Jack Hardaway
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Make no mistake.
God is dangerous.
Sometimes we forget.
To encounter God is to be wounded in the case of Jacob, blessed, but also wounded.
For the disciples it is to be moved to silence as they walk quickly downhill toward the cross.
God and suffering are always in close company.
Holiness, glory and limping back home with a blessing.
Transfigured flesh, words with the heroes of the ancient faith, with Moses and Elijah.
Then drowsy confusion. Then the silence, the silence as they walk with Jesus toward his passion and cross.
Jacob strived with God and humanity and prevailed. Jacob wouldn’t let go.
Jacob was a cheat, and a conman, always on the run, but this time he had a family, and more to lose than ever before.
He barely escaped, running for his life from an angry father law, whom he out conned out of pretty much everything. Now as he is making that escape, his brother approaches with an army of 400, his brother Esau whom he cheated out of pretty much everything as well.
You know those sayings, “Out of the frying pan and into the fire?”, and “Caught between a rock and a hard place?” I think those were originally about Jacob.
We can smell the bacon burning.
And so Jacob met God. Again. Not in a dream, like last time, but in the flesh.
They wrestled all night, in the dark, under the stars, alone by the river. Jacob at the Jabbok, rolling in the mud with the Holy One.
This was no inner struggle, or dark night of the soul.
This was knock down and drag out.
Flesh and bone. Blood and mud.
It had to be at night.
He couldn’t see God in full light, it would kill him, God is too much to behold.
As dawn approaches, as time runs out, Jacob won’t let go.
God was going to have to kill him in the full light of God’s glory, or bless him before he faced Esau in the full light of Esau’s fury, for a fight Jacob would not win.
One fight after another. I’ve known people like that. Who just fight, ferociously without hesitation, or forethought, or commonsense. Johnny Reb.
Jacob shares a kinship with them.
God is dangerous, ferocious in love, no hesitation.
It changed Jacob. He had a new name, Israel, one who strives with God, and then he had the wound. From then on Jacob limped.
God and suffering.
The association is always there.
God can never really be blamed, but neither can God fully escape suspicion.
The disciples wanted none of that.
The cross. It was not what they had in mind.
Jesus must suffer and die and rise again.
The disciples would have none of that.
So the glory blinded them, it overwhelmed them and they fell asleep, perceptual overload. Only to then wake up and blither, and then to be silent on that long walk with Jesus to the execution.
The silence was very loud.
Quiet disquietude.
We never really make sense of suffering. Our words fail. Our theologies fail.
Long nights alone, wrestling in the dark.
We either have too much of God, or too little.
We are either overwhelmed, or parched.
It moves us to silence before the holy.
It wounds us and we limp back home.
There is something essential about that disturbing closeness to the holiness of God.
Holding on and never letting go.
God is wild and untamed.
God’s love is unrelenting, and it rubs us the wrong way.
We are baptized and joined to this wild deity.
God’s beauty is an abrasive crash, that shocks us as we see how little of that beauty we allow into our lives.
To encounter the fullness of love is to be confronted by the absence of that love in ourselves and our world.
The contrast cuts deep.
The beauty of God hurts.
So what are we to do?
In a world full of hurt we hold on tight, never stopping until we are blessed by the wild dangerous God whose love is a consuming fire.
The terrible beauty of the Gospel is that the love of God is unrelenting.
God will never let go until we ask for God’s name and we receive the blessing that is Jesus.
Just ask Jacob, all bloody and limping.
Just ask Peter, James, and John, speechless, on that long walk.
Make no mistake. Love is dangerous. Sometimes we forget.
Love opens us up to all the pain in the world. Love always takes us to the cross to wait in silence.
