2nd. August. 2020 Service

Jabbok and Peniel
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Call to Worship

The Lord is faithful in all his words, and gracious in all his deeds.
Our eyes look to you, for you give us food in every season.

The Lord is near to all who call on him in truth.
You open your hand, O God, and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

The Lord fulfils the desire of all who fear him and watches over all who love him,
Our mouths will speak the praise of the Lord, and the God’s holy name for ever and ever. Psalm 145

The Collect for today

Almighty God, your Son Jesus Christ fed the hungry with the bread of his life and the word of his kingdom. Renew your people with your heavenly grace, and in all our weakness sustain us by the true and living bread, Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Prayer of Adoration and Confession
Mysterious and merciful God,
we praise you for the many ways you come to us
and offer us fulness of life.
When the sun rises and the earth blooms around us,
we are filled with grateful thanksgiving for your gift of a new day.
When evening falls and we find ourselves in deserted, lonely places,
we count on you to provide for our needs.
For the times you show us the way when we need guidance,
we praise you.
For the times you provide healing when we are broken and hurting,
we rejoice.
Your grace makes the poor rich, the hungry satisfied, and the weak strong.
It is fitting that we worship you as the Source of life and love, comfort and courage.

Gracious and merciful God, as we gather to worship,
we are aware that we have fallen short of the life you desire for us.
We therefore confess together:

Through Jesus Christ you have shown us the way of compassion, generosity and forgiveness, yet we pass by the suffering of others.
We blame and judge in the very moments in which you call us to act with kindness and mercy.
We hold on to what we own rather than share our blessings with others.
Free us from greed and from grievances.
Open our hearts that we may absorb and embrace the teachings of your Son, our Saviour.

Assurance of Pardon

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Friends in Christ know that you are forgiven. Forgive one another, and be at peace with God, with yourself and with each other.

Prayer for Understanding

Holy God, your Word is bread for our journey. Send your Spirit upon us now that we may be filled with your wisdom and be strengthened to live in it for the sake of Christ Jesus, your Living Word. Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer (in the words most familiar to you)

The Readings

Genesis 32: 22-31
22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for it is daybreak.’

But Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’

27 The man asked him, ‘What is your name?’

‘Jacob,’ he answered.

28 Then the man said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[a] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.’

29 Jacob said, ‘Please tell me your name.’
But he replied, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ Then he blessed him there.

30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.’

31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.

Matthew 14:13-21

13 When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed those who were ill.

15 As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so that they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.’
16 Jesus replied, ‘They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.’

17 ‘We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,’ they answered.

18 ‘Bring them here to me,’ he said. 19 And he told the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. 20 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 21 The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Romans 9:1-5

9 I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying; my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit – 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, for ever praised! Amen.

This is the Word of the Lord, to Him be all praise and glory.

Sermon

Genesis 32: 22-31

We return to the story of Jacob whom we last met at Bethel when he dreamed of the stairway to heaven and received God’s promise that, through him, He would fulfil the promise to his grandfather, Abraham.

In the subsequent fourteen years, Jacob had worked for his uncle Laban to be able to marry Rachel, whom he loved, after Laban tricked him into marrying her sister, Leah after seven years first. Laban was as deceitful as Jacob and the two men had a very fraught relationship. By using selective breeding of Laban’s sheep and goats which he tended, and with the conniving of his two wives and some crafty dealing, Jacob amassed wealth and eventually escaped from Laban’s influence. In the process, Rachel stole and successfully hid her father’s household gods, which were valuable items. Laban pursued Jacob and his caravan and after a confrontation, they agreed to go their separate ways.

Jacob, who was landless, had to go back home to Edom where his brother Esau lived. This created another problem because Esau had threatened to kill Jacob for stealing his birth right. He was between a rock and a hard place, Laban and Esau. He was in a pickle, as we might say.

One Jewish commentator says that “God endowed Jacob with entrepreneurial ingenuity, a gift he used all the time.” He was good at planning and living by his wits. He was also someone to whom God had promised a blessing, but what did that mean? How was he to go forward into that blessing? He had concluded a truce with his father-in-law/uncle, but he also had to make peace with his brother, which might prove more difficult.

He laid his plans and messengers were sent to prepare the way. They rushed back with the news that Esau was coming to meet them with 400 men. Jacob was now so afraid that he divided his people and flocks into two groups, to be separated by some distance, so that if Esau and his men destroyed one group, the other might survive. Next, he prepared peace offerings; groups of animals were to be driven on ahead in a series of waves, so that Esau could meet and receive the gifts in succession and hopefully be turned from vengeance to mercy.

Jacob also adopted a humbler position by sending messages addressing his brother as Lord, thereby acknowledging his inherited birth right. He did what he could on a human level, but he still had to be fully right with God, and this came about in another supernatural encounter.

The legend of Jacob is a great read. We have an unlikely hero, wearing all his faults on his sleeve for the world to see. The lack of editing-out of the dark bits in the Bible story suggests that the story certainly stems from a real person; a real ancestor of Jesus of Nazareth as Paul hints in our Romans reading. Because he is such a mixture, (on one hand the lover who so loved Rachel that he toiled fourteen years to pay her bride price, and on the other hand someone who was a cunning cheat), we can identify with this character. He is flawed like us.

During the evening before his encounter with Esau, an anxious Jacob sent his two wives and their eleven children across a stream to safety while he remained alone in the night. That is when the dark wrestle with a divine being began.

A powerful Stranger came in the night and wrestled with him. Jacob was outmatched, but would not give in. Hour after hour they struggled. Jacob was injured in his thigh. Yet he still hung in there. Near daybreak he demanded a blessing, and the name of the Person with whom he wrestled. He was given no name, but he did receive the blessing of the Stranger.

When daylight came, he was alone, but he then realised that he had been wrestling with God. Jacob called the place Peniel (panim + el) meaning “face of God”.

This ancient legend is like a parable. It not only tells the tale about some fellow who lived long ago but resonates with things that happen in many a human soul. Spiritually, it may be that we have found ourselves in the ring with various opponents, and at times that opponent has turned out to be God.

Have you ever heard it said that if someone causes you problems look within your own soul? You cannot change another person, but you can change how you react to, feel about, accept or forgive the other. If you choose to continue to be bothered or offended only you can change that. If you choose to be angry, bitter or hate-filled, will getting back at or destroying that person change anything? Many of the challenges which Jesus poses to us in the Gospel cause us to wrestle with God because we resist what he asks of us and because we feel it will cost us too much.

Of course, this does not have to mean something to everyone. We are not all like anxious, wrestling Jacob. Many different personalities make up the church. Thank God!
Some may be blessed with a nature that makes faith in God a simple and definite thing. They believe and get on with living out their faith with no fuss. No dramas.

But there are some among us, neither less faithful than others, who have been given a different nature. We are just made differently. We are those who question everything. Who want to understand. We get downcast over life’s problems and the seeming injustices of providence. The suffering of the innocent almost overwhelms us at times. Our patron saint is Thomas. We may be those who know all about the dark nights where we wrestle with a hidden but very strong God.

And they can be very dark nights. It is no fun being in the ring with God. Bouts may last a few hours, a few days, or perhaps months or a few years. And it is like a wrestle; a wrestle with something far too big for us, yet from which we cannot resign without compromising our soul.

On those dark nights we wrestle with God for answers, for clear guidance. We beg God to give us a name; a handle which we can seize and hopefully use. We end up being thrown, come out limping, but we are also blessed, and to our own surprise also become a blessing to others.

Our experience is not the same in this matter. Some may never have endured a dark night of the soul. That is okay.

Both types of people are special. Neither is more important than the other. Neither is more holy than the other. We need to be aware of each other, to respect each other, to encourage, nurture, support and cherish each other.

One very elderly person who despite times of grief, accident, and disease is always buoyant and positive. When on one occasion she was congratulated on her attitude, she smiled and said: “It’s not because I am a better Christian than others, you know. I don’t have greater faith than others. It’s just the way I am made. I am grateful, but it’s nothing to be proud about.”

Jacob was one of those who had to wrestle, and he came out limping, but truly blessed. The next day he faced his brother and found mercy not condemnation.
“Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept together”

Does not this remind us of the story of the Father and the returning prodigal son?

Things turned out much better for Jacob than he had feared. The Person hidden in the night with whom he wrestled was a wonderful Friend. There was love at work in the dark struggle. That same love had been at work in brother Esau. When we wrestle with our difficulties and fears towards peace, it is usually then that God’s grace effects a change in other people as it has in us.

In the traditional Christian interpretation of this story the emphasis is placed on Jacob surrendering to God’s will for his life, and that the planning of how he would deal with Esau was an expression of doubt. “There is a notion that only after meeting with God at Penuel did Jacob gain trust towards God, and because of that was renamed Israel.” It was not doubt, it was simply wise to have a plan B as he could not know how things would turn out with Esau.

When he ran away from home, Jacob had an angelic vision at Bethel. Now as he returns home, he encounters God again and faces up to his past and the struggles he had with Laban, Rachel, and Leah as well as Esau. “Jacob became a different man, He would no longer “walk over corpses” to get what he needed. He now understands the deep human need for justice and righteousness. He has learned that love without justice is not sufficient. Those less-loved must be treated with honour and dignity; with sensitivity and care. Rabbi Sacks -Lord Sacks- former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations within the Commonwealth wrote:

The highest spiritual gift is the ability to listen – not only to the voice of God, but also to the cry of other people, the sigh of the poor, the weak, the lonely, the neglected and, yes, sometimes the un-loved or less-loved. That is one of the meanings of the great command: Shema Yisrael, “Listen, O Israel.” Jacob’s other name, we recall, was Israel… He is the most tenacious of all the patriarchs and the only one whose children all become part of the covenant. It is rather that every virtue has a corresponding danger. Those who are courageous are often unaware of the fears of ordinary people. Those of penetrating intellect are often dismissive of lesser minds. Those who, like Jacob, have an unusual capacity to love must fight against the danger of failing to honour the feelings of those they do not love with equal passion. The antidote is the ability to listen. That is what Jacob discovered in the course of his life, and why he, above all, is the role model for the Jewish people the nation commanded to listen.” Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenyl ~The Hidden Story of Jacob

Our wrestling does not mean that we are faithless or renegade Christians. We should not blame ourselves or add inappropriate guilt to the darkness in which we struggle.

The darkness and the wrestling can be a sign of valid spirituality. If we did not have faith, there would be no problem, nothing to wrestle. If we did not have love, the pain of the world would not distress us. If we did not have hope, the night would not seem so long.

The dark night in which we wrestle with the stranger is not some cruel prank played on us by fate. As Jacob wrestled, he realised that he could not get the better of his divine opponent and in the end, he surrendered and asked for God’s blessing. All he subsequently experienced led ultimately to the greater glory of God.

¬In the process we may be thrown, we may be wounded, but daybreak will come, and we will emerge richly blessed. Things will turn out much better than we feared. That may sound like saccharine advice, but it comes from the experience of some of the greatest saints,

The strong Stranger who wrestles with us in the darkness is our Friend; the best Friend on earth or in heaven. There is love at work in the long, dark night, and it transforms us as it transformed Jacob who experienced a tearful and joyful reconciliation with his brother, Esau.

Jesus also understands us from personal experience. He had his dark, brooding times: Out in the Judaean wilderness tempted for forty days. Up there alone on the Galilean hills at night. Deeply troubled in the Garden of Gethsemane. Feeling forsaken on the cross at Golgotha.

When we come to the end of our faith-tether and can trust nothing else, we may still trust this Wounded Healer. There is love in the darkness; blessing not curse.

I Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
—Genesis 32.24

We trust a dark God
who seizes us in lonely places,
who comes to us in travail,
who births us only in great labour.
Faith is no mere greeting card but a wrestling,
an awful confronting of both doubt and assumption,
a tangling with what is in which neither can prevail.
The Mysterious One uses barred holds,
offers invisible becomings.
There is no struggle in which
blessing is not enfolded in the mystery.
There is no tribulation in which
God is not reworking the clay.
Limping, we become a new person with a new name.

Therefore the prayer of the faithful
is not that things go well,
but always and only this:
“I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Amen. Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Amen.

Invitation to the Offering

The sacrifice that honours God is a thankful heart. Therefore, let us present our offerings with thankful hearts, grateful for all God’s goodness to us.

Prayer of Dedication

Blessed are you, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have gifts to share. Bless and use our offerings for your glory. Give us courage to offer ourselves fully to you, trusting that you will guide us on our journeys of faith, wherever we go. Amen.

Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession

O God, we thank you for your goodness in every season of our lives. Even in the uncertainties of this present moment, we are grateful for the strength and courage we find, knowing that you are here beside us. Give us the wisdom and patience we need to face a future filled with many questions and challenges.

Aware of our own needs today, we are reminded by Christ’s compassion that so many others near and far may be experiencing even greater struggles. And thus we bring our prayers for the world, seeking inspiration that we may do our part in bringing comfort, healing and hope through our prayers and faith.

We pray for all who are sick or in pain, that they may have the medical assistance they need and the relief of healing in body, mind, and spirit.
We pray for those who are grieving, that they may know the comfort of your presence and find hope in your promises.
Especially we remember those whose lives have been changed by COVID-19 and ask that you will support their recovery and heal relationships affected by this illness.
(Keep silence for a few moments)

We pray for those who are hungry or homeless, and all those experiencing the stress of poverty and economic uncertainty. Give those with more resources the confidence to share generously.
We pray for leaders in our communities and in our nation, as they seek ways to restore the well-being of our communities in the face of the global pandemic. Give them wisdom and courage as they make decisions which help the most vulnerable.
(Keep silence for a few moments)

We pray for those who seek to show hospitality to others in their homes, in their workplaces, in the church and the community, that their generosity may inspire others to open their hearts so that your goodness at work in the world may be multiplied.

We pray for prisoners and for those who work in prisons, especially for chaplains and volunteers who bring your word of love and grace to them. After long weeks and months deprived of familiar contact, help us all understand the stress of being imprisoned. May those who represent the face of Christ in these environments find strength in your companionship and offer the ministry of reconciliation and renewal that you desire for everyone.

Bless our families and friends whom we hold before you in love today, grateful for all we share in this life of goodness and grace. Lord Jesus Christ, you walk with us through all the days of challenge and celebration. Be our Bread for the journey of life, to sustain us and encourage us, whatever the week ahead holds for us.

Benediction

May the beauty of God
be reflected in your eyes,
the love of God
be reflected in your hands,
the wisdom of God
be reflected in your words,
and the knowledge of God
flow from your heart,
that all might see,
and seeing, believe. Amen

Hymns
Here are some hymn suggestions to check on YouTube if you wish to sing along. Some may not be as familiar as their titles suggest and the ones marked “listen” do not have the lyrics on the screen:
Angel voices ever singing

Sing Alleluia to the Lord

O Lord thou art my God and King

Fill your hearts with joy and gladness

My life flows on in endless song

Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah

For Children

Have you ever watched a wrestling match? Wrestling is a popular sport all over the world. Wrestlers must be strong and determined to win. Wrestling isn’t a modern invention, though. It is one of the oldest sports in the world, and it dates back thousands of years.

In today’s Bible lesson, Jacob spent an entire night wrestling with an angel of God. After an entire night of wrestling, God’s angel told Jacob to walk away. Jacob left the wrestling match with a new name and a limp from his hurt hip.

We sometimes struggle with God, too. We may want to do things our way instead of His way. When is it hard for you to obey God?

What do you think is the fastest way to melt a block of ice? You could try warming it with your hands, or you could blow on it with your breath. There is one fast way, but don’t try it yourself as it could be dangerous. Get an adult to blow on the ice with a hairdryer. Of course, the hairdryer only works because it has the power of electricity to heat it up.

Sometimes there are things which we can only do with extra power. In the story of Jacob, he wrestled with God and gained power to help him to face something difficult in making friends with his brother Esau whom he had cheated. With the power of God, difficult dealings with other people can be smoothed and healed without there being greater hurt.

An ice cube melts much faster when we add outside power. And with God’s power, we can do greater things. We can stop doing things our way. We can surrender to God’s will and trust that He knows best.

Dear God, please help us remember that You are the One who knows what is best for us. We can surrender to Your will and trust You. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Here is a video about Jacob wrestling the angel. It is from India