“The Blessing”
Reverend Thomas G. Steffen
St. Peter’s
13 July 2008
What Roger read a moment ago is a summary of two
pivotal incidents in what may be called the Jacob Story; it is a wild and raw
saga of family strife, hatred, and eventually salvation. The Jacob Story reminds me of the more
popular story and block-bluster movie Titanic. In both stories there is a scheming mother
figure. Jacob’s mother is willing to steal the family birthright for Jacob, her
favorite son. In Titanic, Rose’s
mother is willing to sell Rose’s happiness for her own material security.
In Titanic,
you’ll remember, there’s a young man named Jack who inherits his father’s
fortune but tricks his way onto a life boat and is void of any sense of
“blessing.” In the biblical story,
Jacob, tricks his way into receiving his brother’s birthright but must leave
his family in fear of what his brother may do and what his father mistakenly
did. Having stolen the birthright from his brother, Jacob longs for his
brother’s forgiveness. What for years
was missing between Jacob and his father becomes the problem between Jacob and
his brother. And it was on the very
night before he was to meet his brother for the first time in years that we are
told that “Jacob wrestled with God.”
The narrator doesn’t attempt to explain what happened,
what it means to “wrestle with God,” but the story goes out of its way to
stress that this was not just a dream.
Something really strange happened that night that led Jacob to say, “I
have seen God face to face.” And as they
wrestled he finally said, Jacob said, not the stranger, “I will not let you go
until you bless me!” And in the
mysterious wrestling and asking, after years of
yearning, something was granted. Jacob –
from the inside out – somehow came to the realization that God cared about him
and valued him.
And the text says that he received a new name that
night! To take a new name is a signal
that something radical has taken place; one’s very identity begins to
change. No longer Jacob, but “
Now you may be thinking: Why was this odd story told
and retold for the last 2,500 years?
What's the point in saying that “Jacob wrestled with God?” Let me offer three suggestions for us to
think about, and I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
The first one is simply this: No person or thing or
collection of things can bless us as much as we need to be blessed. If your parents didn't get it right, or if
your husband or wife doesn’t always measure up, if your kids are not all you
thought they should be, well, you may not be all that different from those
whose parents or spouses or kids did a better job. Why?
Because you and I still need God's blessing, God's favor deep in our
souls.
Secondly, we can have a new name if we want one! As we move through this new week, think of
what you would like to become if you lived more fully in the power of “the
blessing.” Picture yourself as truly
accepting the blessing of God and then think of a word, a name. Who might you become if you knew the esteem-building
joy of seeing God face to face?
I’ll put my last suggestion in the form of a question:
Who in your life and in my life needs the blessing from us? Who in your life is longing to know that he
or she is truly loved and affirmed? Who
are the Jacobs and Roses in your life and in mine?
You remember Rose in Titanic, don’t you? All she
wanted really was to be cherished for the unique person she was. And in a way she’s finds it; she finds it “in
a love that saves her,” she says. Jack
Dawson is a “Christ Figure” and the agent of that saving. But Jack, himself, was not the blessing. Nor was the diamond necklace enough to fill
the void. No, the clue is tucked away in
the music that plays as the story nears its end: “Nearer my God to Thee.” Do you remember the violins playing this old
hymn? “Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to
Thee,” which is our deepest longing when it is all said and done, I think.
When romantic love, and diamond necklaces, and family
birthrights, and unsinkable ocean-liners run their course and finally
disappoint us, we are held, we are grasped, and we are saved by God’s blessing.
Amen.
Benediction (at the end of the service):
“And the sun rose as Jacob was leaving the place where
he wrestled with God, and he was limping because God popped his hip out of
joint.”
That may be one of the oddest statements in all of
recorded scripture. But it is a
fascinating one!
Pray that God will touch us, bless and anoint us, in
such a dramatic way that we never get over it.
May it happen in God’s own good timing. We go
in peace.
My thanks to Reva
Allington, a friend and a member of St. Peter’s UMC,
who edits my sermons.