Ouch! My month-long sabbatical didn’t exactly go as planned.
Just a handful of days into my much-needed break from the demands of daily life and responsibilities of ministry, I took a tumble down a short set of concrete steps, as I set out for a hike on an otherwise-sunny spring day in northeast Wisconsin, the land where I was born and grew up – and where I’d hoped to recapture a sense of who I am and how the Lord intends to use me in the soon-arriving autumn of my life. My intent was at once simple and challenging: Better understanding who I am by literally exploring on foot where I’ve been.
My humiliating spill threw a wrench into the machinery of self-discovery; rest and icepacks quickly became my best means of self-repair. But my prognosis was good: No broken bones; just plenty of bruising and abrasion, strained muscles and sprained joints. I’m not one to believe that God is the cause of everything. I’m more inclined to believe that God allows certain things to happen then begins working unto good in the midst of suffering, misery, and apparent defeat.
Perhaps it is so that God permits our stumbling and fumbling, as often-painful reminders of our constant need for ever-present grace. Everybody needs a little Jesus, yes? – no less so the one nursing sabbatical scars.
As I recovered in recliner or bed for much of April – so also mending the welts and wounds to my self-esteem and -confidence, thoughts turned to the Old Testament’s Jacob, who in kind wrestles with his own bout of physical injury and spiritual misery.
As told in Genesis, for 20-or-so years Jacob has been on the lam from his older brother, Esau, who vows to kill Jacob because he swindled out Esau of their father’s vast inheritance and coveted blessing. Jacob’s time in fraternal exile has not been without its share of blessing, but now, God tells Jacob to pack up, head home, and face up to his angry older brother. Understandably Jacob fears reunion with Esau, yet the Lord assures that he’ll be along for the ride to ensure that good things happen.
But on the way home, as we hear in this morning’s lesson, Jacob endures a bloody, sweaty encounter with a formidable stranger who literally knocks Jacob off his feet. Let the Holy Spirit open your heart and mind to the Word of the Lord in Genesis 32:
During the night, Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two servant wives, and his 11 sons and crossed the Jabbok River.
After taking them to the other side, he returned to their start and sent over all his possessions. This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break. When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip, which wrenched it from its socket. Then the man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
“What is your name?” the man asked. He replied, “Jacob.”
“Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “From now on you will be called Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have won.”
“Please tell me your name,” Jacob pleaded.
“Why do you want to know my name?” the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there on the spot. Jacob named the place Peniel, which means “face of God,” for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.”
The sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel, and he was limping because of the injury to his hip. Even today the people of Israel don’t eat the tendon near the hip socket because of what happened that night when the man strained the tendon of Jacob’s hip. (Genesis 32:22-32, New Living Translation)
There was a time – not that long ago, really – when the Church took quite seriously its responsibility of disciplining badly behaving members.
Step too far out of line, and you could expect a knock on your door from the pastor, with a couple elders in tow, to deliver a stern message that you’d better straighten up and fly right or risk being booted out of church. And so it was for a man named Benny Ploegstra, who lived in northwest Iowa under the strict scrutiny of the very conservative and straight-laced Reformed Church.
Benny, an alcoholic who regularly attended Sunday services, had for three years been subject to the discipline of his congregation, and the elders turned up the heat at each step of the reformatory process. Early on, Benny received a discreet warning about his drinking. Then came a more public censure that didn’t name names. But most everyone in the small town knew exactly who it was who’d run afoul of the law in the eyes of the church.
Later, the church lifted its veil of anonymity, which left absolutely no question whom the church had in the crosshairs of its correction: The regularly inebriated town ne’er-do-well Benny Ploegstra.
Eventually the congregation ran out patience with Benny and his persistent struggle with the bottle, so the church issued an ultimatum for Benny to sober up.
And when Benny couldn’t meet the deadline to clean up his act and repent of his wicked, boozy ways, a Sunday-morning date was set for Benny’s public excommunication from the church. Because he couldn’t cork the bottle, Benny was getting the boot.
Now, if know that you’re going to be kicked out of church during a particular Sunday worship, you’ll most likely decide to sleep in that morning and skip church.
But not Benny. Benny chose to attend his excommunication. With a kind of headstrong dignity, he stood before the congregation as the pastor solemnly read the standard rite that designated Benny a “Gentile and a publican” – a fancy-sounding way of calling Benny a filthy sinner who was no longer welcome nor to enjoy any further association with the church.
Benny stood there and heard it all. It wasn’t a protest, although the pastor thought it was. And it wasn’t stupidity, although the congregation thought as much. Benny simply had no intention of leaving.
In fact, until he died of alcohol-induced cirrhosis a few years later, Benny attended church as regularly as he did before. But he never took part in communion whenever the congregation celebrated the Lord’s Supper.
Benny was wrestling with God – like Jacob, wrestling with God and demanding that he wouldn’t let go until God blessed him.
Though Benny lacked Jacob’s way with words, Benny’s stubborn refusal to leave clearly proclaimed that he would not be cut off as if he didn’t exist. “I am God’s child, all right,” Benny was saying in effect. “God’s naughty child, to be sure, but I am Benny, and I am still God’s child – no matter what!”
So, where does that leave the rest of us? The rest of us who attend church regularly, perhaps out of habit, without ever questioning our right to be here?
What about the rest of us who wrestle with our demons – hidden and unhidden – while somehow shunning or avoiding those whose battles with brokenness and evil are on full display for everybody to see and smirk? Like Benny the boozer’s! Like me the stumbler’s! Like Jacob the swindler’s!
Jacob is the kind of guy who lives by his own wits, and he very much takes matters into his own hands to conjure a means of avoiding what he suspects will be a dangerous encounter with his brother, Esau. Jacob has his plans in place, and all he can do now is wait, pausing on the banks of the River Jabbok on what just might turn out to be his last night on earth – to contemplate the events that have brought him to this likely fatal place.
That’s when it happens: From out of the shadows of the night – from out of nowhere – a stranger jumps Jacob.
Is it Esau? A robber? A demon?
Whoever it is is plenty strong. Jacob throws his best punches and wrestles the stranger to the ground several times, but each time the attacker wriggles free and sends Jacob flying back into the muck of the river bank. It goes on like this for hours – fists flying and muscles flexing.
As the eastern sky begins to pink up with the first hints of dawn, blood, mud, and sweat mat Jacob’s hair. His body aches and screams for rest and relief.
But he’s not about to be defeated. He’s not about to give up. Jacob was a fighter.
Just as Jacob takes aim with another roundhouse-right, the attacker’s hand brushes Jacob’s hip, and immediately Jacob feels the searing, wrenching pain of dislocation. Jacob hears it pop! His leg bone torn clean from its socket! But he doesn’t let loose the stranger, who at long last cries out, “Let me go before the sun comes up!” But Jacob says, “No way, jack. Not unless you bless me.”
I’m sorry, what? A blessing? Who ends a wrestling match with a blessing? Jacob does! Even in this encounter with a dark stranger, the wit-strong Jacob won’t leave empty-handed. It’s not enough to wail on his attacker until he taps out. No, Jacob wants a take-away – something he can, as it were, take to the bank.
But Jacob doesn’t get his sought-after blessing – at least not right away. Instead, the stranger asks, “What’s your name?”
“Jacob.”
“Well, not anymore,” the man says, spitting bits of sand from his mouth and wiping bloody sweat from his face. “From now on your name is ‘Israel’ – one who struggles with God.”
“Who are you?” Jacob pleads. “What is your name?”
“Why do you ask my name?” the man replies, which seems his way of saying, “I think you know full well who I am.”
Indeed, Jacob does. It’s God with whom Jacob has spent the night rolling in the dirt. Far from being upset by Jacob’s rough and gruff treatment, God winks at Jacob, tells him, “Bless you, lad,” then disappears from underneath Jacob’s momentary dominance, leaving Jacob face down in the muck, bruised and battered, with one whale of a sore hip. Peniel, Jacob says as he slowly picks himself up and dusts himself off. Peniel! I’ll call this place “God’s Face,” because I just met God face to face, yet I’m still alive!” Jacob then hobbles off toward the rising sun with a lifelong limp to remind him of this bizarre encounter.
From that time on, every step forward he takes recalls the night that forever put him in his place and put God in the right place. Because, you see, God waits until just about the moment Jacob thinks he’s won – nearly certain that his own wits and strength have once again propelled him to the top. God could have wrenched Jacob’s hip out of joint the moment he first leapt out from the shadows. But God didn’t. God lets this wrestling match go on and on and lets Jacob think he’s winning. Then, and only then, does God bless Jacob.
It’s one thing to be defeated but quite another to lose after you’ve already started to savor the sweet taste of victory.
If your wrestling team lopsidedly loses a match, that’s a bummer, but at least you see it coming and prepare to gag on bitter defeat. But if your team leads by a comfortable margin the whole match – only to suddenly lose it all in the last few bouts, well, that’s when you see wrestlers ringing the mat looking not just defeated but dazed and confused.
They were so sure they had this one in the bag. “We can’t lose” became their mantra weight class after weight class. Then they end up losing, and it seems somehow worse than an ordinary defeat.
Jacob was like that. About the time he thought he’d come out on top yet again, BAM! He lost. In such a way that he now knows the whole thing had been rigged from the start. He never had a chance. No amount of cunning, wits, brawn, or craftiness could have won this match.
The ease of his loss leaves Jacob confounded and bewildered – stunned that it was the Lord God himself who does all this, baffled that, even so, Jacob is blessed. Jacob gets the best blessing ever – not by earning it, NOT by capturing it, NOT by scamming it. Jacob collects the best blessing ever by grace and grace alone.
It was, as another describes, a “magnificent defeat,” because Jacob wins by losing.
In defeat Jacob realizes that the best things in life are gifts of grace – blessings of undeserved merit and favor. And if he has to limp the rest of his life to keep on recalling that with each lurching step he takes, THEN SO BE IT! This lesson of grace isn’t something he wants to forget.
The temptation to get ahead by one’s own wits is always real. You and I face it, too. And let’s just admit that when it comes to the goodies of this life – wealth, fame, power, prestige, glamour, the notion that “the early bird catches the worm” works pretty well. If you’re willing to duke it out, you just maybe might find “happiness,” and “success,” and “security” in the ways that the world materially defines such things.
But love, and joy, and peace: Well, those are gifts of God that all burst forth like a geyser from the one font of grace. You need to lose your life FIRST – or at the very least get laid up for a while – to receive new life from the hand of God: From the nail-pierced hand of Jesus, from the pillar of fire shining forth in the night that just is the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit.
We need to lose – need to be crucified with Christ, defeated with Jesus. But it’s a magnificent defeat – an embarrassing loss by the world’s measure, but an amazing, come-from-behind victory as God and the Gospel tally the score.
The face of God, the face of grace:
You meet its countenance in all manner of time and place – maybe even right here through the tear-soaked eyes and broken hearts of injury and defeat in its many evil forms.
Sometimes it’s the mud-encrusted face of the one who has struggled and toiled for a lifetime but never seems to be the one who comes out on top. But mostly you see it in the face framed by a crown of thorns with, as the old hymn says, “sorrow and love flowing mingled down.” That’s the truest face of God.
By the saving grace of this God of resurrection, Peniel is where you and I live and breathe most every day. Because even as one day Jacob hobbles off on a bum hip, limping into the sunrise of a new day dawning, so also on another morning, a most-wonderful man limps into Easter’s dawn, walking gingerly on still-pierced feet, baring on his raised body the stripes of this world’s defeat, changed by the alchemy of grace into our most glorious victory.
In the face of what Jesus does, all of us are left undone. We surely cannot do what Jesus does – surely not on our own, anyway. We only receive such grace by what Jesus gives. It’s the Gospel way: The magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of a loving God – the ONE defeat that ALONE gives victory.
So no, my sabbatical didn’t unfold as I’d planned. But in its painful unraveling came a most-welcome assurance: He is risen! He is risen indeed! As much for problem children like you and me, as for miscreant folk like Benny Ploegstra, with whom we stand firm as both blessed saint and redeemed sinner.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!
Upon his return from a month-long sabbatical, Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on the sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Sietze Buining, Fredrick Buechner, and Scott Hoezee inform the message.