“I will not let you go” (Genesis 32:22-31)

Have you ever been in a situation where there is something you didn’t want to deal with? Maybe it was a challenging issue at work. Maybe it was a tense relationship with a neighbour or a conflict with a family member. Or if you think back to your school days, perhaps it was a homework assignment. I can remember more than once burning the midnight oil (or to be truthful, the 2 a.m. oil!) to finish off a paper that was due the next morning.

Eventually the situation reaches the point where we realize we can’t postpone taking action any longer. Well, those are exactly the circumstances in which Jacob finds himself in this morning’s Old Testament reading.

Those of you who are familiar with his story will know that all his life Jacob had managed to succeed through trickery, through dishonesty and deceit. He was the master of the scam. And there had been an indication that this was the kind of person Jacob was going to be right from the time of his birth.

As you likely know as well, Jacob was a twin. His brother Esau was the first to be born. But Jacob emerged from his mother Rebekah’s womb with his tiny fist clenched tightly around his brother’s heel. In fact it was for that reason that he was given the name Jacob, which means something like “he clutches” or “he grasps”.

What happened at Jacob’s birth was the beginning of a pattern. And so it is that, as we follow the life of Jacob in the Book of Genesis we find him constantly grasping—first cheating his older brother Esau out of his birthright, later masquerading as his brother to steal their dying father’s final blessing along with his inheritance, and later still tricking his uncle Laban out of half his flocks of sheep. But now (to change the image) Jacob’s chickens had come home to roost.

Wrestling with God

As our passage opens this morning, Jacob is dreading what is about to happen. At their parting years before Esau had vowed to kill his brother. And it was only because their mother Rebekah had got wind of this and shared with him what she had found out that Jacob was able to make a hasty exit.

Now, after years of pent-up estrangement and hostility, what Jacob had been avoiding was on the verge of happening. Jacob was about to come face to face with his brother Esau once again. And Jacob quite rightly feared for his life.

As we meet him in this morning’s Old Testament reading, Jabob has been careful to ensure that his family and his flocks are safely out of harm’s way on the opposite bank of the River Jabbok. And there he sits, silent and alone, under the starlit sky.

Then the most peculiar thing happens. Suddenly Jacob finds himself wrestling with a figure who seemingly has come out of nowhere. Try to picture them, grappling with each other, throwing each other down, rolling back and forth on the grassy meadow under the starlit sky. Then, as the faint glimmer of the rising sun begins to appear over the eastern horizon, Jacob’s mysterious opponent strikes him on the hip socket and throws his hip out of joint.

However, Jacob was a tough customer. And he was not one to give up a fight. He was not going to let a mere dislocated hip stand in his way, and so he continued to wrestle with the stranger. It was at that point, seeing that Jacob was not going to call it quits, that the stranger said to him, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob was not going to let the stranger off so easily and was firm in his response: “I will not let you go before you have given me a blessing.”

So the stranger asks Jacob, “What is your name?” To which Jacob replies, “Jacob”—the grasper. “Your name won’t be Jacob any longer,” says the stranger, “From now on you will be called Israel—the God-Wrestler—for you have wrestled with God and you’ve made it through.” So Jacob called the spot where these strange goings-on happened “Peniel”, which means “the face of God”.

They wouldn’t let go

So what can we learn from this strange story from a strange land nearly four thousand years ago?

One of the things that I come away from this story of Jacob is that he was not willing to let go in his struggle with God. And Jacob was not unique. Later on in the Bible we meet with Job. As Job suffered the loss successively of his wealth, his sons and daughters, and finally his health, he continued to cling to his faith in God. In the midst of his unutterable pain and suffering, he declared to his friends, “Though [the Almighty] slay me, yet I will trust in him.” (Job 13:15)

In the New Testament we meet with the Apostle Paul, who shared with his friends in Corinth the sufferings he had endured over the course of his life:

Five times I have received … the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked… (2 Corinthians 11:24-27)

Yet in spite of all this, Paul would not relinquish his faith in Christ. And Paul was not unique. Recently I’ve been reading Letters and Papers from Prison by a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who joined the resistance against Adolf Hitler’s Nazi régime in Germany during World War 2. He was held in prison for a year and a half and then in a concentration camp for another six months before being finally executed. Yet it is clear that over the course of those years his faith in God only deepened and grew.

Christian history right down to the present day is peppered with the stories of women, men and children who have in spite of every kind of adversity and loss, have clung to their faith in God. Indeed, in most cases that faith was only deepened. Like Jacob in our Bible reading this morning, they would not let go.

The One who will not let us go…

Had the circumstances been different, you would have been witnesses to the baptism of three young people this morning. What a privilege it is to stand around the font and witness as people mark the beginning of a lifelong journey of walking with Jesus.

For twenty centuries Christians have been baptizing in obedience to Jesus’ final words to his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you…” (Matthew 28:18-20)

Baptisms are joyful events—and that is as it should be. Yet that joyful atmosphere can easily mask the seriousness of the vows we undertake. Listen to the words with which we address the candidates: “Will you persevere…?” “Will you seek and serve…?” “Will you strive…?” Those are strong words when you take a moment think about them! I don’t think I would be exaggerating to say they pose a superhuman challenge!

Yet we accept the challenge because when Jesus commanded the disciples to baptize, he also left them with a promise: “And remember,” he said to them, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

So it is that as we grasp onto the Lord in baptism, we recognize that we are being grasped by a hand that is infinitely stronger than our own—a hand that, no matter what life may throw at us, will never let us go. And so, with the apostle Paul we are able to proclaim, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

“A Prayer for Canada” (Psalm 72)

“He shall have dominion also from sea unto sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.” So runs the King James Version of Psalm 72:8, the psalm we have just read as our Bible passage this morning. I rather doubt that the psalmist had Canada in mind when he composed this prayer for King Solomon nearly three thousand years ago. Its connection with Canada can be traced to a Nova Scotian, George Monro Grant. A native of Stellarton, Grant became the minister at what was then St Matthew’s Presbyterian Church in Halifax. Described as a “romantic evangelical”, Grant was a great admirer of the famous American evangelist of the time, Dwight L. Moody. Like Moody, Grant’s sermons “stressed the importance of personal conversion and an active engagement in the world, and were centred theologically in the mystery of the Atonement”[1], Christ’s saving death on the cross.

It was in 1872 that Grant accompanied a member of his congregation, Sandford Fleming, on a three-month, five-thousand-mile journey to Victoria. This long expedition was in preparation for the proposed railroad that was designed to link British Columbia to Canada and draw it into Confederation. The following year Grant published a travel book based on the diary he had kept. He entitled it Ocean To Ocean—a direct reference to Psalm 72:8.

Seven years later, after a journey across Canada on the newly laid railway, it would inspire another Halifax Presbyterian, Robert Murray, to pen the hymn,

From ocean unto ocean

Our land shall own thee Lord,

And, filled with true devotion,

Obey thy sovereign word.

Forty years after that, in 1921, these same words in their Latin form were proposed by Joseph Pope (a Prince Edward Islander) to be included as the motto in the newly designed Canadian coat of arms. Today I suspect that few Canadians would recognize that the phrase emblazoned across the cover of their passports is from the Bible!

Way back in my university days I had a friend who liked to say when people would quote from Scripture, “A text without a context is a pretext.” For this reason, over the next few minutes this morning I’d like us to look together at the biblical context of our nation’s motto—at the verses that surround those words, “From sea even unto sea”. As we do so, we are going to find that there are three themes that emerge, themes that I would place under the headings of peace, justice and compassion. So let’s take a look at each one in turn.

Peace

First: Peace. If you are reading from the New International Version (as I am) or almost any modern translation of the Bible, you will not find the word “peace” anywhere in the psalm. Instead you will find the word “prosperity”. It’s there in verse 3 and again in verse 7. If you were to check out some of the older versions, you would find that there the same word is rendered “peace”. Underneath them both there lies that most wonderful of Hebrew words, shalom. “Shalom”—the very word itself sounds peaceful, doesn’t it? But I think recent translators have shied away from using the word “peace” because too often “peace” just means a standoff, an absence of war, while deep-rooted hostilities may still lurk in the background. So they opted for “prosperity”.

However, the problem now is that prosperity, just as much as peace, is an equally misunderstood word—and that is thanks, not in the least, to what has become known as the “health, wealth and prosperity gospel”. That so-called gospel is the farthest thing from the good news that Jesus proclaimed. Wasn’t it Jesus who said to his disciples, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20)?

I suppose we have to leave that problem to the translators, but what does the Bible mean when it uses the word shalom—as it does in our psalm this morning? My Old Testament wordbook translates it as peace, prosperity, well-being, health, completeness, safety. One author has described it as “that full-orbed well-being of individual and society, in character and conduct, manward and Godward”[2] In fact it is all those things combined and brought together into one single, beautiful, all-embracing word.

Shalom is the picture that Zechariah gives us as he looks forward to the day when God himself will come to live and reign in the midst of his people:

This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each of them with cane in hand because of their age. The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there… The seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew.” (Zechariah 8:4-5,12).

Again it is shalom that Isaiah wrote about in his poetic description of the new creation:

“Never again will there be in it
     an infant who lives but a few days,
     or an old man who does not live out his years…
No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
     or plant and others eat…
They will not labour in vain,
     nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,
     they and their descendants with them…
The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
     and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
     and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,”
     says the Lord. (Isaiah 65:20-25)

It is a beautiful picture that the Bible gives us—and may it be the vision that we share for Canada: a land of peace, where people can live without fear of persecution, war, violence, discrimination or want. Certainly that has been the hope of the waves of immigrants and refugees who arrive in the hundreds of thousands every year.

Justice

However, peace cannot exist on its own. It must be accompanied by what the Bible calls justice or righteousness. So it is no coincidence that right alongside peace we meet those words half a dozen times in the first seven verses of Psalm 72. More than that, they crop up more than five hundred times over the course of the Old Testament. And why is this? Because justice is basic to any ordered society. And it is justice that makes peace possible.

Yet once again, as with “peace” and “prosperity”, those two key Bible words “justice” and “righteousness” are often skewed and misunderstood in our society today.

Many people in our day and age see justice as a matter of getting even with another person whom I perceive to have done me wrong. Yet more often than not that kind of attitude leads not to peace but to increased levels of hostility. And the public media only make this worse. They love to give us pictures of people with clenched fists and shouting so loudly you’d think their blood vessels were going to burst. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for anger. Indeed there are injustices that we would be wrong not to be angry about. But they will not be mended by getting even.

The same is true of righteousness. For many to be righteous means to regard yourself as morally better than other people—rather like the Pharisee in Jesus’ story. Do you remember that man’s prayer as he stood looking down his nose at the tax collector praying next to him in the Temple? “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get” (Luke 18:11-12). That is not righteousness. It’s self-righteousness, and there is a world of difference between the two. For righteousness is a matter not of being right, but of being in right relationships. What are Jesus two great commandments? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. That is what true righteousness is all about.

So what does the Bible mean when it uses the words “justice” and “righteousness”? As I have indicated already, the two unquestionably have to do with integrity, fairness and uprightness both in our individual lives and also more broadly across society as a whole. Yet even more they involve bringing people into right relationships with one another and not least with God.

Compassion

In recent years this has led to a movement towards what is called restorative justice, where victim and offender are brought together, and the offender is encouraged to see things from the victim’s perspective. But there is a whole other side to biblical justice and that is that it always has a special eye for the poor, the needy and the downtrodden. And this again is reflected in the psalmist’s vision. Take a look at verses 12 to 14, where he sings of the king,

He will deliver the needy who cry out,
      the afflicted who have no one to help.
He will take pity on the weak and the needy
      and save the needy from death.
He will rescue them from oppression and violence,
      for precious is their blood in his sight.

So we find that in the biblical pattern peace and prosperity cannot happen without justice and righteousness. And there is no real justice where there is not compassion for the have-nots, for the powerless, for those who live on the fringes of society. Job knew this centuries ago when he declared,  

I put on righteousness as my clothing;
     justice was my robe and my turban.
I was eyes to the blind
     and feet to the lame.
I was a father to the needy;
     I took up the case of the stranger.
I broke the fangs of the wicked
     and snatched the victims from their teeth. (Job 29:14-17)

If you take the Bible seriously, you cannot have a truly just society without it being a compassionate society. I remember a conversation I had over lunch with a friend some years ago. An election was coming up and I asked him which candidate he would be inclined to vote for. His answer, I thought, was both biblical and wise. “I would always vote,” he told me, “for the party I believe would most benefit the poor.” How often do you or I think that way when we cast our ballots? I know what I want: I want to see the candidate win who will do the most for me. But is that what God wants? Not according to Zechariah, who warns us, “This is what the Lord Almighty [says]: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other’ ” (Zechariah 7:9).

Ultimately as Christians we know that genuine peace, justice and compassion are to be found in one place and one place only—and that is the cross of Christ. It is by the cross that we are reconciled with God and one another and find real peace. It is through the cross that God’s justice has been finally enacted, as Jesus has absorbed into himself both the penalty and the power of our sin. It is from the cross that the mercy and compassion of God flow forth to redeem and transform both human lives and the whole of creation. And we plead for that day when Christ’s reign of perfect peace, justice and compassion will break forth, every time we pray, “Your kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”

Yet between that time and this may we labour with all the strength that the Holy Spirit gives us to make this country into a land where those qualities of peace, justice and compassion are honoured and lived, from sea all the way to sea.

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[1]     “Grant, George Monro”, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/grant_george_monro_13E.html

[2]     Psalm 72, New Bible Commentary Revised, 495

“We told him to stop” (Mark 9:38-50)

My dictionary defines the word “paranoia” as “a serious mental illness that causes you to falsely believe that other people are trying to harm you”. It also gives this secondary definition: “a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others”. I just wonder if that isn’t what we see among Jesus’ followers in our reading from Mark’s gospel this morning.

Once again, we find them making their way through the towns and villages of Galilee on their way towards Jerusalem. I can imagine, as it was the pattern of his ministry right from the beginning, that people of all kinds continued to besiege Jesus from every direction. There were the sick and the handicapped, begging to be healed. There were those with all kinds of questions about God and about their relationship with him, desperate to find answers. And then there were the doubters and the skeptics, forever casting about for an opportunity to get a jab in here or a poke there, always wanting to shed doubts on Jesus’ credibility.

I suspect that at those times the disciples must have found themselves acting as crowd marshals, trying to make sure that those really in need had an opportunity to see Jesus and to keep things from getting out of control. (For example, do you recall how, when faced with a hungry crowd, Andrew brought a young lad to Jesus with a few loaves and fish; or how they had been pestered by a Canaanite woman whose daughter was in terrible suffering?) I suspect that there were also times when the disciples found themselves with nothing to do, when they could kind of kick about town. Had there been a tavern, they might have found themselves sitting down for a rest over a pint or two.

Stopping

However, on this occasion I imagine the disciples somewhere on the edge of town when they see something strangely familiar happening. A little cluster of onlookers has gathered and as they come up closer they discover that their interest is focused on a man who is casting out evil spirits. Not only that, he is doing it in Jesus’ name. What are they to do? Who gave this man the right to do this? What was he doing stepping into Jesus’ territory?

Now let me ask a question: Does any of this sound the least bit familiar to you? I suspect that we don’t have to scratch too far beneath the surface to find the same kind of paranoia (if you want to call it that) in the church today. I come from a family of died-in-the-wool Anglicans. My great aunt was a member of the Chancel Guild of the cathedral in Ottawa for forty years. When my uncle announced that he was planning to marry a woman from the United Church, the best that she could do was to mutter, “Well, at least she isn’t a Catholic.”

How contrary such an attitude is to the spirit of Jesus! When the apostle Paul was in prison in Rome, there were those who tried to take advantage of the situation. Different people vied to fill the leadership vacuum that he had left behind. Some of the would-be leaders were motivated by selfish gain. Others thought that they could climb to power by denigrating Paul’s ministry. How did Paul react to all of this? Did he curse them? Did he call for their destruction? No. Here is what he said: “What does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this, I rejoice” (Philippians 1:18).

We may not raise our hands and clap and shout “Hallelujah!” all the time in worship. But let us not be critical of those who do. We like to use a Prayer Book. But let us not look down on those who prefer to be more spontaneous. We prefer simplicity in our services. But let us not write off those whose worship involves elaborate ceremony and incense and icons. The key question is, is Jesus being honoured? Is the gospel being proclaimed? Are men and women being drawn into a living relationship with him? Let’s not confuse style for substance. Let us take to heart Jesus’ words to his disciples, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Stumbling

I wonder if you’ve ever heard the old saw that whenever you point a finger at someone else, there are always three pointing back at you. In the conversation that follows this incident, Jesus cautions the disciples not to be quick to criticize others without first taking a careful look at themselves. And the language he uses is stark and uncompromising.

In those days there were at least a couple of ways of grinding grain into flour. Much of the time this was done using a small hand mill, usually turned by women. However, that is not the kind of millstone that Jesus was referring to. What Jesus was talking about was an enormous flat, circular stone weighing hundreds of pounds that had to be turned by a donkey or an ox. Imagine having one of those tied to your neck and then being hurled into the sea!

And if that image were not powerful enough, Jesus goes on to speak about being cast into the fires of hell. The word which our Bibles translate “hell” is actually Gehenna, and Gehenna is the Valley of Hinnom, which runs along the west and south of the old city of Jerusalem. In Old Testament times this was where the worshippers of Moloch had thrown their children onto sacrificial fires. For that reason it was regarded ever after as cursed. In later years it became used as burial ground and in the time of Jesus the Romans used it as a site for cremation. And so you can picture this desolate place, abandoned and putrid with the odor of death.

Neither one is a pretty picture. And it’s not as though Jesus is threatening us with that kind of future. What he is saying is how high the stakes are—how important it is that we attend to the quality and purity of our own personal lives, not only for our own sakes but for the sake of those around us. Being a follower of Jesus is a round-the-clock, twenty-four-hours-a-day assignment.

How crucial it is, then, that we use all our faculties in ways that bring glory to God—and Jesus lists a few of them for us in this morning’s passage: our mouths, our hands, our feet, our eyes. The Bible elsewhere warns us how with the same tongue we can praise God at one moment and slice another person to ribbons at the next (James 3:9). We can raise our hands in worship and quickly use them to hurt and destroy. The same feet that bring us into the sanctuary can also lead us into places of darkness where we never ought to tread. And Jesus’ final warning about the eyes is particularly relevant to our own time, when pornography is so readily available from so many sources. We need to have in mind the words of Frances Ridley Havergal’s hymn of a century and a half ago:

Take my hands and let them move
at the impulse of thy love.
Take my feet and let them be
swift and beautiful for thee.

Take my voice and let me sing
always, only, for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
filled with messages from thee.

Salting

With this we come to what are some of the most difficult words in this morning’s reading, and perhaps some of the most difficult to understand in the whole of the New Testament: “Everyone will be salted with fire.” What did Jesus mean when he said this? Far better minds than mine have pondered over this for centuries. To get at what Jesus was saying you have to understand how salt was used in biblical times.

First of all, salt was used as a preservative and a purifying agent. In a hot climate where there were no refrigerators, salt was what was used to keep food from going bad. Salt could also be used destructively. If you wanted to ruin your enemy’s fields so that they could not produce crops, the way to do it was to spread salt over them. Then nothing would be able grow there until the salt had been washed away by several rainy seasons. Thirdly, salt was used in sacrifice. “Season all your grain offerings with salt,” we read in Leviticus 2:13. “Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.”

So what was Jesus getting at when he said, “Everyone will be salted with fire”? When you think of it, fire also can have the same three uses. We roast meat and cook vegetables over a fire to purify and preserve them. We all know the destructive properties of fire, particularly after the wildfires this past summer that wiped out thousands of hectares of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. And of course fire was almost invariably used in sacrifice.

Now, if we put all three of these uses together, I think we can begin to arrive at something of an understanding of what Jesus was saying. First of all, then, there are the fires of trial and suffering that are a part of human life and not least of the Christian life. Yet painful as those trials may be (and I do not want to underestimate that in any way) the Holy Spirit is mysteriously able to use them in our lives to produce in us more of the character of Christ. Again and again in my pastoral experience I have been humbled to see how by God’s grace and through his power men and women have emerged richer, stronger and deeper as they have come through even the most terrible tragedies.

This morning we read from the book of Job in the Old Testament—and if you want to see an individual whose life was afflicted by tragedy, Job is the place to look. Through the loss of his property, his wealth, his children and finally his health, Job is reduced to the point where all he wants to do is die. Yet somehow Job can affirm, “I know that my Redeemer lives and that he shall stand at the last day… My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 19:25; 42:5).

Yet I believe that there is also a deeper meaning. And it comes in the question that Jesus puts before his followers in the final verse of this morning’s passage: “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?” How does salt lose its saltiness? It doesn’t happen today when we buy it neatly packaged from the grocery store. But in Jesus’ time, salt was taken from the deposits around the Dead Sea, and those deposits were filled with impurities. Gradually over time the salt would leach out, so that all that remained was a tasteless white powder—and that was what Jesus was talking about.

So let me ask, how do we become the salt that brings flavour and life to the world? Certainly not by criticizing others or writing them off as the disciples did. It will be as we put him who is life at the centre of our lives, as we allow Jesus to live in and through us, as we give ourselves wholly and entirely and without reservation to him.