October 21, 2007 Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 121; Genesis 32:22-31; Luke 18:1-8
Today the sermon is one that affects every person in this room. All of us
have either suffered from a long struggle ourselves or been the beneficiary of
people who have struggled long on our behalf. Some of those struggles have been
personal—a struggle to overcome sickness or loss or temptation; and some have
been larger in scope—the struggle to uproot racism or end war or stop global
climate change.
Last week the sermon talked about Mother Teresa’s forty-five year long
struggle. For almost as many years as she struggled to bring justice and mercy to
the poorest of the poor, she also struggled with the feeling that God was absent
from her life. In both of those struggles she seemed to make little headway.
Poverty continued, only eased somewhat by all she did, and her dark night of the
soul continued, broken only occasionally by glimpses of God’s presence and light.
Some people think that Mother Teresa was a failure or a fraud because she
never achieved what they consider success. But to those of us who struggle in
similar ways, her patience and persistence look like a triumph. Mother Teresa
may not have been able to see it in the darkness she suffered, but when we look at
her we see her endurance and courage, her radiant love and light. We look at her
and find inspiration and hope for our own struggle.
Here is the amazingly good news: when we are persistent, when we keep
wrestling with God all night like Jacob, when we keep knocking on justice’s door
like the poor widow, when we keep walking in faith like the pilgrims who sang the
121st Psalm on the way to Jerusalem, we may not be able to feel any progress or
any virtue in ourselves, we may fail to accomplish what we yearn for, but others
will look at us and see endurance and courage, love and light, and they will find
inspiration and hope for their struggle.
This is one of the beautiful things about the story of Jacob wrestling with
God in the night. We need to remember the context of that wrestling match.
Remember that Jacob had extorted from his brother Esau and tricked his father
Isaac in order to win the birthright and blessing away from Esau. Esau was a
mighty and violent man, and he was so enraged that he wanted to kill Jacob.
Jacob moved far away, and now many years had gone by and Jacob was coming
home. He sent Esau word that he was coming, along with a huge gift—enough to
make Esau a rich man. Jacob was hoping that Esau would not kill him after that,
but then word came back that Esau was marching out to meet Jacob with four
hundred men.
Today’s story takes place on the night before Jacob and Esau would meet.
Jacob was alone, divided by a river from all of his people. He was alone with his
fear, his terror of what would happen the next day. He must have been wondering
why he was risking the slaughter of his wives and twelve children and his own
death. He was feeling vulnerable and weak. That is when God chose to spring on
him in the night.
What was God trying to do? We need to remember that it was God who
told Jacob to go back home to Esau. This was God’s idea, so God could not have
been trying to stop Jacob. If we were writing this story today from a modern
psychological viewpoint we might have it be that Jacob wrestled not with God, but
with the fears that wanted to block him from doing God’s will. That would make
more sense to us.
But maybe there is a deeper truth here. Maybe there is a reason why we
need to wrestle not with the fears that block us, but with the one who calls us into
confrontation with our fear. If we wrestle with our fear, we run the risk of
becoming ever more entangled and attached to the fear. By wrestling with God,
by keeping our focus clamped onto God, we become more bound up and united
with God, and God frees us from fear.
Jacob wrestles all night and will not give up. Dawn is coming and God
says, “Let me go!” God is not saying that because, like a troll, God will turn to
stone if caught in daylight. God is saying it to protect Jacob, because the Biblical
tradition says that no one can see the face of God and live. But Jacob is willing to
risk death. He will not let go unless God blesses him. Even after God wounds his
leg, Jacob will not give up.
Then God gives him the new name Israel, which means “the one who
strives with God,” saying, “for you have striven with God and with humans and
have prevailed.” Jacob lets God go, and names the place Peniel, a word that
means face to face, for in the starlight and twilight near dawn Jacob saw more of
God’s face than anyone ever had, and yet he lived.
The final image is of Jacob limping off at dawn to meet Esau. And here is
the most beautiful thing about this story. His wound was not a sign of his failure,
but of his success. It was the mark of his persistence in the struggle, and of his
bearing God’s blessing because he would not give up. It was the symbol of his
hold on God, and God’s hold on him. Did Jacob see it that way? Probably not.
Being lame in ancient Israel was not considered a sign of blessing. It was a curse.
But to us, his wound shows Jacob to be blessed because it came to him through his
steadfast engagement with God. It gives us hope for our own struggle. Next time
you have bags under your eyes from wrestling all night with God, try to think of
them as signs of God’s blessing on you for not giving up!
The gospel lesson today is also about persistence. The widow wins justice
through her persistent knocks and cries to an unjust judge. Jesus urges us to pray
always and not lose heart. He says, “Will not God give justice to his chosen ones
who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he
will quickly grant justice to them.”
There is a bit of a mixed message here. Jesus says, pray always and do not
give up, and he talks about crying to God day and night. Those make it sound as if
justice may be long in coming. Then he says that God will quickly give justice to
those who persist. But if God would be quick we would not have to persist.
Mother Teresa cried out night and day for forty-five years. By human
standards, that does not seem quick. And did justice come? Certainly not in the
form of a world awakened to the immorality of societies that tolerate poverty. Nor
did it come in the form of Teresa feeling deeply connected to God.
And yet her life was triumphant in the inspiration and hope it gave, and the
love and light it still shines. She was triumphant in that she kept knocking and
wrestling with God and never let go her hold. To us the wounds of her suffering
are signs of her success, even though to her they may have seemed only wounds.
On World Communion Sunday two weeks ago we sang the hymn from the
Nicaraguan freedom struggle that begins, “We are people on a journey; pain is
with us all the way,” with the refrain, “Joyfully we come together at the holy feast
of God.” The 121st Psalm is the song of people on a journey, the journey of a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and it sounds joyful in anticipation of the holy feast at the
journey’s end. In the King James Version it comes across as a song of triumphant,
pure faith. “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
But most modern translations begin more tentatively: “I lift up my eyes to the
hills—from where will my help come?”
We love the King James Version because here in the Upper Valley we look
up to the beauty and serenity of the ridge tops and see something of God. But in
ancient Israel the hills were often difficult and dangerous places to ascend.
Pilgrims saw them and thought, how am I going to get through those hills—who
will help me? They had good reason to fear because they could fall under attack,
or they could stumble and go lame, or the harsh sun could smite them and
dehydrate them, and all manner of evils and ills could afflict them along the way.
The Psalm sounds like a bold song of faith, but it could have been whistling
in the dark to keep up their courage. The pilgrims who sang it kept connected to
God, kept focused on God rather than on their fear, kept walking on toward the
gates of God’s holy city. Their triumph was in their faithful persistence, even for
those who did not survive the journey and never reached the gates.
We cannot know why some of us wrestle with God like Mother Teresa and
never get the grace we seek. We do not know why some of us knock on the door
of justice yet never win our case—war continues, global climate change continues,
good health or happiness continues to elude us. We do not know why some
pilgrims die along the road and never get to the feast.
What we do know is that we love and honor those who wrestle and knock
and walk on and never stop persisting in the struggle. We think of Gandhi or King
or Jesus himself, we think of Mother Teresa, we think of Grace Paley and Bill
Coffin, we think of those among us who have borne life’s sorrows and adversity
and yet keep returning persistently to the way of faith, hope and love. The
memorial flowers given today come from a woman who is as good a model of this
as any—Betty Campbell, who has had many sorrows, greatest of all losing her
son, but still persists in the light.
We look at one another and we see each other’s wounds, we see such
beautiful limps, and we know that we are seeing the marks of courage and
endurance, signs of great light and love. We see God’s grace in one another and
we find inspiration and hope in what we see.
We know that we love and thank those who struggle for the light. And if
we love them, God must love them and bless them even more. Blessed are those
who pray always and do not lose heart. They are full of grace.
The final stanza of the United Church of Christ Statement of Faith in the
Form of a Doxology says,
You promise to all who trust you
forgiveness of sins and fullness of grace,
courage in the struggle for peace and justice,
your presence in trial and rejoicing,
and eternal life in your realm which has no end.
Let us pray for faith in that promise, and for courage in the struggle…
Sermon 10/21/2007