The 21st Sunday after Pentecost
October 21, 2007

In each of our lives, there are moments when everything changes, and nothing can ever be the same again.  It’s as if we pass through a threshold, and the door closes behind us, and we enter a new world.  It could be the birth of a baby, it could be the death of a spouse, it could be the end of a relationship, it could be the loss of a job, it could be illness, it could be love, it could be a sudden fall from grace, it could be the marriage of one of our children.

Anthropologists call these experiences “rites of passage”, journeys out of the familiar and into the unknown.  Psychologists call them transitions, where our inner landscape is forever rearranged.

One old retired bishop friend of mine called these moments “thin spaces”.  What he meant is when you and I are drawn into these cataclysmic experiences, there is very little separating us from the Source of All Being.  In these thin spaces, when we are utterly alone, stripped naked, the transcendent light and power of the Almighty shines through.

The story of Jacob in our first reading today is about one man’s journey to this place of change and transformation.  It is a gripping tale, taking up a full nine chapters of the Book of Genesis, and I recommend that you take some time to read it carefully.   As you may recall, Jacob is born with his twin brother Esau to Isaac and Rebecca.  And from day one, the two brothers could not have been more different.  Scripture tells us even in utero the two boys struggled with each other.  And as they grew, their differences became the cause for enmity.

Esau was the eldest, swarthy, a great hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob the younger was “a quiet man” content to live in the tents with his mother.  As the eldest, Esau held the birthright of his father Isaac as patriarch, but Rebecca favored her younger son and connived to wrest this title for Jacob.  One day, after a long hunt, Esau returned home where Jacob was preparing a lentil stew.  Famished, he impulsively bargained his birthright away for a bowl of the soup.  Later on, the deal was sealed as Rebecca and Jacob deceived the now elderly blind patriarch Issac into believing Jacob was Esau, and the old man gave his irrevocable blessing to his youngest son.

This great breach of trust made the two brothers enemies of one another.  And as we read in today’s lesson,  Jacob and his household was forced to flee for his life from Esau and his band of men.  In the midst of this calamity, Jacob finds himself one night wrestling with a man until the break of day.  When Jacob won’t succumb, his foe puts his thigh out of joint, and still Jacob will not relinquish his grip.  He demands of the stranger that he give him his blessing.  And once this is done, Jacob recognizes that his foe is Elohim himself, the Almighty.   Elohim speaks, and tells he now has a new name, a new identity, a new destiny.  And Jacob named the place Peniel which means: the face of God, for he had seen God face to face, and yet his life is preserved.  Subsequently, Jacob went out to meet Esau, the two are reconciled, and Jacob tells his estranged brother:  truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God, with such favor as you have received me.

Now I wonder what are we to make of this strange tale?  Is it simply the story of one more dysfunctional family having its day in the sun, like any garden variety soap opera you can watch on t.v.?  Or is something else here, something deeper for us to consider, something akin to what each of us experience when we are drawn into those thin spaces in our own lives?

Here’s what I believe.  God is waiting for each of us.  It doesn’t matter where we are in our lives or how remote God seems, or even if God doesn’t seem real at all.   We can spend our whole lives trying to get ahead, trying to settle the score, trying to even the playing field.  We can devote every ounce of our energy to keeping things comfortable and safe and secure.  We can be lucky enough to get through our days without loss or illness or calamity. We can use up our days neglecting or forgetting or regretting that God is in our lives.  It’s all the same.  God is waiting for you and for me.

If it is true for Jacob, than it is surely true for you and for me.  And our true birthright, our only birthright is to be in relationship with God.  What God is waiting for, all that God is waiting for, is for us to recognize God and to seek God’s blessing.  All that is asked of us is that we turn our hearts, our passion, our desire to God.  God wants to wrestle with us, struggle with us, contend and remake us.  With open arms, God is waiting for our embrace.  

Most often, we are not ready to do this until we are cut to the quick, when we are drawn into the thin spaces of our lives, when we have no place else to turn.   And these thin places do and will come to each of us..  But this morning, I want you to hear the testimony of one couple who through their own intention have turned their passion and hearts over to God.  Their witness, like Jacob’s, is to the Lord God who is waiting for each of us, to give us blessing, a new name and destiny, and the embrace of eternity.