Raw, Honest Faith
Genesis 32:22-32; Ephesians 1:11-23
Someone told me about a sign in a government building’s cafeteria that says: NOTICE - Due to the current budget cutbacks, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off until further notice.
Things are tough out there! On this All Saints Sunday, I invite you to explore with me themes of struggle and blessing through two fictional characters and the story of one of our Old Testament ancestors, Jacob.
(the Rt. Rev.) Kee Sloan’s novel about a boy coming-of-age in the Mississippi Delta is titled Jabbok. It was inspired by the tributary of the Jordan river named in our scripture reading today. The novel includes two primary protagonists who wrestle with their faith. One, a man, Jake Jefferson, who has lost his faith after a failed marriage and the death of a son. Jake spirals down into alcoholism, and is living in a make-do shack in the woods when he first meets Buddy Hinton, an 8-yr-old child who spends his summers playing in those woods behind his neighborhood. The day Buddy encounters Jake for the first time is when he learns the first of many life lessons Jake will teach him. Buddy comes upon a wounded deer that had been shot by a hunter, and is distraught. Jake comes upon the same deer and can’t leave the poor thing there to suffer. Buddy cries out to spare the deer when he sees Jake take out his knife. But Jake has already seen too much suffering in his lifetime. He mercifully and swiftly finishes the doe. Buddy assumes him to be nothing but a cold-blooded killer, but Jake is actually just a fisherman and a former tent and revival preacher. Buddy is a good Episcopalian who has lots of questions about the way God works in the world. They are both unprepared for the bond that will form between them after this chance encounter in the woods. Buddy and Jake forge a friendship that transcends age and race as Buddy makes daily trips to the woods to talk about life and faith. These conversations span years of hardships, transitions, separation and celebration. From Jake, Buddy learns the depth of a man’s sorrow and the cost of a blessing after a lifetime of wrestling with God. [1]
In Genesis 32, Jacob is headed home after 20 years in another land. He fled after exploiting his twin brother’s hunger and convincing Esau to trade his birthright for a bowl of beans. This led to Jacob tricking his old, blind father Isaac out of the blessing intended for Esau. Nevertheless, Jacob has fared well in the two decades in Haran. He’s wealthy, has twelve sons who will become the namesakes for the twelve tribes of Israel and by all accounts, God has looked favorably upon him. But there is this tension with his brother that he needs to resolve. That’s the cause for the journey. Jacob plans to meet up with Esau and settle things once and for all. Hearing that Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men, Jacob fears that the rumors Esau plans to kill him are true. So, “he strategically separates his family into two camps” in hopes that at least some of them will escape Esau’s revenge. Jacob doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t even want to fight. Ahead of his entourage, he sends an advance team bearing goats and rams, camels and colts as gifts to Esau in hopes that he can appease his brother’s anger. Jacob longs to be reconciled. With all this on his mind at the end of a very long day, Jacob finds himself alone at the ford of the Jabbok.[2]
This is where things get murky. For the reader, what happens next is as unclear as it is for Jacob struggling in the dark. Who is this opponent who comes upon him? What is the point of this wrestling match? Who emerges victorious?
If Jacob didn’t emerge from this encounter physically disjointed, I would say that the one he’s wrestling with is himself, wouldn’t you? It’s his own troubled past and guilty conscience that takes him to the mat and pins him in a Half Nelson. This heel grabber, this trickster from birth has not functioned in his family with humility nor integrity. He is ripe for a mid-life crisis.
Except, he comes away with a dislocated hip. An injury that confirms this to have been a real, physical encounter.
So, one might infer that Esau has sneaked up on him like a brother would, to have a go at him one on one. That’s the only satisfactory way to settle things between bros – who is the most clever, the strongest? There’s only one way to find out. It’s him and me, right here, right now. But Jacob’s opponent is more than a mere man as the struggle lasts all night long. And as it seems Jacob is looking for something mystical, transcendent out of the encounter when he demands a blessing from his assailant.
Jacob recognizes his opponent as God in human form. He marks the encounter by naming this place by the Jabbok, Peniel meaning “face of God.” Meaning Jacob won’t ever forget what it felt like to be that close to God or to have God in his grasp. Jacob, himself, is given a new name: Israel meaning, one who wrestles with God. His contender says to him, “You have striven with God and with humans… and you have prevailed” (vs 28). Even God concedes that Jacob won.
But what I love most about this whole scene is Jacob’s refusal to let go of God. One commentator wrote, Isn’t this “what raw, honest faith looks like”? “Faith is not just passively submitting to God; it is grappling, contending, tenacious, and persistent. It is wrestling: grabbing hold of God and refusing to let go, despite the struggle, the time, the risks, [even] the injury.” Jacob believes… he knows… the blessing is worth all the struggle.
This is the story of Jacob, but it’s every person’s story who has walked with God, or struggled with a challenging scripture text, or journeyed with a church. This life of faith is a struggle sometimes – whether that’s mostly about understanding God or living with God’s people.
The words of biblical scholar Wilda Gafney come to mind: “I don’t run from a fight... I believe in wrestling the bruising words until I squeeze a blessing out of them, no matter how down and dirty it gets or how out of joint I get.” [3] She is talking about wrestling with scripture, but she could just as well be talking about wrestling through a prayer or wrestling with complicated relationships.
How many scrapbooks did we lay out here in the hallways for the sixtieth anniversary? Several per decade…pages that tell the stories of Weatherly’s saints through the years. It has certainly not always been an easy road. Weatherly’s saints have striven with the truth they found in scripture, got down and dirty in the fight for integrity in denominational relationships, with the equal call of women and men, with white privilege and missional partnerships and same sex marriage, LGBTQ inclusion… The saints at Weatherly have wrestled through some hard seasons and gotten up from those matches, much as Jacob did, with a limp, but also on the right side of blessing. And those of us who are here today, are so grateful that you held onto God and kept walking as closely to Jesus as you possibly could. Some of us who are here today might not have been welcomed here 30 years ago and that is the blessing we are living into today! –with so much gratitude for the struggle that forged us into who we are… Not who we will be, but who we are! (somebody say Amen)
After Jacob has striven with God, isn’t the blessing that Jacob knows himself and knows that God is with him… Turns out Esau wanted to be reconciled with his brother also. The story Jacob was telling himself was that Esau wanted to kill him… But the truth, after the personal struggle, after a bout on the mat with God, was a blessing that carried him all the way to mutual reconciliation with Esau. The blessing is (also) that God makes possible what we thought was impossible.
God is working and present in the raw, honest faith of his children.
When life disappoints us, when things fall apart… the light goes out; when people let us down, when church business or obligations feel like a slog; when we feel trapped in the darkness of our souls, with no sign of hope, no window of grace open even a crack… When that happens, how do we keep going?[4]
The blessing from Genesis 32 is that on the darkest of nights, if we refuse to let go, yes, we may come away with a limp – but holding on despite the struggle and aggravation; when we believe that maybe, just maybe, God is in this, then there is also a blessing to be had.
When I first picked up Kee Sloan’s book, I admit, I didn’t understand the title. No character or place in the novel was named Jabbok. It wasn’t until I read Genesis 32 that I got a fuller picture of the author’s intent. Jake and Buddy, like all the rest of us do, had to wrestle with the hardest parts of living – betrayal, death, loss, and finding your way back to yourself while stubbornly not letting go of a faith – even when they couldn’t explain why they still believed. But that’s what raw, honest faith looks like isn’t it?
Buddy Hinton says near the end of the novel, “Every time I learn this, the truer it gets: We can only live our lives looking ahead, and we can only understand them looking back.”
May God give us strength not to let go in the struggle, and grace to see all the Peniel moments in our lives where we came away with a blessing. Amen.
[1] Sloan, Kee, Jabbok Peak Road Press 2014
[2] Anderson, John E., Working Preacher commentary Genesis 32:22-31
[3] Armas, Kat, Abuelita Faith p. 54
[4] Fairless and Chilton, The Lectionary Lab Commentary, year C p. 316