Many people have
a simplistic notion of the Christian faith.
That
includes a lot of the people who believe it and most of the people who don’t.
The formula
goes that you believe there is a God,
be reasonably nice, go to church
some,
and ask Jesus to forgive your sins.
Do that and
you go to heaven when you die.
In the
meantime, don’t worry about things over much
since whatever happens is God’s
will.
They often
think that is what the Bible says.
Such people
should be careful about reading the Bible.
It is
actually a very strange book.
Christianity
is a strange and wonderful religion.
The God we
worship is a strange and wonderful God.
Take, for an
example of strangeness, our Old Testament lesson.
Jacob had
spent a lot of his life on the lamb.
As a young
man he had swindled his brother Esau
who understandably set out to
kill him.
So Jacob ran
away to live with his Uncle Laban
in a far off country.
Laban and
Jacob spent several years trying to outfox each other.
Eventually,
Jacob had to run away from there too.
He was
escaping from Uncle Laban
when he heard that his brother Esau
was coming to meet him.
That was not
entirely good news.
In our
lesson for today, before Jacob confronts Esau,
he crosses the River Jabbok, a
rapidly flowing mountain stream.
It isn’t
easy to cross at any point or at any time,
but Jacob crossed it at night
with his two wives, two concubines,
11 children,
all his livestock and all his
possessions.
Then he came
back across to where he started
and he spent the night there alone.
Probably he
was moving his family and possessions
across the river to keep them safe
from Esau.
But that
night he ran into trouble bigger than his brother.
In the dark,
beside the River, something attacked Jacob
and fought with him until sunrise.
They fought
to a draw, but before the attacker left,
Jacob demanded a blessing from him.
The attacker
blessed Jacob by changing his name to Israel,
which means “struggles with God.”
And Jacob
renamed the place of the fight Peniel,
because he said, “I have seen God
face to face and yet I live.”
This isn’t a
moral example story.
Do as Jacob
did because wasn’t he a good man.
Jacob wasn’t
a particularly good man.
He wasn’t a
hero of the faith.
He didn’t do
anything right here.
He was
running away from someone he cheated
about to face up to someone else he
cheated.
Jacob was
just scrambling for his life
when he found himself alone, in the
dark, in a strange place,
attacked by a powerful stranger.
So he
fought.
A strange
story.
I don’t know
what it’s doing in the Bible
except that it tells us how the
people of Israel got their strange name.
But there
are a couple of things we might learn.
The first is
that we don’t really encounter God
until we are in trouble.
Karl Barth,
the greatest theologian of the 20th Century said this.
He called it
“crisis theology.”
Barth said
it works like this.
Human nature
and the way of the world don’t mesh.
So sooner or
later, we all find ourselves in hot water.
What is the
way out of the hot water?
There isn’t
one.
We cannot
save ourselves.
That’s when
God shows up and saves us by his grace.
We talk a
lot about spirituality these days.
We like to
pray and meditate, listen to uplifting religious music,
and feel very good about everything.
Isn’t God
nice and it’s a wonderful world.
That’s fine
until our life falls apart
as Jacob’s life had fallen apart
that night in the darkness.
Then God
shows up with a blessing.
I have done
major league spirituality in most of its forms and styles.
I have done contemplative
serenity and charismatic joy.
I have
degrees and certificates to prove it. It was all a rush.
It felt
really good and I was proud of how spiritual I was.
But I didn’t
meet God until I was in the kind of panic Jacob felt.
And I can
tell you this.
God may be
in the lovely sunrise and the babbling brook.
But we
connect with God in the dark night of despair.
When God
showed up for Jacob,
it was not as a kindly comforter.
God came to
Jacob like a mugger.
This is not
a nice God, but a fearsome God.
So Jacob
struggled. He fought tooth and nail.
There is a
point in that too.
If we take
God seriously, we don’t just smile and nod politely.
If we take
God seriously, we don’t just sing songs
about how sweet everything is.
We struggle.
There are
several ways to struggle with God.
We might not
be so sure God exists,
and might want to say “Why don’t you
just show yourself?”
We might not
be so sure God is good,
since the creation seems pretty
harsh.
We might not
get how Jesus dying on the cross
does any good.
since it makes us feel small
-- as if God might be
better than we are.
Who does he think he is, anyway?
Or we might
just want God to do something for us,
and God might not be coming through.
After all,
what good is a God who does not obey our commandments?
We don’t get
to know God until we struggle with God.
That’s ok
because getting to know God
isn’t actually that high on our
priority list
– not until we need God
desperately.
A young man
went to see a Zen master and said “I want to learn Zen.”
The Master
grabbed him by the neck, pushed his head into a stream,
and held him down.
When the
young man came up gasping and coughing,
the Zen master said,
“When you want Zen the way you just
wanted a breath,
then you will know Zen.”
That’s when
we know God – when we need God like our next breath.
Then, and
only then, do we get honest.
Then and
only then do we struggle with God.
Remember
what God named his chosen people,
not the beautiful and the good
people,
not the nice and the moral people,
not the people who always obey God
like children,
but Israel – the people who struggle
with God.
And struggle
they did. Read the psalms and the prophets.
For
centuries, Jacob’s descendants continued to fight with God.
The honest
spiritual life is not all flowers and valentines
anymore than the honest marriage is.
It’s a
struggle.
Jacob did
not come out of the struggle unmarked.
God blessed
him and dislocated his hip.
So Jacob
walked with a limp after that.
We can know
God and still live in the world,
but we will never be the same, never
quite at home here.
Honest
religion isn’t about getting our spiritual sunshine vitamins
and smiling all the time.
It’s facing
reality without blinking.
After that
we will be stronger, wiser, saner, but not the same.
