Stewardship Sermon: St. Barnabas Episcopal Church
October 17, 2010
Jacob Wrestles with God
I'm sure if you have turned on the news at all since Tuesday you are aware of the dramatic rescue of the 33 miners from Chile. I don't get to see the TV much these days, but even I saw it. I was sitting by myself eating lunch in a restaurant, with the TV on showing the rescue of the miners. They first showed a replay of one of the miners, coming out of the capsule and kneeling down on the ground, folding his hands and praying. Then they went "live" to miner 19 who got out of the capsule and was waving to the crowd with a great big smile on his face, looking like he just won the Super Bowl.Both of these men were grateful and they both showed it in very different ways. But I wondered who they were grateful to. To whom were they showing their gratitude: the rescuers, their families, the media, God? How does a person even begin to show gratitude for their very life! I imagine that they are feeling grateful just to be alive, to be above ground again, to just be able to see! It must have seemed like they were resurrected, given a New Life—just plain and simple gift, undeserved Grace that hundreds of other miners trapped underground over the years never got. Pure, unearned, undeserved, unmerited Grace—just to be alive!
In our first reading this morning we have an Old Testament story of struggle that I think might be comparable to the story of the miners. We see Jacob, one of the Patriarchs of Israel, traveling through the desert, and he spends a night wrestling with a divine being. This isn't just some high school sport he's engaging in here. He is alone in the absolute dark and he is fighting for his life with someone that seems to be from another world—good or bad he really didn't know—he only knew it was strong. He kept wrestling, never giving up, fighting for his life and somehow he wins—though not without getting injured. But at least he is alive.
But he won't let this guy go, no way, Jacob didn't want to struggle for nothing, so when the man asks him to let him go, for the dawn is breaking (an indication that this is probably some otherworldly being—and not just any old bandit)—Jacob presses him for a blessing. Jacob has a sense that this is no ordinary creature, but God (or an angel of God.) And he wants a blessing, a gift, a grace from God. And what does God do, he blesses Jacob with a new name—this means a new existence, a new reason for being, he is no longer the old self—no, he is now to be called Israel, Israel—a name which means someone who has wrestled with both God and humans and has won—his new name, and therefore his new identity –his new life is to be one who wrestles with God and humans and wins! So he asks his adversary what his name is—but God doesn't reveal the Divine name to Jacob, but instead God blesses him, again, this time with the assurance that this is in fact the Divine that he has wrestled with. And Jacob names the place—"the place where I saw God 'face to face' and lived" (for no one who saw God face to face could live). It was a holy place, this place of struggle—and it was also a place where Jacob could have died but instead he has been given a new life. Jacob has been and is again being blessed by God and he has much to be grateful for.
We are discussing this month the "3 G's" of Grace, Gratitude and Generosity! And these flow one from the other. First comes Grace—the grace of God—undeserved, un-asked for, unmerited. We have all been blessed by God. And if we don't know we are Graced (blessed) how can we be grateful. If we are not aware of the many blessings and gifts we have received from God, then how can we really be grateful to God? And further, once we acknowledge deep within our hearts that all that we are and all that we have and will ever have and be is a complete and totally free Grace from God—what else can we do but be grateful—what else can we do but live our life in Gratitude to the God who has given us all we are and have. And I don't mean the half hearted "thank-you" we get from the kids when we are teaching them to be polite. I mean the gratitude shown on the entire body of that miner who knelt down in prayer to God—the one that said he saw both the devil and God when he was in that mine and he reached out for God. All that man could do was fall down on his knees, fold his hands and pray. Like Jacob, he knew he wrestled with forces far beyond himself and he lived to tell about it. Like Jacob, he found out he was not alone—the power of God was with him giving him new life, plucking him from the clutches of death, beating all the odds—he was alive!!
Why is it that we humans often don't realize how much we have been gifted and graced by God until we are in great danger? What was that old song lyric, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"? And isn't that true, that so often we go on our way thinking we are pretty good stuff (and we are, God made us quite the piece of marvelous work!) but we don't thank the Creator, don't realize how good we've had it until we are, like Jacob, brought to a wrestling match at the brink of death; about to lose it all.
I think often we humans have this thing that says "I got my stuff through my own hard work and perseverance, I have earned everything I've got, no one has given me anything." Have you heard that said somewhere, sometime? So let me ask you, who gave us that gift of perseverance, of hard work, or the gifts of being good at Math, or communication, or logic or good with our hands? Was it our parents, or grandparents, or a teacher? But who really gave them? And through what merit of our own were we born where we are, to the family we are in, in this great country where we have the freedom to make what we can of ourselves? Who put us here? Trace the story back and you will see that it all goes back to God. Either that or its all some dumb luck, and frankly, I don't believe in luck. I believe in God! All that we are and all that we have we owe to God. Can we say, right now at this very moment, in the words of Psalm 116, "What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?" Can we say that we are grateful for all that we are right now, that all we are is from God?
And the Gratitude we give to God we give through our worship. Just like the patriarchs, like Jacob, we offer our thanks by worship. The patriarchs built altars and burnt the best they had as an offering to God—their cattle, their grain; the first and best of the produce and flocks, not the leftovers—they gave worship in their offering. We do the same in our liturgy now. We bring our gifts of bread and wine, and we add to that the offering of our lives in the form of our offering of what we have made (in this day and age it is our money) and we take our gifts up to the altar. They are all accepted by the priest and offered on our behalf as our worship to God. This offering is giving back to God what God has given us,—and we are asked to worship God fully by giving as generously as we have been gifted by God. Giving back to God with the same generosity with which God has given to us. Generosity is a fruit of the Spirit (a sign that the spirit of God is truly at work in us or in a situation).
So that is how we bring together our theme for this stewardship month. God has graced us with all we are and have. In gratitude we give back to God through our worship. We give our gifts back to God and God enables us to give generously through the Spirit of God that lives in us! It's about us giving back to God our Gratitude with Generosity.
I ask you today to put yourself in the place of those miners—imagine their gratitude, imagine the immensity of the miracle that has saved them. What great purpose does God have in mind for them? Now I want you to KNOW that God has saved you and gifted you just as much as God has gifted them: absolutely no less. What great purpose does God have in mind for YOU? We are just as graced; we are to be just as grateful moved by the Spirit to great generosity.
