God's Repair Shop

Preached at Silverton Friends Church

September 24, 2023

 
I’ve been watching The Repair Shop from England on YouTube. The show is built around a workshop of experts in restoration and repair in woodworking, clock-making, leatherwork, art, ceramics, toymaking, metalworking. These experts meet with ordinary people who bring in cherished heirlooms that need attention. As the show says, “While some of the items pass through The Repair Shop due to unfortunate accidents, others are simply ravages of time.” And still others are there because of bad actors. But all are welcomed into the shop and the skillful crafters there work on them, often with nearly magical results. As Will the woodworker says, “This is the workshop of dreams.”

This show makes me reconsider how God looks at the work of restoration and ask myself, “Do these experts reflect something of God’s response to human beings who  need repair, restoration, conservation?”

There are some problems with the analogy I’m going to draw, so let’s acknowledge them up front. First, when people in the Bible encounter God personally (or even just God’s messenger), God often has to say, “Don’t be afraid.” Something about God is awe-inspiring, filling ordinary humans with dread and even terror. “Woe is me!” said Isaiah. Even Jesus occasionally terrified his followers, as when he stilled the storm.  “Who is this that even the weather obeys him!” The experts on The Repair Shop, though amazingly skilled, are friendly humans.  Not scary.  So there is that.

Second, the items brought in do not have wills. They are objects rather than persons, so they do not resist or evade their repairers, though they are certainly often a challenge. Often these items have been loved almost into life by their owners, particularly if they have been a part of their childhood; nonetheless, the items cannot and do not sabotage the repairs.

So what about this show reminds me of the love God has for human beings? As Psalm 8 says, “What are mortals that You God should notice them? What are human creatures that you pay them heed?” There is a mystery about why God loves us, and we take refuge in the word from the Bible that God is love. Jesus is historical evidence that God loves us and wants to save us from error, from brokenness, from evil. This is simply the character of God.

Many Christians have been taught to think that God sees human beings as evil. Some theologies even say that God cannot look on us human beings because of our sins. Imagine this attitude in The Repair Shop.  Clockmaker Steve looks at a broken watch and all he sees is brokenness. So he simply looks away until someone puts a brand-new watch in between him and the broken one. As long as that perfect watch blots out his view of the broken one, he can be happy. Otherwise, he tosses someone’s cherished heirloom into the rubbish.

All through the Bible, the various writers are well aware that God sees their good and their evil.  Job challenges God by reciting how he is good and asking to be told what he’s done that is so wrong it deserves punishment.  The psalmist who wrote Psalm 139 explores in detail how well God knows him or her: You know when I sit and I rise…and with all my ways you are familiar. Wherever I go or even run away from you, your hand leads me and your right hand seizes me. Search me, God, and know my heart, probe me and know my mind. And see if a vexing way be in me, and lead me on the eternal way. (Alter, 316, 317, alt.) And the writer of Hebrews reminds us that the Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword…a discerner of the thoughts and the intentions of the heart.

George MacDonald, 19th century writer and preacher, believed in the inexorable love of God, a love that absolutely wants the best for us, wants us to be our best, and will work on and with us until that goal is met. When C.S. Lewis suffered the loss of his wife Joy, he wrote that if God was just cutting us open to torture us, we could hope that he would lose interest, but that if God was performing surgery to heal us, we could not hope for any relief until God’s work is done.  (Sounds a lot like Job, who said, Could you not look away from me long enough to let me spit on the ground.) Perhaps absolute love can both terrify and comfort us.  After all, God remembers we are dust.
 
When someone brings their beloved object into The Repair Shop, broken, worn, sometimes vandalized, clockmaker Steve and his colleagues say things like this:

I love the challenge of [fixing] something like this.

I love to improve things; I hate to see things thrown away.

This is a nice exciting project.

It’s an honor to be working on this.

I’m thrilled to work on it.

I’ve been imagining God’s Spirit with me, with us, seeing our brokenness, our missing parts, our worn-out-ness, and saying to the rest of the trinity, “I love the challenge of fixing something like this.  I love to improve things; I hate to see things thrown away. It’s an honor to be working on this. I’m thrilled to work on it.”

One scripture that comes to mind is this from Psalm 103.

God forgives all your sins, heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the Pit, surrounds you with steadfast love and mercy….The Lord executes righteous acts and judgments for all who are wronged….As a father [an ideal father] has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For He knows how we are formed; He is mindful that we are dust. The Lord’s steadfast love is for all eternity toward those who fear him.” (The Jewish Study Bible, p1396)

Or this translation by Robert Alter: [God] forgives all your wrongs, heals all your diseases, redeems your life from the Pit, crowns you with kindness, compassion…The Lord performs righteous acts and justice for all the oppressed….As a father has compassion for his children, the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For He knows our devisings, recalls that we are dust…The Lord’s kindness is forever and ever over those who fear him…(Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, “The Writings” p. 239-241)

These words stand out: Forgives, heals, redeems, surrounds, crowns—These are the actions of our God. This is the God we stand in awe of. This is the God who has to say over and over, “Fear not!” Respect is too small a word to describe our response to our God. We can see a little of what it means to see God in action when Jesus stills the storm on the lake, and his close followers and friends fall back in fear and amazement. This is the God who forgives, heals, redeems, surrounds, crowns.  This is the God who, for reasons beyond us, loves us.

It is the attitudes of the repairers toward both the object and the owner that reminds me of God. Their tenderheartedness toward the present owner and absolute respect for the original craftsperson shine through over and over.

Listening
When a person brings an object into The Repair Shop to be worked on, The Repair Shop expert will ask: What do you want me to do with this? Sometimes the owner replies, I want it back as close as possible to when it was first made.  Sometimes the owner says, I want this repaired, but I don’t want all the marks of history taken away. Sometimes the owner says, I just want to hear it chime again, or see it move like it did when I was a child, or I hope you can fix the corner the woodworm ate away.

(This is different from when I took my diamond ring in for cleaning and got it back with all the 1970s antiquing removed as well.  I was shocked and sad, but it was too late to change.  Look at how new it looks, the jeweler said.)

The experts listen to the stories of the objects from their owners.  Their response is always tender and hopeful.  They have confidence in their expertise, and they value what the owners value in the item.  No item is beneath their interest. Steve the clockmaker spent hours on a plastic toy spaceship from the 1960s, getting it to spin but most importantly, getting it to hum like its owner remembered.  

Loving the challenge
These experts love a challenge.  They may moan a little over the complexity of the task, but they really enjoy their work.  Will the woodworker looks at a hundred pieces that have fallen off a chalet music box and puzzles them back on appropriately.  Kirsten the ceramicist looks at a shattered vase and not only reforms it but creates the missing pieces and then carefully paints it so it blends in. The toy experts dismantle a much-loved teddy bear, gently clean years of grime away, carefully match fabrics, and return it to the person who loved it as a child. In many cases, the owner does not want the years of love and use erased, but instead just wants it to be whole again. The owners often value the history revealed in scratches and worn patches, and they also are overjoyed that the bear has both eyes again.

Exercising patience
The experts are patient.  They will say things like, “This is the fiddly bit, but I like fiddly bits.” I’m always amazed at the man who repairs music boxes. He gets it moving first, then listens for false notes.  Again and again he solders or files and then tests it again.

Going beyond expectations
These experts like to do even more than asked. When restoring the chalet music box, Will notices a tiny dog house on the front. So he carves a tiny dog for the dog house. Extra. The toy restorers tie a bow around the teddy’s neck just to dress him up. Extra. Lucia, the art conservator, researches the provenance of the painting she has just restored and gives the owner more reasons to be proud of it.  Extra.

God also listens, God loves the challenge, God is patient, and God goes beyond expectations.

Here are a couple of Repair Shop stories that are lovely parables for us.

Lucia, the art expert, works to conserve the paintings brought to her. The one I saw most recently was a portrait with a hole through the lady’s lips, the result of an adolescent boy throwing a dart at it.  So she had first to repair the 15-year-old hole in the canvas by wetting the threads, restoring them to position with an adhesive behind the canvas, filling in the hole from the front with an acrylic filler, and then painting that twice, once with watercolor to cover the filler and once with oil or acrylic to blend in with the rest of the paint.  She also took the time to carefully clean the painting, and in so doing discovered decades worth of nicotine stain that obscured the rich coloring. Her careful work brought the painting back to its original beauty, and took away the damage caused by carelessness, though of course you can see the repairs from the back.  She also took time to research it, and she explained to its owners why it was more than just a sentimental heirloom, how it fit into history.

Steve, the clockmaker, had a pocket watch that was the only family possession saved by a woman taken to the concentration camp in WWII. She had hidden it by sewing it into her clothing. It was so thin and delicate that it gave Steve more anxiety than most of his repairs.  He began by opening it up and observing the works. He cleaned the clockworks of 80 years and he washed its face. Then he put it back together and it ran, as they say, like clockwork. It was a reminder of resilience and also of the present time. The grandson was moved to tears with gratitude.


When people get back their items, they will often tear up in the stoic British way and then apologize for being emotional. They most often say “Wow” and “I can’t believe you were able to do that,” “this takes me right back to my childhood, to happy memories,” and “I want to give this to my grandchildren, to people I love.” They want to share with their loved ones how the item was magical for them, how it brings simple pleasures and sparks the imagination. They want to share joy with their beloveds.

Imagine God asking us, what do you want me to do with you? Do you want yourself restored to like new? Do you want yourself conserved by having areas of wear and tear and damage remedied? Do you want cleaning so you can operate normally? Do you want the signs of age removed? Or do you want to keep the honorable scars of your history, even as the brokenness is repaired and beauty is restored?

The Fruit of the Spirit Is Love

Preached at Wayside Friends Church, 2023

When the pastors asked me to consider speaking on Love, I became immediately conscious of many failures to love in my daily life, and I nearly declined. But often in preparing to speak to others, I find God speaking to me, so I thought this sermon prep might create that opportunity.

I’ll start with a confession that when I was discussing politics, I said, “I despise that person. He’s a liar.” So there’s that. And then, I’ve been married to a lovely man, Mark, for 48 years and counting, and I find that instead of worshiping the ground he walks on as I did at 16 when we began dating, now I snap at him daily for one thing or another. It reminds me of my dad who came up to my house one day from his room at Friendsview and said, “Your mommy loves me, but she doesn’t love all my ways.” So there’s that, also.  And then I have not outgrown neediness—particularly with those I love the most.  To quote the movie “What About Bob,” “I want I want I want, I need I need I need.” Perhaps the most embarrassing on this list.

None of these things I confess to you make me love myself. In fact, I am ashamed of my unloving actions and words. I am also sad that as I age, I am not becoming sweeter and kinder. This actually dismays me.

When I was in graduate school for English literature, I chose to do my doctoral research on George MacDonald. MacDonald was a 19th century Christian who wrote fiction, poetry, and sermons. His thinking has shaped me in more ways than I can identify.

He lost his preaching job because of his beliefs. He believed that God’s love would never rest until hell is emptied, though the way out of hell is to give up saying "I am my own," to cede our sovereignty to God. We must give ourselves to God, and the way we do that is to obey what God says to us to do.

I turned to my friend and mentor George MacDonald and his disciple C. S. Lewis for help in thinking through this topic of love with something that I hope you and I will find useful. Together, George and I will cover topics of vengeance, justice, forgiveness, and obedience, all as aspects of love.  

Much of what follows is directly quoted or my paraphrase of things George MacDonald wrote, particularly in his 3 volumes of Unspoken Sermons.  His writing is infused with scripture.

As St. Paul confessed, “The good I want to do, I don’t do; the evil I don’t want to do, I do.” What MacDonald says is that we do not know the sources or causes of our impulses, our desires, our tendencies, our likings. To put his ideas into modern terms, we are subject to neurological diseases, we catch the contagious evil around us, we have hatreds rooted in our childhoods, we have inherited genetic tendencies and traits. MacDonald also says that God will make every excuse for us that can be made, that God is pleased with every effort we make in the right direction toward love, and that God will not rest until we have been made right from deep within.  MacDonald is fond of quoting that “Our God is a consuming fire.”

We must recognize the inward opposition to love comes from the part where God is not yet present; we need to realize that it takes time for our whole selves to be redeemed because God goes to the roots of ourselves beyond our consciousness, starts there—when God inhabits that part which is presently opposing our desire to love, it will become holy.

MacDonald counsels honesty. Don’t try to feel good when you recognize that you are not good, but cry to God who is good. Wait in the quietness until light goes up in your darkness, and in the meantime, do something positive that needs doing—make your bed, prepare a meal, visit a friend, weed the garden. He says, astringently, we must give up any notion of playing the hero when we are not yet barely honest. Indeed, the purest efforts of will of which we are capable cannot keep us from doing wrong to our neighbor.

Now on to MacDonald on love (what follows are assorted quotations from MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons, many of then collected in C.S. Lewis's George MacDonald, An Anthology):

Why do we love? We do not love because we see why but because we love. In the main, we love because we cannot help it—there is no merit in it but neither is it selfish. The love that is born in us is our salvation from selfishness.  

Where we do not love, the not-loving seems rational. How can we love a man or woman who is mean, unlovely, fault-finding, untrusting and untrustworthy, self-righteous, self-seeking, sneering and contemptuous? These things cannot be loved. But are they the whole of the person? Is there not within the person the divine element of brotherhood or sisterhood, something lovely and lovable, something human, however it seems to be fading or even dying?

Though we cannot make ourselves love, we can and must fight against the hatred inside us.  Hate concentrates itself on the thing hated. Love makes everything lovely.

If your neighbor, who owes you love, gives you hate, you must nevertheless pay that neighbor the love you owe them, says MacDonald (and also Jesus).

Do not heed much if people mock you and speak lies of you, or even in goodwill defend you unworthily. Heed not much if even the righteous turn their backs on you. Only take heed that you turn not from them.  

In the dungeon of self we are breathing in the same air we breathed out.  “Love your neighbor” is the only way out of  this dungeon. “Love your neighbor” frees us into God’s sunlight and the sweet winds of the universe.

However, the impossibility of following God’s command to love our neighbor drives us to God for help.  

God says, “Vengeance is mine.” When we understand God rightly, we might as well pray for God’s vengeance as for God’s forgiveness. God’s vengeance is to destroy the sin, to make the sinner reject and hate it. The same unblinking purifying love God has for us, God has as well for our enemy. No one escapes the flame of God’s love.

Indeed, Christ died to save us not from suffering, but from ourselves; not from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust. A human being is not made for justice from another human being but for love, which is greater than justice. Love is the law of our condition without which we cannot render justice.

It may be … less evil to murder a person than to refuse to forgive them. When we will not forgive another, we cannot believe that God is willing, even wanting to forgive us.

The will of his and our Father is the yoke Jesus would have us take and bear together with him—it is this yoke—shared with Jesus—that is light and easy.

Do you ask what is faith in God? I answer, leaving your own way, your purposes, your self, and taking God’s way, God’s purposes, God’s self—the leaving of your trust in humans, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and instead doing as God tells you.

Ask yourself whether today you have done one thing because God said "Do it," or abstained from one thing because God said "Do not do it."

To those who obey and thus open the heart’s door to receive the eternal gift, God gives the Spirit of the Son, the spirit of God’s Self to be in them, and lead them to the understanding of all truth…true disciples shall thus always know what they ought to do, though not necessarily what another ought to do.

God does not by the instant gift of the Spirit make us always feel right, desire good, love purity, aspire after God’s self and God’s will. The truth is this. God wants to make us in God’s own image, choosing the good, refusing the evil. For God made our individuality, our apartness, so that freedom would bind us divinely dearer to God’s self with a new and inscrutable marvel of love.

To be right with God is to be right with the universe: one with the power, the love the will of the mighty Mother/Father, the cherisher of joy, the Lord of laughter, whose are all glories, all hopes, who loves everything and hates nothing but selfishness.

It is only in God that the soul has room. In knowing God is life and its gladness. The secret of your own heart you can never know; but you can know God who knows its secret.  

It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.  Let us be compassionate and humble, and hope for every person.

Let us also be compassionate toward ourselves, humble within ourselves, and hopeful for ourselves.  God is faithful and God’s love is unstoppable until it achieves God’s purpose for us which is to love God wholly and first and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Who Are Our Untouchables?

Preached at Silverton Friends Church

May 14, 2023

I have been thinking about touch. We use touch as a metaphor when we stay “in touch” on social media or by snail mail, when we find news stories “touching.” And these metaphors work because of the emotional component of touch. Touching is communication without words. A touch can be selfish, taking something without permission from someone else; a touch can be desperate, grabbing something in order not to be lost or destroyed; a touch can be consoling, wiping someone’s tears away or brushing back a sick person’s hair; a touch can be healing. When we touch someone else, we move into their space with intention, and truly only we can be sure of the goodness of those intentions. (I will also add that asking permission to touch is a helpful practice.)

There is also the word “untouchable.” We use this to describe athletes who cut through defenses like butter, who run away from the crowd in races, and so on.  We use this of people who seem to live charmed lives, untouched (!) by poverty, sorrow, sickness, slander. It has an overtone of invulnerability. (And it is often an illusion.)

But the saddest meaning of the word untouchable is quite literal. This person cannot, must not be touched. In historical India, the lowest class of people was and is called the Dalit, the broken, scattered, divided. They were and are outsiders within their own culture. But every culture has its untouchables, including ours. In Jesus’s day, the Mosaic Law recorded in Leviticus defined a number of people as unclean and therefore untouchable, and if you touched them, you were also unclean, at least until the day had passed and you had undergone a ritual bath. Lev. 5:2 says, “If a soul touches any unclean thing, he also shall be unclean and guilty.” Lev. 10:10 says that the priests are responsible to teach and enforce “the difference between holy and unholy and between unclean and clean.” Proper behavior towards unclean people helped define your religious commitment, your holiness.

As you already know, Jesus didn’t care about the proper behavior towards unclean people.  Jesus came as a prophet, both in his words and in his actions. We can look at what Jesus does to understand what he taught and the reverse as well.

One of the causes of uncleanness was the skin disease that caused discoloration called leprosy in the Bible.  (It does not seem to be the same as what we call leprosy today, by the way.) Leviticus spends a lot of time on leprosy. People afflicted with leprosy were required to leave their homes and communities and stay outside the city. (Lev. 13.3) They were not allowed to join in festivals or pilgrimages or religious ceremonies. In Jesus’s time, we see them sometimes travelling together. So it is remarkable that, as recorded in Matthew 8 and Mark 1, Jesus reached out to touch a leper.

Now a leper came to him, imploring him, kneeling down to him and saying to him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”  Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be clean.” 

The physical seat for compassion and sympathy and mercy was considered at the time to be the bowels. I find this imaginatively engaging. We probably would use the word “visceral” or “guts” so as not to be disgusted, but it carries the idea of an irresistible movement from our depth toward the outside. It is love and caring that must be expressed.  And Jesus makes it visible with a touch.

Now, by rights, Jesus was unclean as a result of this touch, and he doesn’t seem to care about it.  

Another group of unclean persons were women who had “an issue of blood,” whether menstruation, postpartum, or a chronic condition.  They themselves were unclean, and thus outside of religious observance, and everything they touched and everyone who touched them was unclean as well.  Irritatingly, women were unclean for a week after giving birth to a boy and two weeks after a girl.  (Not sure about boy-girl twins…) There were upsides to this, namely that during “an issue of blood” a woman was pretty much set free from wifely and housewifely obligations, but there were significant downsides if the bleeding persisted, as it did for a woman in Jesus’s time. Mark (5) tells the story of the woman who pushed through a crowd in her desperate search for healing and touched Jesus’s robe.  Jesus perceived that healing power had gone out of him, and he asked who had touched him in that way.  When she confessed, he praised her for her faith. At the same time, Jesus was now unclean, and he didn’t seem to care about it. (Of course, all the other people she pushed by were unclean as well, demonstrating the nightmare of keeping track of who is clean and who is unclean.)

Another source of uncleanness was death. A dead body and anyone who touched a dead body were unclean. When the woman touched Jesus’s robe for healing, he was, according to Mark, on his way to see Jairus’s daughter, despite the news that she had died.  He took her by the hand and told her to get up, and she did. 

In Luke 7, Jesus was walking and a funeral procession passed by.  He touched the open coffin, immediately becoming unclean, and told the young man in it to get up. Which he did.  

Jesus did not care that touching the dead person would make him unclean. His compassion for the living moved him to meet a need, and he did so.

No wonder that in the Acts of the Apostles, God taught Peter that no one is unclean through a vision and a visit to Gentiles (unclean). And Paul wrote in Romans 14:14, “Nothing is unclean of itself.”

It is unsurprising, given their religious law, that the people of Jesus’s time and culture distanced and diminished those identified as unclean and therefore unholy. What is surprising is that in our time and culture, and in our individual hearts, we also have people we consider unclean and unholy. I have people I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Maybe you have some of those also. 

But what Jesus teaches us by example is that no one is actually an untouchable. Jesus also teaches us by his word that when we are moved with compassion, we need to reach out with loving, healing touch, whether literal or figurative. We feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, give water to the thirsty, clothe the ragged and naked, set the captives free, and do even more good together than Jesus was able to do in his short life. Jesus takes all those loving actions as done to him. 

And, just to get real personal, sometimes we have parts of ourselves we despise and consider “untouchable”—we want to partition it off from the rest of our selves and isolate it outside the camp, so to speak.  But what would Jesus do with that aspect, that part of who we are?  Wouldn’t Jesus reach out a hand to stop the bleeding, to give life, to make whole? Could we be similarly compassionate to ourselves?

I think in Jesus we can see someone wholly at peace with himself and with God, and the result of that is that he does not need to hate or fear anyone else. All he really complains about in other people is their unwillingness to admit who they really are, and when they do admit it, he meets them with compassion. 

Jacob, Esau, and Peace-Making

 Peace-Making

Today, I’m going to tell you a story about someone who is mostly a negative example of peace-making, Jacob from the book of Genesis. I encourage you to look at chapters 24-33 of Genesis for the detailed story, which is unsparingly honest about this man.

Jacob was born one of twins, but his brother Esau was born first. Esau meant Rough and Hairy and Jacob meant Trickster, or Heel-Grabber. Their characters were also different— Esau was the outdoorsy type, Jacob liked being indoors. Also, each of their parents had a favorite child: Esau was his father’s favorite, and Jacob was his mother’s. And the custom of the time gave first-born sons highly preferential treatment in the distribution of property and power over the other children. So from childhood, Esau and Jacob were set up to be at odds with each other.

As their father Isaac aged, he became blind, and he felt he was nearing his death, so he sent for his favorite Esau and said, Go hunting and bring me a savory meal from the meat you kill, and I will bless you as my first-born son.

Their mother Rebekah overheard this, and she said to Jacob, You go kill a couple of kid goats and I will make your father the kind of meal he loves, and then you can have the blessing meant for Esau. So Jacob did what she said.

Jacob was worried that his father would detect him as an imposter; his mother suggested putting the hairy skins on his arms and the back of his hands and his cheeks and she brought him some of Esau’s well-worn and not recently laundered clothes.  He dressed in the clothes and fixed the goat hair on his smooth skin, and went in to his father Isaac.

His father was puzzled. He brought Jacob near and smelled him, then he felt his arms and hands, and then he muttered, “The voice is Jacob’s, but the smell and hairiness are Esau’s.” Nevertheless, he accepted the savory meal and ate it, and then he blessed Jacob with the blessing he had prepared for Esau. This blessing, besides promising prosperity, also promised that the other son and his offspring would serve the son being blessed.

Esau came in several hours later with his savory dish of game he had hunted and prepared. Isaac was distressed, and they both realized the trick played on them by Jacob and Rebekah. Esau wept and begged for a blessing, and Isaac did what he could, telling Esau that he would be a nomad, that he would serve his brother, and that at some point, his descendants would rebel and throw off that servitude.

In his anger, Esau let it be known that when Isaac was dead, he would kill Jacob. Again, Rebekah stepped in to protect her favorite. She told Jacob he would have to leave home, and she arranged it so that it appeared he was traveling to relatives in order to find an appropriate wife.

Jacob left on the run, with almost nothing but the clothes on his back and some small provision of food (undoubtedly). The blessing for which he had betrayed his brother had instead resulted in his running for his life.

We can see from the lofty distance of time and psychology several things that killed the willingness of Esau and Jacob to live at peace with each other.  The uneven inheritance of children prescribed by their culture, the preferential love of each parent for one of them, with the all-important father’s love going to Esau—these made for a relationship of competition and envy.  Add in that they were very unlike in their characters.  Jacob played the long game, and Esau lived more in the moment, and Jacob took advantage of that.

Even though Jacob himself acts as if everything depends on his wiliness, we find that God has not abandoned him  As Jacob sleeps, he dreams of a ladder between earth and heaven and angels going up and down. In the dream, God tells Jacob: “I am the God of your father and grandfather; I will give you and your descendants the land where you lie; I will give you many descendants and will bless the whole earth through you. I am with you, and I will keep you wherever you go, and bring you home again. I will not leave you until all my promises to you have been fulfilled.” 

When Jacob wakes, he says, “Whoa, God is here ,” and sets up a memorial stone.  Then he says to God, actually ignoring the grace God has offered him: “If you take care of me, providing food, clothing, and keeping me safe until I return to my father’s house, then you will be my God and I’ll pay you 1/10 of all I have.”  

We can see from this that Jacob wants to strike a bargain with God. His understanding seems pagan, in that he locates God in that place and then thinks that offering God material things will ensure God takes care of him. Craftily, Jacob requires God to go first with the bargain before Jacob pays him the tenth. And we learn that God is immune to such nonsense as Jacob proposes.  God has already promised to take care of Jacob despite Jacob’s untrusting character. As, in fact, God is also taking care of Esau despite Esau’s vengeful character.

We can also see that God reaches out to people in conflict to remind them that God’s grace and love are available. The love of God is not scarce but instead infinite.

I skip over the next 20 years except to note that Jacob connives a genetically improbable method to increase his flocks at his father-in-law’s expense, causing his brothers-in-law to be resentful and angry. Jacob decides to run for it, though this time he is encumbered by wives, children, flocks, and employees. Now he is running for home.

On the way home, Jacob hears news that Esau is coming to meet him accompanied by 400 men.  Jacob reasonably assumes this is a fighting force, and he is caught. Going forward is dangerous, and he has promised Laban not to go back.

He sets up wave upon wave of livestock gifts to Esau. Then he arranges his belongings in two companies in case Esau massacres one of them. Then he sets up his children and their mothers in groups and places himself before any of them, in case by killing him, Esau will be satisfied and Jacob’s family will live on.  

Jacob spends a lonely anxious night before his meeting with Esau. While he is alone, a man wrestles with him until daybreak. The anonymous wrestler does not win, so he dislocates Jacob’s thigh and lames him.  Still Jacob holds on, and the wrestler says, “Let me go.” Jacob says, “Not until you tell me your name.” The wrestler says, “What is your name?” Jacob admits his name, which means trickster, and his character. The wrestler says, “Your new name is Israel because you have striven with God and with me and have prevailed.”

When Jacob (now Israel) meets Esau, he bows before Esau. To his surprise, Esau dismounts, runs to meet him, and kisses him, and they weep together.

God has also been with Esau, as it turns out, and Esau has plenty and clearly has forgiven his trickster brother.  Perhaps that is the unexpected way he threw the yoke of Jacob off his neck.

What do we learn from these brothers about conflict? 

1. 1.All conflict is essentially between siblings—all humans are fundamentally related.
2. 2.Conflict often begins in the perception of one party that the other party has more of something—love, food, material goods, freedom, charisma.  In other words, the deadly sin of envy is in the heart of conflict, with the related deadly sin of greed, resulting in the third deadly sin of bitterness, which allows the aggrieved party to justify deceptive, violent, cold-hearted actions.
3. 3.Conflict intensifies when one party’s legitimate rights are taken away by trickery or force. It continues because the deprived party wants justice and even revenge.  It also continues because the oppressive party begins to fear and then hate those they have wronged. Hatred, another deadly sin.

What do we learn from these brothers about making peace?

1. 1.Each must set aside fear of the other—fear of trickery, fear of violence, fear of loss.
2. 2.This is enormously helped along by each recognizing God’s infinite love is for all, and there is enough for all. (I have plenty, says Esau.)
3. 3.Making amends is helpful for the party who has deprived the other. (Jacob needed to give gifts to Esau.) Justice and generosity meet and embrace. 
4. 4.Acknowledging that God is actively involved in the lives of all those in conflict, that they are all under God’s loving and disciplinary care, helps us set aside the desire to control events and other people.
5. 5.Sometimes, it helps to let some time pass.
6. 6.There is no way to bribe God, and no need either.

Charles Wesley wrote a song about how Jacob’s experience spoke to him personally, and I’ll close with that.

Come, O thou traveler unknown, whom still I hold but cannot see;

My company before is gone, and I am left alone with thee.

With thee all night I mean to stay, and wrestle till the break of day.

I need not tell thee who I am, my sin and misery declare;

Thyself hast called me by my name, look on thy hands and read it there.

But who, I ask thee, who art thou? Tell me thy name, and tell me now.

In vain thou strugglest to get free; I never will unloose my hold!

Art thou the man that died for me? The secret of thy love unfold;

Wrestling, I will not let thee go, Till I thy name, thy nature know.

Yield to me now; for I am weak; but confident in self-despair;

Speak to my heart, in blessings speak, Be conquered by my instant prayer.

Speak, or thou never hence shalt move, and tell me if thy name is Love.

‘Tis love! ‘Tis love! Thou diedst for me; I hear thy whisper in my heart;

The morning breaks, the shadows flee; pure universal Love thou art.

To me, to all, thy mercies move, thy nature and thy name is love.

Lame as I am, I take the prey; Hell, earth, and sin, with ease o’ercome;

I leap for joy, pursue my way, and as a bounding hart, I run

Through all eternity to prove thy nature and thy name is love,

Thy Name is Love.

May we each be visited and overwhelmed by the infinite love and care of God, and may we allow that experience to change our hearts toward others, particularly toward those with whom we are in conflict.