Biblical Permission to Fight with God

Posted by Priest on January 17, 2010 under Sermons |

Today is already the 17th day of the new year. And not just a new year. A new decade has dawned upon us. Didn’t we just celebrate the new millennium…? As the old year faded away, many took time to take stock and look back. What did the old year bring us? Was it a year filled with ups or with downs? I bet there is a bit of both in each year. But as the clocks turn on the 31st day of December, we did not just look back: The New Year also lends itself to profound ponderings. What will 2010 bring? God only knows! Still, as we mark a new year, we are often filled with positive anticipation. It is a moment for us to hope and dream and wish and plan a wonderful tomorrow. It is a time to press the reset button for a new beginning. Happy New Year and Happy New Beginnings.

Today’s Gospel story also reveals a new beginning: God’s new beginning with us.

And for many modern theologians, God’s new beginning didn’t so much start with Jesus’ obscure birth on a dark night witnessed by angels, shepherds, and magi. But it is today’s account that marks the arrival of God’s new reign into our reality as God claims Jesus as His beloved and adopts him as the One in whom God’s will is fulfilled.

No longer do we have to search for the almighty God in the heavens far away. No longer do we have to stretch high to reach God. No longer do we have to look up to receive God’s blessing. God’s blessing walks right among us. God reaches down to us and seeks us out. God’s healing and salvation can be grasped and can be embraced.

Today’s reading from the Gospel According to Luke reveals that at Jesus’ Baptism it is more than plain water that is poured. Something fundamentally new is established, something that does not enter the world for a limited time, but something that is eternal, something that could not even be overcome by the terror of the cross or by the reality of human death: In Jesus, God is with us. In Jesus, God walks our ways, talks our language, and listens to our words with human ears. God meets us where we are. God is at eye-level with you, with me and with everybody else. God does not shy away from us, but today God affirms that creation is intended as something good, something very good. You and I were created to be beautiful, awesome, and wonderful. Because God embraced humanity so fundamentally and so fully in Jesus, the words that penetrate the divide between heaven and earth at Jesus’ baptism were words spoken not just to him, but they are spoken to us all: We, too, are God’s beloved, each and every one of us.

After some 2000 years of hearing the story over and over again, it is easy to forget the radical newness of these words. For many, this was blasphemy or simply impossible. The god (or gods) worshipped by most at the time of Jesus was a deity that looked more like a despot, not unlike the Emperor, who lived far away and was accessible only to a few. You only heard of those in power if there was trouble!

But the Creator of heaven and earth is not like this! Already in the Hebrew Scriptures, there are signs and not-so-subtle hints that reveal God quite differently. God’s story with Israel witnesses to God, who is intrinsically bonded to us and fundamentally interested in us. God constantly sought to build up Israel as a sign of God’s order: A nation filled with love and compassion, filled with peace and justice, reconciled with God and with her neighbours. And today’s text continues in this tradition as it moves into the world at large. Today is the public manifestation in the flesh of God’s order. It is a new beginning for us all. God says: “You are my beloved!”

New beginnings. New hopes. New dreams. New wishes and plans for a wonderful tomorrow. It really is all around us: A new year and a new beginning offered to us in the Gospel and offered to us also in our own baptisms.

But 17 days into the new year, I find myself wondering about our hopes and dreams and wishes and plans for a wonderful tomorrow. As the horrific pictures from Haiti flood our screens and flood our minds and our hearts, my sense of new beginnings has disappeared. What is left is a sense of horror, sadness, grief, and emptiness. I am overwhelmed. My heart is broken. And I know, after the initial shock has vanished, there will be questions about the seeming abandonment by God. The pain of the people of Haiti literally cries to the heavens. What happened to God’s intrinsic interest in us? Did God, or whoever created this world, abandon us after all?

I have no clear answers and I find nothing that will make sense of the disaster.

But I do know that the earthquake is no punishment for something the people of Haiti might or might not have done in the past. For some, like Pat Robertson, to claim that this is a direct result of past behaviour is not just overly simplistic, it is also wrong. These are no times to be simplistic or idiotic! A quick look into his Bible should remind Mr Robertson that not just Job encounters evil and pain even though Job is described as a “man [who] was blameless and upright … who feared God and turned away from evil.”¹ Evil, such as the Haitian earthquake, is not the result of behaviour by the Haitian people! And Pat Robertson is not preaching the one true God, if he says otherwise.

In contrast, I would like to share something with you. It is something some of you might have heard before. It is a story. It is a story that is one of those “signs and not-so-subtle hints” in Hebrew Scripture that I mentioned earlier and that speak of God’s intrinsic bond with us and God’s fundamental interest in us. It is the story of God’s fight with Jacob, or Jacob’s fight with God, if you prefer.

In this story, Jacob, one of the ancient patriarchs of Israel, after some time abroad, returns to his homeland. Before entering the lands of his ancestor, he tries to rest at the river Jabbok for a night. Yet, he will not find rest that night. An angel, or a man, or some divine being, i.e. God wrestles with Jacob all through the night and God “did not prevail against Jacob.”² So God strikes Jacob on the hip. But Jacob holds on and does not let go of God. He demands a blessing, which he receives.

This story is the biblical permission to fight with God. When we struggle and do not understand, when we are in pain, overcome by sadness, when darkness seems to swallow us up, then it is no time for simple answers, for easy consolation. But it is time to engage God deeply – and even fight with God.

Thousands have vanished in Haiti and the One who is in charge should not be let off the hook. God is strong enough and big enough to hold our frustration, our grief, our pain, our questions, and our anger. In his baptism, Jesus subjected himself to John so that God would subject himself to all our feelings, concerns, and struggles and so that God would know of the depth of the human experience, even our pain. God’s embrace is not something found only in heaven, something we have to earn. But God acts for us and in us now: God brings the light of his healing, brings salvation and life, brings his abundant and endless love into the midst of our human lives, into the midst of our hearts.

And we cannot just walk away. Jacob’s story teaches us that in the midst of chaos, God is not absent, but is present. We must engage God, must seek God not just in our hearts, but must seek him and his compassion all around us.

We must engage – and must do so with all that we are.

This does not mean that the darkness is a test or that there is a logical correlation, which says that “good will come of evil.” Again, that would be too simplistic.

But when we enter the darkness; when we are willing to not look away and move on; when we face reality, even the reality of death and pain; when we stand by our sisters and brothers in Haiti with prayer and action; then we will be able to enter deeper into God, and then we will be able to understand more about who we really are created to be. It is in the face of those who need us that we will see God. It is in the eyes of those who are suffering that we will discover our true humanity. It is in the embrace of those in pain that we will hear God calling us “beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”

Darkness is part of our reality. But equally part of our reality is God’s call to fight evil and bring hope to those who suffer.

This is a conundrum that is hard to swallow and hard to reconcile. Yet, I believe that if we are willing to hold the tension of this conundrum, if we do not shy away from living into this dilemma, we will find meaning, healing, and salvation in ways beyond imagination: for us, for our sisters and brothers in Haiti, and for all who are engulfed in pain and despair.

In baptism we are covered by water first and we first must go down into the depth of the darkness of the font. But there we will meet Jesus waiting for us, waiting to raise us to life eternal.

To help the people of Haiti please go here.

1 Job 1:1
2 Genesis 32:25

[The Reverend Markus Duenzkofer delivered this sermon on January 17, 2010.]