A Blessing for The Removal of Masks

The bible text for this sermon is available at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=499757827

“Jacob’s Dream” by Marc Chagall

The boy who followed his aging father Abraham into the wilderness has grown to become old man himself, slowing down to savor his favorite foods as the days of his life grow shorter, and looking toward what comes next .  The promise that God made to Abraham and Sarah, that their descendants would fill and bless the earth, has continued through Isaac and his wife Rebekah, and now looks for a new way forward as the story continues beyond them. And so we come to Jacob and Esau, grandsons God’s promise, twins who have wrestled fiercely against each other since their mother’s womb. The struggle within Rebekah was so great that she cried out to the Lord, who told her:

“two nations are in your womb,

And two peoples born of you shall be divided;

The one shall be stronger than the other,

The elder shall serve the younger.” (Gen 25:22-23)

From the moment the children are born, their relationship is filled with conflict, manipulation, and bitterness. Apparently dysfunctional families can be included in God’s story too. Jacob, is the younger twin who came out holding onto his brother’s heel, from the beginning… grabbing onto his brother’s proverbial coat tails.

His name, Jacob, means “one who takes by the heel” or “one who strives, supplants, replaces, unseats.” I wonder…is he aptly named on account of his actions, or does the name he is assigned begin to take on a life of its own, leading him into a particular identity and way of being. Like labeling someone as hero or criminal - does it give meaning to who they already are, or does it resign them to be who others have said that they are.

We, the reader, may see Jacob as manipulator or as one who is manipulated or both. It seems Jacob wrestles with who he is too. It seems Jacob isn’t sure who he is or who he wants to be, so right now he’s trying to be Esau.

He literally wrestles with his brother at birth; he will figuratively wrestles with his father-in-law while on the run; and when he returns toward reconciliation, he again physically wrestles with an unknown shadow of a person all through the veil of night until he presses once more to be blessed. This mysterious divine shadow will ask him, “what is your name?” He responds, “I am Jacob.” But what he implies, is that I am what my name has said I am.”  I’m the one who strives, who toils against, the underdog, the hustler.

Perhaps Jacob, through his experiences, has come to believe that this is how things are and must be – that one must snatch blessing from the world, to wrestle it to the ground and pin it down, to put on a mask of what we think is needed in order to achieve approval, safety, prosperity, or goodness. Even now, we snatch, maneuver, wrestle and strain. We see and sometimes are those who get ahead by unearned advantage.  We get caught up in putting on a show with hashtag #blessed, trying to convince ourselves as much as anyone else that if we manifest it, it will come - a sort of spiritual “fake it ‘til we make it.”

I’m not saying I’m entirely against hustle…that is, using all of what you’ve got, to live into the fullness of who you know yourself to be…but that’s very different, it’s an entirely different mindset than thinking you HAVE to hustle to be worth anything, to have any chance at goodness. It’s quite different from making your way by undercutting and harming others in order to get there, or by losing yourself in the process.

Ultimately none of those things are what earn blessing. In fact, the beauty of blessing is that it can’t be earned, only given. And to Jacob it emerges here….in the wilderness, on the run, even to the scoundrels and those who think themselves to be. All this wrestling changes Jacob and so does the blessing that emerges amidst the wrestling. It causes him to see things in new ways, to notice things he didn’t see before, to recognize what was already there.

As he rests from his running and wrestling, in the thin space of dreams, Jacob recognizes that even here, even now…he is surrounded by God’s angels and by God’s very self. It seems this blessing is a kind of opening our eyes anew – to recognize the divine in our midst, to see ourselves, just as we are, as part of God’s story and God’s promises, and to have our gaze turned from focusing only on ourselves in order to see others as a part of this holy blessing too. This blessing isn’t exclusively for Jacob’s benefit as God voices that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and your offspring.”

To me, this sounds a lot like the blessing of baptism. It’s not that the elements of water and the words of promise impart something magical or entirely new. Rather, it’s a recognition of blessing that is already present and true. In baptism, we give voice to the divine promise, “you, by name, are a child of God.” It isn’t earned or deserved or achieved, it is just who you have always been and were created to be…emerging to the surface and being recognized in community. The recognition still matters, and it shapes us in important ways, but it’s not the hinge on which the blessing rests.

And then we light a candle for the baptized and commend them by saying, “let your light shine before others so that they might recognize and respond to the goodness of God around THEM.” The blessing of God is, at its core, always an expansive blessing that turns us toward one another for the good of one another. It is a blessing that blooms as it is shared. It echoes from the beginning when God blesses us to be fruitful and grow in such a way that supports others to grow. It carves a way from the waters of creation through our own deep wells of being to recognize the ripples of blessing that we are a part of.

No matter what hot mess got us to this place…whether our own mess, messes we inherited, or messes that just are…may we, if even only in the space of deep knowing that resides in our dreams, recognize that we are surrounded and immersed in God’s presence and promise of blessing for the blessing of the whole world. May we awake to the truth that God is in this place in ways we did not know before.