Sunday, February 22
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. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When 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. 26Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ 27So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ 28Then the man* said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,* for you have striven with God and with humans,* and have prevailed.’ 29Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. 30So Jacob called the place Peniel,* saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ 31The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 32Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle. –Genesis 32:22-32
This is the first half of the Hebrew Bible scripture reading for this first Sunday in Lent, when we introduce our worship series on “Sacred Conversations.” I picked it because it points to a number of truths about sacred conversations:
–Sacred conversations, frequently, are difficult ones. They are conversations that involve “wrestling”–with ourselves, with our fears or our hopes or our dreams, perhaps with our understanding of who God is.
–Sacred conversations sometimes leave us wondering what just happened. An internal dialogue might leave us asking whether we were talking with our ego, or our fear, or with the Spirit of God within us. A conversation with a friend or a stranger might prompt us to wonder whether that person was an angel, a messenger sent by God.
–Sacred conversations change us. Jacob emerged from this wrestling-conversation with a limp, a visible reminder of his human imperfection, and also with a new identity and a new sense of purpose.
Give us courage, O God, to wrestle, to wonder, to allow ourselves to be changed. Amen.
–Debbie Clark