"The Payoff" - August 28, 2011

Text: Galatians 3:26-28, 1 Corinthians 12:4-14

There was an interesting news story awhile back out of Shreveport, Louisiana.  Bishop Fred Caldwell is pastor of the Greenwood Acres Full Gospel Baptist Church, a large African-American congregation with a membership of about 5000.  The church had about six active white members.

Shreveport is by all accounts a segregated city.  In Caldwell’s eyes, it is one of those Southern cities where the Civil Rights movement never quite took hold and the power structure was never forced to change.  “Shreveport is one of the last strongholds of the Confederacy,” he said.  Racial prejudice here runs deep.”

He also said that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.  He certainly isn’t the first to make that observation –Martin Luther King may have been the one to popularize that phrase - but it is true, and not only in Shreveport but in America generally.

All of this had weighed on Caldwell’s mind for a long time, and finally he had an idea – an idea, he says, that came from God.  To bring more diversity to his church, he offered to pay white people to attend services: five dollars for Sunday mornings, and $10 for Thursday night services.  (He reasoned that people were busier on weeknights and so he ought to pay a little extra for the Thursday services.)

Of course, there was reaction.  Some people were shocked.  Some members were afraid that it might bring in the wrong kind of people who were coming for the wrong reasons.  But then, Caldwell said, one could make the case that Jesus majored in the wrong kind of people.  Others said it was wrong to pay people to come to church when there were poor people who could use the money.  Caldwell responded that Judas said the same thing to Jesus, and he wondered if the people asking that were giving their money to the poor.  Some expected that longtime members would have a problem with paying newcomers to come to church -- but a number of members in fact offered to help pay people to come.

Well, it is an interesting concept, the kind of thing that most of us instantly have an opinion about.  But I think the bigger issue is what this pastor was hoping to accomplish.  He certainly raised the issue of segregation.  More white people – not a lot, but more – have attended his church since, and most didn’t want the $5.  His offer made it clear that they really were welcome.  And his offer made the news, raising the issue for a lot of folks - not to mention giving his church a lot of free publicity, more than you could buy with a few $5 bills.

It is no secret, and it is not surprising, that people like to go to church with folks who are like them.  And so churches tend to be made up largely of one socioeconomic group, or ethnic group, or racial group, or tilt toward a certain age.  Many churches will target a particular niche—maybe the 20-30 age group, or seekers, or the classical music crowd.  There are cowboy churches in Texas.  There are new churches in places like Arizona and Florida, in areas with lots of retirees, intentionally formed as churches for senior adults.

The appeal of a particular church to particular grouping of people isn’t all bad.  And it can’t be avoided; it’s just the way the world works.  A more liberal church is going to draw more liberal people.  A conservative church will draw conservative folks.  It’s hard to do both country music and Bach at the same time.  It’s hard to be all things to all people.  There is a certain sense in which members of any group, whether it be church or Rotary or Little League or the Iowa Studebaker Collectors Club, will be at least somewhat alike.

Several years ago, church growth experts were talking about what they called the “homogeneous unit principle.”  Congregations that grew, they said, were made up of a fairly homogeneous group, and attracted those same kinds of people.  They went a step further by proposing this as a strategy—kind of the opposite of Bishop Caldwell’s strategy. Churches should aim for folks who were just like they were. 
They proposed it because, they said, it worked. 

The question is, in the church, should it be that way?  If we only want people just like us, can it really be called the church of Jesus Christ?

To me, there are a lot of reasons why it is good for a church to have a broad mix of people.  There are practical reasons.  We live in a diverse community, and so it only makes sense that we reflect our community.  If we are serious about ministering where we are, we need to be diverse.

And then, there is a power and energy that comes with a widely varied group.  Most of us have diverse tastes—we like all kinds of food, we listen to all kinds of music, we enjoy traveling to different places.  There is something exciting and energizing about all of that.  There is something energizing about a church with all kinds of people, where everyone is not just like me.  There is something energizing about trying new things, having new ideas, and having a little variety in our life together as a church family.

There are practical reasons for wanting diversity.  But to me, the practical arguments are far outweighed by the theological argument for diversity.  If we are claiming to follow Jesus, we might want to look at Jesus’ first followers.

The 12 disciples were a motley bunch.  There were hard-working fishermen.  There was also Matthew, a tax collector – hated by most of the population as a Roman lackey – and Simon the Zealot, a member of a political party dedicated to the violent overthrow of Rome.  Folks from opposite ends of the political spectrum were in Jesus’ inner circle – it is like he had Dennis Kucinich and Steve King both on his team, and it is hard to see them hitting it off all that well.  There were also women who were prominent among Jesus’ followers, which was absolutely scandalous in that day.  In fact, the gospels tell us that Jesus’ primary financial supporters were a small group of women.

Jesus did not shy away from relating to Samaritans, who were hated by the Jews.  He hung out with people who were not exactly the upstanding citizens of the day, and because of that accused of being a “glutton and a winebibber.”  (Which might raise the question, “When was the last time you heard someone called a “winebibber”?)  Jesus related to all kinds of people, he had a diverse group of followers, and to be real honest, he didn’t seem to give any thought to anything like think all that much of the “homogeneous unit principle.”

When we look at the early church, the diversity among believers broadened to include both Jews and Gentiles.  Paul worked with churches made up of all kinds of folks – rich, poor, of different races and different religious backgrounds and different nationalities and different occupations.  It got messy – at times it was extremely messy - but in the middle of all the messiness, there was Christ, and there was hope, and there was a witness to the world of love and care and peace.
 
As Paul puts it, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”   The culture took note of the church because of the love members had for one another, and because the church cared for the poor and needy around them, whomever they were.

When we gather as a group of diverse individuals and together become a family, when together we become the church, we are reflecting what God’s kingdom is like.  To follow Jesus means reaching out to the other.

Every person wants to belong.  Every person has a need to be accepted.  The Church is to be a community where all are welcome, all are accepted, where all are part of the family.

In the Church, we need all kinds of people.  Our reading from I Corinthians uses the analogy of the body: we need each part working well in order to function and be healthy.  Ninety-nine percent of your body can be working just fine, but if your back goes out, or your kidneys stop cooperating, or you’ve got a bad toothache, or an eye decides to take the day off, you can be in real trouble.  We need all of the parts working together.

I’m thankful for all of the gifts in the Body of Christ.  I’m thankful for all the gifts that are offered by members of this community.

I’m thankful for musicians who lead us in worship with their instruments and voices. 

I’m thankful for Sunday School teachers who care for children and who lead adults and who help us as we study the scriptures and apply our faith in our daily lives.

I’m thankful for people who quietly work behind the scenes, trimming shrubbery and baking cookies and visiting people who are sick and working in the nursery and giving people rides and bringing flowers for the sanctuary and maintaining the library.

I’m thankful for those with artistic gifts and those with organizational skills and those who are mechanically inclined and those who can operate a miter saw or paintbrush or pipe wrench. 

I’m thankful for those who with their faithful presence lift the spirit of others.  I’m thankful for the laughers and the smilers and the gigglers and the huggers.  I’m thankful for those who persevere even when life is difficult.  And I’m thankful for those who help others to persevere.

I’m thankful for those who are people of deep prayer.  I’m thankful for long-time members, for those who offer experience and wisdom.  I’m thankful for newcomers who bring new ideas and fresh energy.  I’m thankful for students who bring excitement and ask questions, and jump right in sharing their gifts.  And I’m thankful for children who teach us so much about trust and joy.

We need all of this, and more.  We need each person, with all of our differences.  Maybe we need each other because of our differences – different experiences, different ideas, different gifts.

God, for some reason, chooses to work through us.  We are the Body of Christ.  And we need the gifts of every person.

Bishop Caldwell paid people $5 to go to church.  But we get a payoff - there has to be a payoff od some kind, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.  What is the payoff?

Today that question may be easier to answer.  There is going to be a good meal.  We are outside, it’s fun, it’s different.  You don’t have to get dressed up.  You can spike a volleyball on the pastor.

But week in, week out – what is the payoff?  For me, the payoff is this.  We come from different places; we have different hopes and dreams, different experiences.  We don’t all talk the same or look the same or vote the same.  Even our ideas about faith and our theological understandings may be different.  We have different gifts.  And all of this – all of this - is good.  All of this is wonderful.

Because while we are all different, we come together to become a family—a family where we are welcomed and we are accepted.  We become part of a community where we can be stretched and challenged and grow, and where we are nurtured and loved and cared for, and where under God’s grace we are discovering together what it is to follow Jesus - and in the process, what it is truly be ourselves. 

That is the payoff.  And friends, that is worth far more than $5.  Amen.

"Reunion" - August 21, 2011

Text: Genesis 33:1-10

Have you ever been just filled with dread?  You have put off and procrastinated, but there seems to be no way out, and the time has come.  You’ve been home for the summer for a couple of weeks and now, you have no choice: you have to go and look for a job. 

Or, the date approaches for your root canal.  You’d rather avoid it, you are scared of the dentist, but the day comes and all you can do is buck up and face it.

For some, it is the beginning of a new school year.  You want summer to last forever.  You want to be carefree.  School cramps your style.  You want to stay up late and sleep in.  You are not thrilled with the thought of buckling down and studying and writing papers.  (And by the way, this is true for faculty as well as students.)  But it doesn’t matter.  The days of summer fly by, and next thing you know, it is a new school year.  

I read about a youth minister at a Baptist church in Kentucky.  He was scheduled to preach during the Sunday night worship service one week.  He hadn’t preached very much and he was nervous about it, not to mention woefully unprepared.  He did not want to preach that night.  And so, he called in a bomb threat.  Called the sheriff’s office and said that the church would be blown up.

Well, that is one way to get out of preaching.  It got the young man arrested and I’m thinking that it probably did not help his ministerial career, but he did get out of preaching that night.

But you can’t always call in a bomb threat.  There are all kinds of things we would rather avoid but which have to be dealt with.  That’s life.  It has always been this way. 

We have been looking at the life of Jacob for several weeks, and we have kind of come full circle.  We are right back to where we started, with Jacob and Esau.  Even if you were not here that first Sunday, back on July 8, you probably know the story.  Jacob and Esau are twins.  Esau was born first, ruddy complexion, hairy.  Jacob was born right afterwards.  He was never as strong or as tough as Esau but was a schemer from the word go.  Born grabbing Esau’s heel and went through life grabbing at what belonged to his brother – and anybody else, for that matter.  The very name Jacob means “heel-grabber.”

In a moment of hunger, Jacob gets Esau to trade his birthright – the rights and privileges that went to the first born – for a bowl of soup.  And then, when it came time for their father Isaac to pronounce his blessing on his oldest son, Jacob sneaks into the tent, impersonates his older brother, and his blind father pronounces the blessing on him.  Esau is enraged, and rightly so.  He makes plans to kill his brother.  Aided by his mother Rachel, Jacob heads for the hills, flees for his life, goes back to where his parents were from, in what is now Syria.  He works for his Uncle Laban, marries Laban’s two daughters, Leah and Rachel, and stays there for 20 years.  As we read last week, it came time for Jacob to move on.  He had found a way to take advantage of Laban just as he had always found a way to take advantage of others, but it was catching up with him.

As he left Laban’s country and headed back toward home, Jacob wrestles with an angel.  A man wrestles with him all night long and Jacob refuses to let go.  It turns out that Jacob has really been wrestling with God, and he is blessed with a new name, “Israel,” for he strives with God and prevails.

The story of Jacob wrestling with God, which we looked at last week, comes while Jacob is on his way to meet Esau.  Let’s back up a step or two and look at the preparations Jacob makes for this meeting, and then at his encounter with his brother.

Jacob fears his reunion with Esau.  He has feared his brother’s wrath for 20 years.  But he can’t run forever.  He has to face Esau, he has to go back home.  He’s about to get an ulcer over it, it scares the daylights out of him, but he has to do it.

Now being Jacob, crafty as he is, he does not just forge ahead to meet Esau without preparation.  As Jacob begins his journey toward Esau, he sends messengers ahead.  They return and tell Jacob that Esau is coming to meet him, and he is bringing 400 men.

This sounds ominous.  Jacob divides his traveling party into two groups, two companies, thinking that if there is bloodshed, maybe half of them will survive.  He is clearly worried.

Part of his preparation is prayer.  In chapter 32 beginning with verse 9, Jacob prays for deliverance:

O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, “Return to your country and to your kindred, and I will do you good,” I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan; and now I have become two companies.  Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children.  Yet you have said, “I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted because of their number.”   

This is the longest prayer in the whole book of Genesis.  And it sounds like a prayer Jacob would pray: he reminds God of what God has promised him.  “My brother Esau may kill us all, even the mothers and children – yet, you have said that you will surely do me good and that my offspring will be like the sand of the sea.”

As we mentioned last week, Jacob relates to God in a very direct and forthright way.  He doesn’t hem and haw as we might.  He can be demanding.  But he is completely honest.

It is tempting to look at the story and see prayer here as simply part of Jacob’s strategy.  You send scouts, you send messengers, you send gifts, and you pray.  It’s right there in the playbook.  This may be strategic, to be sure, but it is authentic.  It is heartfelt.  In his fear and desperation, Jacob turns to God. 

Knowing what is coming and having prayed about it, Jacob sends gifts ahead to his brother.  These are serious gifts:

from what he had with him Jacob took a present for his brother Esau: two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty milking camels and their colts, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.  These he delivered into the hand of his servants, each drove by itself, and said to his servants, ‘Pass on ahead of me, and put a space between drove and drove.’  He instructed the foremost, ‘When Esau my brother meets you, and asks you, “To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?” then you shall say, “They belong to your servant Jacob; they are a present sent to my lord Esau; and moreover he is behind us.”

This happened with each drove – with the goats and sheep and camels and cattle and donkeys.  We are talking in the neighborhood of 600 head of livestock.  This says something about both Jacob’s wealth and about how fearful he is of his brother.  It is like a guilt offering.  Jacob is trying to atone for his sins against his brother and gives this extravagant gift.

Finally, as they are traveling once again, Jacob looks up and sees Esau off in the distance.  So what does he do?  He divides his children among Leah and Rachel and the maids.  First Billhah and Zilpah and their children in front, then Leah and her children, then Rachel with Joseph behind, last of all. 

Can you imagine what it was like for Jacob’s children?  Can you imagine being a son of Billhah and Zilpah, standing at the front, knowing that you were least valued, most expendable?  Knowing that your father would put you in the place of greatest danger?  This is something Jacob’s children would remember the rest of their lives.  And it is exactly this kind of stuff that led to Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers years later.

Jacob had been the favorite of his mother Rebekah.  Esau had been the favorite of their father Isaac.  Rachel was his favorite, not Leah.  Joseph would be his favorite son.  The favoritism and the hurt and pain it caused carried on through generations.

At least Jacob has the decency to go first.  As he nears his brother, he bows seven times, an act of deference and submission.  Jacob was not a deferential man.  He was about as far from deferential as you could get.  But here he is, bowing before his brother.

For his part, Esau doesn’t care about Jacob’s deference to him, he runs and the brothers embrace and they weep.  And then Jacob’s family and household approach and bow down before Esau as well.  And Esau says, “What’s the deal?  Why the gifts, why the honor, why the respect?”  It is apparent that Esau had forgiven his brother a long time ago.

Esau says, “I have more than enough.  Your gifts are not necessary.”  But Jacob says, “No, I want you to have it.  To see your face is like seeing the face of God, because you have received me with such favor.”

To look into his twin brother’s eyes after so many years and see forgiveness instead of revenge and love instead of hatred and acceptance rather than rejection was like seeing the face of God.

You know, Esau never gets the press.  Jacob is the one we always hear about.  It’s Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Jacob becomes Israel, the father of the nation.  Esau is known as Edom, which sounds more like a cheese than a nation.  Yet it is Esau who gives us a wonderful example of a forgiving heart.  Esau is unaccountably generous.  He is able to forgive and forget.  Esau is a picture of grace.

Esau wanted to travel with his brother, but Jacob says, “I’ve got women and children, I’ve got nursing animals, if I drive them too fast it will kill the flocks.  Go on ahead to Seir and we will meet up with you there.

It’s a flimsy excuse.  It is sad reading these words because we know Jacob isn’t really going to follow Esau.  Esau probably knows this, but he goes ahead and takes Jacob at his word.  Here, even at this moment of reconciliation, Jacob is still not completely honest.  There is still deception.  Esau goes ahead to Seir but Jacob instead goes to Succoth.

There is a lot of sadness in the story of Jacob and Esau.  There is a lot of unnecessary pain.  We can ask a lot of “what-ifs?”

Some have asked, “What if Laban had not pulled the switcheroo and had Jacob marry Leah?  There would not have been the rivalries within that family, Joseph doesn’t get sold into slavery, and maybe the Hebrew people do not wind up captives in Egypt.  It’s a lot to put on Laban, but hat question is asked.

What if Rebekah had not been so scheming?  What if Isaac had not been so thick-headed?  What if they had not played favorites with their children?  Things might have been very different.

What is most ironic is what led to the break between Jacob and Esau in the first place.  Jacob took, or Esau gave away, his birthright and then Jacob stole his blessing.  Jacob was to have all the rights and privileges and material advantages of being the first born.

But Jacob has to flee the country.  He is away for 20 years.  We read later that Jacob and Esau bury their father Isaac – whom everybody thought was on his deathbed 20 years earlier.  After Jacob leaves home, we don’t read any more about Rebekah.  We don’t know if Jacob ever saw his mother again.

Jacob returns a very wealthy man.  He gives an extravagant and expensive gift to his brother.  Now, why did he run away in the first place?  He had schemed to gain wealth, and because of that he had to flee.  There is no evidence that Jacob even cashed in on his birthright.  The flocks, the wealth that Esau had – he was keeping the family flocks.  By having to go into exile, Jacob forfeited the chance at his family wealth.  He didn’t even get what he schemed for in the first place, and there was 20 years of separation from his family and estrangement from his brother.

The things that we grasp after – the things that we hunger and long for – are they worthy of our seeking and our grasping?  Sometimes we find that the things we want are in the end not really what we want at all, and that all the effort we expend in the pursuit of selfish ends is not worth it.

Maybe the weirdest thing about the whole story is that for a patriarch – and considering that the nation Israel is name after him – Jacob is really not a very sympathetic character.  I mean, he learns, he grows somewhat, he displays faith, he has some positive qualities – but after all of that, he is still kind of a jerk.

We generally don’t name nations after people like that.  We just don’t.  We don’t name nations after Mel Gibson or Tonya Harding or Bernie Madoff or Charlie Sheen.

But the nation is called Israel, named for Jacob-who-became-Israel, the one who schemed and stole and cheated and lied against his own family, the one who played favorites with wives and children, the one who gained wealth by cunning and cleverness and questionable practices.

Well, the country was not called Israel as an award for virtuous behavior or extraordinary service.  It’s just a statement of fact.  Jacob’s sons become the twelve tribes of Israel, and it is what it is.  Maybe the message is that God can use us, even with all of our faults.  God loves us and chooses to bless us despite our best efforts.

Jacob is full of flaws, but God loves him anyway.  Which is good news for us.  We are far from perfect, but God loves us anyway.  In our New Testament lesson, Paul says, "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them."

We see God’s grace in the unexpected forgiveness and acceptance of Esau.  We see grace in God’s treatment of Jacob, who is blessed far beyond what he deserves.  And if our eyes are open, we see instances of God’s grace all around us, even when we don't deserve it.  Amen. 

“Wrestling with God” - August 14, 2011

Text: Genesis 32:22-32

In high school I knew a guy named John.  John was a year ahead of me and he was a wrestler. He was a great wrestler. In fact, he was an undefeated Indiana state champion and had all kinds of college scholarship offers. He decided to go to college in Iowa, which is pretty well the center of the wrestling universe. (I don’t remember if he went to Iowa State or the University of Iowa – I wasn’t paying that much attention to Iowa in those days - but I have a bad feeling it was U of I.)

Wrestling is a part of the Iowa landscape – it is more popular here than in any other state. (And no, I’m not just talking about the Straw Poll.)

We all know something about wrestling. Even if you have never been to a wrestling meet, even if you couldn’t care less about the sport, we all have some experience wrestling, because wrestling is not just something that happens over at Hilton Coliseum. There is a lot of mental and spiritual wrestling that goes on in our lives. Life can be a real struggle. When the stress and the pressure and the uncertainty pile up, when times of grief and pain and sadness come, when we have to make hard choices, when events happen and our notions of how the world works and what our faith means are called into question, we can sometimes feel like we are wrestling – with others, with life, maybe even with ourselves. Maybe even with God.

We have been looking at the life of Jacob this summer. The lectionary followed the story line of Jacob’s life for a few Sundays, but we have gone on to fill in some of the rest of the story. You can read it through in Genesis and figure out why we left out some of it. As we have learned, it is quite a story. Wrestling seems a perfect metaphor for Jacob’s life.

He wrestled with Esau – he was born grabbing Esau’s heel and just kept wrestling with him, taking his birthright and blessing and then fleeing for his life, going back to the old country as his mother suggested to find a wife. He wound up in a wrestling match with Uncle Laban. He worked for Laban for 20 years. He worked seven years for the right to marry Rachel, but Laban pulled the old switcheroo and Jacob unknowingly married Rachel’s older sister Leah. Jacob then worked another seven years to marry Rachel, the one he loved. Being married to two women, two sisters at that, and having an obvious favorite did not exactly lead to marital bliss or family tranquility. More wrestling.

In the end, Jacob wound up profiting from his time with Laban. He made what at the time seemed like a good deal for Laban – after working 14 years for two wives, Jacob’s wage from that point would be the speckled and spotted lambs and black sheep of the flock – which would seem to be a small percentage.

As we read it, it doesn’t really make sense in terms of animal husbandry, it has a hocus-pocus quality to it, but Jacob has a way to make the flock produce young that were striped and speckled and spotted, and so his flock becomes very large. Jacob by now has 12 sons and one daughter, and he is very wealthy. But all is not well. Even though Jacob prospers, he’s not happy. After all, he’s still working for his uncle, and Laban’s sons are becoming upset that Jacob is whittling away at what is rightfully theirs.

Jacob is in a tenuous situation. Laban can see that an unusually high percentage of the flock is speckled and spotted and he knows Jacob is up to something, as always. It was time for Jacob to move on, time to head back home to see if his parents are still alive. It was time to face Esau. It was time to face the music.

Twenty years after leaving home, twenty years after taking both the birthright and blessing that belonged to Esau, twenty years after fleeing for his life, Jacob is still fearful.

First, he is fearful of Laban. He loads up all of his belongings and with flocks and servants and wives and children in tow, he flees in the dead of night. It is three days before Laban finds out that Jacob has taken his daughters and grandchildren and up and left. Laban catches up with the whole contingent and Jacob and Laban come to an understanding. They wind up pledging a covenant. “May the Lord watch between you and me while we are absent one from another,” they say. It’s a verse you can find on charms and pendants that friends wear when they are apart – you have to put the two charms together to complete the verse. It sounds beautiful, but those charms leave out the next part, which says, if you mistreat my daughters or take another wife, God will see it (and the implication is, “I will hunt you down.”) I’d like to see the Christian bookstores try to sell a charm with that verse.

Finally Jacob and his household are on the move, on their way. Jacob may have been fearful of Laban, but he was more fearful of his brother Esau. He sends messengers ahead to meet Esau, hoping to find favor with his brother. And the messengers return, saying that Esau is coming to meet him. And he is bringing 400 men.

This did not sound like good news. Jacob is panicky. He divides his group into two companies, thinking that if there is bloodshed, maybe at least half of them might survive. He sends gifts ahead to Esau, hoping for his favor.

Jacob comes to the Jabbok River. He helps his wives and children and flocks cross the river, he gets all of his possessions across. Jacob is the last one remaining, the last one left to cross the river. And suddenly, there is a man there, wrestling with him. They wrestle until daybreak. Neither will give in. Jacob holds on for dear life; he refuses to let go. And somewhere along the way, Jacob realizes that he is not wrestling with Esau; he is wrestling with God. The Hebrew people believed that no one could look at God and live. So perhaps God is trying to protect Jacob by trying to end the fight. “Let me go, for day is breaking.”

But even with the danger of death, Jacob will not let go. He literally will not let go even if it kills him. The man struck Jacob on the hip and he is in pain, but he still will not let go. Some of you know what hip pain is like, but Jacob continues to struggle. Jacob says, “I will not let go until you bless me.”

And God, the wrestler, says, “What is your name?”

Where have we heard this before? Twenty years earlier, Jacob schemed his way to receiving the blessing of his father Isaac, the blessing intended for his brother. The last time Jacob asked for a blessing, Isaac had said, “Who are you? Tell me your name.” How many times had Jacob replayed that scene in his mind? How many times had he been unable to sleep, remembering that he had said, “I am your son Esau.”

And now, here it is again. “What is your name?” But this time, he answers, “I am Jacob.” The Schemer. The Trickster. The Shyster. The Manipulator. I am Jacob, the one who deceived his father and betrayed his brother, the one who will outmaneuver anyone I can. I am Jacob . . . please bless me.

It may be the first time Jacob has fully owned up to his identity. This time he is not stealing the blessing that belongs to someone else. He is not lying and cheating in order to get what is another’s. He is asking for a blessing that suits him, and before he can get it, he has to stand honestly before God with all his virtues and shortcomings plain to see. When he finally does this, finally admits that he is who he is, God offers him a new name.

“You shall be called Israel, for you have striven with God and humans and have prevailed.” Jacob is now Israel – the one who strives with God, the God-wrestler. It is a positive affirmation of who Jacob is.

Walter Brueggeman sees the wrestling with God as a prayer. He writes,

The prayer is an honest, unflinching conversation between partners, albeit disproportionate partners, who have a shared interest which Jacob is not timid in pursuing.

I propose that too much conventional church prayer is excessively soft and accommodating, and has lost the defiant edge that belongs to petitionary prayer. Such prayers are softened in our common usage, on the one hand, by defeatist piety too much shaped by moralism. That is, prayer assumes that in our condition we have no rights to press or insist upon God. On the other hand, such softened prayer is influenced by modernist secularism which does not ask much, because God has become a stable object but no active subject. I.e., we do not pray vigorously because we do not imagine a God who could respond vigorously or effectively. Our sense of self is too humiliated and our sense of God is too emptied to pray with the nerve and robustness that father Jacob readily utters.

Brueggeman is right. We don’t talk to God the way Jacob did. We don’t wrestle with God like that because we either think we shouldn’t talk to God in that way or we don’t think God can really do anything about our situation.

Not Jacob. Roberta Hestenes asked, “What is it that Jacob wanted more than anything else in life? What is it that we, in the deepest longings of our being, want more than anything else?”

She answers, “Sometimes we don’t even know how to put our longings into words. But the word for Jacob was the word “blessing.” I want to know the smile of God. I want to know the favor of God. I want to know that what I am doing with my life is pleasing to the one who made me, that my life has purpose and significance that honors the God that has called me and made promises to me.”

Jacob wrestled with God, he held on until he was blessed, and he was forever changed by the struggle. Anne Lamott says that God loves you just the way you are and God loves you too much to let you stay that way. Twenty years earlier, God told Jacob that God would be with him and protect him and bless him, which is another way of saying that God loved him. Since that encounter, Jacob has gone on being himself, grasping and scheming his way into more than his share of his Uncle Laban’s wealth. God has loved Jacob all along, but this is his moment of transformation. And it comes through struggle.

In our New Testament lesson, Paul writes to the Philippians and says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Through the struggle.

At the beginning of the movie “Shadowlands,” C.S. Lewis lectures confidently on the problem of evil. “Suffering is the megaphone through which God gets our attention,” he tells his students. He speaks as somebody who has all the answers, because he has never really struggled with these questions. At the end of the movie, Lewis’ wife has died of cancer. Lewis knows that he needs to talk to her son, Douglas, to try to offer a comforting word. He decides to tell the boy about his own mother’s death. Lewis says, “When I was about your age my mother got sick and I prayed so hard for her to get well.” Douglas interrupts, “It doesn’t work, does it?” For what looks like the first time, Lewis isn’t sure how to answer.

Finally he begins to cry, “No. It doesn’t work.” Out of grief, through struggle, beyond anything that he imagined, Lewis finds his way to a faith that has been strengthened and proven through the fire.

Sometimes we have to wrestle with our faith, wrestle with what we believe, wrestle with our notions of who God is and how God operates, in order to come to a deeper and stronger faith.

We always look at this story from Jacob’s point of view. But it may look different from God’s point of view. One writer imagined this from God’s viewpoint and sees God holding Jacob through the night as Jacob wrestled with himself. A lot of the wrestling we do may be wrestling with life, wrestling with choices, wrestling with circumstances, wrestling with ourselves in the presence of God.

School is about to start. Students are already arriving. Some of our students who live in Ames will be going away to college soon (at least one of you right after the benediction!), and through it all, through our experience at ISU - or UNI or DMACC or Cincinnati or the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, or wherever, there will be plenty of wrestling going on. And it’s not just students: there are all kinds of kinds of changes in life that all of us have to face. There will be struggles and hard choices and decisions about friends and values and time and vocation and priorities. There are decisions we all have to make about what is good and what is just and what is right. If we take God seriously, there will be struggles about where and how we fit in God’s world and how we will live out this life that God had blessed us with and what part we will have in making known God’s goodness and justice and mercy and love.

Life involves struggle, and sometimes it can be painful. But as we struggle, God is there alongside us, blessing us, transforming us, holding us until we see the sunrise. God loves us just the way we are, and God loves us too much to let us stay that way. Amen.