaac sends Jacob away to live with Rebecca’s brother Laban (thinks it’s his idea), and blesses him with the blessing of Abraham
      • knowingly blesses him after everything
  • On his way to see Laban, Jacob stops in a place he’ll call Bethel
    • has a dream where God says, “I am with you” and promises to bring him back home
    • Jacob wakes up saying, “I didn’t know it, but God is here! Whoa!”
      • makes a vow: “If God will be with me and meet my needs for food and clothing, and let me come back home in peace, then that will be my God and I’ll give God 10% of everything” (so pious)
  • Jacob meets his match in Laban
    • Laban has two daughters: younger Rachel, who is graceful and beautiful…and elder Leah, who has nice eyes
    • Jacob wants to marry Rachel, but Laban tricks him into marrying his eldest daughter Leah instead;
    • lets him marry both in exchange for several years of work
    • there’s a big rivalry, resulting in 2 wives, 2 handmaids, & 12 sons
  • Jacob tricks Laban – performs some magic, so he can take huge amounts of livestock, and “grows exceedingly rich” with large flocks, slaves, camels, donkeys
    • Laban’s sons start gossiping; Laban doesn’t like Jacob very much anymore
    • God tells Jacob: “Go home, kid. Go home & I’ll be with you.”
    • Jacob tells his wives that God came to him in a dream again, and God was the one who gave him all the livestock because of their promise at Bethel, so he didn’t cheat their father, he’s actually super pious
    • Rachel & Leah agree to go, because there’s no money in it for them to stay [remember Jacob paid the marriage price with labor, not with any tangible goods that would be held for them in case he died or left them]
  • leaves suddenly without saying goodbye, with the people and animals to go back to Canaan
    • funnily, Rachel steals one of Laban’s household, associated with luck/prosperity – good thing Jacob didn’t marry a idol-worshipping Canaanite woman, right
    • Laban is furious and chases after them; there’s a big fight:
      • Laban: “Why’d you trick me & leave secretly? You didn’t say goodbye. I would have thrown you a farewell party. I’m not going to hurt you because your God said not to. And why’d you steal my household gods?”
      • Jacob: “I didn’t steal your gods. And I worked so hard for you for so many years, and God is obviously on my side, that’s why I’m so rich now.”
      • So they call a truce, and make a little pillar of stones as witness, and that was that.
  • Jacob heads back toward Canaan, sends messengers to Esau, promises tons of gifts to his estranged brother, presents himself as Esau’s servant
    • Esau is coming, with 400 men
    • Jacob is terrified
    • decides to split his group into two groups, so at least half will survive [how very King Solomon]
    • he prays to God, pleading for deliverance from Esau, saying he’s afraid Esau will kill all of them, even mothers & children
      • seems like maybe his first act of sincerity & caring about someone else for once
      • sends ahead droves of gift offerings to Esau
        • nice, but also strategic – doing it to gain favor
  • Jaakov sends his family across the Jabbok River (which sounds like “crooked” river)
    • Jabbok river, as rivers often do, served as a separation of territories – marking this side vs that side, these people vs those people, this land vs that land, this way vs that way, and for Jacob: this life vs that life, this side of crooked vs that side
  • And Jacob is left alone.
    • After scheming to gain blessings and riches and possessions…he is alone.
    • On the verge of seeing his estranged brother, who has vowed to kill him and is coming to meet him with 400 men…he is alone.
  • And a man wrestled with him
    • God in the flesh? Angel from God? Guardian of angel of Esau, sent to destroy him? A holy vision?
    • maybe it’s like Fight Club, and the man is in Jacob’s mind all along
  • And they’re wrestling, fighting, all night, losing track of time, until daybreak
    • And the man Jacob is fighting sees that Jacob is still fighting, fighting as he has done his whole life, always creating conflict, living in drama
    • The man just taps his hip, injuring Jacob, trying to slap some sense into him – that is how ‘unfair’ the fight was – picture a big cartoon person holding their arm out saying “I’m not gonna fight you” while a child is swinging their arms around, fists balled up, so angry, so hurt inside, wanting to fight even though they don’t really understand the damage a real fight would do
    • and he says, “Let me go, for the day is breaking,” or: “Stop fighting! A new day is dawning!”
  • but Jacob still wants to fight, unless the man blesses him
    • he bartered for Esau’s birthright
    • he stole Esau’s blessing
    • he was blessed again by Isaac before leaving home
    • he was blessed by God
    • he cheated Laban out of tons of livestock and possessions
    • but still he feels like he needs a blessing?
    • And I’m reminded of 1 Timothy, “The love of money is the root of all evil”
      • or, perhaps: destroying relationships in order to seek out riches and earthly blessings will never bring you Life, will never bring you closer to God
    • even after spending his life seeking out and gaining family, money, land, resources, power – he is still empty
  • maybe the man rolls his eyes, or does the world’s first face-palm
    • “What is your name?” or: “Who are you?”
      • Or if it’s Jacob fighting with himself, maybe he just says to himself what many of us have said to ourselves:
        “What am I doing? Who even am I?”
      • Jacob. Not Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham. Just Jacob.
        The deceiver, the liar, the trickster, the swindler, the crooked.
    • “Not anymore,” the man says to him, or he says to himself….
    • “Now you will be called Israel” which means “one that struggled with the divine” or “one who has prevailed with God” or “one seeing God”
  • Jacob doesn’t fully get it, and asks the man, “Who are you?” or asks himself, “Where is this coming from?”
    • And the answer is that is doesn’t matter, why are you even asking?
    • If it was a man, or an angel, or God, or no one the whole time – it doesn’t matter who Jacob has been fighting.
    • What matters is the transformation. And there is the blessing.
  • Jacob starts to get it, and names the place Peniel (meaning “face of God”), saying, “I saw God face to face, and yet God let me live.”
    • And maybe what he doesn’t realize is that not only did God not kill him, just completely destroy him in the fight, but God transformed him and gave him New Life
    • against other people, someone will always out-deceive you or defeat you in your battles; but against God, God doesn’t want to fight you! But God will wait, and wait, and push for reconciliation
    • so Jacob thought he was striving with (against) God, but here we see that the whole time, God is striving with (alongside) Jacob
  • Jacob sets off to meet Esau, limping, because getting sense knocked into you hurts, let nobody say that transformation is easy
  • He sees Esau coming, and is still terrified
    • even after the long night of wrestling and living to tell the tale, he is still fearful
  • but Esau greets him warmly with forgiveness and welcome, because transformation of the soul brings transformation of relationships, and that is what Life in God is all about

• In Romans 9, Paul writes about this, saying that God will have mercy on whomever God chooses, and hardens the heart of whomever God chooses.
  • So it’s all just a game?
  • There is no freewill? No autonomy?
  • Sorry not sorry, but no – that is still the thinking of Jacob the game-player
  • though God has been misunderstood by many, and we will never fully understand God, Jesus taught us that God loves everyone. Jesus demonstrated time and time again that God seeks out the outcasts in order to show them love and acceptance and community.
  • There have been a lot of ideas about God through the ages, and we see several stories of people pushing back:
    • Abraham, Moses, Job, Jonah – the OT is full of people, prophets and leaders even, who, evidently, argued with God
    • thus once again we see that God has a personal relationship with us
    • and, perhaps this tradition of arguing with God is condoning us arguing with the ideas we have about God
    • God does not exist simply to give us blessings and riches, and grant wishes, and avenge our enemies
• Which brings us to the Widow and the Unjust (Wicked) Judge
  • go back a chapter to Luke 17:20 for the context of the conversation when he told the parable: “And when Jesus was asked by the religious leaders, “When is the Kingdom of God coming?” he answered them and said, “The Kingdom does not come as something one observes, Nor will persons say, ‘Look: Here it is’ or ‘There it is’ for look: The Kingdom of God is within you.
    • He then describes how the “days of the Son of Man” will be sudden – people will pull you in different directions, but they won’t be true – but the revealing of the Son of Man will instantly make everything clear
  • Jesus says, “in a certain city there was a certain judge…who had no respect for God or anybody else” and it seems very real, very personalized…
    • And I wonder if any of us can picture a judge like that? Or picture a person like that in another position of authority?
    • Jesus gets very real and directly talks unjustices of the political system
  • and a widow is seeking justice from this known corrupt judge
    • a widow had minimal inheritance rights, so “widow” accurately has a connotation of living in poverty on the margins, with few ways to provide for herself or for children; vulnerable, a target for exploitation
    • Hebrew word for widow is “almanah” rooted in “alem” – “unable to speak”
      • voiceless (but really, she has a voice and is silenced)
    • Greek word is “chĕra” meaning “forsaken” or “left empty”
  • and she keeps coming back to the judge, asking for justice over her adversary
    • we don’t know the details
    • accord. To Jesus, the judge says (maybe Jesus is mocking here): “Though indeed I do not fear God, nor do I have any concern for humankind, I shall grant her justice simply because she bothers me, for fear that at the last she will entirely exhaust me with her visits” – can also be translated literally as “she’ll give me a black eye”
  • and Jesus says, “Listen to what the unjust judge says”
    • the judge will give in, because he is exhausted at this woman’s resilience, and fearful of this widow fighting him
    • but we know that God does not fight against us, but waits for us to stop fighting and come around, as we saw with Jacob
    • this is a typical “how much better is God than this earthly thing” parable
    • and we have to realize/remember that God’s vision of justice is not the same as ours – it’s not riches or blessings or vengeance, but something more like Life, recognizing the holiness in all of us, respecting our connectivity to the Divine and to every other part of creation
  • and Jesus says, “God will swiftly bring them justice” – what does justice look like?
    • just as Jacob’s idea of a blessing was different than God’s, our idea of justice – often vengeance (crime and “punishment”) – is different than Divine Justice
      • remember it was our own calls for vengeance, for so-called justice, that demanded Jesus’ death
      • it was our own lack of deeper understanding of God’s holy justice that created the idea of Hell
      • God’s justice brings people back into connection with community, with that which is Holy, with Life – and is enacted by the Divine Spirit that connects us all
  • So, again, what does justice look like?
    • …for a widow who, perhaps, was promised money for work, and then the money was not given when the work was completed?
    • …similarly for, perhaps, an immigrant without formal federal authorization, who was promised money for work, and then not given the money when the work was completed, or was even deported when the work was completed?
    • …for Gerald Bostock and Donald Zarda, each fired from their jobs for being openly gay, and for Aimee Stephens, fired from her longterm job after she came out as trans, all of them, right now, fighting for justice, not just for themselves but for LGBTQIA+ communities as a whole, in front of the Supreme Court?
    • …for the late 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson, who was playing videogames with her 8-year-old nephew, heard a noise outside, got up to investigate, and was shot in her own home, by unannounced police officers?
    • …for people with limited options in life, who sign up for the military because for them it’s the only way to get access to a higher education, and are sent overseas to fight in wars, wars that probably don’t adhere to God’s definition of justice, and come back with PTSD or don’t come back at all?
    • …for workers at, say, Whole Foods, who lost health insurance – 1900 people who can no longer even buy insurance through their company – all to boost company profits, in turn to benefit the literal richest man in the world?
    • …for 76-year-old Bennie Coleman, who had bought his home in D.C. with cash twenty years ago, but now was overdue on a $134 property tax bill, and thus had his house seized and was forced off the property by U.S. marshals? And it’s not just him, it happens frequently, especially to older people living with cancer, dementia, in hospice, or w. other medical issues – what unjust judge allowed that to happen?
  • What does justice look like? Realistically, there may be no perfect divine justice on earth, at least not in the short term.
  • In the parable, it doesn’t mention anyone besides the judge and the widow – but none of us are an island, and remember how Jesus phrased it as a certain judge in a certain town.
    • Perhaps this was a landmark case at the time. What was the community hearing about the case?
    • Would it have gone unnoticed if not for the emotional labor of this widow, who kept coming back to this judge, seeking justice from a corrupt man in a less-than-perfect system?
    • Was it high ranking in the news of the day – people weren’t tweeting about it, but were they talking about it as they worked, as they ate together, as they met in the community?
    • Did anyone lend support to this widow – did they show up en masse as a visual sign of community support, did they petition the judge, did they petition more powerful individuals to speak out?
  • Now, Luke frames this as a parable on prayer
    • Is our takeaway that we should just around praying quietly to God over and over until we get our way?
    • How do we gain Life, gain Divine Justice, get closer to God?
  • In the next parable Jesus says:
    • don’t be like an outwardly pious person who prays about himself saying, “God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of mankind – rapacious, unjust, adulterous – or even like this tax-collector” – but be like the tax collector, an outsider, who humbles themself before God and asks for mercy. “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
    • again we remember lessons from Jacob, who exalted himself and tried to gain earthly riches and blessings, led a life filled with drama and struggle until he finally allowed himself to see past earthly concerns and see that God seeks not to make us powerful over others, but to transform us
    • stop fighting for the sake of fighting, to have power over each other
  • Last week, we talked about the meaning of Jesus telling the Samaritan leper, “your faith has made you well” – that the leper’s faithfulness – dedication and commitment to the community and Kingdom of God – giving him new Life.
  • Similarly with Jacob, we’ve learned that what transforms us, what brings us life, what heals our soul – is not actually struggling with/against God, with/against other people
    • but struggling with our own brokenness and our misconceptions about God, and coming out the other side to realize that God is there, patiently waiting for us to stop fighting them, reaching out for reconciliation, showing us only goodness and love and mercy
• So if we combine these two things, perhaps Divine Blessings and Divine Justice involve wrestling with our ideas of God…relationships…living in community…living in peace with others…respecting other’s existence…honoring the holy goodness by which all others were created…seeking out the divine spirit that connects us with others………
• to be transformed to a point where we are no longer acting for ourselves alone,
  not only for our families,
  not only for our church,
  not only for our denomination,
  not only for our city,
  not only for our state,
  not only for our country,
  not only for people who look like us,
  not only for people who act like us,
  not only for people who speak like us,
  not only to seek power over anyone else,
  not only to wrestle against God or anyone else…
• but to view Life as God views it
  through a lens of Love
  with a vision of Holy Community,
  and a dedication to Divine Justice for all,
  not just earthly justice for ourselves
• We need transformation of the soul, individually and communally,
  • and that transformation brings transformation of relationships
• God’s vision of Justice, of Life, of the Kingdom of Heaven, is already within each of us, and made more visible when we live out intentional, actionable love toward others
  • Will you act faithfully to make God’s vision a long-term, lasting reality?
  • Will you wrestle for justice against God, or wrestle for Justice along with God?