BELOVED ADVERSARY John M. Buchanan
Genesis 32:22-30 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
October 19, 1980 Columbus, Ohio

The occasion is an important one for the life of this church. Ordination and
Installation are the prerogative of the Presbytery in our system. The Presbytery of
Scioto Valley is in charge today. At its last meeting it appointed a commission to act
in its behalf and to ordain and install the candidates it had examined and approved, At
the conclusion of the service several persons will address ordinands and congregation,
in specific terms, about the new relationship that exists. My responsibility, and my
privilege, at the invitation of Jerry and Barbara Beavers, is to preach the sermon for
the occasion. T presume on that privilege, for a few moments at least, to say a little
about where we have been and where we are and where we are going.

In fact, I heard a story just two weeks ago which sets the context. A motorist, a
city motorist, on his way to Lima, was totally lost on an Ohio back road, After a very
long time he finally saw a farmer ~ working his field, The motorist stopped his car, got
out, waved to the farmer - and when he was within earshot called out, "How do I get from
here to Lima?" The farmer thought for several moments and said, finally, "If I wanted to
go to Lima, J wouldn't start from here." Jerry and Barbara, even though that breaks ail
the rules of homiletics, I decided to risk it, because it fits so much of what I know
about your lives over the past several years. Anyone who wanted to end up here - at this
service of ordination - wouldn't have started where you did.

But you did and your story - your faith journey is part of what we celebrate today.
From the United States Navy and life as a settled, middle American family, to a year in
private industry and life in suburbia, to enreliment and three years as full-time
students on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary, it was an arduous journey. As
the intense final leg began, the complexity, as you know, increased, The transfer from
the Presbyterian Church U.S. to United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A,, the discrep-
ancies between ordination requirements, the intricacies of the process, the necessity to
candidate and graduate and negotiate and purchase a home and pick up and move again, and
the mishaps which would have been major but for the fact that time would not allow you
the luxury of any but minor mishaps - sprained ankle the day before you were to preach
trial sermons, automobile accidents and burglaries. Your journey in recent months has
been intense - but steady, never varying far from course, No one would choose to begin
it from the point you began. But you have done it - and we love you for it - and the
more we think about it we keep seeing the steady hand of another, sometimes guiding,
sometimes prodding, sometimes stalling, but always present, creatively participating in
the journey.

(oges es Fetter ~ sdery ~ (henomus Ee

We have come, in recent years, ta place new value on our personal story. Alex
Haley and the subsequent "Roots" phenomenon, was at least partially responsible for
helping us to understand the significance of our own personal history. For many Christian:
it was a reminder of something we should always have known; namely, that our religion is a
story, basically: that the story of God is woven into human stories: stories of men and
women who Lived and loved and died and who sound very much like us. This God - from the
beginning, is really not an abstraction. He is not described very well really, as the
First Cause, the Ethical Imperative, or even the immutable, omnipotent, infinite source
of being, but rather the God of Abraham, Isaac. Jacob and Jogeph + or, if you will, the
God of Joe, Saily, Fred, Betty, Jerry and Barbara.

Apart from whatever ego satisfaction we receive from talking about ourselves, the
truth is that in Christian faith, our personal story is taken up into the stery of God
and His people. The characters in the larger, ongoing story are people like us: we are
invited to consider them, identify with them and locate our story in theirs.

-2.

Jerry and Barbara, your story is very much the point of what we are about this
morning. I invite you, and everyone else, for that matter, to locate something
personal in this old story out of a distant past, Listen now to the word of God-

(Genesis 32)
The same night he arose 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.
And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the
breaking of the day, When the man saw that he did not prevail against
Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob's thigh 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." And he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said,
‘Jacob'", Then he said, "You name shall no more be called Jacob, but

Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed."
Then Jacob asked him, "Tell me, I pray, your name." But he said, “Why
is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. So Jacob

called the name of the place Peni'el, saying, "For I have seen God face
to face, and yet my life is preserved."

That story is at least 3,600 years old. Hearing it is like seeing a fragment of
pottery in a museum: old, crumbling, encrusted, just a small piece of what once was a
beautiful and meaningful work of art, The whole story of Jacob is not, in fact, very
uplifting. If you believe that dishonesty and fraud don't pay - don't read up on Jacob.
He succeeded at both. The second of a set of twins, Jacob convinced his elder brother
Esau to exchange his birthright for a, howl of hot stew. And that was only @ warm-up for
one of the worst frauds of all time. | His father Isaac was nearly blind, weak, ready to
die. Zt was time to hand on the blessing to his eldest son. With the colluston of his
mother, Jacob impersonated Esau, disguised his voice, wore his clothes, even made his
hands and neck feel hairy like Esau's, and managed, somehow, to be the recipient of a
blessing so important it could never be given again, or taken back, for that matter. When
Esau discovered what happened he was obviously angry. In fact, he promised to kill Jacob.
Jacob fled - to his uncle's place, and on the way experienced that memorable dream of a
ladder, and the angels of God and the repetition of the blessing and promise of God to

His people, Jacob stayed with his uncle Laban for twenty years and his character didn tea
improve at all. ween OO

“

Jacob worked as a herdsman, married his cousin Rachel, fathered many children and
became very comfortable. Success, however, is due ~ again - to Jacob's dishonesty and
fraudulent relationship with his uncle, In fact, Jacob is systematically stealing his
father-in-law's sheep out from under him. When he has accumulated so much it's em-
barassing, he decides it's time to go home, which he does, secretly, at night. His wife
even steals the family valuables from her father's house for good measure. herarareew
Dap ee

That's the character who is heading for Canaan, and whe begins to think about the
people still at home; namely, Esau, the brother he cheated twenty years earlier. With
an immense caravan of livestock and family strung out for miles, Jacob thinks about the
encounter and at a stream called the Jabbok, sends everybody across, but decides to
Spend the night there, on the far side, alone. To savor the triumphant entry? Out of
fear? To pray and meditate? Who knows? atrzid | pays

He is accosted by a man with whom he wrestles - all night long, a faceless man who
refuses to be identified, who wounds Jacob in the thigh and who - because Jacob is now
holding on for dear life, blesses Jacob again, just before disappearing in the early

light of dawn. And the story ends with Ja€cb - now called Israel, limping home to a
reunion with Esau, and to get on with the business of living out the story of God
and His people.

What do you make of that story...this crude saga about a shrewd businessman wrestling
all night with somebody, just is side of the promised land? Is it no more than a
bronze age myth? Or is Ged's“word in it too? Is it possible that pieces of our story
might find a place in it he truth is that if you and I are alive intellectually and
honest morally, we will bé accosted by somé strangers with whom we will have to struggle.
The truth is that God is the one with whom we ultimately have to do. Jacob was account-
able finally. He had earned, cheated, worked and defrauded his way into success, But,
ultimately, he was accountable, in a mysterious way, to his God.

The philosophers have understood that, even when the church has forgotten it.
Frederick Nietzsche was an ardent opponent of Christianity precisely because he under-
stood the power inherent in the very idea of God. Ina novel, one of his characters
is arguing that God must be killed. He says, "God looks with eyes that see everything.
He peers into man's ground and depth, into his hidden shame and ugliness." (Thus Spake
Zarathustra - in Paul Tillich, Shaking of the Foundation, p.42). Paul Tillich wrote,
"He is God only because he is inescapable. And only that which is inescapable is God."
(Ibid., p.40).

The God who is truly God will accost us. We are accountable to Him. He will surprise
us and He will be, at times, our adversary. If we are looking only for comfort, assurance
and the emotional gratification of knowing our salvation, we will in fact miss the God
who emerges from this old, old story.

This God will give us some sleepless nights. This God will call us to account
precisely by forcing us to wrestle when we'd rather relax. Nobody wants to wrestle with
the difficult and painful issue of abortion - who would choose to do that? TI don't want
to have to wrestle with the claims of national security over against the claims of peace
making it a Christian priority. I'd far rather sleep than lie awake fretting about the
conflicting arguments of the Business Community and the Environmentalists. But may IT
Suggest that the reality of God is posited precisely in those struggles: that His
presence is more often than not documented in the nagging presentation of moral, political,
economic issues we would rather ignore: and that religion that is irrelevant - is
religion which proclaims too much peace and provides a too comfortable shelter from the
painful but vital issues of our common life. —_

Jacob never did get a clear shot at him. He never did find out his adversary's name.
In his world, to know the name of something, was to control it. That's why people don't
say the name of God in the Old Testament. So this blessed foe never totally revealed -
himself, The mystery remains: the identity is shrouded in mist and darkness. GA set

06

That's a danger for us, and a temptation, too, particularly for those to whom others
ask ultimate kinds of questions. This God resists being defined too precisely and
known too fully, The trouble with religion in general, and religious professionals in
particular, is that we begin to believe that we can wrestle with God and pin Him. We
take ourselves altogether too seriously theologically. But God is truth and the state-
ments we make about Him are only small portions of a greater truth. The most arrogant
Sin is always religion that claims all the truth for its own. Some of the saddest moments
in history have resulted from that arrogance. This old story asks for space - empty space
in our struggle for wonder and mystery: space for God to be our God when and how
He chooses,

-4 -

Jacob's journey had been a long and complex one. Along the way he had provided
handsomely for himself and his family. As he looked across the Jabbok to the encamp-
ment on the other side he saw wives and slaves and thousands of heads of livestock and
sons for whom the tribes of Israel would one day be named. And I wonder if God, in
His wisdom, simply decided that before it was too late Jacob had to learn the most
important lesson in life; namely, that we can't ever earn what we really need: that
what we really need in life can only be given to us.

That's what Frederick Buechner suggests...'"...there are a few things in this
world you can't get but can only be given, and one of these things is love in general,
and another is the love of God in particular." (Peculiar Treasurers, p57).

Perhaps this beloved adversary has to accost us, unexpectedly, some dark night to
teach us the hardest lesson of all: that what we really must have to live - is all
grace, undeserved, unmerited, unexpected grace: like the gift of children and a wife
or husband to love, and music, and laughter and ecstacy and joy.

Perhaps the story has to end there ~ because for you and me it isn't finished yet.
Jacob had the good sense to hold on to his beloved adversary and in the early light of
morning to limp across the border into the promised land, crippled - but a new and
better man now.

So, in God's grace, may it be for us. For you, Jerry and Barbara, in the years of
ministry ahead - and for all of us. God will not answer all our questions. He will
not reveal all of himself. He will continve surprising us with struggles that keep us
sleepless at midnight. But, by His grace - this dear and beloved adversary will be
our God, He will not leave us alone. He will love us - and be with us and save us. \
Amen, oy we
Ay
-~ “al Ly
x :

God eternal, we pray as humble, faltering servants. Surprise us - startle us -
struggle with us, and finally, God our Father, give us the assurance of Your presence:
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen,