October 16-17, 2010
21st Week-end after Pentecost
Genesis 32:22-31
Salem Lutheran Church
Sycamore, Illinois
I don’t know about all of you but the story of those 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days and nights captured my imagination. Again and again over these last couple of months my mind would turn to them… even during those times when the news wasn’t covering them. For I could not begin to imagine what that would be. To be buried alive. To have left behind who knows what kind of unfinished business that day when they went off to work like any other day. To not know if daylight, if reunion, if new beginnings, if life itself would ever be fully theirs again. And as I sat this week with the story of Jacob wrestling all night long, it occurred to me that that must have been exactly what those miners went through.
No matter that once they were discovered still alive that those outside were able to get them food and medicine, movies and letters from home. No matter that they had an organized routine that included running miles in place --- for their physical health to be sure, but every bit as much, I expect, to keep their spirits up, their hearts focused, their wills strong. No matter all of these things. Still it must have felt like the fight of their lives. Indeed, the first one who spoke to the press on Wednesday morning after being rescued, said that those 69 days and nights he was with God and the devil every step of the way. That while he clung tightly to the hand of God, still the battle was real.
And not only of course, for those 2000 feet below ground, but for their families who kept vigil day and night for over two months and for those charged with the responsibility of their rescue. I mean, what must it have been when those rescuers descended deep into the earth to assist in sending them up. Though their journey into unknown darkness wasn’t as long, still it took a certain kind of strength and courage to push back fears that must be inevitable in moments like those… And as for that tiny cage? It could only carry up one at a time, so one of those rescuers had to come up last. In fact, Manuel Gomez was the first down and the last up. And so I wonder what it must have been for him, especially in those last minutes. For one by one they had been sending them up all night and all day and with everyone who went, he knew his job was that much closer to being done. But when he put his last friend in the cage and watched him go, can you even imagine what threatened to take over his heart and his mind… in those minutes where there was not even one other heart beating next to his before he, too stepped out to the cheers of a world who had been watching and waiting for it all to be done.
Indeed, a battle can last 69 days, or for a night, or for half an hour: and it is just as real, just as wrenching, just as potentially life changing.
And so it was for Jacob. You remember him… he’s one of those Old Testament characters who has captured our imagination all of our lives. From before he came out of the womb we hear something about what his life would hold, for his wrestling match began back before he burst into the world… fighting even then to best his brother, Esau. We recall that there was some real dysfunction going on in that family where one parent favored one of the boys and one the other. We remember how Jacob with his mother, Rebekah, conspired to trick aging, sight impaired Isaac into giving the birthright to Jacob and not to Esau… and how then Jacob had to flee for his life. We recall how Jacob nearly met his match in his future father-in-law Laban: how he wound up marrying not only Rachel, whom he loved, but first having to marry her sister, Leah, too. And now we hear that Jacob is on his way home. Why, we don’t know but for all of his faults and he had many, I can only imagine that Jacob never forgot his brother, Esau and what he did to him. That perhaps he carried some regret about the treachery he employed to take what rightfully would have been Esau’s. And now Jacob is going home… exactly to what, he’s not sure of course, but he’s packed up wives and children, flocks and herds and all that he has and he’s headed towards home.
And so it is the night before that long anticipated reunion with Esau --- the night before Jacob will meet either welcome or rejection, the wonder of life itself renewed or the threat of death each fighting for his attention in his mind: it is then that we meet up with him now. He’s sent everyone else across the stream and now he’s alone and what we hear next is that a man wrestled with him until daybreak. Now to be sure, at first Jacob doesn’t know who he’s wrestling with… although we are led to believe that if it’s not God himself it is certainly God’s representative who Jacob holds at bay all night long. It must have felt at times that it was both God and the devil, as that Chilean miner put it --- who kept wrestling with Jacob through the night. In the end Jacob says he has seen God’s own face and so we know God’s hand is indeed all over it… and that as day breaks, Jacob is left both wounded from the struggle and blessed with a new future with a new name before his journey to see his brother continues.
And so it is with all of us. Sixty nine days and nights. A single night that never seems to end. Or just a few moments when everything that is and has been flashes before our eyes and we can’t see our way clear to what will possibly be ours next. So it is with all of us. We, too, know what it is to spend the long night with both God and the devil close. We know what it is to come back into the daylight both wounded by the struggle, walking with a limp even, but knowing the amazing blessing of God --- for often in and through it in ways we can’t always completely comprehend or explain, in and through those times somehow we are blessed to see the very face of God.
So when did you last look into God’s face? When have you known the power of God in that amazing way that might well leave you limping but whole in ways you never were before? Was it a battle over a physical illness, a long broken relationship, fears for a beloved child, a grief that still wakes you in the night, or worry about your own unknown future? What was the struggle, the match, the fight that finally brought you to a new clarity of vision and understanding and hope? And what new name did God give you when you were done? For 33 Chilean miners, they will be marked and remembered for 69 days underground which had to leave them changed. For Jacob he was forever after called “Israel” which came to stand for a whole nation of people who would continue to follow God and stray from God’s ways, who would triumph and sin and fail and begin again over and over again. And who finally, ultimately would rely on the very grace of God that gave them all they had and made them all they were in the first place. And so it is with all of us. We know this to be so in a single Chilean miner who came from the darkness into the light and who told the world about holding God’s own hand. And in Jacob, the second son of Isaac, who wrestled all night long and lived to tell a story of God’s own grace. And all of us with all of our all night battles who have been so very blessed to see the face of God as well. Indeed, all of us, too, who are now named people of deep faith, lovers of justice, dreamers of new days, and those with deeper understandings that can only be borne of struggle. Indeed, all of us, too. Amen.
