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Sunday, August 6, 2017 | 4:00 p.m.

Jacob Persisted

Nanette Sawyer
Minister for Congregational Life

Psalm 17
Genesis 32:22–31


Our reading today comes from chapter 32 of Genesis—our story of Jacob continues. I want to tell you what happens before we get to today’s portion of the story.

After working for his father-in-law, Laban, for twenty years, Jacob decides to return home to the land of his childhood.

He brings his wives, servants, children, and hundreds and hundreds of livestock and begins the journey back to the land of his ancestors and his kindred, his family.

Of course, this means encountering Esau, his estranged brother, the one whom he cheated out of the blessing from their father. The last thing Jacob had heard about his brother was that Esau wanted to kill him.

Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” But the words of her elder son Esau were told to Rebekah; so she sent and called her younger son Jacob and said to him, “Your brother Esau is consoling himself by planning to kill you.” (Genesis 27:41–42)

Was that an exaggeration? Would Esau kill him? Would the twenty years apart have softened Esau’s heart?

Walking across the landscape on his journey back home, Jacob was afraid of meeting his brother. When he got word that Esau was ahead of them, approaching them with 400 men, he devised a couple of plans to try to survive and to try not to lose everything.

First, he divided his family and all his possessions into two groups and sent them in different directions. If one half of his family was killed and one half of his possessions were taken, maybe he could still have the other half. That was his strategy.

But he also tried to appease his brother. He put together some extravagant gifts of livestock for Esau and sent them on ahead, so that his brother would get the gifts before he ever saw Jacob.

Even in this, Jacob was strategic. He sent the gifts in multiple batches so they would have a bigger impact. Instead of sending one huge gift, he sent five very large gifts, one after the other.

First, a shepherd with 220 goats went ahead to tell Esau this was a gift from Jacob. And he wasn’t to say, “your brother, Jacob”; he was to say, “your servant, Jacob.”

Then, a little while later, a shepherd with 220 sheep would greet Esau and give the same message. A gift! From your servant, Jacob.

Then thirty camels and their colts would be given; later, forty cows and ten bulls would show up; and finally, thirty donkeys would arrive. “Your servant, Jacob” sent these! And by the way, Jacob is following us, so you’ll see him soon.

Jacob wanted so much to be accepted by his brother, but he didn’t know if he would be. So the presents were sent off, and Jacob spent the night in the camp.

And now our reading: Genesis 32:22—3:4. Listen for what God may be saying to the church.

●      ●     ●

I’m struck by this image of Jacob, the night before meeting his brother, standing alone on the edge of a river. After all he’s been through—all the trickery and betrayal with his brother, with Laban, after all the running away, fleeing for his life and for his future, bringing all his people and possessions, after all of this, he gets up in the middle of the night, sends everyone who’s left with him across the river, and there he stands, alone.

Is he restless? Worried? Afraid? Does he regret his actions?

He’s on the cusp of a transformative moment, at a crossing place in his life, standing on the bank of a river. And I imagine that he is looking back on all he’s done and looking forward to what the future may hold. But in this moment he stands alone. In this moment, there is only him, his thoughts, his memories, his fears, his conscience.

In that solitude he begins to wrestle. How many of us have awoken in the night to sit up alone and wrestle with our thoughts, our memories, our fears, or our conscience?

Jacob wanted to be accepted by his brother. He wanted to be forgiven. He wanted to have a new life in his old place, with his family. Would his gifts to Esau be enough to heal that rift? Would Jacob stick to his apologies and really be changed in his relationships, or would he revert to his old sneaky ways of trickery and betrayal?

I’m saying “he,” but I’m thinking about us. I’m thinking about the moments in our own lives when we are given an opportunity and a responsibility to make something right that has been so wrong.

How long are we willing to stay in the struggle? Can we hang on, even when it hurts? Even when our hip gets thrown out of joint, so to speak? Can we be that persistent to demand a blessing?

I love that Jacob keeps wrestling, not so he can conquer the man; not so he can dominate him or turn the tables or “win” the fight. He holds on in order to get a blessing.

Now that’s a different kind of fighting. That’s fighting for something positive. That’s persistent hope. That’s trust in Possibility. That’s a conviction that blessings can come out of our struggle if we persist.

Sometimes we struggle because we believe there is something better at the end of our struggle, and we might say, “I’m not going to stop; I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to let go until things change.”

We’ve recently passed an important anniversary. Last week, July 28, was the 100-year anniversary of an event called the Silent March, or the Silent Parade.

I never heard of this Silent Parade until someone told me about it last week and Google did a “doodle” about it. If you went to your web browser and pulled up Google on July 28 to look something up, if you went to “google” something, you would have seen a little cartoon, a doodle, depicting the Silent Parade.

The Silent Parade happened in 1917, on July 28, 100 years ago, when 10,000 African Americans walked silently through the streets of New York City in protest of lynchings, mob murders, and other anti-black violence.

First in the parade came the children, dressed in white, followed by the women, also dressed in white to symbolize purity. Then the men followed, dressed in dark suits to show that they were in mourning for the hundreds of African Americans who had been recently killed in mob violence in the riots in East St. Louis and in mourning for the thousands who had been brutally murdered by lynching over the prior thirty years. The number counted of those murdered by that date were 2,867 people, with not one person being held accountable for a single murder.

The Silent Parade was indeed silent except for the sound of muffled drums. The drums beat on and the people walked on in silence—showing their unity, their purity, their sorrow, their persistence, and their strength.

The parade was organized by the NAACP, WEB Dubois, and several pastors, along with James Weldon Johnson, who wrote the hymn we sang in church a few weeks ago, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

James Weldon Johnson later wrote about the Silent March in his autobiography, Along This Way, which was published in 1933. “The streets of New York have witnessed many strange sights,” wrote Weldon, “but I judge, never one stranger than this; among the watchers [of the Silent Parade] were those with tears in their eyes.”

The people who watched that parade were changed by what they saw. This Weldon quote was printed in the Washington Post last week, so now I need to go and get Weldon’s autobiography and read more about this.

As Google put it in their explanatory note about the event, “Although the demonstrators marched in silence, their message was very clear. One sign read, “Mr. President [which was Woodrow Wilson at the time], why not make America safe for democracy”—a challenge at a time where the President was promising to bring democracy to the world through World War I while Black Americans were being stripped of their civil rights at home.”

Reading about the violence that was happening at the time, and all the suffering and death that precipitated the parade, I found my heart breaking, and I felt a bit despairing at the tenacity of violence.

I remembered yet again how long the night has been in which we’ve been struggling for a blessing, holding on to God and praying that one day God will tell us that we have prevailed.

When Jacob would not give up his struggle, he ended up walking away a changed man. There was something very different about him, and the change wasn’t just that he limped.

He had a new name and, in some ways, a new identity. The man/angel/God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, which means, The One Who Strives with God, because, the angel-man said, “you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”

Like Jacob, we struggle with God, and we struggle with humans. Some of our struggles are societal: we struggle against social forces. Some of our struggles are familial: we struggle with our families, like Jacob and Esau. Some of our struggles are personal, as we struggle to be changed.

After that night of struggle, Jacob did meet his brother Esau, and Esau welcomed him with a bear hug. He forgave Jacob completely, and Jacob compared Esau’s face to the face of God.

When he described his experience with the angel-man, Jacob had said, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”

Now, when talking with Esau, Jacob said, “Truly to see your face [Esau] is like seeing the face of God—since you have received me with such favor” (Genesis 33:9–10).

Jacob saw the face of God and lived. He saw the face of one who received him with favor. He saw that face of God in the angel-man, and he saw that face of God in his brother Esau, who forgave him, who welcomed him.

That is the God that we cling to and the God who clings to us—a God who receives us with favor, who forgives us, who will wrestle with us until we are transformed. We can see the face of God in each other’s faces sometimes, if we look for it and if we offer it to one another.

So when you feel like you are all alone in the long dark night of life or a long dark night of your soul and you are wrestling and struggling, consider this: Is God in the wrestling with you? Are you holding on to God while you struggle? Do you stand on God’s steadfast love as a foundation while you seek justice and righteousness in the world?

Because, like Jacob, we are held by God in a holy struggle. And, like Jacob, God receives us with favor and forgiveness and pushes us to do better, to prevail and to persist. And we have each other, too.

So I encourage you to wait for, struggle for, insist upon a blessing.

When we think we are all alone, suddenly we find that we are not alone. God is with us and just might bless us if we hold on and insist.

May we persist and may we prevail, with the help and grace of God. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church

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