I will not let you go, unless you bless me.
HIS IS One of those curious scenes in the Bible. On several places in the Hebrew Scriptures (especially in Genesis) angels serve double-duty as the Presence of God. In this story of Jacob, after wrestling all night with him, the stranger says Jacob has “wrestled with God”. But even God can’t win against Man - in the end it’s that gift of Free Will that trips him up every time.
At times in my own journey I’ve been convince that, in order to have a good, healthy and loving relationship I shall have to give up what I perceive as my own call to the priesthood. At other times, I’ve become to convinced that I have to give up being Gay to be a priest. I have to give up either the very human desire to love and be loved or else give up the very divine urge to serve.
Proper 13, Year A, in the RCL tells us the story of Jacob in conjunction with Paul’s Lament over his Jewish friends’ rejection of Jesus as Messiah. But I’m more interested in another Chapter where the Church is called “The Israel of God”. From there follows a long, said and painful tradition of Christian theology speaking of the Church as “the New Israel”, with God cutting off the “Old Israel” for their unfaithfulness in rejecting Jesus.
Paul misses the point, “They are Israelites, and to them”
And when the Church falls for this trick, she forgets what Israel means: to wrestle with God.
Israel got all that she got - not in spite of, but because of being “A Stiff-Necked People”.
God did not reject them for their questioning and their doubts: despite of such, to Israel “belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah.”
We (Christians) loose out when we simply submit to what came before. Paul has called us “those who wrestle with God”.
What does that mean? What does it mean to stand before God and insist, This is the way things are going to be.
Does it mean to simply refuse to hear the cry of Justice in the call for the ordination of women just because no one has ever done it before? Or does it mean to stand on faith before God and say, “no, this is right” and do it?
As our understanding of the human body grows and deepens, as we realise what gifts millennia of evolution have given us, do we refuse to listen to the call of our gay bothers and sisters or do we stand on faith before God and say, “no, this is not right anymore” and change society?
Should Jacob have let go when God broke his hip? Can there be a more-clear sign that God wants this to be over?
No, it was after that point that Jacob said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
Third time is a charm. What if I refuse to let go of my desire to love AS WELL AS refusing to let go of my desire to serve God?
I will not let you go until you bless me.
Damn it.
Picayune point - Jacob’s hip was twisted, and maybe dislocated, but not broken. Had it been broken, he would not have been able to walk next day.
The problem with your conclusion is that you leave the door wide open to the logical conclusion that we are the ones who somehow set doctrine for God. All I have to do is wrestle with Him hard enough and I can change things to the way I wish them to be. Under your argument, anything any group of Christians wants to do goes. Many times that can be benign, but . . .
Another side effect of your argument is that anything a follower of Judaism wants to do goes.
Or for that matter, any follower of Islam. After all, all three religions look to the same Yahweh.
In fact, are you not making God so dependent on man’s free will that we can no longer count on His commitments? Certainly, any good parent has to know when to say, “no,” and enforce it.
Point yielded on “broken”. The translation I had said “dislocated”…
You’ve hit the other nail right on the head. Indeed, as I’ve blogged several times, that is *exactly* the point of Rabbinic Judaism and was, for some time, of Rabbinic Christianity. It is the wrestling with the text, with God, with the faith that makes us - and it - stronger. That has been my argument for quite some time.
My point only sounds odd after the last 1000 years or so. Judaism is once again in flux, as is Christianity, albeit only in a broad sense that may not be accepted by all groups of Christians who insist - rightly or wrongly - on a more-narrow definition. Certain parts of both traditions try to hold on to something that is (without much evidence) claimed to be the way it always was in an artificial stasis.