A Fourth Church Sermon by John A. Cairns

August 4, 2002 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Struggling Toward a Blessing

John A. Cairns
Dean, Academy for Faith and Life,
Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 17:1–7, 15
Genesis 32:22–31

“Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’
But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’”

Genesis 32:26 (NRSV)

I stayed up later than I had planned last Sunday night. I made the fortunate mistake of turning on CNN just to see what was going on in the world, only to discover that moments before, in Somerset, Pennsylvania, they had dropped a phone hookup down the just-completed shaft and had spoken with the nine trapped miners, and they were all alive and reasonably well. It was the news that was urgently hoped for but still surprising and unexpected. People who had been working around the clock were taking what felt like their first deep breath in three days. The word miracle was used. What a great piece of timing on my part to have caught the story at that exciting point!

Well, you know how it is on CNN—when a story like that is breaking, they stay on it. Other programming is set aside, and reporters and anchors are let loose to fill endless open space. So they must keep talking long after they have anything to say. They interview people who can say even less and they rerun the same footage over and over again. And still you watch, drawn like a moth to a flame, thinking that in the next minute or two something will surely happen and you’ll be right there—in on it, the first to know.

Now I must say that in all their time-filling chatter, I did pick up some interesting information. I got a few handles on the scope of this operation—indeed, of the magnitude of this miracle. New techniques had been implemented, such as the early introduction of heated air. Then there was the providential delay caused by the broken drill bit. This had been a combination of well thought-out procedures, highly skilled work crews, and good old-fashioned luck. And then the bucket brought up Randy Fogle. Goosebumps!

I watched a little longer, saw Blaine Mayhugh and Thomas Foy make it to the surface. Then, confident that the process would be successfully completed, I went to bed. But I found myself thinking what must it have been like. What must it have been like in the darkness of that mine? What must it have been like contemplating your own mortality, continually replaying your own anxieties and guilt and fears, wrestling with your own demons? Wouldn’t the mental ordeal be every bit as trying as the physical ordeal?

There’s something about the darkness that provokes the struggle, sets your mind racing, sends your thoughts crashing into each other. I have no concept of what it’s like in a coal mine, and 77 hours is far, far beyond anything I could imagine having to endure, but I do know that there are times in my life when in the darkness my wrestling begins, when I am trying to figure out who I am, what I’ve done and how I’ve done, what my future looks like, and what I’m afraid of—and more. My guess is that it is something we all have in common: the uninvited, physically demanding mental process that seems to engage us to the point of holding us captive. It’s my experience that it is usually instigated by some event or anticipation—some not particularly positive event or anticipation—and that fear is at the heart of it.

Our scripture lesson this morning tells such a story. Jacob is approaching the territory of Esau, his older brother. Some time back, Jacob had swindled Esau out of his birthright and his father’s blessing. Fearing his brother’s vengeance, Jacob had fled, left the country to avoid Esau’s wrath. And now, almost 20 years later, he is returning. He is a man of means with family and flocks, and he is coming back to attempt a reconciliation. Jacob has sent out his servants ahead of him, bearing gifts for Esau. Then he sends his animals and his family’s goods and finally his immediate family. His scheming mind is hoping that as Esau encounters these people and gifts, his animosity toward Jacob will be assuaged.

Now on the eve of his anxiously anticipated reunion with his brother, Jacob is all alone. He lies down to sleep, but what happens in the darkness is not rest, but wrestling. Throughout the night, Jacob struggles—struggles with a man or a force or his fears or perhaps with God (the story is never clear). The struggle is intense, but Jacob holds his own. As morning approaches, the stranger seeks to leave—perhaps to avoid being seen or known. But Jacob wants something for his effort: a blessing, a blessing that would relieve some of his inner fears, would take away the self-doubt and anxiety and offer a hopeful outlook. Jacob wants a blessing. It is the outcome any of us would covet—a blessing, a word that we’re OK and will continue to be OK, a word to remove the anxiety and guarantee the future.

But what the stranger offers Jacob is a new name, “Israel”—not an exoneration of the past, of Jacob’s various misdeeds, but a chance to go on, a new direction, a fresh start. Yet Jacob is not satisfied. He still wants a blessing—and he wants to know the name of his adversary—so he holds on. When you have endured the struggle, you want some reward. As the morning dawns, he gets his blessing—and a dislocated hip—but he never learns the name of the stranger in whose grasp he has spent the night.

Walter Bruggemann puts it this way: “When daylight comes the stranger is gone and so is Jacob. There remains only Israel, who had not had a good sleep that night. . . . Israel, blessed and named . . . the same man decisively changed by a new limp . . . a cripple with a blessing” (Genesis, pp. 269–270).

It makes you wonder about the wrestling we do, doesn’t it? As we look at Jacob’s experience, we see elements of defeat as well as victory, of power as well as weakness, of limitation as well as opportunity. God has remained God—unnamed, hidden, mysterious. Jacob is no longer Jacob. He now lives in a new name, a name the world will come to know: Israel.

On Monday, miner John Unger was trying to put the genie back in the bottle and reclaim his anonymity. He had participated in a news conference only, he said, “because he wanted to thank God, his family,and the more than 100 men and women who coordinated the rescue and all the ordinary Americans who were praying for us.” Then he wanted to escape the limelight. Unger may get some of his wish. In a few weeks, his name will disappear from the national media and from the memories of those who prayed for his survival. But he will never be “plain old John Unger” again. He is a different man because of his long night of wrestling. That experience will not be undone or packed away or forgotten. Instead, he and his colleagues will be marked as Jacob was marked. Nine men whose noblest struggles were in the darkness with the Unseen. Nine men who bear the mark of their ordeal.

Certainly your struggles and mine are not likely to approach those of the men trapped for 77 hours in a mine. They are not likely to be as dramatic as a Jacob’s all-nighter at Peniel. But when we are on the verge of a difficult decision or a new venture or a potential catastrophe and the night wraps its darkness around us, we each do our own wrestling. The job, the relationship, the future, the past, the moral choices, the noble ambitions, the kept and unkept resolutions, the secrets, the approaching deadlines and anxious encounters. We wrestle with the possible approaches or outcomes; with what the future will mean for us—do to us; with how one part of our life will impact all the others. And most of all, we wrestle with our fear. Throughout our night we are in the grasp of a “stranger” who will not let us go.

“We are fearful of anything that blurs our boundaries or disturbs our identities” (Miroslav Wolf). But that is exactly what happens. As we become desperate to find a way through all the anxiety-strewn clutter to a positive outcome—to a blessing—our boundaries are blurred, our identities are disturbed. We want the morning to come, to come and bring an end to the darkness, but not at the price of our losing control or sacrificing satisfaction. We want—we need—a reward for our wrestling. These are our struggles, our nightlong battles, not some idle exercise. And as we wrestle with them, we wrestle with God and God does not let go.

We may think we wrestle to get our way, to win our point, to capture an ally or obtain some reassurance, but be assured that what the experience will produce for us will be similar to what it produced for Jacob: a new name and a limp, a reshaping of our identity and a way to remember our encounter. That’s what this is all about. At the heart of our fear—in the midst of our darkness—God comes uninvited to wrestle us into a new understanding of who we are—and to give us a blessing.

May we be ready and willing to receive it.

Amen.