Arenas de Lucha

delivered at the Perkins School of Theology Course of Study School

Hoy es el último día del Curso de Estudio y creo que en las mentes de mucha gente hay una sola palabra: libertad. Ya vemos el camino hasta nuestros hogares. Ya sentimos los ritmos de vida que casi hemos olvidado. Sí, la yerba ha crecido y tenemos que cortarla. Sí, gente en nuestras congregaciones nos necesitan. Y sí, viene el domingo. Pero todavía, libertad es una palabra que suena en nuestras almas. Porque lo que queremos más que todo es un lugar de gracia. Un lugar donde podemos ser nosotros mismos.
Pero tengo noticias malas, hermanos y hermanos. El lugar donde vamos…el lugar donde Dios nos llama para servir es un lugar de gracia pero también es una arena de lucha. Yo sé porque yo había estaba luchando por veinte años en los campos del Señor como un pastor. Y tú lo sabes también. Seguir a Jesús es una jornada de gracia y lucha pero es una jornada que cambia todo en nuestras vidas y nuestro mundo.

It had been a long time since Jacob travelled this road. Twenty years had passed since he fled his parents’ home in fear for his life because he had tricked his brother, Esau, out of a blessing and out of his rights as the first born. On that first journey he had stumbled across an outdoor sanctuary of standing stones and had used it for a campsite. In that place, which he did not recognize as a holy place, Jacob slept. Afraid that his murderous brother might be just behind him….certain that an uncertain future lay just ahead…Jacob slept.

As he slept, God came to Jacob and promised to be with him…promised to bring him home at last to his parents’ land…promised to bless him with descendents so numerous that they could not be counted. But Jacob was a trickster, known as a deceiver, and so he didn’t put much stock in promises and, even though he named the place Bethel – the house of the Lord and the gateway to heaven, he didn’t think much about the blessing after that day.

Now he was back on the road. A wealthy man with cattle, servants, two wives and children. In the far land of his mother’s birth he had found his fortune and his match in his uncle Laban. Now was on the run again as the result of his latest deception in which he had tricked his uncle out of all the best of the sheep.

He didn’t escape Laban. Laban caught him, but God was still looking out for Jacob. Why? I don’t know. But God told Laban not to threaten Jacob. So instead of a violent confrontation they just had a huge argument that ended with the two of them setting up a heap of rocks. They agreed to use the rock marker as a boundary which neither of them would go past.

Laban said, “May God watch you while we’re apart.” Not “May God bless you,” but “May God watch you,” because, you see, Laban didn’t trust Jacob any further than he could throw one of those stones in the heap. So Laban left and Jacob was left with his back now against this pile of rocks beyond which he could not pass and his face set toward…well, it was set toward Esau.

¿Con quién luchaba Jacob en las riberas del río Jaboc? Toda su vida era una arena de lucha. Desde su nacimiento cuando nació agarrado al talón de su hermano, Esaú, Jacob luchó por cada cosa que recibió. Él le hizo trampa a Esaú para recibir los derechos del hijo mayor. Él engañó a su padre Isaac para recibir la bendición destinada para Esaú. Por causa de esto Esaú estaba furioso y Jacob tuvo que huir por su vida.

En medio de su viaje hasta el país de su madre, Jacob durmió en un lugar donde vio en un sueño una escalera con ángeles subiendo y descendiendo y Dios diciendo que Él bendeciría a Jacob con tierra y descendientes y protección. Pero aun con esta promesa incondicional, Jacob tuvo que hacer un trato con Dios. Y le dijo, “Si Dios me acompaña y me cuida en este viaje, si me da qué comer y con qué vestirme, y si regreso sano y salvo a la casa de mi padre, entonces el Señor será mi Dios.”

Es lo mismo con su tío en el nuevo país…con su Tío Labán quien se convirtió en su suegro. Labán era un embaucador así como Jacob, pero al final Jacob, después de adquirir esposas, siervos e hijos, engañó a su suegro, tomando todas las ovejas buenas de su rebaño y huyendo por su vida una vez más, pero esta vez con todas sus riquezas.

Labán alcanzó a Jacob con ira en su corazón, pero Dios no le permitió hacer daño a Jacob. En cambio ellos negociaron otra vez y construyeron un montón de piedras. Labán le dijo, “Ni tú ni yo cruzaremos esta línea para perjudicarnos.”

Y luego Jacob miró hacia el oeste y su hermano Esaú. Pero era una lucha más antes de la reunión difícil. En medio de la noche, después de mandar a toda su compañía, incluyendo a su familia, a través del río, Jacob estaba sólo en la orilla. Y un extranjero vino y ellos lucharon toda la noche hasta al amanecer. Jacob no lo sabía pero él luchaba por una bendición otra vez. Y otra vez luchaba con Dios. Siempre estaba luchando con Dios, pero no lo sabía.

He was stuck between a rock, or a pile of rocks, and a hard place. The last time Jacob had seen his brother he was planning his death. Now he was going back. Jacob sent messengers ahead to Esau to let him know that he was coming back in peace. But the messengers returned saying that Esau already knew and he was coming to meet Jacob with 400 men. That was bad news. So Jacob split his company in two hoping that one half might make it while Esau destroyed the other.

Then Jacob did a strange thing, something he had never done before, as far we know. Jacob prayed to God. Oh, God had come to Jacob before. And Jacob had made a bargain with God before. But Jacob was praying to God now. He remembered the promise God made to him at that lonely sanctuary twenty years before on this same road. Jacob prayed for his life because he was afraid.

Jacob reminded God of the promise to “do him good” (which God had never really said) and of God’s promise to return him to his homeland and to bless him. Jacob reminded God that it would be really hard to keep this promise if he were dead.

God didn’t answer. So Jacob sent some of his wealth ahead as a bribe to Esau and sent his family on across the Jabbok River and he stayed on the far side as night fell across the land. Jacob, whose strength and wit and trickery had pulled him through every time before…who had accumulated a great caravan of wealth and a family…now stood alone, waiting for daybreak.

Hay un elemento de lucha en todas nuestras historias de llamamiento. Para unos hay un sentimiento de volver al hogar pero también hay un sentido que las luchas de nuestras vidas ahora tienen un lugar para mostrar sus propósitos verdaderos.

Cuando era pastor del campus en la Universidad de Virginia, tenía un estudiante con mucha inseguridad. La primera vez que yo lo vi, él estaba en una feria de todos los grupos estudiantiles. Él estaba vestido con armadura de bambú y con una máscara sobre la cara. Y tenía una espada de madera en la mano. Estaba enfrente de una exposición para el grupo de artes marciales coreano, por lo tanto la armadura era apropiada, pero ello simbolizaba algo más. Este joven estaba luchando contra todo el mundo y estaba buscándose a sí mismo.

Otro estudiante le invitó para cenar con nosotros en el Wesley Foundation donde estaba nuestro ministerio. Descubrí que este joven, a pesar de todos sus dones, estaba luchando urgentemente para conocerse a sí mismo, para saber el propósito de su vida, y para conocer con quién luchaba. Él vino a Cristo y, en uno de los días más grandes de mi ministerio, le bauticé en el Día de Pascua. Celebramos con él que Jesús había cambiado su vida y había transformado su inseguridad en confianza. Pero en esta nueva familia de la iglesia él nunca paró su lucha. Ahora su lucha es para entender qué hacer con el don que es su vida. Es una lucha hasta la muerte vivir como Cristo.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man appears and he and Jacob start wrestling. What’s up with this? This is totally unexpected except that you can imagine that there is some wrestling going on within Jacob as he waits for the sun.

This guy is pretty good, too, because he keeps up with Jacob all the way up to dawn. Then he strikes Jacob on the hip and dislocates it, but he still can’t overcome Jacob and he finally has to say, “Let me go. It’s daylight.” Almost as if to remind Jacob that he’s got somewhere to be.
Jacob can’t let any contest end without getting something out of it so he says, “I won’t let you go until you bless me.”

"What's your name?," says the man.

"Jacob," he answered.

The man says, "Your name isn't Jacob anymore - it's Israel, because you don’t just struggle with humans and win. You also struggle with God."

Then a curious Jacob asks, "What's your name?"

But the stranger responds, "Why do you ask my name?" as if to say, "Don't you recognize me, Jacob? I am the one who comes to you in the night, who meets you in your darkest moments, who promises to walk with you through your trials. I am the one who you have struggled with all of your life. And I am the one who blesses you in spite of yourself."

With that the man gives Jacob another blessing without being forced to. The only one who has ever given Jacob a blessing he didn't fight for was the God who spoke to him on this same road twenty years before. And Jacob knows that he is on holy ground, that he has been found out and named. His true identity had been revealed. All that he had done throughout his checkered life was not just a struggle to make his way in the world. It was a struggle with God. And though he wasn’t the man God might have wanted him to be – though he had failed and fallen – God would not let him go and would not let him force a blessing out of God. So he called the place Peniel which means "the face of God" because he had seen the face of God and survived.

Jacob left the place limping and later that day he saw the face of God again. For when he met his brother Esau coming to meet him with his 400 men, Esau met him with tears instead of spears. And Jacob said, "Truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God."

Cuando el sol salió, Jacob estaba pasando de Penuel, pero debido a su cadera, iba cojeando. ¿Qué tipo de cojera tiene la gente en tu congregación? ¿Qué tipo de cojera tienes tú? El mundo no necesita oír que hay arenas de lucha. Nuestra gente está luchando en arenas cada día. Querrán escuchar una palabra de gracia. Vendrán y se sentarán en los bancos de la iglesia y se preguntarán cómo podrán ser hijos de Dios. Se sentirán perdidos y querrán saber lo que Jesús les pedirá de ellos. Se pondrán a cantar un himno y no se sentirán dignos de las palabras. Tú estarás de pie y no te sentirás capaz para la tarea. Porque sentimos el peso de nuestras luchas…de nuestros miedos…de nuestros pecados.

No…el mundo no necesita oír que hay arenas de lucha. Es verdad. Pero el mundo sí necesita saber que puede encontrar a Dios en medio de la lucha. El mundo necesita saber que hay luchas que sí valen la pena. El mundo necesita saber que hay que luchar con Dios.

Tal vez este lugar, este Curso de Estudio, ha sido una arena de lucha para ti. Tal vez ha sido doloroso. Tal vez tú sales con una cojera. Pero luchar es verdaderamente un reto…un reto para pasar a nuevas oportunidades. Nos encontramos con Dios no sólo en el consuelo sino también en la fructífera perturbación. Como cuando un granjero ara un campo para la siembra, hasta romperlo, prepararlo para la nueva vida. Esto es Peniel.

Estamos en un ejercicio sagrado, ustedes y yo. Caminamos en temor porque no sabemos lo que hacemos. Unas veces caminamos con una cojera. Pero caminamos con el poder del extranjero que lucha con nosotros en la noche y que ha prometido nunca soltarnos. Porque el nombre de este extranjero, como dice Carlos Wesley en un himno famoso…el nombre de este extranjero es amor. Y este amor – este amor dado sin tener en cuenta los méritos…este amor derrochador se derrama en la gente más inverosímil…hasta nosotros. Este amor nunca nos suelta. Gracias a Dios.

Peniel - a place to meet and struggle with God. A place of challenge. A place to meet God face to face. You leave the wrestling ring that is Course of Study today to go back to the wrestling ring that is your home. You go back to serve communities that need to know that the struggles they face are meant to be something more.

They are going to be in your church on Sunday morning. They will come needing to hear a word of grace. They will sit down in the pew wonder how in the name of heaven they can be a child of God…They will feel lost and will want to know what it takes to be a follower of Jesus Christ…They will stand to sing a hymn when they don’t feel like they are worthy of the words, when they feel weighed down by sin. Then…Then, when they hear the choir sing, when they hear the words of assurance and comfort in a prayer or in the words of the Bible, when some poor preacher like me or you dares to preach a sermon through which God can speak, when a neighbor in a pew, when they take the bread and wine…Will they see their struggle in some new light? Will they start to believe that God uses ordinary, sin-laden, needy people like them? Will they start to believe that God really does mean it when God says, “You are mine”? Will they start to recognize, “Hey, if God can use an old trickster like Jacob, then maybe God can use somebody like me”? Will they start to see that the wrestling that they have been doing is giving them opportunity to see God face to grace?

Maybe you, too, have struggled with God here at Course of Study and maybe it has been painful at times. Maybe you are limping away. But wrestling is really a challenge - a challenge to move on to new windows and new opportunities for growth. When we meet God it is not only in comfort, but sometimes in fruitful disturbance, as when a farmer turns the soil, breaks it up, so that new life can come again in the spring. Peniel was a place of wrestling.

This place has been a Peniel. This sacred place has been a place of grace and a place of struggle. It is a place where we gather to continue to be very ordinary people caught up in the extraordinary things God has us doing. And the promise to us is the same as it was to Jacob - God will be with us and God will not let us go until we recognize that we are a holy people.

We are bound together in a holy business, you and me. We don't know what we're doing and we sure don't deserve to be doing it. But we walk this road together, limping along at times, but always marching with the greatest power of all - the power of God's unmerited, extravagant love, poured out on unlikely characters…even us. Thanks be to God.

Genesis 32:22-32 [Reina-Valera 1995 Update]
22 Se levantó aquella noche, tomó a sus dos mujeres, a sus dos siervas y a sus once hijos, y pasó el vado de Jaboc. 23 Los tomó, pues, y les hizo pasar el arroyo a ellos y a todo lo que tenía. 24 Así se quedó Jacob solo; y luchó con él un varón hasta que rayaba el alba. 25 Cuando el hombre vio que no podía con él, tocó en el sitio del encaje de su muslo, y se descoyuntó el muslo de Jacob mientras con él luchaba. 26 Y dijo: -- Déjame, porque raya el alba. Jacob le respondió: -- No te dejaré, si no me bendices. 27 -- ¿Cuál es tu nombre? -- le preguntó el hombre. -- Jacob -- respondió él. 28 Entonces el hombre dijo: -- Ya no te llamarás Jacob, sino Israel, porque has luchado con Dios y con los hombres, y has vencido. 29 -- Declárame ahora tu nombre -- le preguntó Jacob. -- ¿Por qué me preguntas por mi nombre? -- respondió el hombre. Y lo bendijo allí mismo. 30 Jacob llamó Peniel a aquel lugar, porque dijo: "Vi a Dios cara a cara, y fue librada mi alma". 31 Ya había pasado de Peniel cuando salió el sol; y cojeaba a causa de su cadera. 32 Por esto, hasta el día de hoy no comen los hijos de Israel del tendón que se contrajo, el cual está en el encaje del muslo, porque Jacob fue tocado en este sitio de su muslo, en el tendón que se contrajo.

Genesis 32:22-32
In that night, Jacob got up and he took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed toe Ford of the Jabbok. When he had sent them across the wadi, he sent across all that he had. So Jacob was left all by himself. Now a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he could not prevail over him, he struck the socket of his hip so that Jacob’s hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him. He said, “Release me, because dawn has arrived.”
But Jacob said, “I will not release you unless you bless me.”
He said to him, “What is your name?”
He answered, “Jacob.”
The man said, “You name will not be Jacob any more, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and you prevailed.”
Jacob asked, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask for my name?” And he blessed him there.
Jacob called the name of that place Peniel because, “I saw God face to face but my life was preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel and he was limping because of his hip.

Listening to the Groans

I met with the new Crossroads class last week. It is meeting in the basement of the Fray Building, which is about as far from the front of the church as you can get. I was getting ready to leave to come get my things together for the 11:15 service and I heard a sound coming from the front of the property. It was the bell in our steeple. David Downing was ringing the bell as he does every Sunday. And for some reason I could hear it better from the Fray Building.

It’s a beautiful sound. It sings out to Franktown and to the fields and says, “Something important is about to happen. We are gathering here and God is going to be worshipped. Songs are going to be sung. Prayers are going to be offered. The Bible is going to be read. The word is going to be proclaimed. These things will happen even if you don’t come, but you should come. You should be here. You are invited. You are welcome.” That’s what the sound of that bell says. Amazing, isn’t it, that something so small, that we might not even notice, can say so much.

This week I got to tell Bible stories and do Discovery times with children and youth at our district Camp Occohannock. On Monday I was out there and I went down by the dock and found a periwinkle snail to use as an illustration. We were talking about creation and I wanted to tell the children about these periwinkles because they have this incredible ability to sense the tides. Even when they are separated from the water and their natural habitat they somehow know when the tides change and when it is time to move up and down the grass they live on to find the nutrients washed up by the tide. They have taken periwinkles to South America and as soon as they land there the periwinkles begin to move up and down in concert with the local tides. This tells us that the periwinkles are in tune with the pull of the moon which controls the tides.

So I was telling the youngest group of campers this on Monday and showing off my little periwinkle. I told them that the periwinkle must be an intergalactic space creature because it has this communication with the moon. Then I asked them what a periwinkle did every day. What do they think about all day? I was expecting an answer like, “They’re thinking about when it’s time to move up or down,” but one little boy said, “They’re thinking about how to take over the world.” He was expecting that these small creatures were going to make a big difference.

That’s also what Jesus seems to be expecting. When Jesus told parables about what the kingdom of God is like he used images of small things that made a big difference. A mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, growing into a great tree. Yeast, almost invisible, leavening the loaf. Salt giving taste to food. These are the ways Jesus talks about the way God works and the way the Church works. Like a bell on a summer morning or a periwinkle in the marsh, you have to pay attention to know what they’re saying and you have to know their story to understand where they are headed and what their purpose is.

So let me move us then to another seemingly small thing making a big difference in the world…something Paul talks about in the reading from Romans for today – the Holy Spirit. Christians talk about the Holy Spirit a lot but it may be the hardest thing for us to understand. We invoke the Spirit. We get anointed by the Spirit. We get slain in the Spirit. We are inspired by the Spirit. When the choir sings well we say that they’ve got the Spirit. But there must be something more to the Holy Spirit.

When we sing the doxology, as we’re going to do in just a little while, we praise God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is one of the three persons of the Trinity, one of the names by which God is known. We talk about God the Holy Spirit when we talk about the ways Jesus’ presence continues with us, when we talk about the ways God sweeps us up into the life of the Trinity, when we talk about the hope we have as Christians. The Holy Spirit is not some ghostly presence or ecstatic emotion; the Spirit is God with us still.

As Paul talks about it here, the Spirit’s role is to do two things – to help us know who we are and to help us hear where we are going. The Spirit has to help us know who we are because we so often forget and we begin to listen to other voices that want to tell us who we are. Paul’s way of talking about this is to say that when we are not listening to the Spirit of God we are indebted to the flesh – to those worldly voices that tell us that we are less than what God made us to be. You know these voices. These are the ones that tell us that we are slaves to our bad habits and addictions….that we cannot change…that we have no talents…that we are unforgivable because of things that we have done in the past…that we are unlovable because of things that were done to us…that no one cares for us…that we can’t reform the world…that there is no virtue in work no values worth giving our lives for…that I might as well look for number one because no one else will…that we do not bear the image of God and that because things have always been this way that is the way they will always be. You know these voices and they are the messages of the flesh according to the way Paul talks. When we are in the sway of these messages, we are dying.

The Spirit speaks a different word. It tells us that, yes, some things will have to die. The things we do as a result of the word of the flesh will have to die, but we will live. We are not made to live in slavery to fear, we are made to live in glory with Christ. The Spirit of God tells us that we have a new identity. We are children of God. When we are able to call out to God as a child calls out for a parent, then we have received the promise. We are part of a new family.

Now you might think this might not seem like good news. Who wants to hear that they are children? When you are 5 years old you don’t want to hear that you a child. You want to be a big boy or a big girl. When you are a teenager you don’t want to be a child, you want to be an adult. When we are adults we might envy the simplicity of childhood, but we don’t want to be children. We want to have some control of our destiny, to feel somewhat independent. But children is what the scriptures say that we are when we give ourselves over to Jesus.

Think about what children hear, though. Who is it that hears sleigh bells at Christmas time? Who is it that knows that there is still wonder and mystery in the world? Who is it that jumps up and down when a loved one or a friend comes for a visit? Children, the smallest among us, are in touch with God’s greatest treasures.

We don’t really lose that, you know. It’s always there, but we cover it over when we start to let those voices of the flesh define who we are. But the child is still there…waiting for adoption.

When we were in New Orleans last summer on the mission trip where we were helping to rebuild a home that had been hit by the hurricane, one of the best moments of the day was in the afternoon when the ice cream truck would come through the streets. It was really hot in that house and we looked forward to the refreshment that a lemon-lime ice rocket could provide. Nobody loved the ice cream truck more than Christy Ann. One day we were working together in the back room of the house and far off in the distance I could hear the music of the ice cream truck coming. I turned around to ask Christy Ann if she had heard it and she was gone. Her roller and pan were lying on the ground and she was out at the curb getting her change together.

Somewhere within us is that same impulse that can respond to God and wants to go running to God. The challenge for us is to listen in the distance for that future that the Spirit is leading us to. Remember that this is the other thing Paul tells us about the Spirit. It tells us who we are – children of God – and helps us to hear where we are going. Paul says, if you listen closely you will hear the whole creation groaning. Yes, there is suffering in this world. Yes, things never change as quickly as we would like them, too. Yes, our progress seems slow and it seems that we take one step backward for every two steps we take forward. But the important suffering is what the creation is going through as it waits for God’s new day.

The creation is suffering as it waits on the day when all will be revealed for what it really is. But this is a special kind of suffering – it’s like birthpangs. Just as a woman cries out in the pain of childbirth, but does so knowing that something is being born, so the creation cries out knowing that the end of this story is a birth, is life. And the creation waits on us to get it. The creation waits for us to hear off in the distance that sound that tells us that a new day is coming. Like a bell in church steeple…like an ice cream truck on a hot day…there is a sound that tells us God will do a new thing.

We have confidence and hope because we are awaiting our final adoption papers which will acknowledge what we already know through the Spirit – that we are children of God and heirs of Christ. If you listen closely they sound you hear is the flesh dying and a new person being born – a new order being established.

We have this great opportunity as Christians. We get to be agents of this new day. Our spirits respond to the Holy Spirit in a sympathetic chord that rings out in witness to what God is doing. And the world needs to hear.

How many people do you know who are suffering because they cannot hear these sounds? How many people do you know who are so bound by their own brokenness and pain and sin that they cannot hear any word of hope? How many people have forgotten the wonder of their lives and the wonder of this world and have settled for lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau put it in Walden? How many of us are desperately trying to hide the places in our own lives that have become dried-up deserts? How many of us need a new day?

Pray, my brothers and sisters. Pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that will remind us who we are and where we are headed. And go forth to love. There is no other thing we can do that will do more to change the world. Our acts of love are a witness to a Spirit that still blows in the wind and grows like a mustard seed and plots with the periwinkle to take over the universe which it has claimed and loved since before before. Thanks be to God.

Romans 8:12-25

So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh you are near to death. But if, by the Spirit, you put to death the works of the body, you will live, for those who are led by the Spirit of God are those who are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery leading again to fear, but rather you received a spirit of adoption through which we can cry, "Abba, Father." That same spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. If we are children then we are also heirs - heirs of God and heirs together with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also share in his glory.

I reckon that the sufferings of this present age are not worth comparing to the glory that is about to revealed in us. For with expectation the creation eagerly awaits the revelation of the children of God because creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but through the one subjecting, in hope that this same creation would be set free from slavery to corruption for the liberty that is the glory of the children of God.

We know that all creation groans together and has suffered the agonies of childbirth together until now. And not only the creation, but we who have experienced the first-fruits of the Spirit have also been groaning inwardly ourselves, we who are eagerly awaiting adoption and the redemption of our bodies. For we are saved in hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what they can see? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly await it with patience.

Hairy and the Heel-holder: Dealing with Family Conflict

If there is a point to the Jacob and Esau narrative that we read from Genesis today it might be this: Even scoundrels and scalawags have a place in the reign of God. Some of you will find that good news. In fact, most of us probably will because I doubt there are many of us who feel as though we’ve done our part to earn full sainthood. To hear that a rascal like Jacob has made it into the first book of the sacred scriptures for both Jews and Christians and that he is there, not as a villain, but as a character used for God’s own purposes…well, to hear that seems like a pretty hopeful thing. Maybe God does have a use for people like you and me after all.

If we take away nothing else from this reading today, I guess that will be alright. We come to church looking for a little good news and, in a story as difficult as obscure as this one, a word of hope for the little degenerate who lurks within us all probably fits the bill for gospel. But I’m not satisfied and it’s my job as the preacher to get below the surface of this text, to explore its seamy underbelly, to expose its troubling darkness and to take you with me. I’m also going to try to do something really amazing with a text that is this challenging – I’m going to try to say a few things about how to deal with family conflict. That’s not an easy thing with a story that is mostly about how NOT to deal with family conflict, but we’ll see what we can do.

A few years ago Bill Moyers did a PBS series in which he reminded us that the book of Genesis is one of the greatest treasures we have. Not only does it give us an introduction to the Bible and to God, but it also gives us some of our most memorable stories and fascinating people. This is a book with magic gardens and talking serpents, giants and floods, skyscrapers built to the heavens and cities leveled to the ground, a God who gets elbow-deep in mud to create a human being and who argues, angers and despairs. And throughout the book there is one constant – conflict…the lifeblood of good stories and a staple of our lives. Particularly in Genesis we get stories of family conflict. Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Joseph and his ten half-brothers, and our own happy family today. Given all this conflict it seems incredible that God’s promise to Israel somehow makes it to a second book – Exodus!

So let’s look at this passage. Chapter 25 starts with a preface that tells us that what we’re about to hear is a preface to a cycle of stories about Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, who were the first ones to receive the promise of blessing for the nation that is to come from them. But if this is about Isaac, it’s about Isaac in a very odd way. Isaac has very little to do with these stories that are to come, just like he’s had very little to do with the stories that came before.

Isaac’s greatest moment came on the mountaintop as his father Abraham is about to slay him on an altar dedicated to Yahweh God. He is the child of promise. We know that because God calls him that. But after this episode, Isaac becomes a pretty marginal figure. He doesn’t even arrange his own marriage. A servant makes all the arrangements for his wedding to Rebekah. And later on, when he finally decides that the time has come to impart the great vision of what Yahweh has promised to his sons, Isaac himself has lost all vision and is at the mercy of Rebekah and Jacob who manipulate his weakness to take the blessing he intends for Esau. Isaac may get the first mention here, but it’s Jacob who gets the top billing from here on out.

As in all good stories, there has to be a complication to make this story move along. The complication here is that Isaac and Rebekah, the couple on whom the promise of descendents, land and nation has fallen, have no children. If you’ll remember, it is the same complication that Abraham and Sarah faced when they were told they were going to enter geriatric parenthood. They had the good sense to laugh when God told them that they were going to have a child. Abraham fell on his face laughing. Sarah laughed behind the tent flap. God had the last laugh and the result was Isaac, whose name means Laughter.

But Isaac doesn’t laugh here. He prays to Yahweh, the God of his parents and before verse 21 is over, Rebekah is pregnant, though the text suggests that it took twenty years before the prayer was answered. Isaac becomes a father at the relatively young age of sixty.

There is another problem here, though. There’s not one child, but two, which is not a problem except that they don’t get along. Even before they are born, they don’t get along. This is sibling rivalry in the extreme. Then something amazing happens for a story written by men – (you know it’s written by men by the description of the birth that’s about to happen) – amazingly, we get a glimplse of Rebekah’s thoughts about this pregnancy. She’s thinking, “It’s like a war zone in there! They’re beating on each other! I’ve got a knee over here, an elbow over there.”

I know, I know. This sounds like a normal pregnancy. But Genesis says it was worse than normal, so much so that Rebekah finally says something that is very hard to translate. The King James Version says that Rebekah said, “If it be so, why am I thus?” My translation is, “If it’s going to be like this, why do I even exist?” However you translate it, this is a prayer and so Rebekah turns to this God who has granted her the gift of this pregnancy and asks, “What’s going on?”

It’s then that God makes the only appearance in this text. We are told God answered Isaac’s prayer, but the only words God speaks are the words to Rebekah and they are a bit of prophecy. God says, “It’s not two children but two nations that are in your womb.”

(You can just about hear Rebekah saying to herself, “Well, it sure feels like it!”)

God says, in effect, “This is about more than a pregnancy. This is about a long-term conflict that will seem never-ending. These two children will be ancestors of nations that will always be in a contest of might. But as in all the stories of God, the older will serve the younger.”

Now notice something here. Rebekah knows the end of the story now. We don’t know that anyone else ever does, but she does. The reasons why God chooses as God chooses are no clearer now, but Rebekah knows the conclusion and she decides to be an agent for bringing it about. She, like God, will favor the younger child for no discernible reason.

The birth is unusual, to say the least. The first of the twins is a red, hairy baby and because he is hairy they decide to call him…Hairy. In Hebrew that would be Esau. And then…and this is where I think a man must have reported this story because I don’t think this is an obstetrical possibility…anyway, the story is that the second child was born grabbing hold of the heel of the first. And for this miraculous feat he earned the name “Heel-holder”, which is Hebrew for Jacob.

With the birth the stage is set. The characters of these two are pretty well set. We know from this point on that Esau will be the earth-child, defined by the hair of his body as somebody close to his animal nature. Sure enough, when he is grown, he is the hunter, the outdoorsman, beloved by his father because he brought home the game Isaac loved so much. They are very close, Isaac and Esau. They make decisions with their stomachs, not based on grand promises of future blessings.

Jacob, we know from birth, will be the fighter, the one who scrapes and scraps, always reaching ahead for the blessing and bedeviling his brother in the process. When he is grown, he is described as a pretty man who dwelt in tents. He made his way on the favor of his mother and the favor of God, though Jacob can’t seem to recognize a gift that doesn’t involve an attached string. He struggles for everything and even ends up wrestling God on the banks of a river, for which he earns a new name, Israel – one who strives with God.

The scene with the stew is very predictable once we know these characters. Who knows if Jacob planned the thing from the beginning or not? He is boiling a pot of lentil stew when his brother returns from the hunt, tired and famished. Esau sees and smells the stew and speaks from his stomach, “Quick, Jake, let me guzzle down some of that red stuff because I am really hungry.”

Jacob is direct and to the point, “First, sell me your birthright.”

“Look I’m dying here, Jake! Am I going to eat my birthright?”

“First, swear to me, Esau.”

“Whatever.” So he swears and he eats and he drinks and he stands and he leaves. Esau will not figure in the blessing from here on out, but his confrontations with Jacob will continue until the day they bury their father and go their separate ways.

Now I guess I don’t need to say that this is not a model family. You’ve got two brothers who fight, parents who pick favorites and a family blessing that can only be passed along to one of the children. This is a recipe for disaster.

We can relate to this story because it is so much like our families. Have you ever noticed this? You get together with your family and it seems like everybody has these…quirks. Everybody but you, of course. And even when it’s going well there are little reminders of simmering conflicts and unresolved tensions that go back to birth and probably beyond. Every family lives with these deep complexities that are part of the nature of human community.

We can also see things in the life of Isaac and Rebekah’s family that make us wince because we know that they are making mistakes that will haunt the family down the road. When love is channeled instead of spread freely, something is going to wrong. If any member of the family feels devalued and unloved, conflict is inevitable. So when Isaac and Rebekah choose up sides, something bad is going to happen.

When the needs of family members are not met in healthy ways, they begin to be expressed in unhealthy ways. The narrative this family lived with was that only one child was going to inherit this blessing. The other child was going to have to settle for something less. This is the way things were for much of human history. Inheritance was usually limited and passed along to the oldest son. But this not healthy for families. How many families have been torn apart because there are some children who have not felt love and who have equated the stuff that’s left behind after death as a symbol of the parent’s love? Every child needs to share in the family’s blessing. Or you have manipulations over stew or worse.

Bishop Gregory Palmer, in his closing sermon at General Conference, used this [i]text and said, “[It is] incumbent on you and me as people of Christian faith that we not become stingy with the blessings—stingy with what we have received from God..Naked we came into this world. We brought nothing with us, and we will take nothing with us. Everything we have—every good and perfect gift, comes from God.” And it is to be shared, both within families and within churches to the world.

So when love is not expressed to all the members of the family…when the needs of family members are not met in healthy ways…something bad will happen. But when unhealthy behavior is not confronted early, it can lead to major problems down the road. In this family it led to death threats and exile and divisions. When we explain it away and say, “It’s just a phase. It’s just a small thing. It’s something I used to do and I got over it”…when we explain away bad behavior in our children or our siblings or our extended family and fail to draw necessary lines…we often see major consequences down the road.

As Jeremiah Wright puts it, “God will forgive you for sowing wild oats. But God's forgiveness don't stop the crop. Them oats you sowed will bring a crop. You will reap what you sow. But stop calling your crops your cross. [mocking] "Well... that child is just my cross." No, that child is your crop. A cross is a sacrificial vehicle of redemption that you voluntarily pick up; a crop is the result of something you sowed. Our choices have consequences, our behaviors have consequences.”[ii]

A corollary to this is that parents should be parents. Not passive and disconnected like Isaac. Not manipulative like Rebekah. But engaged and on the same page - engaged with their children and on the same page with their spouses or other caregivers on the approach to take with their children. Too many of us are trying to do it on our own.

But finally, the good news again. I know there are all kinds of families out there and all kinds of arrangements. There are all kinds of ways that our families – every family – are not what we’d want them to be. But God works through imperfect families. Indeed that’s the only kind of family God has ever worked through.

Does you know this story of Hairy and the Heelholder? Does it feel familiar? For as long as human beings have been instruments of God’s grace, Jacob and Esau and their descendents have lived within us. We know this story, because it is our story. And yet God became human to live in this mess and to show us the way to redemption and resurrection. Thanks be to the God who loves messy families and wants them to be whole.


Genesis 25:19-34
These are the stories of Isaac, son of Abraham:
Abraham bore Isaac. Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan-Aram, and sister of Laban the Aramean. Isaac prayed on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. Yahweh answered his prayer and Rebekah, his wife, conceived.
The children struck one another within her and she said, “If it is thus, why do I exist?” So she went to consult Yahweh and Yahweh said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb,
And two peoples from within you will be divided;
One people will be mightier than the other,
And the older shall serve the younger.”
When her time to give birth came about, there were twins in her womb. The first came out red and all of him was like a great mantle of hair, so they called his name Esau. After this, his brother came out with his hand grasping the heel of Esau, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when they were born.
The boys grew up and Esau became a man skillful in the hunt, a man of the fields. Jacob became a pretty man, a tent-dweller. Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
One day Jacob was boiling up some stew when Esau was coming in from the fields. Esau was famished. Esau said to Jacob, “Quick, let me guzzle some of that red stuff because I am famished!” (On this account they also called him Edom.)
Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.”
Esau said, “Look, I am dying here! What good is this birthright to me?”
Jacob said, “First, swear to me.”
So Esau swore an oath to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank and then stood up and walked away. So Esau despised his birthright.

[i] http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=4017527&content_id={E590EA13-6F93-484A-9D00-B4E4455A25B6}&notoc=1
[ii] Jeremiah Wright, “Transcript of a Jeremiah Wright Sermon”, 1/27/08, The New Republic http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4808fe74-023d-417b-8537-33763c33e399
Hairy and the Heel-holder: Dealing with Family Conflict
July 13, 2008
Franktown United Methodist Church

If there is a point to the Jacob and Esau narrative that we read from Genesis today it might be this: Even scoundrels and scalawags have a place in the reign of God. Some of you will find that good news. In fact, most of us probably will because I doubt there are many of us who feel as though we’ve done our part to earn full sainthood. To hear that a rascal like Jacob has made it into the first book of the sacred scriptures for both Jews and Christians and that he is there, not as a villain, but as a character used for God’s own purposes…well, to hear that seems like a pretty hopeful thing. Maybe God does have a use for people like you and me after all.

If we take away nothing else from this reading today, I guess that will be alright. We come to church looking for a little good news and, in a story as difficult as obscure as this one, a word of hope for the little degenerate who lurks within us all probably fits the bill for gospel. But I’m not satisfied and it’s my job as the preacher to get below the surface of this text, to explore its seamy underbelly, to expose its troubling darkness and to take you with me. I’m also going to try to do something really amazing with a text that is this challenging – I’m going to try to say a few things about how to deal with family conflict. That’s not an easy thing with a story that is mostly about how NOT to deal with family conflict, but we’ll see what we can do.

A few years ago Bill Moyers did a PBS series in which he reminded us that the book of Genesis is one of the greatest treasures we have. Not only does it give us an introduction to the Bible and to God, but it also gives us some of our most memorable stories and fascinating people. This is a book with magic gardens and talking serpents, giants and floods, skyscrapers built to the heavens and cities leveled to the ground, a God who gets elbow-deep in mud to create a human being and who argues, angers and despairs. And throughout the book there is one constant – conflict…the lifeblood of good stories and a staple of our lives. Particularly in Genesis we get stories of family conflict. Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Joseph and his ten half-brothers, and our own happy family today. Given all this conflict it seems incredible that God’s promise to Israel somehow makes it to a second book – Exodus!

So let’s look at this passage. Chapter 25 starts with a preface that tells us that what we’re about to hear is a preface to a cycle of stories about Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, who were the first ones to receive the promise of blessing for the nation that is to come from them. But if this is about Isaac, it’s about Isaac in a very odd way. Isaac has very little to do with these stories that are to come, just like he’s had very little to do with the stories that came before.

Isaac’s greatest moment came on the mountaintop as his father Abraham is about to slay him on an altar dedicated to Yahweh God. He is the child of promise. We know that because God calls him that. But after this episode, Isaac becomes a pretty marginal figure. He doesn’t even arrange his own marriage. A servant makes all the arrangements for his wedding to Rebekah. And later on, when he finally decides that the time has come to impart the great vision of what Yahweh has promised to his sons, Isaac himself has lost all vision and is at the mercy of Rebekah and Jacob who manipulate his weakness to take the blessing he intends for Esau. Isaac may get the first mention here, but it’s Jacob who gets the top billing from here on out.

As in all good stories, there has to be a complication to make this story move along. The complication here is that Isaac and Rebekah, the couple on whom the promise of descendents, land and nation has fallen, have no children. If you’ll remember, it is the same complication that Abraham and Sarah faced when they were told they were going to enter geriatric parenthood. They had the good sense to laugh when God told them that they were going to have a child. Abraham fell on his face laughing. Sarah laughed behind the tent flap. God had the last laugh and the result was Isaac, whose name means Laughter.

But Isaac doesn’t laugh here. He prays to Yahweh, the God of his parents and before verse 21 is over, Rebekah is pregnant, though the text suggests that it took twenty years before the prayer was answered. Isaac becomes a father at the relatively young age of sixty.

There is another problem here, though. There’s not one child, but two, which is not a problem except that they don’t get along. Even before they are born, they don’t get along. This is sibling rivalry in the extreme. Then something amazing happens for a story written by men – (you know it’s written by men by the description of the birth that’s about to happen) – amazingly, we get a glimplse of Rebekah’s thoughts about this pregnancy. She’s thinking, “It’s like a war zone in there! They’re beating on each other! I’ve got a knee over here, an elbow over there.”

I know, I know. This sounds like a normal pregnancy. But Genesis says it was worse than normal, so much so that Rebekah finally says something that is very hard to translate. The King James Version says that Rebekah said, “If it be so, why am I thus?” My translation is, “If it’s going to be like this, why do I even exist?” However you translate it, this is a prayer and so Rebekah turns to this God who has granted her the gift of this pregnancy and asks, “What’s going on?”

It’s then that God makes the only appearance in this text. We are told God answered Isaac’s prayer, but the only words God speaks are the words to Rebekah and they are a bit of prophecy. God says, “It’s not two children but two nations that are in your womb.”

(You can just about hear Rebekah saying to herself, “Well, it sure feels like it!”)

God says, in effect, “This is about more than a pregnancy. This is about a long-term conflict that will seem never-ending. These two children will be ancestors of nations that will always be in a contest of might. But as in all the stories of God, the older will serve the younger.”

Now notice something here. Rebekah knows the end of the story now. We don’t know that anyone else ever does, but she does. The reasons why God chooses as God chooses are no clearer now, but Rebekah knows the conclusion and she decides to be an agent for bringing it about. She, like God, will favor the younger child for no discernible reason.

The birth is unusual, to say the least. The first of the twins is a red, hairy baby and because he is hairy they decide to call him…Hairy. In Hebrew that would be Esau. And then…and this is where I think a man must have reported this story because I don’t think this is an obstetrical possibility…anyway, the story is that the second child was born grabbing hold of the heel of the first. And for this miraculous feat he earned the name “Heel-holder”, which is Hebrew for Jacob.

With the birth the stage is set. The characters of these two are pretty well set. We know from this point on that Esau will be the earth-child, defined by the hair of his body as somebody close to his animal nature. Sure enough, when he is grown, he is the hunter, the outdoorsman, beloved by his father because he brought home the game Isaac loved so much. They are very close, Isaac and Esau. They make decisions with their stomachs, not based on grand promises of future blessings.

Jacob, we know from birth, will be the fighter, the one who scrapes and scraps, always reaching ahead for the blessing and bedeviling his brother in the process. When he is grown, he is described as a pretty man who dwelt in tents. He made his way on the favor of his mother and the favor of God, though Jacob can’t seem to recognize a gift that doesn’t involve an attached string. He struggles for everything and even ends up wrestling God on the banks of a river, for which he earns a new name, Israel – one who strives with God.

The scene with the stew is very predictable once we know these characters. Who knows if Jacob planned the thing from the beginning or not? He is boiling a pot of lentil stew when his brother returns from the hunt, tired and famished. Esau sees and smells the stew and speaks from his stomach, “Quick, Jake, let me guzzle down some of that red stuff because I am really hungry.”

Jacob is direct and to the point, “First, sell me your birthright.”

“Look I’m dying here, Jake! Am I going to eat my birthright?”

“First, swear to me, Esau.”

“Whatever.” So he swears and he eats and he drinks and he stands and he leaves. Esau will not figure in the blessing from here on out, but his confrontations with Jacob will continue until the day they bury their father and go their separate ways.

Now I guess I don’t need to say that this is not a model family. You’ve got two brothers who fight, parents who pick favorites and a family blessing that can only be passed along to one of the children. This is a recipe for disaster.

We can relate to this story because it is so much like our families. Have you ever noticed this? You get together with your family and it seems like everybody has these…quirks. Everybody but you, of course. And even when it’s going well there are little reminders of simmering conflicts and unresolved tensions that go back to birth and probably beyond. Every family lives with these deep complexities that are part of the nature of human community.

We can also see things in the life of Isaac and Rebekah’s family that make us wince because we know that they are making mistakes that will haunt the family down the road. When love is channeled instead of spread freely, something is going to wrong. If any member of the family feels devalued and unloved, conflict is inevitable. So when Isaac and Rebekah choose up sides, something bad is going to happen.

When the needs of family members are not met in healthy ways, they begin to be expressed in unhealthy ways. The narrative this family lived with was that only one child was going to inherit this blessing. The other child was going to have to settle for something less. This is the way things were for much of human history. Inheritance was usually limited and passed along to the oldest son. But this not healthy for families. How many families have been torn apart because there are some children who have not felt love and who have equated the stuff that’s left behind after death as a symbol of the parent’s love? Every child needs to share in the family’s blessing. Or you have manipulations over stew or worse.

Bishop Gregory Palmer, in his closing sermon at General Conference, used this [i]text and said, “[It is] incumbent on you and me as people of Christian faith that we not become stingy with the blessings—stingy with what we have received from God..Naked we came into this world. We brought nothing with us, and we will take nothing with us. Everything we have—every good and perfect gift, comes from God.” And it is to be shared, both within families and within churches to the world.

So when love is not expressed to all the members of the family…when the needs of family members are not met in healthy ways…something bad will happen. But when unhealthy behavior is not confronted early, it can lead to major problems down the road. In this family it led to death threats and exile and divisions. When we explain it away and say, “It’s just a phase. It’s just a small thing. It’s something I used to do and I got over it”…when we explain away bad behavior in our children or our siblings or our extended family and fail to draw necessary lines…we often see major consequences down the road.

As Jeremiah Wright puts it, “God will forgive you for sowing wild oats. But God's forgiveness don't stop the crop. Them oats you sowed will bring a crop. You will reap what you sow. But stop calling your crops your cross. [mocking] "Well... that child is just my cross." No, that child is your crop. A cross is a sacrificial vehicle of redemption that you voluntarily pick up; a crop is the result of something you sowed. Our choices have consequences, our behaviors have consequences.”[ii]

A corollary to this is that parents should be parents. Not passive and disconnected like Isaac. Not manipulative like Rebekah. But engaged and on the same page - engaged with their children and on the same page with their spouses or other caregivers on the approach to take with their children. Too many of us are trying to do it on our own.

But finally, the good news again. I know there are all kinds of families out there and all kinds of arrangements. There are all kinds of ways that our families – every family – are not what we’d want them to be. But God works through imperfect families. Indeed that’s the only kind of family God has ever worked through.

Does you know this story of Hairy and the Heelholder? Does it feel familiar? For as long as human beings have been instruments of God’s grace, Jacob and Esau and their descendents have lived within us. We know this story, because it is our story. And yet God became human to live in this mess and to show us the way to redemption and resurrection. Thanks be to the God who loves messy families and wants them to be whole.


Genesis 25:19-34
These are the stories of Isaac, son of Abraham:
Abraham bore Isaac. Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan-Aram, and sister of Laban the Aramean. Isaac prayed on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. Yahweh answered his prayer and Rebekah, his wife, conceived.
The children struck one another within her and she said, “If it is thus, why do I exist?” So she went to consult Yahweh and Yahweh said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb,
And two peoples from within you will be divided;
One people will be mightier than the other,
And the older shall serve the younger.”
When her time to give birth came about, there were twins in her womb. The first came out red and all of him was like a great mantle of hair, so they called his name Esau. After this, his brother came out with his hand grasping the heel of Esau, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when they were born.
The boys grew up and Esau became a man skillful in the hunt, a man of the fields. Jacob became a pretty man, a tent-dweller. Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
One day Jacob was boiling up some stew when Esau was coming in from the fields. Esau was famished. Esau said to Jacob, “Quick, let me guzzle some of that red stuff because I am famished!” (On this account they also called him Edom.)
Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.”
Esau said, “Look, I am dying here! What good is this birthright to me?”
Jacob said, “First, swear to me.”
So Esau swore an oath to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank and then stood up and walked away. So Esau despised his birthright.

[i] http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=4017527&content_id={E590EA13-6F93-484A-9D00-B4E4455A25B6}&notoc=1
[ii] Jeremiah Wright, “Transcript of a Jeremiah Wright Sermon”, 1/27/08, The New Republic http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4808fe74-023d-417b-8537-33763c33e399

Do You Know Why I Do What I Don't Want to Do?

Caroline Johnson thought she was going to be happy for the rest of her life. A few years ago she was chosen to be the subject of an episode of ABC’s “Extreme Makeover,” a TV program where they try to do your life over for you. Johnson had plastic surgery and they gave her a new nose, new teeth and breast implants. She was amazed at the difference it made for her. People looked at her differently. She had more self-confidence. But something happened to her happiness. After a while she felt the same emptiness creeping back into her life. “Once it wears off,” she says, “it’s just normal life again.”

She’s not alone, you know. Researchers have found the same phenomenon in newlyweds and lottery winners.[i] Changing your external circumstances can have a big impact on your life, but it’s no guarantee that you will live happily ever after. Happiness is not a winning number or a tummy tuck. There must be something more.

This is a hard question for us, particularly us Americans, because we have really struggled to create a happy nation. One of the symbols by which we are known throughout the world is the smiley face. We had a major hit song a few years ago by Bobby McFerrin called “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Foreigners wonder about us because we are known for having cheery dispositions and they suspect it’s a little artificial.

When Suzanne and I moved to England for a year right after seminary to serve Methodist churches there, one of the things we were told is that if we were to use the phrase, “Have a nice day,” it might be perceived as inauthentic. I thought to myself, “No problem. I don’t use that phrase. I’m going to be real.” But the first day that we were there in the church manse, our home for the year, a workman came to cut on the gas and as he was leaving I smiled and said, “Have a nice day.” Some habits die hard.

Here’s what I want to say today, though. Our impulse toward happiness is not wrong. In fact, God gives us that impulse. But the ways we go about it and what we think it is may be very wrong. John Wesley said it to his Methodists almost 300 years ago. “Who can blame you for pursuing [happiness]? It is the very end of your being.” But happiness is not what we think it is. It is not a “blessed out” emotional state or the way that we feel when things are going our way. Happiness is a theological state and it has everything to do with God. Our unhappiness is a result of the state in which we find ourselves – seeking God in things that do not lead us to God. Wesley put it this way, “You seek happiness in your fellow-creatures [and created things] instead of your Creator. But these can no more make you happy than they can make you immortal.”[ii] In other words, a nose job not only can’t get you into heaven, it can’t even make you truly happy because happiness is about your relationship to God.

Paul the apostle knew what mixed-up creatures we are. In fact, Ellen Charry, who teaches theology at Princeton, says that Paul’s writings in Romans 7, which we read this morning, “are among Western Christian psychology’s foundational texts, showing that the human soul teeters between its identity in the divine image and its fallen reality, seeking repair, release, redemption.”[iii] That is to say, that our souls are always being drawn in competing directions. On the one hand, we are made in God’s own image with all the potential and promise that implies. But on the other hand, we are continually struggling with the effects of sin and we are always in need of healing and liberation. Here we are at the beginning of creation in a wonderful garden walking with God, sharing an intimate life with each other and with all of the other creatures…feeling happy. But here we are, after Adam and Eve bite the forbidden fruit, dissatisfied with our lives, disappointed in our relationships, always wanting more than we have, using more resources than our environment can sustain, not taking care of our bodies and feeling distant and separated from God. Here we are remembering what we could be seeing glimpses all around us of the remnant goodness of the earth and ourselves. And here we are feeling hopelessly caught by the way things are.

This is a Christian way of looking at things. Other psychologies will tell you different things about who we are. Other psychologies will not talk about the soul – they will talk about the self. Other psychologies will talk about self-actualization and may see God as at best marginal to being healthy and happy, but certainly God is not necessary to wholeness. As Charry puts it, in these systems, “the spiritual life becomes an addition to a well-ordered self for those so inclined.”[iv]

I say this as someone who has a lot of respect for psychology and who has benefitted from it, but unless there is an openness to what
God wants to do with our souls, the possibility of healing in the Christian sense just can’t happen. Happiness in the Christian sense is about finding ourselves in God and resting our restless hearts in God. “The way to that goal,” again to quote Charry, “is coming to know, love, and enjoy God ever more felicitously in the company of other seekers.”[v]

Paul probably puts it better. He knew what it was like to live in this world as a conflicted human being. In this passage today he talks about a frustration that is common to any one of us who has ever tried to live better or even just to go on a diet. “I don’t do what I want to do,” Paul says. “I have the desire present within me, but I do not find the ability to do good. So the good that I would do I don't do, and the evil that I would not do, that’s what I do.”

Paul says all of this in the midst of a discussion about the Law, which every good Jew to whom he was talking would have seen as the highest revelation of what God wants of us. The Law was given to Moses and to us in order to show us the way we are supposed to live. And when we are able to recognize our failure to live up to what the Law requires, we are giving a backhanded compliment to the Law. We recognize that it is good; we’re just not living up to it.

This is Paul’s big insight, though: God gave the Law and implanted in us the desire to fulfill it. To put it another way, God gave us the means to love God and made us with a heart to love God. That should have been enough to give us communion with God. But sin has done something drastic to our souls. It has separated us fundamentally. We are split within ourselves. So strange things happen. We set our minds to do one thing, and we end up doing something else. We decide, “I am definitely not doing that anymore,” and guess what? We do it. Has this ever happened to you? It’s like there’s a faulty wire in there somewhere.

So this is our situation. We know the Law. We know there is a part of us reaching out to God. But we also know how we betray ourselves by pursuing things that lead us away from God. We are disordered and distorted. Finally Paul cries out in this passage and says, “O wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?”

Well, who do you think will save me from this body of death? It’s Jesus. That’s the means that God has chosen to overcome sin and lead us back to our first love. It’s Jesus. When we forgot who we were, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It’s Jesus. While we were yet sinners, God sent the only begotten Son to live with us and die for us. It’s Jesus. When we rejected him, despised him, killed him on a cross…when we did the worst that we could do to love, that’s when God gave us the remedy. It’s Jesus.

So what Christian psychology always comes back to is this basic story that helps us understand who we are and where we’re supposed to look for help. Happiness for Christians is found in becoming ever more like Jesus. But we have begun to get it backwards. There are a lot of Christians out there who accept our society’s definition of what happiness is. We believe that happiness is about my individual emotional state and the role of the Bible is to give us some help so that I can be a happy person. The Bible can help me be successful, to be prosperous, to have a stress-free life. But that is exactly backwards. We don’t love God so that our lives and relationships can be easier; we live certain ways and carry out certain practices so that we can love God more. And sometimes our lives will be easier and sometimes they will be harder. But we will never be able to understand what happiness is until we see it through God’s eyes.

So we have been given this way of life that looks different from the rest of the world. From the perspective of the rest of the world, worshipping here on Sunday morning may seem like a nice thing to do, but it really has no meaning or value. Reading the Bible with its funny words and ancient ways and difficult stories seems strange. Building a community of caring that shares the joys and burdens of its members and extends itself into the world around us in service? That may be a quaint idea, but it doesn’t put us in the mainstream. Who does that?

Well, we do. We give ourselves to worship and study and prayer and peacemaking and fellowship because we are trying to find our way, our direction, our hope. And when we neglect these practices that are so central to who we are, we start to settle for less than true happiness.

One of the things that fascinates me is cave exploration. Last year our family went on a caving expedition in West Virginia and we spent several hours going deep into Organ Cave, with lights on our heads and scrambling over rock formations. It was great fun. But they told us that they have only explored about 40 miles of cave there and there is a lot more to be explored. The reason it hasn’t been explored more is because the unexplored sections are so far from an entrance that they are difficult to get to. It takes a day or more of traveling underground to get to them.

What that means is that when you get to an unexplored section and a new discovery you have made a major investment in going deeper. The reward comes because you have gone over a lot of familiar territory.

It is the same with the Christian life. There are rewards we can only know by staying with the program…by staying connected to God…by doing those things that Jesus told us to do. It is a journey of a lifetime, but it is the way of true happiness.

Brothers and sisters, we have not been living up to our calling. We have settled for lesser forms of happiness. We have settled for cheapened forms of faith that don’t ask anything of us. Following God is more than feeling good – it is feeling whole.

So where is God calling you to go? Tell me again why you can’t follow? Your life is hidden with Christ in God, according to the letter to the Colossians. Isn’t it about time you went to find it? Thanks be to God.

Romans 7:14-25a

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am flesh, sold unto sin. Now I don't understand what I do, for I do what I don't wish to do, and what I hate, that's what I do. If I do what I don't wish to do, I concur that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin living in me. For I know of nothing living in me, that is in my flesh, that is good. I have the desire present within me, but I do not find the ability to do good. So the good that I would do I don't do, and the evil that I would not do, that I do.

So if I do what I would not, I no longer do it but the sin living within me. Therefore I find this law: that the will to do good is in me, but evil is always ready at my hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner self, but I see another law at work in my members making war against the law of my mind, and I am captured by the law of sin that is in my members.

O wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

[i] Michael Mendelsohn, “Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness,” ABC News, 1/11/2008, http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4115033
[ii] John Wesley, Sermon 77, “Spiritual Worship”
[iii] Ellen T. Charry, “Augustine of Hippo: Father of Christian Psychology,” Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2006, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3818/is_200610/ai_n17196791/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.