Making war, making change
Commentary
It has happened more than once that I have been counseling a young couple who are planning to get married, and the discussion has come around to the subject of fighting, arguing, and conflict. It's a standard point I raise in various ways in premarital counseling, wanting to get the issue of conflict on the table and look at how it happens in their relationship. And it has happened that the couple looks at me and says something to the effect, "Oh, no, pastor, we're too much in love to argue." Implied in what they say is the idea that they will always be so much in love that they won't ever fight. And what is most extraordinary about it is that they really seem to believe it. Admittedly, when I have run into this it has been with naive and very young couples, and it is also a phenomenon that I have seen less and less lately.
Now, I have to say that that view of how their marriage will be doesn't mean that their marriage is in jeopardy. I have usually been pretty confident that it won't be too long before they have their first fight and so discover the truth that there is conflict in all marriages.
Nevertheless, there is a distinct view that comes through in such comments, one that the culture promotes. It is the view that we can actually not have conflict, that we can actually go through a marriage, or a meeting of a church board, or have nations that adjoin each other or that trade with each other, without disagreements or arguments or out-and-out warfare.
And the corollary to that view is the idea that there can be true change without some kind of conflict.
Well, that may be so in some arenas of life. I'm just not sure where. And Israel, born Jacob, would be the first to tell you that fighting produces deep change, perhaps, most of all, fighting with God.
Genesis 32:22-31
Jacob comes to the river Jabbok with his family out of the wreckage of his tumultuous life, a life of battling with someone, or deceiving someone, or conning someone out of something. Thus far, Jacob has not been an exemplary character; just ask his brother Esau or his father-in-law Laban. Now, after his sojourn in Haran where he married and got rich and fathered a family, Jacob is returning home to Canaan.
The story of his wrestling with God is strange and confusing. Commentators are agreed that it bears the marks of great antiquity and of the pre-literary oral tradition and of pre-Israelite Canaan, on the basis, among other things, of the very confusion and the questions that the account raises.
In verse 24, the wrestling begins very matter of factly, the second clause of the sentence making it seem like a mere afterthought. So far there is neither an explanation for the wrestling nor an identity of the man. Clearly, Jacob is very strong (see 29:10 on Jacob's strength) and so in the night-long fight, he prevails. But then in verse 25 we get a hint that the man is something more than just a man, for he knows a magical place to touch Jacob to make him lame. Yet still Jacob holds on. The man's request to be released because daylight is coming leads some to suggest that in the story's pre-Israelite form the man was a nocturnal demon. Jacob senses the being's power, for he insists on a blessing as a condition of releasing him. In response, the man asks Jacob's name, and Jacob, trustingly, gives it. At that point the man gives Jacob a new name, and in so doing identifies himself as God. Has Jacob indeed prevailed over the Creator? Jacob in turn asks the man's name, but doesn't get it, instead getting the blessing he had sought. Apparently it is now clear to Jacob that the supernatural being he had wrestled with was God, so he names the place in honor of what happened there.
Certainly in this story the issue of naming is of the highest importance. To the Hebrew mind -- in fact for many ancient peoples -- a name is more than a superficial attachment to a person or a place. There is a connection between the essence of a thing and the name it bears. In the case of a person, a name reflects an inner quality, or perhaps a destiny. Thus Jacob the Supplanter (Genesis 25:26) has become Israel, the One who Strives with God, and with that new name comes, we shall see, a change in Jacob. Further, there is distinct power in knowing someone's name. So it is that Jacob put himself in the man's power when he actually told him his name, which is precisely the same reason that the being never gave his name.
Our understanding of the significance of the story depends on the larger context. Because what we really see here is the beginning of the transformation of Jacob, marked by the change in his name. Where he has been dishonest and crafty, he will become the true patriarch and the father of the nation of God's chosen people, beginning with his coming reconciliation with Esau. Jacob has fought with God. He has not emerged unscathed. He is permanently lamed, but there is a deeper and more fundamental change in Jacob. He has been remade, recast, as a result of the battle.
Romans 9:1-5
Paul was a man for all seasons and a man of all contexts in the first-century world. He was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, he was a citizen of Rome, he was born in the Greek-speaking city of Tarsus, he was a Pharisee, and he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. The New Testament reports many of the struggles within him over all of those roles and positions, not least of which was the fact that he had been a persecutor of the church. Yet no conflict within him brought him more anguish than the fact and the fate of his people, Israel.
This short reading is but a fragment of, the introduction to, the great struggle of Paul with the question of the Jews, chapters 9 through 11 of Romans. How do you deal with the fact of Israel's unbelief, that the Jews have not come -- in Paul's time or in ours -- to know Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah?
The depth of Paul's feeling is clear: not only does he state it uncategorically in verse 2, but he even goes on to say in verse 3 that if he could be accursed and thereby bring Israel to Christ, he would do so gladly.
And then we come to verses 4 and 5, a uniquely powerful statement about Israel, particularly in the NRSV: "They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen."
The last doxological lines of verse 5 have long been argued about. The argument is one of punctuation, so it really isn't clear from the Greek. Here's the question: Does Paul intend "God" to be in apposition with "Messiah"? (NRSV). In other words, is Paul intending to say that Jesus is God? The KJV and the RSV both render "christos" "Christ," while the NRSV changes matters slightly by translating it "Messiah." In the RSV the blessing is directed to God who is not identified with Christ. The KJV and the NRSV are more ambiguous, which is probably the best place to leave it.
Here in these last two verses of the reading we have a singularly concise, but also singularly accurate, appraisal of the role of Israel in God's saving history. It brings to mind God's call to Abraham in Genesis, and the role of Abraham in the salvation of the world, "I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3).
It points out the utter irony that God's salvation has come, in all respects, through the people Israel, yet they have not believed in the culminating event of that salvation. Again it brings to mind the line from John's prologue, "He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him."
But this passage only poses the question and deals with Paul's deep feelings. To get more, to hear Paul's answer, we look beyond the lectionary at the larger context, and to Paul's deep hope and belief, to be found in 11:26, that "all Israel will be saved."
Matthew 14:13-21
Altogether, there are six accounts of the feeding of a large number of people in the four Gospels. Matthew and Mark each have two -- first, five thousand, then four -- while Luke and John each have one. It seems clear that they all emerge from a common tradition that at some point became duplicated.
The first part of verse 13, "heard this," refers to the gruesome death of John the Baptist. So Jesus withdrew. Was it out of grief for the death of his friend and kinsman? Or perhaps it was fear for his own safety? We don't know, but the Gospels are clear that Jesus would on occasion go off by himself -- from 40 days in the wilderness to the Garden of Gethsemane. It was into that context that the crowd came clamoring. He wanted and needed to be alone, but the crowd wanted him, they wanted his teaching and his healing, or perhaps some unguessed-at promise that this strange rabbi seemed to hold.
In response to their need, and despite his own need, Jesus had compassion. He healed them and fed them.
In a previous era, one of the chief exegetical tasks when dealing with miracles was to find a naturalistic explanation, one that people could readily accept. So one explanation frequently offered for the multiplication of fish and loaves was that the people had food hidden in the sleeves of their clothes, and they were moved by Jesus' own compassion to have compassion for others and so they brought out their food and shared it. The real miracle, goes this explanation, was one of inspired compassion. Uh ... Well ... In the face of such absurd assertions, it's usually best to keep a smile on your face and move on. The postmodern interpretive task with miracle stories, I believe, is to keep the mystery and the power, not explain it away into nothingness. That means wrestling with it, possibly saying, simply, "I don't know," or perhaps actually accepting it, all the while letting the story stand as it is and speak to us.
There is no question that the feeding has a eucharistic feel and connection, carrying anticipatory echoes of what is to come later, specifically verse 19b, "... he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples...." Is the story a retrospection from the Last Supper? Or perhaps the eucharistic language was simply borrowed from the account of the Last Supper? Again, to take a hard stance on such issues often results in depriving the story of its meaning and power.
Let it suffice to say that Jesus' compassion is a major theme in the story, the compassion he had even when he was depleted and needed to be by himself, a compassion that had enormous -- and miraculous -- power to meet people's needs.
Application
How wonderful it would be if life could be lived, and love could be treasured, and relationships between nations could be enjoyed, without conflict. In the past 20 years, there was a brief instant of hope that large conflict would be eliminated from the world. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama declared that with the fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent demise of communism, the world had reached "the end of history," that is, the "end point of human ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." It didn't last long. The strife in the former Yugoslavia, among other places, showed us that history in Fukuyama's sense was still going strong. And that was well before September 11, and the war on terrorism and the boiling crisis in the Middle East.
No, conflict is here to stay.
Very reasonably, we try to avoid it, and we hope it won't come. After all, human conflict, national conflict, familial conflict, tribal conflict, kills people or wounds them in body and soul. It happens both on the large scale of nations and the small scale of lovers. So the young couple I counseled genuinely and sincerely didn't want to think that their married life would have strife and fights. So we smooth things over, pour oil on the various troubled waters around us, douse the fires before they become raging infernos. There are countless metaphors for avoiding conflict. But there is a real danger in that.
The married couple who go out of their way to avoid all conflict are not really avoiding it, they are simply driving it inward and barring the door. The inner strife is still there waiting to emerge in some other form.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was roundly condemned in 1938 for his appeasement of Hitler and the Third Reich, avoiding conflict at all costs. He achieved what he called "peace for our time," which became a catchphrase for a nation burying its head in the sand. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn't appeased Hitler? But we do know what did happen in World War II.
Not only is conflict inevitable, it is also through conflict that change happens. In the human body, a muscle struggles against an object, a set of weights, say, and if the muscle does that enough, it grows, gets bigger, becomes able to push harder, it changes.
Likewise in a marriage, there is productive conflict, conflict that airs differences and resolves feelings, and ultimately builds a stronger, deeper relationship.
Now the danger here is that we become too sanguine about conflict, too ready to accept it, a Pollyanna, or perhaps a Pangloss, saying easily that all things work together for the best. We don't want to dismiss the pain and injuries caused by conflict. But we also need to affirm that very little true change happens in life without struggle.
Case in point: Jacob, a scoundrel who fought with an unknown creature, a man, a being, a demon, an angel, God. At the end, Jacob was certain that it was God he had fought. And in some way he prevailed, but only, of course, on God's terms. And God's terms for Jacob's victory were that even though Jacob prevailed in the struggle, he came out of the fight injured, lame for life, with a new name, Israel, and changed forever deep inside. What if Jacob had immediately made peace with his opponent and not fought at all? Well, of course we don't know, but the all-night-long struggle implies that it was important for it to happen. Only later would we see the change, as he reconciled with his estranged brother Esau, and as he became Israel, the father of the nation.
Certainly in many of us there is horror at the thought of fighting with God. After all, we have been taught to fear God and love God. But sometimes fighting with God, struggling in our hearts, through our church, in our studies, in our denominations, is exactly what God wants of us, because it is the means by which God touches our hips and lames us for his service, and gives us a new name for his service, and transforms us for his service.
An Alternate Application
Matthew 14:13-21: A Depleted Savior? Jesus needed to be alone; he was tired, maybe afraid. Perhaps he was depleted, wrung out. Yet despite his own need for solitude, Jesus met others' needs, healing and feeding people. Why? Why didn't he take time for himself, a mental health day, to use the current expression? The answer is that he was filled with compassion, and in some way that took priority for Jesus. It could be a model for us: Do we need to wait until we are completed healthy and whole to help other people? It could just be that it is as we minister to others, we ourselves are restored, and as we feed others, it feeds us.
First Lesson Focus
Genesis 32:22-31
We continue with a pivotal event in the life of the patriarch Jacob, the bearer of God's promise. Jacob has been living for 20 years with his Uncle Laban in Haran in Mesopotamia. During that time he has acquired two wives and 11 children, and, by cheating his uncle, much wealth. But now he has been commanded by God to return to his home in Canaan (Genesis 31:13). His leave-taking from Laban is not friendly, but is done, and Jacob journeys toward Canaan.
Awaiting Jacob in his homeland, however, is his brother Esau, who has vowed to kill him, and when Jacob hears that Esau is coming out to meet him with 400 men, Jacob is afraid. Nevertheless, Jacob, always the schemer, carefully plots his strategy. He sends a servant ahead of him with an enormous present of cattle for Esau. He divides his remaining entourage into separate droves, thinking that some of them may survive Esau's wrath. And in the night, he sends his wives and his 11 children across the ford of the River Jabbok into Canaan. Then Jacob, the cheat, the schemer, the rich man is left alone in the dark.
But Jacob is not alone. Suddenly he is attacked in the dark by a mysterious figure, who wrestles with him the whole night long, and who puts Jacob's thigh out of joint. Jacob, however, persists in the fight, and his name is changed by his protagonist from Jacob to Israel. Moreover, the figure blesses him and then leaves, and Jacob goes limping away, having prevailed in the struggle.
Now what are we to make of this strange incident? First of all, this is an ancient story, in which the mysterious figure asks Jacob to release him before the break of day. That is a relic from a time when it was thought that supernatural beings guarding a river ford lost their power in the daylight. But that ancient belief has been incorporated into the later story about Jacob.
Second, Jacob asks the name of the mysterious figure, because he recognizes that it is a divine figure. Again, that is an ancient touch in the story. The power of a god was contained in his name, and if you knew his name, you could gain control over him. But of course, the divine name is not given.
Jacob's name, however, is given and then changed. He is renamed "Israel," and that means "He who strives with God." And in the figure of this ancient patriarch, Israel sees her whole history embodied. She is the people who strives with the Lord. She is God's chosen people, but her election brings with it a constant struggle with the God who creates and owns her life. Constantly she fights against his commands. Constantly she suffers for her disobedience. Constantly, God must correct and forgive, love and wrestle with her to guide her in his chosen path. And that wrestling costs Israel something. She, like Jacob with his crippled thigh, is wounded in the struggle.
But most important in this story is the fact that Jacob-Israel persists. "I will not let you go," Jacob tells his antagonist, "until you bless me." And at the end of the wrestling, Jacob-Israel receives the blessing. Such is the lesson of faith that is communicated to us in this ancient text. Our life with God is a struggle, isn't it? Like Israel's, it is a wrestling, because it is not easy to be faithful to our Lord. Calamities come upon us, as they come upon all persons. Suffering is a common occurrence among us all. Sometimes God's commandments and will for our lives seem impossible to follow in a society and world such as ours. And we wrestle to be faithful. We wonder sometimes where God is and what he desires. We struggle to find the proper path amidst a turbulent history. We occasionally are tempted to give it all up and just to follow our own ways and desires.
And yet, like Jacob-Israel, we are to say to our Lord, "I will not let you go, God, until you bless me." We are to hang on to God for dear life. We are never to let him go, never waiver in our trust, never give up on his love. Because he is a God of infinite love who does indeed bless us, and who will continue to bless us in all our trials. Our Lord Jesus knew that when he made that ascent up the hill of Golgotha. And millions of faithful Christians have known that throughout the history of the Christian Church. With God are overwhelming measures of good and joy and abundant life, pressed down and running over. With God are blessings beyond counting. And the word to us is, "Hang on." Never let go of the Lord until he blesses you. Because he will.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 55:1-5
These five verses constitute the first stanza of the complete oracle found in Isaiah 55. And Isaiah 55 is the final chapter of the preaching of Second Isaiah to the Israelite exiles in Babylonia, sometime between 550 and 538 B.C. The whole first half of the poem is laced through with imperatives: "come," "buy," "eat," "hearken," "delight yourselves," "incline (your ear)," "hear," "seek," "call upon." So it is an urgent invitation, and the reason for it is stated in the second half, verses 8-13.
Exiled Israel is invited to a divine banquet. At God's table, she may partake of sustenance that will cost her nothing. She may have the necessities of life -- water and grain, verse 1. But she can also feast on luxurious fare -- the fat and tender portions of meat, verse 2. And if she will come, she can enjoy something far greater, namely, a life of fellowship with her God. In the past, God made an everlasting covenant with King David, guaranteeing his love for him. But now, Israel is told, God will extend that covenant to all of them. And just as David's victories witnessed to all peoples of the power of God in his life, so Israel's release from captivity (vv. 12-13) will witness to many nations and draw them to her.
Israel, however, must respond to God's urgent call. She must seek him while he has drawn near to her, she must call upon him, and she must forsake her wicked ways and unrighteous thoughts (vv. 6-7). If she will do so, God will pardon her all her unfaithful past and fulfill all his promises to her (vv. 10-11).
In similar manner, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ issues an urgent invitation to us. He offers us fellowship with himself, that communion with him that can sustain and nourish us all our life long. Not only will such fellowship gives us access to his sustaining presence, so that we can walk every day, but it can even furnish us with delights, like the choicest food at a heavenly banquet, so that we feel like soaring and singing.
It is a compelling invitation, isn't it? To have living water that can quench all our soul's thirst. To have sustaining bread that can satisfy our heart's every hunger. To have joy that the world can neither give nor ever take away. And it's all free, without price to us, though it cost God the crucifixion of his only begotten Son, and without labor, because really it is so easy to love the Father of Jesus. But one thing is asked of us -- that we RSVP -- that we reply to the merciful invitation by seeking our Lord and calling upon him in prayer, so that we sincerely want to turn away from our old ways to walk in his different ways. Trusting him, friends -- that's what is asked of us -- opening ourselves to his gracious invitation, for he is a forgiving God who wants so much for us to join him. Come, buy, eat, hear, seek, call -- the imperatives are all still there. And surely our fondest answer must be, "Lord, in gratitude we come."
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 17:1-7, 15
This psalm belongs in the category of "personal lament," which means it probably was not used for corporate worship, but by an individual pray-er. From the tone, the person is clearly in some unspecified distress, probably from persecutors of some sort. Protesting his innocence and his faithfulness to God, the psalmist asks for divine relief, and concludes with an expression of confidence that God will come to his aid (v. 18: "I shall awake satisfied").
Psalm 17 could easily be the prayer of a penitentiary inmate imprisoned for a crime he or she did not commit, a circumstance that unfortunately is not that rare in the penal system. With the number of DNA exonerations, revelations of lab errors and manufactured evidence cases in the news these days, it would not be unreasonable to use this psalm as the basis of sermon leading to prayer for those wrongly accused. A summary of the 1999 Denzel Washington movie The Hurricane, which tells the story of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter's imprisonment for a triple-murder he did not commit, would make a good opening hook for the sermon.
Or use the case of Gerald Amirault, 16 years in the Massachusetts penal system (at the time of this writing). Accused of child abuse in a case that for most people has been convincingly debunked (including the editors of The Wall Street Journal who advocate his immediate release), Amirault has been denied a parole hearing because he has refused participation in a treatment program for sex offenders. He says it is because the crime did not happen; the Massachusetts Department of Corrections maintains he is "in denial." Read the facts of the case yourself and make your own decision, but assuming he is innocent, as he says, then why should he "confess" to the crime to get a hearing? And then read this psalm again, imagining it were his prayer.
If talking about wrongly accused inmates seems too far removed from your congregation, you might also use this psalm to talk about our individual sense of sinfulness. When is it appropriate and when is a hypersensitive conscience that accuses when even God himself does not?
Now, I have to say that that view of how their marriage will be doesn't mean that their marriage is in jeopardy. I have usually been pretty confident that it won't be too long before they have their first fight and so discover the truth that there is conflict in all marriages.
Nevertheless, there is a distinct view that comes through in such comments, one that the culture promotes. It is the view that we can actually not have conflict, that we can actually go through a marriage, or a meeting of a church board, or have nations that adjoin each other or that trade with each other, without disagreements or arguments or out-and-out warfare.
And the corollary to that view is the idea that there can be true change without some kind of conflict.
Well, that may be so in some arenas of life. I'm just not sure where. And Israel, born Jacob, would be the first to tell you that fighting produces deep change, perhaps, most of all, fighting with God.
Genesis 32:22-31
Jacob comes to the river Jabbok with his family out of the wreckage of his tumultuous life, a life of battling with someone, or deceiving someone, or conning someone out of something. Thus far, Jacob has not been an exemplary character; just ask his brother Esau or his father-in-law Laban. Now, after his sojourn in Haran where he married and got rich and fathered a family, Jacob is returning home to Canaan.
The story of his wrestling with God is strange and confusing. Commentators are agreed that it bears the marks of great antiquity and of the pre-literary oral tradition and of pre-Israelite Canaan, on the basis, among other things, of the very confusion and the questions that the account raises.
In verse 24, the wrestling begins very matter of factly, the second clause of the sentence making it seem like a mere afterthought. So far there is neither an explanation for the wrestling nor an identity of the man. Clearly, Jacob is very strong (see 29:10 on Jacob's strength) and so in the night-long fight, he prevails. But then in verse 25 we get a hint that the man is something more than just a man, for he knows a magical place to touch Jacob to make him lame. Yet still Jacob holds on. The man's request to be released because daylight is coming leads some to suggest that in the story's pre-Israelite form the man was a nocturnal demon. Jacob senses the being's power, for he insists on a blessing as a condition of releasing him. In response, the man asks Jacob's name, and Jacob, trustingly, gives it. At that point the man gives Jacob a new name, and in so doing identifies himself as God. Has Jacob indeed prevailed over the Creator? Jacob in turn asks the man's name, but doesn't get it, instead getting the blessing he had sought. Apparently it is now clear to Jacob that the supernatural being he had wrestled with was God, so he names the place in honor of what happened there.
Certainly in this story the issue of naming is of the highest importance. To the Hebrew mind -- in fact for many ancient peoples -- a name is more than a superficial attachment to a person or a place. There is a connection between the essence of a thing and the name it bears. In the case of a person, a name reflects an inner quality, or perhaps a destiny. Thus Jacob the Supplanter (Genesis 25:26) has become Israel, the One who Strives with God, and with that new name comes, we shall see, a change in Jacob. Further, there is distinct power in knowing someone's name. So it is that Jacob put himself in the man's power when he actually told him his name, which is precisely the same reason that the being never gave his name.
Our understanding of the significance of the story depends on the larger context. Because what we really see here is the beginning of the transformation of Jacob, marked by the change in his name. Where he has been dishonest and crafty, he will become the true patriarch and the father of the nation of God's chosen people, beginning with his coming reconciliation with Esau. Jacob has fought with God. He has not emerged unscathed. He is permanently lamed, but there is a deeper and more fundamental change in Jacob. He has been remade, recast, as a result of the battle.
Romans 9:1-5
Paul was a man for all seasons and a man of all contexts in the first-century world. He was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, he was a citizen of Rome, he was born in the Greek-speaking city of Tarsus, he was a Pharisee, and he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. The New Testament reports many of the struggles within him over all of those roles and positions, not least of which was the fact that he had been a persecutor of the church. Yet no conflict within him brought him more anguish than the fact and the fate of his people, Israel.
This short reading is but a fragment of, the introduction to, the great struggle of Paul with the question of the Jews, chapters 9 through 11 of Romans. How do you deal with the fact of Israel's unbelief, that the Jews have not come -- in Paul's time or in ours -- to know Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah?
The depth of Paul's feeling is clear: not only does he state it uncategorically in verse 2, but he even goes on to say in verse 3 that if he could be accursed and thereby bring Israel to Christ, he would do so gladly.
And then we come to verses 4 and 5, a uniquely powerful statement about Israel, particularly in the NRSV: "They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen."
The last doxological lines of verse 5 have long been argued about. The argument is one of punctuation, so it really isn't clear from the Greek. Here's the question: Does Paul intend "God" to be in apposition with "Messiah"? (NRSV). In other words, is Paul intending to say that Jesus is God? The KJV and the RSV both render "christos" "Christ," while the NRSV changes matters slightly by translating it "Messiah." In the RSV the blessing is directed to God who is not identified with Christ. The KJV and the NRSV are more ambiguous, which is probably the best place to leave it.
Here in these last two verses of the reading we have a singularly concise, but also singularly accurate, appraisal of the role of Israel in God's saving history. It brings to mind God's call to Abraham in Genesis, and the role of Abraham in the salvation of the world, "I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3).
It points out the utter irony that God's salvation has come, in all respects, through the people Israel, yet they have not believed in the culminating event of that salvation. Again it brings to mind the line from John's prologue, "He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him."
But this passage only poses the question and deals with Paul's deep feelings. To get more, to hear Paul's answer, we look beyond the lectionary at the larger context, and to Paul's deep hope and belief, to be found in 11:26, that "all Israel will be saved."
Matthew 14:13-21
Altogether, there are six accounts of the feeding of a large number of people in the four Gospels. Matthew and Mark each have two -- first, five thousand, then four -- while Luke and John each have one. It seems clear that they all emerge from a common tradition that at some point became duplicated.
The first part of verse 13, "heard this," refers to the gruesome death of John the Baptist. So Jesus withdrew. Was it out of grief for the death of his friend and kinsman? Or perhaps it was fear for his own safety? We don't know, but the Gospels are clear that Jesus would on occasion go off by himself -- from 40 days in the wilderness to the Garden of Gethsemane. It was into that context that the crowd came clamoring. He wanted and needed to be alone, but the crowd wanted him, they wanted his teaching and his healing, or perhaps some unguessed-at promise that this strange rabbi seemed to hold.
In response to their need, and despite his own need, Jesus had compassion. He healed them and fed them.
In a previous era, one of the chief exegetical tasks when dealing with miracles was to find a naturalistic explanation, one that people could readily accept. So one explanation frequently offered for the multiplication of fish and loaves was that the people had food hidden in the sleeves of their clothes, and they were moved by Jesus' own compassion to have compassion for others and so they brought out their food and shared it. The real miracle, goes this explanation, was one of inspired compassion. Uh ... Well ... In the face of such absurd assertions, it's usually best to keep a smile on your face and move on. The postmodern interpretive task with miracle stories, I believe, is to keep the mystery and the power, not explain it away into nothingness. That means wrestling with it, possibly saying, simply, "I don't know," or perhaps actually accepting it, all the while letting the story stand as it is and speak to us.
There is no question that the feeding has a eucharistic feel and connection, carrying anticipatory echoes of what is to come later, specifically verse 19b, "... he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples...." Is the story a retrospection from the Last Supper? Or perhaps the eucharistic language was simply borrowed from the account of the Last Supper? Again, to take a hard stance on such issues often results in depriving the story of its meaning and power.
Let it suffice to say that Jesus' compassion is a major theme in the story, the compassion he had even when he was depleted and needed to be by himself, a compassion that had enormous -- and miraculous -- power to meet people's needs.
Application
How wonderful it would be if life could be lived, and love could be treasured, and relationships between nations could be enjoyed, without conflict. In the past 20 years, there was a brief instant of hope that large conflict would be eliminated from the world. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama declared that with the fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent demise of communism, the world had reached "the end of history," that is, the "end point of human ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." It didn't last long. The strife in the former Yugoslavia, among other places, showed us that history in Fukuyama's sense was still going strong. And that was well before September 11, and the war on terrorism and the boiling crisis in the Middle East.
No, conflict is here to stay.
Very reasonably, we try to avoid it, and we hope it won't come. After all, human conflict, national conflict, familial conflict, tribal conflict, kills people or wounds them in body and soul. It happens both on the large scale of nations and the small scale of lovers. So the young couple I counseled genuinely and sincerely didn't want to think that their married life would have strife and fights. So we smooth things over, pour oil on the various troubled waters around us, douse the fires before they become raging infernos. There are countless metaphors for avoiding conflict. But there is a real danger in that.
The married couple who go out of their way to avoid all conflict are not really avoiding it, they are simply driving it inward and barring the door. The inner strife is still there waiting to emerge in some other form.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was roundly condemned in 1938 for his appeasement of Hitler and the Third Reich, avoiding conflict at all costs. He achieved what he called "peace for our time," which became a catchphrase for a nation burying its head in the sand. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn't appeased Hitler? But we do know what did happen in World War II.
Not only is conflict inevitable, it is also through conflict that change happens. In the human body, a muscle struggles against an object, a set of weights, say, and if the muscle does that enough, it grows, gets bigger, becomes able to push harder, it changes.
Likewise in a marriage, there is productive conflict, conflict that airs differences and resolves feelings, and ultimately builds a stronger, deeper relationship.
Now the danger here is that we become too sanguine about conflict, too ready to accept it, a Pollyanna, or perhaps a Pangloss, saying easily that all things work together for the best. We don't want to dismiss the pain and injuries caused by conflict. But we also need to affirm that very little true change happens in life without struggle.
Case in point: Jacob, a scoundrel who fought with an unknown creature, a man, a being, a demon, an angel, God. At the end, Jacob was certain that it was God he had fought. And in some way he prevailed, but only, of course, on God's terms. And God's terms for Jacob's victory were that even though Jacob prevailed in the struggle, he came out of the fight injured, lame for life, with a new name, Israel, and changed forever deep inside. What if Jacob had immediately made peace with his opponent and not fought at all? Well, of course we don't know, but the all-night-long struggle implies that it was important for it to happen. Only later would we see the change, as he reconciled with his estranged brother Esau, and as he became Israel, the father of the nation.
Certainly in many of us there is horror at the thought of fighting with God. After all, we have been taught to fear God and love God. But sometimes fighting with God, struggling in our hearts, through our church, in our studies, in our denominations, is exactly what God wants of us, because it is the means by which God touches our hips and lames us for his service, and gives us a new name for his service, and transforms us for his service.
An Alternate Application
Matthew 14:13-21: A Depleted Savior? Jesus needed to be alone; he was tired, maybe afraid. Perhaps he was depleted, wrung out. Yet despite his own need for solitude, Jesus met others' needs, healing and feeding people. Why? Why didn't he take time for himself, a mental health day, to use the current expression? The answer is that he was filled with compassion, and in some way that took priority for Jesus. It could be a model for us: Do we need to wait until we are completed healthy and whole to help other people? It could just be that it is as we minister to others, we ourselves are restored, and as we feed others, it feeds us.
First Lesson Focus
Genesis 32:22-31
We continue with a pivotal event in the life of the patriarch Jacob, the bearer of God's promise. Jacob has been living for 20 years with his Uncle Laban in Haran in Mesopotamia. During that time he has acquired two wives and 11 children, and, by cheating his uncle, much wealth. But now he has been commanded by God to return to his home in Canaan (Genesis 31:13). His leave-taking from Laban is not friendly, but is done, and Jacob journeys toward Canaan.
Awaiting Jacob in his homeland, however, is his brother Esau, who has vowed to kill him, and when Jacob hears that Esau is coming out to meet him with 400 men, Jacob is afraid. Nevertheless, Jacob, always the schemer, carefully plots his strategy. He sends a servant ahead of him with an enormous present of cattle for Esau. He divides his remaining entourage into separate droves, thinking that some of them may survive Esau's wrath. And in the night, he sends his wives and his 11 children across the ford of the River Jabbok into Canaan. Then Jacob, the cheat, the schemer, the rich man is left alone in the dark.
But Jacob is not alone. Suddenly he is attacked in the dark by a mysterious figure, who wrestles with him the whole night long, and who puts Jacob's thigh out of joint. Jacob, however, persists in the fight, and his name is changed by his protagonist from Jacob to Israel. Moreover, the figure blesses him and then leaves, and Jacob goes limping away, having prevailed in the struggle.
Now what are we to make of this strange incident? First of all, this is an ancient story, in which the mysterious figure asks Jacob to release him before the break of day. That is a relic from a time when it was thought that supernatural beings guarding a river ford lost their power in the daylight. But that ancient belief has been incorporated into the later story about Jacob.
Second, Jacob asks the name of the mysterious figure, because he recognizes that it is a divine figure. Again, that is an ancient touch in the story. The power of a god was contained in his name, and if you knew his name, you could gain control over him. But of course, the divine name is not given.
Jacob's name, however, is given and then changed. He is renamed "Israel," and that means "He who strives with God." And in the figure of this ancient patriarch, Israel sees her whole history embodied. She is the people who strives with the Lord. She is God's chosen people, but her election brings with it a constant struggle with the God who creates and owns her life. Constantly she fights against his commands. Constantly she suffers for her disobedience. Constantly, God must correct and forgive, love and wrestle with her to guide her in his chosen path. And that wrestling costs Israel something. She, like Jacob with his crippled thigh, is wounded in the struggle.
But most important in this story is the fact that Jacob-Israel persists. "I will not let you go," Jacob tells his antagonist, "until you bless me." And at the end of the wrestling, Jacob-Israel receives the blessing. Such is the lesson of faith that is communicated to us in this ancient text. Our life with God is a struggle, isn't it? Like Israel's, it is a wrestling, because it is not easy to be faithful to our Lord. Calamities come upon us, as they come upon all persons. Suffering is a common occurrence among us all. Sometimes God's commandments and will for our lives seem impossible to follow in a society and world such as ours. And we wrestle to be faithful. We wonder sometimes where God is and what he desires. We struggle to find the proper path amidst a turbulent history. We occasionally are tempted to give it all up and just to follow our own ways and desires.
And yet, like Jacob-Israel, we are to say to our Lord, "I will not let you go, God, until you bless me." We are to hang on to God for dear life. We are never to let him go, never waiver in our trust, never give up on his love. Because he is a God of infinite love who does indeed bless us, and who will continue to bless us in all our trials. Our Lord Jesus knew that when he made that ascent up the hill of Golgotha. And millions of faithful Christians have known that throughout the history of the Christian Church. With God are overwhelming measures of good and joy and abundant life, pressed down and running over. With God are blessings beyond counting. And the word to us is, "Hang on." Never let go of the Lord until he blesses you. Because he will.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 55:1-5
These five verses constitute the first stanza of the complete oracle found in Isaiah 55. And Isaiah 55 is the final chapter of the preaching of Second Isaiah to the Israelite exiles in Babylonia, sometime between 550 and 538 B.C. The whole first half of the poem is laced through with imperatives: "come," "buy," "eat," "hearken," "delight yourselves," "incline (your ear)," "hear," "seek," "call upon." So it is an urgent invitation, and the reason for it is stated in the second half, verses 8-13.
Exiled Israel is invited to a divine banquet. At God's table, she may partake of sustenance that will cost her nothing. She may have the necessities of life -- water and grain, verse 1. But she can also feast on luxurious fare -- the fat and tender portions of meat, verse 2. And if she will come, she can enjoy something far greater, namely, a life of fellowship with her God. In the past, God made an everlasting covenant with King David, guaranteeing his love for him. But now, Israel is told, God will extend that covenant to all of them. And just as David's victories witnessed to all peoples of the power of God in his life, so Israel's release from captivity (vv. 12-13) will witness to many nations and draw them to her.
Israel, however, must respond to God's urgent call. She must seek him while he has drawn near to her, she must call upon him, and she must forsake her wicked ways and unrighteous thoughts (vv. 6-7). If she will do so, God will pardon her all her unfaithful past and fulfill all his promises to her (vv. 10-11).
In similar manner, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ issues an urgent invitation to us. He offers us fellowship with himself, that communion with him that can sustain and nourish us all our life long. Not only will such fellowship gives us access to his sustaining presence, so that we can walk every day, but it can even furnish us with delights, like the choicest food at a heavenly banquet, so that we feel like soaring and singing.
It is a compelling invitation, isn't it? To have living water that can quench all our soul's thirst. To have sustaining bread that can satisfy our heart's every hunger. To have joy that the world can neither give nor ever take away. And it's all free, without price to us, though it cost God the crucifixion of his only begotten Son, and without labor, because really it is so easy to love the Father of Jesus. But one thing is asked of us -- that we RSVP -- that we reply to the merciful invitation by seeking our Lord and calling upon him in prayer, so that we sincerely want to turn away from our old ways to walk in his different ways. Trusting him, friends -- that's what is asked of us -- opening ourselves to his gracious invitation, for he is a forgiving God who wants so much for us to join him. Come, buy, eat, hear, seek, call -- the imperatives are all still there. And surely our fondest answer must be, "Lord, in gratitude we come."
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 17:1-7, 15
This psalm belongs in the category of "personal lament," which means it probably was not used for corporate worship, but by an individual pray-er. From the tone, the person is clearly in some unspecified distress, probably from persecutors of some sort. Protesting his innocence and his faithfulness to God, the psalmist asks for divine relief, and concludes with an expression of confidence that God will come to his aid (v. 18: "I shall awake satisfied").
Psalm 17 could easily be the prayer of a penitentiary inmate imprisoned for a crime he or she did not commit, a circumstance that unfortunately is not that rare in the penal system. With the number of DNA exonerations, revelations of lab errors and manufactured evidence cases in the news these days, it would not be unreasonable to use this psalm as the basis of sermon leading to prayer for those wrongly accused. A summary of the 1999 Denzel Washington movie The Hurricane, which tells the story of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter's imprisonment for a triple-murder he did not commit, would make a good opening hook for the sermon.
Or use the case of Gerald Amirault, 16 years in the Massachusetts penal system (at the time of this writing). Accused of child abuse in a case that for most people has been convincingly debunked (including the editors of The Wall Street Journal who advocate his immediate release), Amirault has been denied a parole hearing because he has refused participation in a treatment program for sex offenders. He says it is because the crime did not happen; the Massachusetts Department of Corrections maintains he is "in denial." Read the facts of the case yourself and make your own decision, but assuming he is innocent, as he says, then why should he "confess" to the crime to get a hearing? And then read this psalm again, imagining it were his prayer.
If talking about wrongly accused inmates seems too far removed from your congregation, you might also use this psalm to talk about our individual sense of sinfulness. When is it appropriate and when is a hypersensitive conscience that accuses when even God himself does not?
