The Inevitable Struggle

Genesis 32:22-31
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21

Struggle is imminent. There is no way to avoid it. Even making an effort to avoid struggle is itself a struggle! The essence of any struggle, however, is the personal growth that can come just as with any learning experience. Regardless of the nature of the struggle, we can come away with a broader perspective even if we firmly stood our ground. Surely we can at least appreciate the fact that we cannot possibly know everything there is to know, especially from the perspective of someone else.

I found myself in the middle of a couple of struggles this week and, like Jacob in Genesis 32:22-31, I also want to come away with a blessing. Yet I must prepare myself for the possibility that I may come away from it all with ONLY a limp … and that’s if I’m lucky! It’s ok, though, because if it were not for these particular two items, it would have been two others, maybe three. As I stated, struggle is unavoidable most especially for the faithful.

The first item was simply an issue of time; there seems to never be enough of it to do everything that we would like to do, let alone everything we must do. When time is compressed – as it always seems to be - then it becomes necessary to prioritize. The problem with this is that while I may have juggled a few things in a particular order I thought best, it may soon be brought to my attention that maybe I should have done something a little differently, maybe arranged my priorities in another way. I did the best I could, but only time will tell the true outcome. Time, however, is an issue that will never go away.

The second item involved the sermon. I thought I was done until I received an e-mail from the Arkansas Conference reminding me that August 3 is “Anti-Lottery Sunday”. I admit that the “reminder” itself suggested that at some point I should have already been aware of the significance of this particular Sunday, but I just don’t recall the first notice. This is not to say that I support the lottery initiative. I don’t. I think it is a bad idea for probably as many reasons as some of you, perhaps many of you, may think it is a good idea. Whether the lottery itself is good or bad, however, is not the point that I hope to make. Not today, anyway.

There is my political self that is ideologically Republican, almost libertarian. That is to say, I think that the less our government is involved in our lives, the better. We can make our own mistakes, thank you very much, or we can enjoy our own successes. Even within the highest ideals of this freedom, we must always be mindful of those who are marginalized by society through no fault of their own either by disability or certain injustices which do still exist whether we like it or not.

With this freedom, then, comes duty and responsibility. We must recognize that our freedom to do as we choose ceases to exist when we infringe upon the legitimate rights of others. Cigarette smoking is a prime example. Smokers have every right to light up but when in the course of exercising that right the clean air is poisoned, the air that non-smokers cannot avoid such as in restaurants or other common-area public places, the right to smoke no longer exists even in the absence of state or city smoking prohibitions. At least, this is my opinion primarily as a matter of common, social, and public courtesy. When our rights become burdensome to others, we then have the duty or responsibility to make other choices. The struggle exists in doing what we OUGHT to do vs. doing what we would LIKE to do. This is, in our society and in our culture, the constant challenge of the faithful. My libertarian self says you have the right to buy lottery tickets when you like and smoke where you like until kingdom come. It is not the government’s business – or mine.

Then there is my religion self, a United Methodist with the honor and privilege of serving as a pastor, a minister – LIKE EVERY BELIEVER - of the entirely social Gospel of Christ, and one who believes that the Church as a whole has remained silent for too long about social issues but is now trying to find its voice and speak with clarity and with moral authority regarding the Church’s social obligations within the context of the Gospel. Admirable, but some elements of the Church have also found themselves advocating for “choice” and “freedom” pertaining to certain social issues and have, in my opinion, jeopardized the moral authority of the Church as a whole by using flawed doctrinal or theological reasoning. My religion self says that the Church must use its voice to speak against the lottery but, perhaps more importantly, help others to understand the nature of our opposition – but, of course, within the boundaries of existing law. Only in America, huh???

So what else is new? Does the past silence of the church require that we remain silent from now on and just let things go as society allows or demands, regardless of the risk potential? Does the fact that most of us probably can be accurately labeled “hypocrite” mean that we should just stop the charade and quit trying? No and No. The struggle exists uniquely in our society because we understand our religion self that is probably constantly struggling with our social and public policy self, our political alter-ego. Lotteries, casino gambling, and abortion spring to mind as issues we may struggle with, but what may not be clear is what we hope to come away from the struggle with, what we hope to accomplish. Can we, or should we even try to, protect people from themselves - even if in the name of Christ?

Jacob’s struggle in Genesis 32 seems to come out of nowhere, yet it is the story of a struggle endured by a man of faith who is moving “forward”, enroute to his destination in Canaan, the Promised Land. But who is this “man” who seems to come from nowhere and is not only not identified but who also refuses to identify himself when asked? And what might the story of this particular struggle suggest for we who continue to struggle on our own journeys as we face that which evokes fear and uncertainty especially when we do what we think is the proper thing but which will face almost certain opposition?

Some schools of thought have suggested that the “man” against whom Jacob wrestled was perhaps a demon or a Canaanite god intent on keeping Jacob from going any further, essentially trying to keep him from entering into Canaan. This theory makes sense in a couple of points: Jacob’s ability to overcome even with injury, and the seeming need of "the man" to avoid the light of day. There are problems with this theory, of course, not least of which are Jacob’s determination to receive a “blessing” directly from this “man” and Jacob’s proclamation in verse 30 in naming the place “Peniel” as he attributes the struggle to a direct encounter with the Lord and has lived to tell it.

I think most scholars agree, however, that “the man” whom Jacob encountered was an angel of the Lord, but it still remains unclear as to why this encounter took place exclusively for Jacob and why this encounter had to end before the sun came up. The timing of the sunrise, however, may only be incidental to chapter 33 which picks up right from this encounter: Jacob looks up and sees Esau coming with 400 men in tow. This impending encounter was one that Jacob was NOT looking forward to!

Maybe the struggle Jacob encounters could more reasonably be attributed to his previous plea to the Lord in chapter 32. Remember that Jacob is very afraid of meeting up with Esau because of the stunt he pulled in chapter 27 when he “tricked” his father Isaac into bestowing the blessing to Jacob that should have rightfully gone to the older brother, Esau, in which it is also written: “So Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him, and Esau said in his heart, ‘The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then I will kill my brother Jacob'.”

If Jacob was aware of this searing hatred, and he most certainly was, then he had every right and reason to be afraid and flee as he did. I wonder, however, if the struggle we encounter daily is the same struggle between Jacob’s religion self that should have been comforted by his earlier prayer in which he reminded even himself that that the Lord had already told him, “I will surely treat you well …”, and Jacob’s more worldly, political self which recognized Esau’s right to be upset and reason to seek vengeance.

The struggle may well be reduced to nothing more than a matter of faith in believing in, and resting on, the promises of the Lord God rather than turning to our own devices to manipulate an outcome more favorable to self than to the glory of the Lord God. The struggle is imminent, I think, perhaps because we have become too worldly over time and, rather than resist the worldly influences, we have probably resisted the religion.

The good news is that as long as a sense of struggle exists, there is hope. It could well mean that we are attempting to find a place for everything and keep everything in its proper perspective. The spiritual reality is that we cannot segregate ourselves by our worldly inclinations and our spiritual being, they being two parts of the same whole.

Within this struggle, however, we must finally and completely come to understand that it is the SPIRITUAL part of ourselves that will endure long after everything worldly has faded away. It must necessarily be, then, that we shift our focus on worldly things with our spiritual perspective, to be informed by the social Gospel of Christ so that the struggle will finally and completely give way to the will of the Lord God our Father. To His Glory … now and forever. AMEN.