“From con artist to wounded healer”
a sermon by Bob Faser
31st July 2011
St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Bacchus Marsh, Victoria
Our first lesson, from the book of Genesis, ends with a statement that Jacob’s injury is the reason why Jews don’t eat a particular cut of meat. Sometimes a story like this lesson is used to explain why a community of people does something in a particular way. Biblical scholars and anthropologists have a technical word for this sort of story: an etiological narrative. (You don’t have to remember that if you don’t want to.)
Similarly, the story of Peter’s dream in the Book of Acts is another story of this sort. It’s used to explain why Christians don’t follow the Jewish dietary laws, despite the fact that the beginnings of Christianity took place in a very Jewish context.
Using these stories in this way limits each story. It takes some of the force away from the power of the story.
For example, in the case of Peter’s dream, keeping the story in the area of food and food alone blunts the meaning of God’s powerful words to Peter: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane!” It’s not just about Christians having permission to eat a ham sandwich. It’s about developing what I like to call a “Christian humanism”. It’s about the company we keep. It’s about celebrating God’s love for the whole creation, not only the bits of it we’ve been taught to consider “respectable”.
It’s a similar story with Jacob’s wrestling match in today’s lesson. If we think it’s only about why one part of an otherwise kosher animal is non-kosher, we’ve missed the point of the story.
Before Jacob’s mysterious wrestling match, Jacob was a con artist. Today, we’d call him a “white-collar criminal”, or a “colourful business identity”. (And, if you think his lawyers might be listening, raise your eyebrows and call him an entrepreneur with an ironic smirk in your voice.)
Jacob the con artist conned many of the people around him.
• He conned his brother Esau into giving up his birthright.
• He conned his father Isaac into giving him the inheritance intended for Esau.
• He conned his father-in-law Laban but was counter-conned by Laban as well. (If you try to con a con artist, expect to be conned yourself.)
And one night, while Jacob was on his way to meet up with Esau,
• the brother he conned and whom he hadn’t seen for years,
• the brother of whom Jacob was justifiably afraid,
Jacob met a mysterious stranger. Without any explanation why, Jacob and the mysterious stranger engaged in all all-night wrestling match.
One thing that this incident tells us – why it’s not merely a reason why a particular joint of meat is not kosher – is the insight that struggle is an essential ingredient to the life of faith. Faith that does not include an element of struggle is not real.
Now, you’ll get some people who’ll deny the importance of struggle for faith, and they’ll deny it in many different ways.
• In its crudest form, you hear this denial expressed in the “prosperity theology” expressed by some TV preachers such as those found on Channel Ten in the early morning. “If you have faith,” they’ll say, “you’ll have wealth as well. You won’t have to worry. You won’t have to struggle.”
• In a much more refined form, this idea was expressed by some popular preachers in the twentieth century, who spoke about “the power of positive thinking” or about “possibility thinking”. Much of this is about how to use your faith to get the things in life you want.
• Then there are others who abandon their faith after they’ve encountered the tragic dimension of life: whether it’s the tragic death of someone close to them, or some mass tragedy somewhere in the world, or even their own experience of the horrors of war. Because of this bitter experience, they decide that a loving God would not have allowed this to happen, so their belief is sadly lost.
Each, in their own way, denies the importance of struggle for the life of faith
A writer that many people have found helpful in helping us retain a lively faith in the face of the struggles of life is Rabbi Harold Kushner, and particularly his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. We learn that there is a struggle to our lives – to all lives. For some people, because of their circumstances, this struggle is incredibly profound. No amount of faith will ever remove this struggle from our lives, but our faith can help us to make our lives liveable.
Back to Jacob’s wrestling match.
In the course of the wrestling bout, Jacob was injured. His hip was dislocated. (Personally, I can identify with the hip.)
And Jacob’s injury was important. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Jacob’s injury was the making of him. Sometimes our injuries, our wounds, our own imperfections are the very things that enable us to serve others effectively. Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Roman Catholic priest, made this point very significantly in his book The Wounded Healer. For all who seek to reach out to others in God’s name, our own areas of weakness, our own areas of woundedness, can be profound sources of wholeness for others.
Jacob somehow sensed that the mysterious stranger with whom he wrestled was God. Whether he recognised this immediately or whether he came to this recognition over some longer period of time, we don’t know. (And the time frame isn’t all that important.)
But Jacob spoke about seeing the face of God, yet living to tell the tale. This is something that people weren’t supposed to be able to do. Jacob even named the place of his all-night wrestling bout Peniel, Hebrew for “the face of God”. But then again, if the experience was a source of growth, of course God had a part to play in it.
We’re told Jacob limped away. After the wrestling match, Jacob limped away a different person. The master con artist became the wounded healer. Jacob approached Peniel trying to wheel-and-deal his way out of another tight spot. Jacob left Peniel limping along God’s pilgrim way.
God transforms our human life. Sometimes our only response to God’s transformation is to limp along as best as we can.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Copyright: Robert J. Faser, 2011
