Rochester, MN UCC - "Striving with God and Others" - Genesis 32:22-31
I was probably 11 the last time I tried to fight my brother. I remember being furious with him, and making the decision to walk up the steps to the porch he was standing on and punch him. I did just that. It surprised him too. He was taken aback, shook his face, and promptly threw me down the stairs. After this rather embarrassing failure, I accepted that I was not likely to ever triumph over my brother in physical combat. If we were to get along, I’d have to find a better way to do it; I’d have to seek grace and reconciliation.
Relationships are tricky, they all have ups and downs. We hurt each other, we let each other down. When this inevitably happens, we can allow distance and alienation to grow between us. This damage to our relationships is not without its impact on our spiritual lives. Our sense of peace, wholeness, and well-being is always harmed by resentment and alienation in our relationships. Brokenness in our relationships correlates with a brokenness in our relationship with God. As 1 John says, “Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”
When God wrestled with Jacob by the river Jabook, it was on the eve before his reunion with his estranged brother Esau. Having stolen his inheritance through lies and deceit years earlier, Jacob is nearly overcome with fear at the prospect of reuniting with Esau. It is in this situation that God appears to Jacob as a man and the two wrestle until dawn. Jacob refuses to release God until he blesses him. Jacob receives the blessing and the new name Israel, for he has striven with God and prevailed. Yet this blessing is not without its cost, Jacob’s thigh has been injured and he will forevermore walk with a limp.
Our lives involve us in our own struggles with our sisters and brothers, and our own struggles with God. Our choices have consequences and no life is without suffering. Yet we do not struggle through our fear, doubt, and alienation alone. God struggles with us. And though the night may be long and the struggle intense, though we will not escape this life unscathed, God’s favor and blessing come to us in the midst of our striving. God’s grace attacks our old selves, our resentments and grudges and feelings of superiority, and opens for us a new life made possible through grace and forgiveness. God’s blessing makes possible a life in which we can ask for forgiveness from God and from another. May we seek this blessing of God in our struggles and may we seek to find pathways to grace and forgiveness. Because it is only in forgiveness that our relationships with God and others can be made new, joyful, and life-giving. Amen.
Rev. Andrew Greenhaw