"Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope"
(Book title by Joan Chittister, 2003)
Sermon Presented August 3, 2008
Genesis 32:22-31
I preached on this text three years ago - before I read the book with the sermon's title by Joan Chittister, a Benedictine Sister who stirs the Catholic Church and Christians of all faith traditions to look at our traditions and Scripture in new ways. I will never again hear this scripture as I did before.
Our text is a story about Jacob, who in his past life, stole from his twin brother Esau, deceived his father Isaac and tricked his father-in-law Laban - all for his own personal gain. Jacob's the bad guy and Esau the good guy in the biblical story! Immediately preceding our text, Jacob and his family have left Jacob's father-in-law - taking all of their possessions, and are headed toward Esau in the hope of reconciliation. But before Jacob meets up with his brother, he must deal with God. Through Jacob's story we can see the cycle of struggle and the seeds of hope that spring out of the struggles in our lives. In the midst of struggle, hope can grow. I'm reading Genesis 32:22-31.
Everyone has struggles - some more than others. However, struggle doesn't need to be destructive. It isn't the struggle that defeats us, but our failure to deal with it that depletes the human spirit.
Joan Chittister knows struggle well. She had polio as a child, and received one disappointment after another in the direction of her career. From a very young age she knew she was meant to be a writer. During high school while other teens were participating in sports and lounging on the beach, Joan stayed by herself and wrote. She wrote all the time - news stories, feature stories, editorials, humor columns, as well as numerous short stories she never intended to show anyone. Writing was her life! Writing fiction was her dream!
However, when she entered a monastery, she was directed into a career in teaching. Then after being told she could get a graduate degree in creative writing, the offer was withdrawn with the statement that it would be better for her humility to work in a camp as a cook than to pursue her education (p. 6.) Thus, she began the greatest struggle of her life - a struggle to relinquish her dreams. Chittister said that change that is real is change that you don't want!
The gift of struggle is the call to think differently about who God is and about who we are as individuals. It calls us to think again about what life really means and about how to live in the world. As did Jacob, we wrestle with these same deep spiritual questions. Hopefully we are able to open our eyes to new possibilities and find the answers for ourselves as we struggle with God and ourselves.
When Christopher Reeves broke his neck, he became a quadriplegic and could no longer act in movies. In his struggles, he found his voice to address medical research for spinal injuries. When Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, he soon was unable to act as he formerly did. In his struggles, he focuses his attention on his debilitating disease and with the awareness he calls to the disease, brings in great financial resources for research. When Professor Randy Pausch learned that he had pancreatic cancer, he delivered his "Last Lecture" - emphasizing that "you cannot change the cards you are dealt, just how you play the hand." That lecture will continue to impact lives for years to come. When Vonetta Flowers, a young African-American track star from Alabama failed to qualify for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, her heart was broken. Yet instead of despairing, in the next Winter Olympics she tried out for the bobsled team - a sport she had never even seen; and became the first black American to win a gold medal for bobsledding in the Olympics. In 1993, when I believed that divorce would forever squelch my dream of becoming a minister, I was freed to move to a small town in Kansas to become a pastor. In all of these devastating events - in all of these great struggles - hope was born.
And as with Jacob, we usually carry a scar - a limp - with us. Joan Chittister never wrote fiction; Christopher Reeves died without walking; Michael J. Fox still has Parkinson's Disease; Randy Pausch died last month; Vonetta Flowers didn't run track in the Olympics; and I am still divorced. The scars remain but we have a choice in how we deal with our situations - our wounds. The challenge is not to be defined by our scars, but to choose to move on into a new life. Jacob made peace with his brother and moved on.
There is no single path for a joyful life - no single way to move out of our depression. However, we can't dwell on the life that no longer exists. When I was in college, a girl in my sorority was pinned to a young fraternity man. She had the wedding date set and her dress purchased - the whole planning process was complete. However, what she didn't plan was the exodus of the prospective groom from the relationship. Two years later, on the same date she had planned the original wedding, she married someone else - wearing the same dress. Emotionally, she never got past the broken relationship. She wasn't transformed by hope but stuck in the past. The essence of life is not to find the one thing that satisfies us but to realize that nothing can ever completely satisfy us - and that's okay! The important thing is to cease to be defined by our scars and move on with life.
The great interruptions of life - our struggles - leave us completely disoriented. Like Jacob, we find ourselves in darkness. God seems absent. However, these dark nights are necessary to the development of our souls. We can only wrestle with God while searching for that speck of light at the end of the tunnel. Darkness is a call to faith, and sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is to simply keep on living.
Jacob didn't allow fear to overtake him. He continued wrestling with his unnamed opponent throughout the night. Sometimes we, too, must engage in battle. Fear cripples us more than anything, and fear can cause our minds to stop functioning!
But we need to face our struggles head on. We can sin by being silent - by failing to stand up for our rights or the rights of another. Thus we need courage. Courage is the ability to stand our ground and to speak the truth. It's the picture of Jacob holding onto the stranger demanding information that isn't forthcoming. Courage isn't necessarily action, but an attitude. It's the spiritual strength that gives us direction in the midst of our confusion. Courage drives us to reevaluate our unchallenged assumptions, to confront the unacceptable and the oppressor, and to eventually change what appears to be unchangeable (p. 50). Fear can either energize courage - or it can paralyze us.
Part of the pain of struggle is to admit that the relationship is over; the diagnosis is correct; the loved one is dead; the money is gone; the friend betrayed us; the job offer was withdrawn; the house was sold. There is nothing we can do about it. This attitude leads to surrender! Chittister says that "surrender is what cleans the barnacles off the soul" (p. 58.) I don't mean we stop grieving what we don't have. I mean that we surrender to new meanings and new circumstances and begin to think differently. We have lost - yet we will go on!
Surrender distinguishes who we were from who we have become, and there is no turning back. Now we must accept reality so that the spiritual life can really happen in us. Jacob struggles all night with no hope of really winning, and he's exhausted. Exhaustion is an unseen enemy in our struggles. At the end of the night, Jacob is ready to give up - but only with a win. Surrender is the moment we realize it's time to become someone new. Surrender isn't about giving up; it's about moving on (p. 71).
Some of our struggles last a lifetime. We struggle with envy, greed, lust, jealousy, anger, love, health, money, work, relationships, and we exhaust ourselves with the pain because we allow the pain to consume us. The struggle doesn't defeat us, but remaining in combat with it can. When we realize we can't change the circumstances, we can become what we are next meant to be (p. 73).
Jacob is each of us. Like him, we try hard to control our lives so that we can determine life's outcome. Hopefully we aren't as conniving as Jacob, but we have detailed plans for most situations. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. Like Jacob, we seek God's deliverance when it doesn't appear that we can determine the desired outcome. And like Jacob, most of us must return to deal with our broken relationships, realizing that our struggle was also with God. Something new is required. Both healing and growth demand struggle.
One benefit of struggle that changes us is that we mature to the place where we can walk with others in their struggles. Now we're ready to listen. Now we can lead. Now we become fully human. The beauty of self-help groups is that those who have struggled and changed can walk along side those who are wrestling with their own demons.
Until we deal with the death of a loved one, someone else's grief is simply a formality. Before feeling humiliated, we can never know how painful it can be to those who are humiliated with no way to defend themselves. After we ourselves know struggle, we realize that love, peace, and security are much better than the money, position and fame we desired. Now we begin to make different decisions as we look toward a different future. We don't stay the same - but are transformed (p. 84).
Hope and despair aren't opposites, but are shaped from the very same circumstances. Each of us has many opportunities to choose one or the other. The difference is that despair colors the way we look at things, makes us suspicious of the future and negative about the present. Hope, on the other hand, takes life on its own terms, knowing that whatever happens, God lives in it and will bring good to those who live in it.
Hope doesn't wait for things outside us to get better, but hope encourages us to get better inside. It's about becoming open to the God of newness, knowing that hope is God's gift to transform us from the depths of despair. What a gift that is!
08/03/2008
