TEXT: primary--Genesis 32:22-31; secondary-Mt14:13-21

Genesis 32:22-31

22 The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.26 Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me."27 So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob."28 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."29 Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him.30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved."31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
The New Revised Standard Version

Matthew 14:13-21

13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.14 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves."16 Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat."17 They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish."18 And he said, "Bring them here to me."19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

The New Revised Standard Version

Pastoral Prayer
Lord, how like the disciples of old we are, doubting when faced with that which is beyond our comprehension. When we consider the miracle of your feeding the thousands, we continue to be amazed at your divine power. Yet, we sometimes forget to thank you for the continuing miracles of daily provisions. We are grateful for the things which we often take for granted-the nourishing food we eat, the water we drink, the clothing we wear, the buildings in which we live, work and worship. We know that for many these basic provisions are never assumed and are a source of daily struggle.

When we are confronted with such need-needs beyond our comprehension-overwhelmed we turn away. Call us to turn to you instead. As we are faced with our own inadequacy, remind us to not believe that we can do nothing. Create in us a childlike trust that knows it is only in you that we are able to accomplish all that you desire.

Tear from us the worthless idols to which we cling: pride, arrogance and self-reliance. Instill in us the essence of your very words spoken through the prophet of old that our salvation is found in repentance and rest in you. For you, O Lord, are with us and ready to save-ready to take the meager offerings of our lives and multiply them to meet the crushing demands of those in need.

We bring before you this morning the needs of these our friends. Some are in need of shelter, some in need of employment, some in need of physical healing, some in need of comfort, some in need of assurance, all in need of your presence and power. Minister unto them we pray.

Help us to regain a sense of wonder and of daily thanksgiving, recognizing that commonplace miracles are miracles nevertheless.
Benediction

As you go from this place, may your faith bring certainty to believe in that which we do not see,

May your trust bring confidence to move forward even if it be alone in the shadow of God who beckons you onward,

May your service bring fulfillment even as it seems to call for more from you than you believe yourself able to give,

And may your love bring unending joy as the hand of God grasps yours so as to not let you fall.
AMEN
INTRODUCTION
{Some of the following material is adapted from ideas shared by William K. McElvaney in Preaching from Camelot to Covenant, published by Abington Press (Nashville, 1989).}

Elie Wiesel compares the story of Jacob and the wrestling match by the river Jabbok to a mystical poem, mysterious from beginning to end, in which every question brings forth another.

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So here is Jacob, alone yet not alone at night in the wilderness, running from Esau, yet destined to meet him on the morrow after all the years. Here he is after the Bethel experience-the dream of heavenly messengers-a time of wonderful and frightful dialogue with God-a time of covenant making, promise and presence. Perhaps you have had such an experience. O maybe the angels and stairs were missing. Yet, it was a time of special closeness with God and a time when you experienced what you could refer to as "God's call on your life."

However, memory of one's covenant with God can weaken with time. Now we see Jacob up against it. Esau is coming with four hundred men and Jacob has sent his possessions, his children and his wives ahead of him in hopes that Esau will be softened. But will his gifts be enough to appease his deeply wronged brother?

From the time of his earliest memories he had heard his mother recall the promise of how it would be through him-Jacob-that God would carry out the promise to Abraham. But it had seemed that God's promise was to be thwarted by Isaac's love of Esau and so Jacob had taken matters into his own hands-conniver that he had become-and then he had had to run for it. Now twenty years later he was on the way home to face the music.

Alone by the river Jabbok, he lies down to a fitful rest. This time there are no opening heavens, no stairways reaching to earth, no angels traveling between heaven and earth to minister to him, no God standing at his head with promises. This time there is a life or death wrestling match with a stranger.

The match continues through the night and Jacob demands from his opponent his name. The opponent answers with a question, "Why do you want my name?" As if to say, "What is it to you?" The struggle continues, the identity of the nameless one seems to shift. Is it a man, an angel, or God? Jacob, who should know as well as anyone, continues to name his antagonist to the point that he states, "I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved." Earlier in the text, the wrestling partner confirmed Jacob's appraisal by asserting, "…you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed."

Later when Jacob meets up with Esau, he exclaims, "for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God, with such favor you have received me."

To wrestle with human relationships is to wrestle with God and vice versa.

Yet what else does the match disclose? Do we find a gift of grace in such an experience-a saving reality-and if so, saving us for what? At times it seems that the "church is saying that the word of faith will remove trials and tribulations, that grace will protect you from failure and hardship, and that we were meant to be what William McElvaney has called the "Society for the Promotion and Preservation of the Privileged and Prosperous, at Ease in Zion." While we may cast stones at televanelists who make much of such a smug approach, we had better confess that the desire for such grace lurks in all of us. I yearn for simple answers to share with you as I prepare sermons, but there are none. If we live with impending sorrow or tragedy, do not all of us desire simplicity and swiftness of sure solution? Do we not yearn for simple once and for all solutions to the wars which are waged in our world, for the hunger that besets millions, for the brokenness within our own lives? Give me a simple, one-two-three process which by following I can become the success that I dreamed that I would be.

Instead, we wrestle with life; life wrestles with us. We yearn for the grace of quick solutions, and when none comes, we are just as quick to conclude that there is no grace.

Our story offers another option-a more biblical one I might add than that which we would attribute to the gospel. The story is "that grace is often wrapped around a wrestling match with life, around ambiguity, complexity, and uncertain outcomes." God meets us in the wilderness, in our aloneness, at the river Jabbok as we prepare to face the mess that we have made of our past. There God wrestles with us in as real a way as God did when we had been stirred by the presence of God by our head with staircases and promises. There God wrestles with us to bring us from our fear to blessing. Our God who promised not to forsake us will not let us alone until we have faced fear. Our God loves us enough to encounter us, to engage us, to wrestle with us until we do not want to let go and until we have a new name.

As we wrestle with the ambiguities of life-both within and without us-grace is present. We serve a wrestling God. A wrestling God of grace who follows us in our fleeing. Not a convenient grace, but a confronting grace. Jacob was ready to quit and God said, "Come out and wrestle." We are ready to throw up our hands at the ambiguities between what should be and what is and God says, "Come out, come forth, and wrestle with me that I might give you a new look on life and a new blessing, perhaps the very blessing for which you have been striving all of your life or maybe one for which you had not even considered to look. Come, wrestle and live."

Jacob refused to let go until he had a blessing. How like our vintage Jacob. Looking for leverage, for an advantage over an opponent, always on the make for a blessing. Instead of getting a blessing, he got a new name. You see, Not only is God a wrestling God; God is a renaming God. Jacob, the Grasper, the Supplanter, becomes Israel, the one who will forever strive and wrestle with God. The meaning of the blessing and birthright is turned upside down. Jacob becomes the father of the twelve tribes of Israel and is signed up almost against his will for a larger story and journey by initiative from elsewhere. The plot of the blessing is not what Jacob had in mind.

Isn't that just like God? "You want a blessing do you? Well, it's yours! You will have the blessing, the birthright of my Covenant. You will have the promise of my faithfulness and affirmation-and you will have the confronting, demanding and often ambiguous relationship of my claim and purpose that always attends the promise of the Covenant. This is the blessing!" Isn't this the mystery of what we have come to call as Christians justifying and sanctifying grace, a grace for us, yet in us and through us? A grace that frees us to be servants? A grace that renames us for a new destiny in the larger vision of God?

What happened to Jacob is fundamental. For what God is doing-wrestling and renaming-is found from Genesis to the last line of history. What God is doing is wrestling us into a larger vision, an eternal history, a never-ending story, an ultimate promise and claim. Every biography and autobiography of those who claim faith in God is the story of the initiative of God restoring folk from an alternative or altered script. Moses, Jonah, Mary, Zacchaeus, Paul, you, me. The story is always different in its particulars but the same in intent. In the wrestling and renaming, God is asking us, "Is life finally only our story, or is life a larger story of the broadest of connections?"

We have each had our dreams of heroes and who we would be and how we would be. We play our version of make believe, attempting to construct our world to fit our dream. We put together blueprints of how we will accomplish those dreams, reach our ideal. They do not include the tragic dimension. We do not want adversity to upset us. Who does? We construct our Camelots. It is the world which Jacob had constructed when he had dreamed about the blessing which Isaac would pass on to him. Then comes real life, not as we had imagined it, but as we experience it.

Then along comes God. Not that God had taken a walk away from us, but now God wants to wrestle us beyond our self-centered Camelots to a new dimension of life with in covenant with God. God seeks to save us to become our deepest and truest selves for God and for others, to restore us to our intended purpose in community. God wrestles with us and renames us as we prepare to move into a greater reality-to covenant-a more life-giving and more freeing relationship than our imagined blueprints could offer.

Finally, our wrestling and renaming God is also a wounding God. Jacob's thigh was put out of joint and he limped from that day forward. This image certainly does not fit our image of God as comforter, as balm of Gilead or as healer. The wound could be the wound that offers wholeness to us all by offering us security in God's purpose. The wound reminds us that we share in the world's pain, and yet offer healing through the vulnerability of self-giving love.

The Wounding, the dis-location, serves to remind us that our assumptions, our professional pride, our self-serving ways have been put out of place and freedom is to be found in the limp.

The wounding could be the channel through which the life of God pours. In our weakness the strength of God becomes more evident to us and to others. Perhaps our woundedness becomes our Achilles heel in reverse. Our wound of vulnerablity is the occasion of life and the deepest of joy. It becomes the indelible mark of the fact that we have wrestled with God and prevailed-not to defeat God, but to the getting of a new name and the grace which comes as we walk in covenant with God.

I rejoice that we serve a wrestling God who invites us to enter into a place of blessing and woundedness, as people who have been given new names, and who share covenant as a new family, a people who were not a people but now are a kingdom. That's the kind of person I always wanted to become, I just didn't realize that a wrestling match would be needed to get my attention.