Pentecost 10 - Year A

Genesis 32.22-31; Psalm 17.1-7, 16; Romans 9.1-5; Matthew 14.13-21

We have been reading these last few Sunday mornings through the great stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This morning we heard of Jacob wrestling through the night by the ford of Jabbok. We will return to that suggestive and evocative tale in a moment. But we have also, these last few Sundays, been reading through Paul’s magisterial letter to the Romans. Unlike many of his other letters in the New Testament, which were written to churches that he had helped found, the letter to the Romans is written ahead of a planned visit to Rome by Paul, to a church community he has not yet met. Paul is seeking, in the face of continuing suspicion of his activity, his establishing of Gentile Christian communities, to address the heart of Christian faith as he understands it. It is a letter written in the hope of reconciliation, and of communion.

We heard today the opening verses of Chapter 9, where Paul begins to wrestle with one of the central question which has led to other Christians being suspicious of his activity, and his sense of heartbreak at the rupture with his earlier life caused by his own conversion to faith in Christ. He begins to wrestle with how he understands the church to now relate to the Jewish people, or at least to those Jews who have not expressed faith in Jesus Christ. As a faithful Jew himself, immensely proud of his own Jewish identity, and the place of the Jewish people in the purposes of God, Paul struggles to reconcile his faith in the eternal covenant that God has made with God’s people, with the fact that, in Christ, everything has changed.

Paul begins, in the passage that we heard, with an affirmation of the centrality of the Jewish people, his own flesh and blood, to God’s purposes. That is an affirmation that Christians need to continue to make. Our own contemplation of the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, over the last few weeks, reinforces the ways in which we are heirs of the promise given to them, steeped in that same tradition and covenant. And yet, as Paul goes on to acknowledge, and wrestle with, the coming of Christ, for Christians, has altered our understanding. For Paul, and the church subsequently, it has, most fundamentally, opened up that promise and covenant with God to all people – Jew and Gentile. Where does that leave Jews who do not recognize Christ as the Messiah? That is the painful and hard question that Paul is wrestling with. To its everlasting shame, the church subsequently often bypassed Paul’s wrestling with that wound of the church’s break with Judaism, and substituted it with a crude anti-Judaism instead. For Paul, the covenant with the Jewish people is something that God has made, eternally. It cannot therefore be revoked or denied – even if that means living with the painful reality that there is a profound disagreement between those who profess Christ and those who do not. Certainly Paul would have been horrified by the history of the church’s denial of its Jewish roots and heritage, and its frequent collusion with, and incitement of, antisemitism, the persecution of Jewish communities down the centuries in the name of Christ. Paul is arguing, in the face of opposition from Jewish Christians, for the inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant relation with God. But he refuses to make that a reason to cut Jews off from the covenant – both communities have to be held across the wound of disagreement.

Reading Paul’s wrestling with these questions now, raises all sorts of contemporary equivalents. The relationships between Christianity and Judaism continue, of course, in many forms – both mutually enriching and adversarial and suspicious. A sermon is not long enough to do justice to the complexities of all this; to the deep wound of the Holocaust; and the founding of the nation of Israel as a place where Jews could affirm ‘never again.’ To the ways in which the October massacre by Hamas re-opened that wound, and how that now shapes the politics of the Middle East and the devastating suffering of the Palestinian people. The wounds of disagreement continue to be open and raw – can we follow Paul in refusing to find easy answers, or convenient scapegoats? And instead hold onto a vision, in God’s time and within God’s purposes, of reconciliation and mutual flourishing?

By the ford of Jabbok, we find Jacob alone, having sent ahead of him all his family, and everything he owns. And now alone, in the night, he begins to wrestle – with a man, an angel, God? The text is deliberately unclear. The wrestling leaves him both wounded – limping from a thigh joint put out of its socket – and blessed. We have reached this story after a number of readings that focused on the stresses and strains of familial and sibling relationships - Cain and Abel; Sarah and Hagar, both bearing the offspring of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael; Rachel and Leah, sisters and rivals for the affections of Jacob; and Jacob himself and his brother Esau. Those tales have focused on tensions and rivalries as they bubble to the surface or break out into violence; in the context of scarce resources, the question of which sibling comes out on top is crucial. As Jacob cunningly displayed, in obtaining his father’s blessing that should have gone to his brother Esau, when it comes to the hard work of surviving, such blessing, and the material goods handed on with it, become all important.

After stealing the blessing, Jacob has fled: both to avoid his brother but also to establish a new life. He has prospered in the home of his kinsman Laban, and is now returning – with his two wives and abundant wealth. And yet he is fearful of the reception he will receive from his brother Esau. He has sent presents on ahead to appease Esau; and now he is left alone to wrestle. With his conscience? With his fears? We are not explicitly told who the man is, with whom he wrestles. The man refuses, in fact, to yield up his name. Instead, having extracted Jacob’s name and put his thigh out of joint, he offers to give Jacob a new name – Israel, and to bless him. The night’s wrestling has left Jacob wounded, re-named and yet blessed. And so he rises, blessed and limping, to go and meet his estranged brother. The reading from Genesis continues like this: ‘Now Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids. He put the maids with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel and Joseph last of all. He himself went on ahead of them, bowing himself to the ground seven times, until he came near his brother. But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.’

This reconciliation between brothers with a long and acrimonious history, is a moment of utter and surprising grace. Esau running to greet his brother is surely the model that Jesus draws on in his telling of the father in his parable of the prodigal son. Esau ignores the presents sent on ahead, the women and children lined up to form a human barrier, even the figure of his long-lost brother kneeling in obeisance – Esau runs to meet him, and Jacob, and we, are brought to tears by the warmth of embrace.

Jacob then explicitly links this moment to the strange events of the night before: “truly to see your face," Jacob says, "is like seeing the face of God - since you have received me with such favour.” Once again, Jacob is blessed: in this moment when fears are revealed to be unfounded, when barriers are broken down, when what unites these brothers is known and celebrated. What unites, not what gives one power over the other – therein lies the blessing. For blessing is a gift, not an obligation; it is about grace, and not power.

Without the wrestling there is no blessing. Without the surprising grace of reconciliation, there is no blessing. May we be people prepared to wrestle; to acknowledge the wounds; to give space to God’s work of reconciliation; to hold on to the possibility of suspicions and fears overcome. Amen.