Wounded and Blessed

From Transaction to Transformation

…there will come a day
when what felt to you
like limping
was something more
like dancing
as you moved into
the cadence
of your new
and blessed name.
Jacobs Blessing, Jan Richardson

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
The Uses of Sorrow, Mary Oliver

You can’t stand in the midst of the world and struggle for fundamental change unless you are standing in your own space and looking for change within.
Origin unknown, attributed to Howard Thurman

Opening Meditation

Name a grievance you might hold. Where is it in your body?

Breathe slowly and deeply.

1^st Readings

Luke 18.1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.

He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.

In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”

For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone,

yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” ’

And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says.

And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?

I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’

Genesis 32.22-31

The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.

He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’

So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’

Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’

Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’

The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

REFLECTION

Today, a conversation between two stories.

Many of you will know the famous Epstein sculpture of Jacob wrestling with the angel. It’s a very powerful depiction of the Genesis story. What’s most striking to me is the intimacy it portrays in the struggle. If you didn’t know the title of this piece, it could be mistaken for a very erotic embrace - both tender and fierce. (Likewise - but less so - the Rembrandt above, which is in the public domain and therefore useable here.)

The widow, by contrast, pesters the judge until he gives in. I’ve no doubt her cause was worthy and her approach justified. Jesus makes it clear that justice was close to his heart, and that he would, indeed reward such perseverance. Still, the passage ends somewhat cryptically: And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

So - is this pestering the same as the faith he’s looking for? Perhaps. But the conversation between this parable and the Genesis story teases me.

This week, I’ve been wearing out random employees of booking.com for a refund on a booking I cancelled 2 weeks ago. I’m hoping my persistence pays off. In the grand scheme, it’s not a major issue of justice but the amount owed feels significant enough to matter - and deeply frustrating. I’m persevering, and I might win them over. But I don’t have much faith in them, whether they pay or not. It’s an impersonal and faithless struggle.

On the other hand, when I approach someone I trust about something that truly matters, it feels more like a mix of struggle and embrace. There will be something relational - even intimate - in the conflict.

That difference feels important these days both in politics and prayer. Fighting for our rights is often necessary. The widow, in the religion of Jesus, represented someone vulnerable - someone who could not wrestle in quite the way Jacob did. One could argue that we’re seeing the difference between the marginalised and the privileged. I’m not sure. I’ll leave that one open for now.

But, more to the point, this is a parable about prayer and the spiritual life. And while begging for justice is a very valid prayer with a long history, it cannot stand alone lest it become self-righteous complaint, bitterness or despair. By contrast, Jacob’s prayer was vulnerable. He felt compelled to walk into the night and to wrestle. With what? Shadow, doubt, mystery, fear, demon, angel, God?

It seems that Jesus also chose that kind of wrestling - both intimate and challenging. Instead of defending himself before his persecutors, he stood open-hearted. For all his passionate commitment to justice, the work of salvation took him down a very different path. His was the ultimate wrestling, the ultimate embrace, the ultimate wounding. And with it, we were given an eternal blessing - a new name. And though we limp with it, that name is Love.

Meanwhile, after another day of pestering, it looks increasingly likely that I won’t get that refund. What angel might I need to wrestle with, then? Perhaps the angel of life-is-not-fair and the reminder that this small irritation pales beside the value of a contented, loving heart. Or maybe: let this nuisance be solidarity with so many who fight for far greater things.

And so - God bless the call-centre workers everywhere who must listen to pestering voices all day and feel powerless to help, themselves caught in the gears of an impersonal technology.

I wonder what we might find, in our own silent moments of grievance, that needs to be wrestled with and embraced - within ourselves, within our world, within God?

How might we move from pestering the other for outcomes to wrestling with the Other for transformation?

What if, paradoxically, that transformation is the surest route - however slow - to justice for all?

Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’

Ponder. Practice. Pray

Name a grievance you might hold.
What’s the complaint? Where is it in your body?

Breathe. Pray for the Spirit’s guidance and support.

Search inside that grievance for something in you that might need to be owned, embraced, wrestled with, transformed…

Ponder and pray with all this.

Widening the Circle

As you move out of your personal reflection, wherever it might have taken you, take a moment to extend whatever grace you’ve found to the people and places on your heart today, especially those who are victims of gross injustice - but also that those in power might dare to wrestle with greater realities.

The Lord’s Prayer
Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and testing, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and for ever. Amen.

Jim Cotter

Second Reading

Jacob’s Blessing

If this blessing were easy,
anyone could claim it.
As it is,
I am here to tell you
that it will take some work.

This is the blessing
that visits you
in the struggling,
in the wrestling,
in the striving.

This is the blessing
that comes
after you have left
everything behind,
after you have stepped out,
after you have crossed
into that realm
beyond every landmark
you have known.

This is the blessing
that takes all night
to find.

It’s not that this blessing
is so difficult,
as if it were not filled
with grace
or with the love
that lives
in every line.

It’s simply that
it requires you
to want it,
to ask for it,
to place yourself
in its path.
It demands that you
stand to meet it
when it arrives,
that you stretch yourself
in ways you didn’t know
you could move,
that you agree
to not give up.

So when this blessing comes,
borne in the hands
of the difficult angel
who has chosen you,
do not let go.
Give yourself
into its grip.

It will wound you,
but I tell you
there will come a day
when what felt to you
like limping

was something more
like dancing
as you moved into
the cadence
of your new
and blessed name.

—Jan Richardson

The Man Watching
By Rainer Maria Rilke

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestler of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Blessing
And so…

May we cry and fight for justice on behalf of those who desperately need it.

May we wrestle with what we find inside ourselves as we cry.

May we be embraced and blessed by the Greater Being.

May our limping become a dance.

And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with us all evermore.
Amen.

Music:

Blessings! Julie