An Incredible Encounter
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle A
Jacob sends presents to brother Esau in the hope of finding favor with him. The messengers return with frightening news: There is no thanks from Esau and Esau is coming to meet Jacob with 400 men! Jacob, frightened and stressed, develops a plan. He divides his people and flocks into two groups. If Esau should attack one group, the remaining group may well be saved. Next, Jacob prays to the God of Abraham and Isaac. He dares pray for protection from Esau even though he knows he does not deserve it.
Then methodically, Jacob sends presents in waves. Between each collection of goats, ewes, camels, colts, cows, and donkeys, the servants are to answer the question, "Who is sending these gifts?" with "They belong to your servant Jacob and they are a present send to my lord Esau, and moreover he is behind us" (Genesis 32:17--18).
Personal fears can be very real. They can be exaggerated, imagined, discounted, or ignored, but when someone vows to kill you, that is a sure attention--getter and a legitimate fear.
"A 1,000--pound bomb had been dropped and failed to explode. Instead it got buried in the ground. A member of the bomb--disposal squad was lowered into the crater and sat calmly on the now--exposed bomb and began to remove its fuse. Suddenly, he hollered, 'Get me out of here! Quick!' His squad members hurriedly hauled him up and asked, 'Is the bomb about to explode?' 'I don't know about that,' he exclaimed, 'but look at that rat!' A rat had frightened him more than the bomb."1
Jacob had every reason to be terrorized. He had cheated his brother Esau, not only once, but twice and fully expected payback. He deserved retaliation. He expected a blow--up.
A lady in Arkansas nearly stepped on an angry copperhead in her backyard. At first she did not recognize it and was intrigued, but then quickly shuddered because of the threat to herself and her young daughter. She quickly plopped a pail over the serpent until help arrived.
"Education," wrote Angelo Patri, "consists of being afraid of the right things."
The great and grand fear we are taught from Genesis to Revelation is "the fear of the Lord." This is not being scared of God. It is maintaining a reverential trust in God - not wanting to offend God's loving and gracious presence. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Psalm 111:10).
With Jacob, the faithful confrontation with Esau is nearing. After he sends his two wives, two maids, eleven children, and all he owns back across the river Jabbok, he is left alone.
It is night. Often trouble comes at night. The late phone call triggers worry. Trouble knocks in the darkness. And when one is alone, one is especially vulnerable.
A figure in the darkness grabs Jacob! They wrestle! The two combatants battle all night! Rolling and tussling in the sand, they inflict every wrestler's move - the half nelson, the body kick, the scissor squeeze. This is no dream, nightmare, nor sleepy introspection, but a challenging physical engagement. Who is this stranger? Esau in disguise? A bandit? A messenger from God?
Jacob takes a risk engaging this stranger. He could lose this wrestling match. He could get hurt or killed. Jacob could have run away, escaped, or hid in the nearby rocks of the brook Jabbok. But Jacob plunges ahead. Jacob is neither cowardly, nor shallow. He puts himself into it with all he's got.
Neil Simon once said: "If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor."
On October 5, 1976, Ed Yost, the inventor of the modern hot air balloon, took a risk. He launched from Milbridge, Maine, at 6:20 p.m. and set out to be the first man to cross the Atlantic by a low--altitude helium balloon. Many had tried before and several died. Nonetheless, Ed nearly succeeded, traveling 107 hours, 37 minutes, and covering 2,740 miles before crashing into the sea 200 miles east of the Azones. He set a dozen records flying the Silver Fox, many of which still stand today.2 Ed later assisted a team who did successfully cross the Atlantic and still later built the balloon that Joe Kittinger flew to become the first solo flight to cross the big pond.
"When Jesus calls a man, he bids him to come and die," said Bonhoeffer. There is no greater risk than to offer one's life.
Walt Disney was a risk taker and a great visionary. Charles Swindoll tells the following story about Disney: "Several years ago I met a gentleman who served on one of Walt Disney's original advisory boards. What amazing stories he told! Those early days were tough; but that remarkable, creative visionary refused to give up. I especially appreciated the man's sharing with me how Disney responded to disagreement. He said that Walt would occasionally present some unbelievable, extensive dream he was entertaining. Almost without exception, the members of the board would gulp, blink, and stare back at him in disbelief, resisting even the thought of such a thing. But unless every member resisted the idea, Disney usually didn't pursue it. Yes, you read that correctly. The challenge wasn't big enough to merit his time and creative energy unless they were unanimously in disagreement ... Is it any wonder that Disneyland and Disney World are now realities?"3
The pummeling and punching ends in a draw. Both win. Both lose. The stranger is Elohim. Incredible as it seems, the God of the universe has taken on human form and "mixes it up" with Jacob.
Was the greater risk Jacob's or God's? Why would God wrestle with Jacob? Was this a disciplinary action for Jacob? Was this a call to conversion and change? Was this a test to see if Jacob's faith was sterling or sawdust?
Was this struggle with God a gracious rehearsal for what Jacob might experience when he soon faced Esau? How could Jacob even stay in the ring with Elohim?
Here God is not described with all the godly attributes as all--powerful, all--knowing, omniscient, and omnipresent. Yet grace appears amazingly when God "mixes it up with Jacob," challenges, convicts, evaluates, and judges him.
When the stranger sees that he does not prevail against Jacob, he strikes Jacob on the thigh and puts his hip out of joint. Jacob is marked permanently, just as Christians are marked permanently with the cross of Christ in Holy Baptism.
As Jacob goes limping about, he turns to his adversary and demands, "I will not let you go unless you bless me" (Genesis 32:26).
"What is your name?" the adversary asks.
"Jacob."
"You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed" (Genesis 32:25--28). The new name Israel means "prince of God."
So Jacob, limping away because of his dislocated hip, calls the place where he wrestled with Elohim Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved" (Genesis 32:30). Biblical tradition holds that if one actually sees the face of God, one will die from the sheer power of it. (See Exodus 33:20; Numbers 12:8; Judges 13:22.) Recall that when Moses returned from Mount Sinai, his face was shining, from being in the very presence of God.
It is an awesome, sobering thing to experience the presence and power of God in one's life. This presence comes in the stillness of utter silence. It comes in loud, crashing, bashing, lashing tumults of life - sickness, death, divorce, tragedies, and sadnesses. It comes in a song, a worship moment, in the sweet sacraments. The presence of God can be highly emotional or an intense intellectual searching and yearning.
There's great glory in worshiping an awesome God and at the same time wrestling in the dirt with Elohim. God often is in our adversity. God is not the perpetrator of adversity and trouble, but struggles with us in the desperate circumstances of life.
The Psalmists often struggled with God deep in their souls and in their common lives. In his commentary on the Psalms, Walter Brueggeman uses three categories to group the Psalmists' wrestling with God: (1) Psalms of orientation articulate the joy, delight, goodness, coherence, and reliability of God. (2) Psalms of disorientation give voice to seasons of confusion, alienation, and displacement. (3) Psalms of new orientation speak boldly about a new gift from God, a fresh intrusion that makes all things new.
Disorientation means opportunity for transformation and growth. As Jacob traveled in transition, moving from one place to another, threatened by his fear of Esau, and now mixing it up with a face--to--face encounter with God, would he in fact grow and change?
Was this Peniel experience a test like that of Abraham? Would Jacob rise above the challenge? When Christians are confronted in the dark night of the soul by adversity, they may rise above the challenge by engaging it and overcoming it, meet it with a sense of humor, and/or be changed and transformed in it by the Holy Spirit.
Martin Luther said, "It is impossible for a human heart, without crosses and tribulations, to think upon God."
When scientists sequestered themselves in an artificial environment called Biosphere 2, they discovered that nearly every weather condition could be simulated except one, wind. Over time, the effects of their windless environment became apparent. A number of acacia trees bent over and even snapped. Without the stress of the wind to strengthen the wood, the trunks grew weak and could not hold up their own weight.
Someone named it "the adversity principle." Problems make us stronger. Life without challenge (and wrestling) takes its toll on every living creature.4
James wrote, "My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:2--4).
Some folks flunk the test while others pass. For many, adversity produces character while adversity leads others to loss of faith. Adversity makes people bitter or better.
Stories abound of folks who rise above adversity. Demosthenes, the greatest orator of the ancient world, stuttered! The first time he tried to make a public speech, he was laughed off the rostrum. Julius Caesar was an epileptic. Beethoven was deaf, as was Thomas Edison. Charles Dickens was lame, so was Handel; Homer was blind; Plato was a hunchback; Sir Walter Scott was paralyzed. One musician was so nearsighted he couldn't read the musical score. So he memorized not only his part, but every part. He was the famous Arturo Toscanini.
Adversity may be met in part with a sense of humor. They had just become engaged, and she promised, "I'll be with you, dear, to share your troubles."
"But, darling," he protested, "I don't have any."
"You will," she prophesied.
The airplane ride was so rough that the stewardess poured the food directly into the sick sacks.
Pilot: "Pilot to tower ... pilot to tower ... I am 300 miles from land ... 600 feet high and running out of gas ... please instruct ... over."
Tower: "Tower to pilot ... tower to pilot ... repeat after me ... 'Our Father, which art in heaven....' "
Adversity potentially changes and transforms people by the work of the Holy Spirit. Jacob discovers a new humility. He can never walk in arrogance again. Lame Jacob becomes a better man. His pride is laid aside. Eventually he will confess his wrong to Esau, ask forgiveness, seek re--entrance into the relationship he knows he has abused.
A postscript to the story of the wrestling match at Peniel is that Jacob does meet Esau. They are reconciled. All Jacob's fears vanish in gratefulness.
____________
1. Michael Guido, Guido Evangelistic Association, used by permission.
2. National Geographic, February, 1977, issue, "The Longest Manned Balloon Flight," pp. 208--217.
3. Charles Swindoll, Living Above The Level Of Mediocrity (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1989), p. 107.
4. Richard Meyer, "Big Mack Attack," Faith At Work, Fall, 1998, p. 13.
Then methodically, Jacob sends presents in waves. Between each collection of goats, ewes, camels, colts, cows, and donkeys, the servants are to answer the question, "Who is sending these gifts?" with "They belong to your servant Jacob and they are a present send to my lord Esau, and moreover he is behind us" (Genesis 32:17--18).
Personal fears can be very real. They can be exaggerated, imagined, discounted, or ignored, but when someone vows to kill you, that is a sure attention--getter and a legitimate fear.
"A 1,000--pound bomb had been dropped and failed to explode. Instead it got buried in the ground. A member of the bomb--disposal squad was lowered into the crater and sat calmly on the now--exposed bomb and began to remove its fuse. Suddenly, he hollered, 'Get me out of here! Quick!' His squad members hurriedly hauled him up and asked, 'Is the bomb about to explode?' 'I don't know about that,' he exclaimed, 'but look at that rat!' A rat had frightened him more than the bomb."1
Jacob had every reason to be terrorized. He had cheated his brother Esau, not only once, but twice and fully expected payback. He deserved retaliation. He expected a blow--up.
A lady in Arkansas nearly stepped on an angry copperhead in her backyard. At first she did not recognize it and was intrigued, but then quickly shuddered because of the threat to herself and her young daughter. She quickly plopped a pail over the serpent until help arrived.
"Education," wrote Angelo Patri, "consists of being afraid of the right things."
The great and grand fear we are taught from Genesis to Revelation is "the fear of the Lord." This is not being scared of God. It is maintaining a reverential trust in God - not wanting to offend God's loving and gracious presence. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Psalm 111:10).
With Jacob, the faithful confrontation with Esau is nearing. After he sends his two wives, two maids, eleven children, and all he owns back across the river Jabbok, he is left alone.
It is night. Often trouble comes at night. The late phone call triggers worry. Trouble knocks in the darkness. And when one is alone, one is especially vulnerable.
A figure in the darkness grabs Jacob! They wrestle! The two combatants battle all night! Rolling and tussling in the sand, they inflict every wrestler's move - the half nelson, the body kick, the scissor squeeze. This is no dream, nightmare, nor sleepy introspection, but a challenging physical engagement. Who is this stranger? Esau in disguise? A bandit? A messenger from God?
Jacob takes a risk engaging this stranger. He could lose this wrestling match. He could get hurt or killed. Jacob could have run away, escaped, or hid in the nearby rocks of the brook Jabbok. But Jacob plunges ahead. Jacob is neither cowardly, nor shallow. He puts himself into it with all he's got.
Neil Simon once said: "If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor."
On October 5, 1976, Ed Yost, the inventor of the modern hot air balloon, took a risk. He launched from Milbridge, Maine, at 6:20 p.m. and set out to be the first man to cross the Atlantic by a low--altitude helium balloon. Many had tried before and several died. Nonetheless, Ed nearly succeeded, traveling 107 hours, 37 minutes, and covering 2,740 miles before crashing into the sea 200 miles east of the Azones. He set a dozen records flying the Silver Fox, many of which still stand today.2 Ed later assisted a team who did successfully cross the Atlantic and still later built the balloon that Joe Kittinger flew to become the first solo flight to cross the big pond.
"When Jesus calls a man, he bids him to come and die," said Bonhoeffer. There is no greater risk than to offer one's life.
Walt Disney was a risk taker and a great visionary. Charles Swindoll tells the following story about Disney: "Several years ago I met a gentleman who served on one of Walt Disney's original advisory boards. What amazing stories he told! Those early days were tough; but that remarkable, creative visionary refused to give up. I especially appreciated the man's sharing with me how Disney responded to disagreement. He said that Walt would occasionally present some unbelievable, extensive dream he was entertaining. Almost without exception, the members of the board would gulp, blink, and stare back at him in disbelief, resisting even the thought of such a thing. But unless every member resisted the idea, Disney usually didn't pursue it. Yes, you read that correctly. The challenge wasn't big enough to merit his time and creative energy unless they were unanimously in disagreement ... Is it any wonder that Disneyland and Disney World are now realities?"3
The pummeling and punching ends in a draw. Both win. Both lose. The stranger is Elohim. Incredible as it seems, the God of the universe has taken on human form and "mixes it up" with Jacob.
Was the greater risk Jacob's or God's? Why would God wrestle with Jacob? Was this a disciplinary action for Jacob? Was this a call to conversion and change? Was this a test to see if Jacob's faith was sterling or sawdust?
Was this struggle with God a gracious rehearsal for what Jacob might experience when he soon faced Esau? How could Jacob even stay in the ring with Elohim?
Here God is not described with all the godly attributes as all--powerful, all--knowing, omniscient, and omnipresent. Yet grace appears amazingly when God "mixes it up with Jacob," challenges, convicts, evaluates, and judges him.
When the stranger sees that he does not prevail against Jacob, he strikes Jacob on the thigh and puts his hip out of joint. Jacob is marked permanently, just as Christians are marked permanently with the cross of Christ in Holy Baptism.
As Jacob goes limping about, he turns to his adversary and demands, "I will not let you go unless you bless me" (Genesis 32:26).
"What is your name?" the adversary asks.
"Jacob."
"You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed" (Genesis 32:25--28). The new name Israel means "prince of God."
So Jacob, limping away because of his dislocated hip, calls the place where he wrestled with Elohim Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved" (Genesis 32:30). Biblical tradition holds that if one actually sees the face of God, one will die from the sheer power of it. (See Exodus 33:20; Numbers 12:8; Judges 13:22.) Recall that when Moses returned from Mount Sinai, his face was shining, from being in the very presence of God.
It is an awesome, sobering thing to experience the presence and power of God in one's life. This presence comes in the stillness of utter silence. It comes in loud, crashing, bashing, lashing tumults of life - sickness, death, divorce, tragedies, and sadnesses. It comes in a song, a worship moment, in the sweet sacraments. The presence of God can be highly emotional or an intense intellectual searching and yearning.
There's great glory in worshiping an awesome God and at the same time wrestling in the dirt with Elohim. God often is in our adversity. God is not the perpetrator of adversity and trouble, but struggles with us in the desperate circumstances of life.
The Psalmists often struggled with God deep in their souls and in their common lives. In his commentary on the Psalms, Walter Brueggeman uses three categories to group the Psalmists' wrestling with God: (1) Psalms of orientation articulate the joy, delight, goodness, coherence, and reliability of God. (2) Psalms of disorientation give voice to seasons of confusion, alienation, and displacement. (3) Psalms of new orientation speak boldly about a new gift from God, a fresh intrusion that makes all things new.
Disorientation means opportunity for transformation and growth. As Jacob traveled in transition, moving from one place to another, threatened by his fear of Esau, and now mixing it up with a face--to--face encounter with God, would he in fact grow and change?
Was this Peniel experience a test like that of Abraham? Would Jacob rise above the challenge? When Christians are confronted in the dark night of the soul by adversity, they may rise above the challenge by engaging it and overcoming it, meet it with a sense of humor, and/or be changed and transformed in it by the Holy Spirit.
Martin Luther said, "It is impossible for a human heart, without crosses and tribulations, to think upon God."
When scientists sequestered themselves in an artificial environment called Biosphere 2, they discovered that nearly every weather condition could be simulated except one, wind. Over time, the effects of their windless environment became apparent. A number of acacia trees bent over and even snapped. Without the stress of the wind to strengthen the wood, the trunks grew weak and could not hold up their own weight.
Someone named it "the adversity principle." Problems make us stronger. Life without challenge (and wrestling) takes its toll on every living creature.4
James wrote, "My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:2--4).
Some folks flunk the test while others pass. For many, adversity produces character while adversity leads others to loss of faith. Adversity makes people bitter or better.
Stories abound of folks who rise above adversity. Demosthenes, the greatest orator of the ancient world, stuttered! The first time he tried to make a public speech, he was laughed off the rostrum. Julius Caesar was an epileptic. Beethoven was deaf, as was Thomas Edison. Charles Dickens was lame, so was Handel; Homer was blind; Plato was a hunchback; Sir Walter Scott was paralyzed. One musician was so nearsighted he couldn't read the musical score. So he memorized not only his part, but every part. He was the famous Arturo Toscanini.
Adversity may be met in part with a sense of humor. They had just become engaged, and she promised, "I'll be with you, dear, to share your troubles."
"But, darling," he protested, "I don't have any."
"You will," she prophesied.
The airplane ride was so rough that the stewardess poured the food directly into the sick sacks.
Pilot: "Pilot to tower ... pilot to tower ... I am 300 miles from land ... 600 feet high and running out of gas ... please instruct ... over."
Tower: "Tower to pilot ... tower to pilot ... repeat after me ... 'Our Father, which art in heaven....' "
Adversity potentially changes and transforms people by the work of the Holy Spirit. Jacob discovers a new humility. He can never walk in arrogance again. Lame Jacob becomes a better man. His pride is laid aside. Eventually he will confess his wrong to Esau, ask forgiveness, seek re--entrance into the relationship he knows he has abused.
A postscript to the story of the wrestling match at Peniel is that Jacob does meet Esau. They are reconciled. All Jacob's fears vanish in gratefulness.
____________
1. Michael Guido, Guido Evangelistic Association, used by permission.
2. National Geographic, February, 1977, issue, "The Longest Manned Balloon Flight," pp. 208--217.
3. Charles Swindoll, Living Above The Level Of Mediocrity (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1989), p. 107.
4. Richard Meyer, "Big Mack Attack," Faith At Work, Fall, 1998, p. 13.
