A sermon on Genesis 32:24-33:4 by Revd Dr Colin Hunter

Retirement is a life stage transition that has concentrated the mind powerfully and caused me to reflect on what is most important for me in life and ministry. After fifty years in the church, twenty five in pastoral ministry, fifteen on the Whitley faculty, involvement with the Melbourne College of Divinity ministry studies post graduate program as a student, board member and administrator for nearly twenty years, what is that one thing above all others that defines the essence of faith? For me it is all wrapped up in one word – reconciliation.

Reconciliation was a big word for the Apostle Paul; sometimes he used it to talk about God making peace with humankind through the death of Jesus Christ, as in Romans 5; at other times about the reconciliation of the world – the cosmos – in Christ. In Ephesians the author addresses the Greek and Jewish Christians and tells them that God has reconciled the two groups and, through the cross, ended the hostility that existed between them– it’s just that they couldn’t acknowledge that truth and live by it. The Christ figure is the key to reconciliation, and reconciliation is at the heart of the mission of the Christ.

For as long as people walk this planet there will be hostility, violence and war, I am not so naïve as to believe otherwise. But I also believe with every fibre of my being that there is no more vital human calling and ministry, than the ministry of reconciliation. And for me it is not possible to talk about reconciliation between me and God apart from reconciliation between me and those with whom I have become estranged. I have to start with myself, my family and my community.

The Jacob narratives
One of the great images of reconciliation in all human literature is found in the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis. They were twin brothers, Esau was born first with Jacob hanging on to his heel as they were born. They were as different as any twins, or any brothers for that matter, could be. Esau was a skilful hunter, a man of the open fields who loved to roam far and wide in search of game and adventure. He was his father Isaac’s favourite and as the older brother he would expect to inherit the family fortune. Jacob, by contrast, was a quiet man who lived in the tents, enjoyed cooking and was his mother Rebekah’s favourite.

I have often seen parallels between my older brother Bill, and Esau, and myself and Jacob. Bill and his wife Lesley live in the country, have travelled some of the most inaccessible tracks in this country in their rugged four wheel drive and off-road caravan. Bill worked overseas with an aid agency in Rwanda shortly after the horrific genocide, restoring water supplies and other services. He was awarded the Institution of Engineers Fred Hollows award for services to humanity. Last year Bill and Lesley cycled from Prague to Venice.

Bill is Esau, a man of the open fields while I have been Jacob, a man of the tents and the church and the college. But that is where the parallels with Jacob and Esau end because Bill and I have always been the best of friends who look out for each other and love spending time together. Maybe that’s because we migrated in 1952 as ten pound Poms and have never had much of an inheritance to fight over.

In the Genesis story Jacob, aided and abetted by his mother, twice cheated his brother Esau and robbed him, first of the inheritance that was rightfully his, and then of the blessing of the old man Isaac. Well, in the early days of the relationship between Jacob and Esau there was no blessing, no peace, only anger and jealousy and hatred about who would receive the inheritance and the blessing. How many times have families been ripped apart by dirty dealing over property or an inheritance? How many siblings refuse to have anything to do with their brothers and sisters or parents because they have been, or believe they have been, treated unjustly? The court that needs the strictest security for fear of violence is the family court because it seems that the closer we have been to our adversary, the more bitter the hatred that can develop.

Esau was so angry with Jacob that he planned to kill him, so Rebekah sent Jacob off to her brother Laban and the story branches off into Jacob’s marriages to Laban’s daughters, Leah and Rachel – more dirty dealings by Laban and sibling rivalry between the two sisters, but we won’t go there tonight.

Fast forward a couple of decades, Jacob is now a wealthy man and decides it is time to go home. He knows that he will have to face his brother Esau and deal with the bad blood between them, but has no idea of how Esau will respond – will he have nursed his anger and still want to kill him? On the afternoon before the brothers are due to meet, Jacob lines up a procession of servants with domestic animals of various kinds to offer as gifts to appease Esau. He instructs them to bow low to the ground in a gesture of submission as soon as Esau appears. He takes all his family and possessions across the Jabbok River than returns to the other side to spend the night alone by himself. This is a man who was seriously troubled and afraid. And the story tells us he wrestled with a man all night until sunup.

What a strange story. Who was the man? Was it an angel? Was it a demon? Was it God? According to Claus Westermann the implication of the story is that it was a river demon that attacked Jacob, but somehow that doesn’t seem to fit well with the attacker being the one who blesses him and gives him a new name. From now on he is no longer Jacob the usurper but Israel, the one who prevails with God. I like to think of this story as Jacob wrestling with himself, with his guilt, his demons, his history, before the encounter with his brother Esau.

Reconciliation with oneself
During my time in the church, as a lay person and as an ordained pastor, I have known many clergy who have burned out, or else behaved badly by dominating or abusing their congregations. Not all, but many of them had not engaged this wrestle with themselves, had not struggled to know themselves, to be at peace with themselves so that they could be reconciled with those whom they had hurt or by whom they had been hurt. I was at a workshop in Brisbane last year with Greg and Meryam Brown, psychologists who have worked for more than twenty years with clergy who have suffered burnout or who have abused parishioners. They reaffirmed my sense that more problems in ministry are caused by a lack of personal integration than any other factor. Rowland Croucher likewise lists the number one cause of clergy burnout as unresolved family of origin issues which leave people inwardly fragmented.

It has been my great privilege these last many years through the field education program at Whitley College to stand alongside people training for ministry as they wrestled with themselves – and sometimes with me – in the quest to know who they are, to understand themselves and their ministry context. Whatever our particular ministry within the church, we all need to do the difficult work of wrestling with our identity, to know ourselves and to be reconciled to ourselves so that we do not unwittingly become abusers of ourselves and of others.

It took Jacob years of wandering in his own wilderness before he was able to engage the hard work of wrestling with his own distortions. Only then was reconciliation with the brother whom he loved and feared, the brother whom he had wronged, possible.

Reconciliation with one’s family
The climax of the Jacob/Esau drama comes after Jacob has wrestled all night and come away with a damaged hip, but still alive. He goes ahead of his entourage and sees Esau with a company of 400 warriors. In an attitude of submission Jacob bows to the ground seven times, no doubt a ritual apology for the sins he committed against his brother so many years before and an acknowledgement of Esau’s superior status in the family. But instead of standing on ceremony and humiliating Jacob, Esau runs down the road, embraces and kisses his brother, and they both weep tears of relief and joy at being reunited.

What does this wonderful story bring to mind for you? My mind went immediately to the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. The younger son spends this share of the family inheritance, blows it all on sex, drugs and rock and roll, and comes home deeply repentant for what he has done. His father sees him coming a long way off, runs down the road, embraces him and kisses him, and throws a party. He has compassion on his wayward son and forgives him. Interesting that in the Jacob narratives, the father figure, or the compassionate, forgiving God figure is not Jacob, it is the much maligned and denigrated Esau. It is Esau who demonstrates compassion and forgiveness, not Jacob the father of the tribes of Israel.

Reconciliation within a conflicted family is probably the next most difficult task in life to reconciliation within one’s own conflicted self. And it is not always possible. Some siblings are like the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son and simply refuse to be reconciled. Sometimes the bitterness and hurt just run too deep, but if one person does not take the initiative to restore a relationship it won’t happen. And what of the larger conflicts, between gangs, ethnic groups, warring tribes and nations, religious conflicts? Claus Westermann comments that ‘Every war is in essence a war between brothers’, so whilst the Jacob stories are about a man finding peace with himself and his family, they can be legitimately extrapolated to provide a model for reconciliation in the world.

Conclusion
I don’t want to trivialise the process of reconciliation by offering simplistic solutions. I think I take my lead about practical reconciliation from Jenny’s cousin Lesley who lives in Cornwall. Her daughter was murdered by her flatmate’s former boyfriend. There was no apparent motive, and no reason for the brutal killing ever uncovered. Lesley is a Quaker and needed to work on the devastation and bitterness that hovered over her. So she arranged to visit her daughter’s killer in an attempt to understand, and perhaps to forgive. Sadly the murderer’s counsellor interrupted proceedings when Lesley asked why he killed Ruth, so the reconciliation process was aborted. But she has become a leading figure in the restorative justice movement in the UK and activist against the death penalty, corresponding with people on death row in Texas.

She had done the hard spiritual work of inner reconciliation, largely through her Quaker spirituality, and has found a way towards healing through a willingness to engage the hard process of reconciliation with her daughter’s murderer. Lelsey believes passionately that this is the way of God. This is what I have learned, this is what I struggle to live, that ‘in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us’. Reconciliation begins with me and my ‘self’. It moves to those who have been close and from whom I have become estranged. And then, as I let go the fears, the guilt, the self justification and self pity of estrangement, I might just possibly become an agent for the peace of God in the world. And is not this how, in Christ, God reconciles the world to Godself?

Amen, let it be so.