A Wound that Heals Us
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24 Year C RCL)
16 October 2022--8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist, Medford (Oregon)
Readings: Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 121; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8
God, give us hearts to feel and love,
take away our hearts of stone
and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
When Ronald Reagan was running against incumbent president Jimmie Carter in 1980, only one presidential debate took place. Reagan perhaps won the debate by use of a single memorable line. Exasperated when Carter began to relist the deficiencies he saw in Reagan’s position on Medicare and Medicaid, Reagan interrupted, “There you go again!” The audience burst into laughter. Reagan had defused the criticism not through any refutation of fact, but just by strategically expressing well that most human of emotions, desperate exasperation.
“There you go again!” These words express frustration at someone’s apparent inability to change, whatever the relapse. We often silently reproach ourselves with them.
Today’s Genesis reading tells the story of a man who has a hard time changing his conniving, self-seeking ways. Even in the womb, he seems to struggle with his twin brother. When Esau is born first, the feisty younger twin rejects his second-place by grasping Esau’s heel. So his parents name him Jacob, “Heel.”
A maneuverer from the start, Jacob plays on Esau’s simplicity and hunger to get him to ignorantly trade away his property inheritance for a dish of lentil stew. Later, he impersonates Esau to steal his father’s spiritual blessing.
Esau, exasperated and resentful, plans simply to murder Jacob as soon as their father dies and take back his rightful inheritance and blessing. So Jacob, ever wily, leaves town to lie low for a while. He goes to his uncle Laban’s home far away to wait until things calm down.
Jacob clearly is in distress. During his escape, he has a vision of a ladder into heaven, and for the first time connects briefly with the God of his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac. He calls the place Bethel, the House of God. But he remains Jacob, the heel.
Uncle Laban too is a trickster. When he settles on a bride price for Jacob to marry one of his daughters, he tricks him into paying double—a work contract of fourteen years instead of seven—and taking on an unwanted daughter as well. Jacob’s hard work and business savvy pay off. When the shared assets grow to a size worth arguing about, tensions develop. Jacob knows it is time to return to Canaan when, as he says to his wives, “Your father is not treating me a nicely as he used to.”
Now comes the problem of divvying up the wealth. Jacob still has tricks up his sleeve, turning the tables by tricking the trickster. He rigs the process of selecting flocks in his favor, and ends up with the lion’s portion. So he has to flee his uncle by night too, just as he had to flee his brother. “There you go again!”
As Jacob returns to Canaan, he is afraid that Esau still will murder him. So he sends messengers with kind words. They return and say that Esau is coming to welcome him home—accompanied by 400 armed men!
Yikes. The big hairy man may be dull, but he clearly does not forget a grudge.
Jacob is prudent. He divides his large caravan into two camps: if Esau takes the first by violence, at least Jacob might have half his family and goods left. Then he sends all the huge baggage and livestock train in several small groups ahead, all with the instructions that if Esau challenges them, they are to say they are gifts from Jacob for his dear brother Esau. Finally, he sends his own immediate family. But he still is too afraid. He alone goes back to spend the night on the riverbank.
That is when today’s mysterious story occurs. A stranger accosts Jacob and wrestles with him in the dark until the break of dawn, when the stranger, desperate to end the match, performs some kind of ninja trick on Jacob’s hip. Jacob can no longer wrestle. He might as well give up. But he continues to hold on for dear life. The stranger says, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” Jacob replies, “Not until you bless me.”
Jacob has run out of tricks. He is desperate, unsure that his maneuvers will turn away Esau’s wrath. He might lose everything in the next few hours. The struggle in the dark in some ways represents the struggle going on in his heart: his fears and plots versus the hope for a new day. All he can do is hold tightly. “Bless me,” he begs, “Bless me.”
The stranger asks, “What is your name? Who are you?” “Jacob,” is the answer, “a heel, a trickster.”
This confession, this avowal of stark truth when all options and plans are gone, marks a real change in Jacob’s life. The stranger blesses him in reply, “Jacob is not your name, but Yisrael: ‘It is God who Struggles.’” “You are a heel no more. You don’t need to struggle any more, for God is the one who struggles.”
The day comes, and Jacob, forever changed, limps back to cross the river to his family. His limp will stay with him the rest of his life. He greets Esau later in the day, and the brothers are reconciled (with Esau in fine Asian style first refusing all the gifts, and then, after his brother’s urging, accepting many of them.)
Today’s Lectionary includes this story along with other scriptures telling us to persist in seeking God: Jesus’ parable of a corrupt judge cowed into granting a petitioner’s request simply to gain some peace and quiet, 2 Timothy’s counsel to persist whether the times are favorable or hard.
But the story of Jacob’s wrestle is not just about holding on tight, bulldozing ahead come hell or high water. The key is in the words of blessing: you don’t need to be a heel. You don’t need to struggle. Because God struggles with us, God struggles for us. Be still and know that I am God.
How many of us are Jacob here? Do we say to ourselves: “There you go again! What can I do to get out of this fix? How can I turn back the clock? How can I keep from the bad same old same old?”
When others have hurt us, how many of us are like Esau here? Do we want to blurt out “There you go again,” and never again have anything to do with them, or worse, want to work them harm?
In all of this, God is there, loving us, supporting us, and holding us tightly. In our desperation, we have to hold tightly onto God, and not let go, even though everything is going wrong and we may get hurt in the struggle. “I won’t let go, not until you bless me. Not until you tell your name, show me who you really are!”
The good news is this: our failings and the failings of others are ways that God shows his love and grace. St. Paul knew this when he spoke of the mysterious “thorn” God had placed in his flesh: “but [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’… for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12: 9-10).
Charles Wesley wrote a poem about this story that captures the need for persistence:
Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
and I am left alone with thee.
With thee all night I mean to stay
and wrestle till the break of day.
Wilt thou not yet to me reveal
thy new, unutterable name?
Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell,
to know it now resolved I am.
Wrestling, I will not let thee go
till I thy name, thy nature know.
My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath thy weighty hand,
faint to revive, and fall to rise.
I fall, and yet by faith I stand;
I stand and will not let thee go
till I thy name, thy nature know.
Yield to me now—for I am weak,
but confident in self-despair!
Speak to my heart, in blessing speak,
be conquered by insistent prayer.
Speak, or thou never hence shalt move,
and tell me if thy name is Love.
‘Tis Love! ‘tis Love that wrestled me!
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
pure, universal Love thou art.
To me, to all, thy mercies move—
thy nature and thy name is Love.
Such prayer must begin in honesty about who we are. Jacob must speak his old name before he can be given a new one. Each and every prayer, each and every eucharist is a revolutionary act, subverting the system of oppression and accusation, including self-accusation. It tells us “heel,” “deceiver,” “fighter,” is not our true name.
This week, find something in yourself that needs forgiving, needs remedying. And in your prayers, pray that God will help you with it, simply help. And then be patient. Say you won’t let go until he blesses you. Be like that persistent annoying woman in the Gospel reading. And forgive yourself.
Also find something in someone in your life that needs forgiving, needs correcting, something that makes you angry. And just forgive them. If that’s not possible, ask God to help you forgive. And say you won’t let go until he blesses you in this.
In the name of Christ,
Amen.
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