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.