Proper 13 / Pentecost 11 / OT 18
Devotional
Water From the Well
Lectionary Devotional For Cycle A
Object:
Then the man said, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed."
-- Genesis 32:28
In some ways Israel was a people with an almost haunted look on their face. As they moved through life, they were both the same as and different from other people. For reasons only God understands, this was a people who had glimpsed the face of God and limped through life with that memory in their soul. The people of God, formed out of the twelve sons of Jacob, were called Israel. The biblical origin of the name Israel was given here in this story of Jacob wrestling with God. The story reflects several characteristics of the self-understanding of the people of God. Because, as Christians, we see ourselves as included into God's choice of a people, sometimes referred to as a new Israel, the story applies to us as well. First, in Jacob we see the church characterized as a people marked not by their moral superiority but by the fact that God touches our lives. Second, Israel is a people who wrestle with God and humanity, with the divine and the human dimensions of life. What makes us distinctive from humanity in general is our audacious refusal to let go of either our humanity or the way we have been touched by the divine. We wrestle with what it means to be God-struck; with what the divine presence brings to our understanding of life.
Our glimpse of eternity changes how we view the most ordinary of events. Jacob would continue to experience many events, good and bad, in life as he watched his twelve sons and a daughter grow. But, each would be experienced in light of having wrestled with God. God could no longer be denied. Finally, we are wounded by our interaction with the divine. Those touched by God limp through life. They do not stride through history in arrogance but limp with a wounded awareness that there is more to life than meets the eye. Everything has a vertical as well as a horizontal dimension.
-- Genesis 32:28
In some ways Israel was a people with an almost haunted look on their face. As they moved through life, they were both the same as and different from other people. For reasons only God understands, this was a people who had glimpsed the face of God and limped through life with that memory in their soul. The people of God, formed out of the twelve sons of Jacob, were called Israel. The biblical origin of the name Israel was given here in this story of Jacob wrestling with God. The story reflects several characteristics of the self-understanding of the people of God. Because, as Christians, we see ourselves as included into God's choice of a people, sometimes referred to as a new Israel, the story applies to us as well. First, in Jacob we see the church characterized as a people marked not by their moral superiority but by the fact that God touches our lives. Second, Israel is a people who wrestle with God and humanity, with the divine and the human dimensions of life. What makes us distinctive from humanity in general is our audacious refusal to let go of either our humanity or the way we have been touched by the divine. We wrestle with what it means to be God-struck; with what the divine presence brings to our understanding of life.
Our glimpse of eternity changes how we view the most ordinary of events. Jacob would continue to experience many events, good and bad, in life as he watched his twelve sons and a daughter grow. But, each would be experienced in light of having wrestled with God. God could no longer be denied. Finally, we are wounded by our interaction with the divine. Those touched by God limp through life. They do not stride through history in arrogance but limp with a wounded awareness that there is more to life than meets the eye. Everything has a vertical as well as a horizontal dimension.
